|
Almost two million women have served in the U.S. military and thousands more with the military forces of other nations.
Historians seem reluctant to record or publish the names and numbers of American women who gave their lives in service to their country. Whether from illness, injury, disease, enemy fire, plane crashes, or the unknown, they deserve to be remembered as having made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us all remember that women have served proudly since our nation began. The Civil War Some historical records verify the fact that over sixty women were either wounded or killed at various battles during the Civil War. Perhaps one of the the most poignant stories about women in the Civil War is told in Women in War1866, by Frank Moore. In 1863, at age 19, a woman known only as Emily, ran away from home and joined the drum corps of a Michigan Regiment. The regiment was sent to Tennessee and during the struggle for Chatanooga a minie ball pierced the side of the young soldier. Her wound was fatal and her sex was disclosed. At first she refused to disclose her real name but as she lay dying she consented to dictate a telegram to her father in Brooklyn. "Forgive your dying daughter. I have but a few moments to live. My native soil drinks my blood. I expected to deliver my country but the fates would not have it so. I am content to die. Pray forgive me...... Emily." After the Battle of Gettysburg,
July 1863, the bodies of two Confederate women, in uniform, were found.
A Union flag bearer, also a woman in uniform, was killed on the hill near
Picketts Charge. A young woman named Frances Day was mortally wounded
while serving as Sgt Frank Mayne in the Western Theater. Spanish American War Ellen May Tower of Byron, Michigan was the first U.S. Army nurse to die on foreign soil, of typhoid fever, in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War, and was the first woman to receive a military funeral in Michigan. Twenty two women died as a result of service in the Spanish American War: Bailey, Lurecia - Army Contract
Nurse - Typhoid Fever Source Material graciously provided
by WIMSA - The above names came from Record Group 112, National Archives,
2nd Report, NSDAR, p. 87; 3rd Report, NSDAR, p. 50 ; Record Group 112,
"Order of Spanish American War Nurses," Trained Nurse and Hospital
Review, Vol. 23, p. 81 and ps. 208-210; same peridocal, Vol. 24, p. 423;
Vol 25, p. 447; Record Group 112, "The Village of Byron and It's Heroine,
Ellen May Tower," by Kathryn Seward. World War One World War Two During the battle on Anzio, six Army Nurses were killed by the German bombing and strafing of the tented hospital area. Four Army Nurses among the survivors were awarded Silver Stars for extraordinary courage under fire. In the Pacific Theater a Japanese suicide plane bombed the hospital ship USS Comfort off Leyte Island. In the attack 6 nurses, 5 medical officers, 8 enlisted men, and 7 patients were killed, and 4 nurses were wounded In all, more than 400 military women lost their lives during World War II. In 1944 U.S. Army Nurse Aleda E. Lutz of Freeland Michigan was the first U.S. military woman to die in a combat zone during World War II when her hospital plane went down on her 196th rescue mission. A little known fact is that thirty eight WASPs gave their lives during WWII - and yet the WASP were not given full military status until many years later.
