| Show iff omen ollien play important roles in wars fought throughout centuries of conflict by ROGER SHAW newspaper Tin union ton western ased edl by biased NEW SI V YORK A well known historical novelist once remarked renar irked ked to me the great r ate marriage t m jorid orld history 1 Is that of ven venus us mars the ine more you think with th about sout it t irom from any old aspect ji ste arte rte truer it seems seem s to be kipling added added to this something a bout about the female being ie ing deadlier than male and and theres also the N the he lold old slogan about the hand that rocks the cradle rules the home 1 and the home defense program to boot all th this is sounds rather i anti sentimental sentiment alt but this is bant rnea rit to be a factual piece and not one gushing with t the h e i whistler and his mother sp spirit arit As a matter of fact the war functions of women 9 go 0 back a long ways ney ey date all the way to the mythical amazons of ancient greece who were cere war women with a kick and a vengeance in the middle ages lovely ladies often directed the defense of feudal castles astles locked into chastity belts of cold old hard iron W while hile their mailed husbands were off at the crusades tome e of these medieval amazons re very effective in siege war ire e and at times they even wore annor or one rule was always ob aved ved in this type of fighting the ady dy went with the castle if sh she e were ere attractive so much for medieval nedi eval chivalry which was more realistic ea listic than sir walter scott is always ready to admit joan of are arc then there was the mad maid of orleans that german maeschen maed chen va women are found in almost every branch of service in beleaguered beleaguer ed britain this woman ambulance driver attends civilian casualties and transports wounded soldiers from camps and hospitals from lorraine known to some as oan loan of arc here was a woman at war a regular feline field ma marshal ri of the first water she gave the english their worst defeats until the rattle battle of dunkirk in 1940 which is jang saxing a good deal in lan guage biage joan was such a good war wor woman rian that the english said she was vas a witch and burned her as such As a matter of fact joan must have given them a terrible inferiority leno ferio rity complex for when she en red the picture the french and english had been battling for a cen tu r y and the hundred years war was as drawing to a disastrous close in the russian revolution there emerged the battalion of death eath which got even more press benting gen ting than the U S marines and a saying an awful lot right from com the horses mouth this was a ker e ask unit and it was commanded b by y ay a brainy grim 1917 i who always carried poi bon tablets table ts in case she were captured r some actual fighting the he w bof d really did some fighting S ginst against the bolsheviks and we the germans both they carried the extra alo long russian rifles with extra cwg long bayonets which could not be removed eli from the s rifle barrels and which stood taller than some of the sky W 1 b of f d lad ladies ies finally keren r i ran away alway and the kerensky fol wing S dispersed it in y the s spanish civil war up in k 6 northerly ort herly basque country the 4 on 6 bounding DOun ding basque country girls i folks ought side by side with their men 3 cliff f they pushed italians over in anth t arid and vicariously kicked them S 1 evants apts la Passi onaria was a alid an ira gus T danish communist fighter 6 the she raised hades up P and down peninsula for years on b if 0 41 41 1 L W TV 70 C Z I 1 women are playing vital roles as noncombatants combatants non in england today somewhere in england the young lady above left covers plane fuselages with fabric on an airplane assembly line an expert flier the other lady right serves as an experimental pilot she is shown in the cockpit of a new bombing plane end everybody was afraid of her including the spanish loyalist government which she was supposed to be serving in her own sweet rubicund way after the end of the civil war this passion flower fled over the border to france in the first world war women went to work in the british and german ammunition factories with a vim and a vengeance they liked it it meant female emancipation higher wages by far and plenty of wartime glamour lure and sex appeal they worked hard and efficiently and they had the time of their likes lives there were feeble echoes of this in america but nowhere near the high pressure goings on as in the lands of those ill assorted first cousins the king and kaiser again mars and venus in 1940 june france collapsed and the defense program came to the united states again it was women and war mars and venus hearts and swords when it came to forging the swords or co ing with them in other ways the hearts came in with a vengeance by the middle of 1941 for instance some million and a half men will be in training camps some six million more people will be needed in offices and industrial plants to back them up in the speedup of the defense and help england programs that six milli million ont required is where the women come into the present picture and in large numbers too women are good for any factory process except heavy lifting or similar strong arm stuff in some mu notions lines like special fuse making the finicky female fingers out cut mode the mere male in philadelphia its fuses but in detroit its automobiles some detroit women have been working in auto factories for a quarter of a century and like it you find them in all departments ignition wiring piston inspecting soldering things together body trimming working a 40 hour week with decent social safeguards they cant work unless they are 18 and effo enforced reed rigidly under the stringent michigan laws and most of them marry have children and lead a home life these auto workers or motor ettes so called could and can be easily converted into airplane conditioners and girl groundhogs they paint plane wings inspect mechanical details and check deficiencies clean up and etch identification numbers in the aircraft works from dawn till dusk they toil at gun making and J 0 while some w women 0 men play an active mothers role 0 in england En glands 1 s defense jarnport important this ant er ts wol work k is even more war no lite life in must go on war or stick the caps on shells and fuss efficiently with machine tools which have now become the veritable sin sm aws of modern warfare so it goes in america we always employ close to two million women in industries and that figure is going up up anc up canadian sp speedup speed eed up 10 canada has already speeded up its gals or perhaps the gals have speeded up the land of the maple leaf factories and shipyards are on the make in the previously under indus dominion for england must be served and supplied all canadians and over 16 have been registered by the ottawa government ern ment and the airplane and munitions works are getting rapidly feminized there are even girlish armament engineers and so on down the gamut in canada the women work 44 hours per week as against the yankee 40 but they dont w work ork nearly as hard they have more fun at it and it is more human and less on the soulless robot pat tern the american women take to overalls and old clothes while the toil in the getup get up of our own midwestern mid western college coeds they munch on candy sport the old high heels and kid their male shop bosses if any not as well protected as the yankees and paid somewhat less but theres the other side to the coin that of the lighter heart and the wiser crack this attitude too is reflected in the canadian male conscription its only for a month as against the grimmer year a minimum of the A merican american draft system when it comes to canadian military wives they get 20 per month from the husbands pay and another 35 from the government there is another monthly 12 each fo for r children A canadian private soldier gets per day which is very good military money in fact the worlds to top p for doughboys dough boys then up in canada there are all sorts of volunteer groups for washing sailors laundry halifax button sewing anning toronto work in the salvation army the Y W C A running military saloons called canteens canteen s dancing with the boys and marrying them off TI they aey also drive e trucks roll red cross ma materials teriah 5 collect books and magazines for the camps and campers and collect blood for transfusions profess professional ional nurses Is trained nursing is a completely professional job up north of us nurses are in the army with the rank and pay of lieutenants and there are act actually bally some of them four units being overseas in in the snappiest of all the current snappy war uniforms these are public heal diet ga gals is hospital experts and so called physiotherapists plus some free lances and glamour ites they like it and are liked in england they are super popular and have the time of their lives so they write home to winnipeg or three rivers or guelph in the new american conscript will also take a army the W women omen hand or hands each new camp is is librarian and three hostesses to have a an and d the local club women sponsor so weekly y dances and other such goings on in some communities nice girls are not supposed to step out with private soldiers especially in the cons conservative erva tive south A fair ratio in the camps is 50 g girls eirls when it comes to to men ing and such festivals |
