The best known of these soldiers was Maria Bochkareva, the founder of the Russian “Women's Battalion of Death.” The first woman to lead a Russian military unit, Bochkareva went as far as to petition the Czar for permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian army in 1914 and was granted permission to join. Though it would be years before many other countries allowed female soldiers, in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia women did serve as combat troops. Curie invented a mobile X-ray unit, radiological cars nicknamed "little Curies," and ultimately trained 150 women to be X-ray operators on the battlefront, of which Curie herself was one - an act that she believed contributed to her later death from radiation exposure.
WW1 PARTICIPANTS DRIVERS
Many of the women drivers of the Red Cross Motor Service and other ambulance groups used their own cars, including Marie Curie. They delivered medical supplies, transported patients to hospitals and drove through artillery fire to retrieve the wounded.
WW1 PARTICIPANTS HOW TO
Many women who knew how to drive volunteered to go overseas to serve as ambulance and truck drivers or mechanics. The automobile age was just getting underway in WWI, and motorized ambulances became key to medical treatment on the battlefield. She went on to become the first president of California Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 1931. in France and the only woman anesthetist with Mobile Hospital Unit #1. Gran was one of the first woman anesthetists with the A.E.F. I was just scared.” - Medical Corps anesthetist Sophie Gran. We were supposed to hit the floor, but he was out and didn’t know what was going on. “I had just given this poor boy anesthesia when a bomb hit. Most of all, women were expected to bolster the morale of their families at home and loved ones overseas.Ī nurse assisting doctor with an operation. was asked to sign a pledge card stating that she would “carry out the directions and advice of the Food Administrator in the conduct of my household, in so far as my circumstances permit.” This meant canning food for future use, growing vegetables in the backyard and limiting consumption of meat, wheat and fats. They went into every kind of factory devoted to the production of war materials, from the most dangerous posts in munition plants to the delicate sewing in aeroplane factories.” - Alice Dunbar Nelson, American Poet and Civil Rights Activist, on African American women’s efforts during the war, 1918īut even women in more traditional roles contributed to the war effort.
“The women worked as ammunition testers, switchboard operators, stock takers. Recent research also shows that a limited number of African American women served overseas as volunteers with the YMCA. A French woman working as an airplane mechanic.Īs women took traditional male jobs in the United States, African American women were able to make their first major shift from domestic employment to work in offices and factories.