The Korean Conflict Ensign Constance R. Esposito,
Navy Nurse Corps SN Doris Frances Brown, Milwaukee,
non-hostile death Navy Vietnam (1959-1975) U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Carol Ann Elizabeth Drazba Lt. Drazba and Lt. Jones were assigned to the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon. They died in a helicopter crash near Saigon, February 18, 1966. Drazba was from Dunmore, PA., Jones from Allendale, SC. Both were 22 years old. Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander Capt. Alexander of Westwood, NJ and Lt. Orlowski of Detroit, MI died November 30, 1967. Alexander, stationed at the 85th Evac. and Orlowski, stationed at the 67th Evac., in Qui Nhon, had been sent to a hospital in Pleiku to help out during a push. With them when their plane crashed on the return trip to Qui Nhon were two other nurses, Jerome E. Olmstead of Clintonville, WI and Kenneth R. Shoemaker, Jr. of Owensboro, KY. Alexander was 27, Orlowski 23. Both were posthumously awarded Bronze Stars. 2nd Lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan Lt. Donovan, from Allston, MA, died of pneumonia in Qui Nhon on July 8, 1968. She was assigned to the 85th Evac. in Qui Nhon. She was 26 years old. 1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane Lt. Lane died from shrapnel wounds when the 312th Evac. at Chu Lai was hit by rockets on June 8, 1969. From Canton, OH, she was a month short of her 26th birthday. She was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Bronze Star for Heroism. In 1970, the recovery room at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, where Lt. Lane had been assigned before going to Viet Nam, was dedicated in her honor. In 1973, Aultman Hospital in Canton, OH, where Lane had attended nursing school, erected a bronze statue of Lane. The names of 110 local servicemen killed in Vietnam are on the base of the statue. Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham, Chief Nurse at 91st Evac. Hospital, Tuy Hoa. Lt. Col. Graham, from Efland, NC, suffered a stroke in August 1968 and was evacuated to Japan where she died four days later. A veteran of both World War II and Korea, she was 52. U.S. Air Force Capt. Mary Therese Klinker Capt. Klinker, a flight nurse assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, was on the C-5A Galaxy which crashed on April 4 outside Saigon while evacuating Vietnamese orphans. This is known as the Operation Babylift crash. From Lafayette, IN, she was 27. She was posthumously awarded the Airman's Medal for Heroism and the Meritorious Service Medal. Civilian American Red Cross Army Special Services Catholic Relief Services Central Intelligence Agency United States Agency for International
Development United States Department of the
Navy OICC (Officer in Charge of Construction) Journalists Missionaries POW/MIA Operation Babylift The following women were killed in the crash, outside Saigon, of the C5-A Galaxy transporting Vietnamese children out of the country on April 4, 1975. All of the women were working for various U.S. government agencies in Saigon at the time of their deaths with the exception of Theresa Drye (a child) and Laurie Stark (a teacher). Sharon Wesley had previously worked for both the American Red Cross and Army Special Services. She chose to stay on in Vietnam after the pullout of U.S. military forces in 1973.
Revised November 2000: Desert Storm Major Marie T. Rossi was killed 1 March 1991 in Saudi Arabia in Operation Desert Storm. She was flying a CH-47D CHINOOK Cargo Helicopter when it crashed into an unlit Microwave Tower in bad weather. Major Rossi was 32 and a native of Oradell, NJ. Army PFC Pamela V. Gay, 19, Surrey,
Virginia Navy AG1 Shirley Marie Cross Stateside ANG Pilot CWO2 Carol McKinney, Missouri Peacetime Barbara Allen Rainey, 34, US Navy First woman pilot in the history of the U.S. Navy, earning her gold wins in 1974. She was killed while training another pilot, in an air accident in Florida in 1982. Lt. Kara Hultgreen, 29, US Navy Lt. Hultgreen was the first woman to qualify in a combat-ready F-14 Tomcat, graduating third in her pilot training class. She was a member of the Black Lions of VF-213 readying to deploy to the Persian Gulf. As she was approaching the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on 25 Oct1994, her aircraft began losing altitude. Her radar intercept officer ejected successfully. Hultgreen ejected immediately after, but the jet had already rolled. After an exhaustive search, her body and the plane were not recovered. She received full military honors upon her death. The Navy salvaged the plane and recovered her body, still strapped inside the ejector seat. A four-month investigation found that technical malfunction, not pilot error, caused the crash and that almost no pilot could have saved the plane after the left engine stalled. Captain Amy Lynn Svoboda, 29, US Air Force Captain Svoboda, an Air Force jet pilot, died on May 29, 1997, after her A-10 Thunderbolt plane crashed during a training mission at the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range in Arizona. Capt. Amy Lynn Svoboda’s death marked the first fatality of a woman pilot in the Air Force which has only 13 other women fighter pilots. The No. 2 training officer in her squadron, Captain Svoboda had logged more than 1,400 hours piloting jets and was part of a training flight with another A-10 when her plane crashed near Gila Bend, AZ.
RETURN TO THE WOMEN'S HISTORY LIBRARY | RESEARCH ROOMS | THE READING ROOM LIZNOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS | WOMAN SUFFRAGE TIMELINE | THE LIZ LIBRARY ENTRANCE
Except as otherwise
noted, all contents in this collection are copyright 1998-06 the liz library.
All rights reserved.
|
