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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780870818257 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University Press of Colorado |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2006 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 310 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
American Women in World War 1
They Also Served
By Lettie Gavin
University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 1997 University Press of ColoradoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87081-825-7
CHAPTER 1
The First Women of the Navy
"Is there any regulation which specifies that a Navy yeoman be a man?" With that question to his counsel, U.S. secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels made military history. And he also solved the tremendous manpower shortage that plagued the Navy in the spring of 1917 as the United States prepared to enter the war in Europe. Navy shore stations, where activities were increasing dramatically, urgently needed help. Every bureau and naval establishment called for more stenographers, draftsmen, and other clerical help. The Navy was awash in its own paperwork, but every man was needed at sea on the hundreds of naval vessels then readying for action in the Great War.
Faced with the need for drastic action, Daniels shrewdly questioned counsel about gender regulations. He was advised that the law did not specifically indicate that Navy yeomen (clerks) must be male. The secretary then shocked Navy colleagues by his order: "Enroll women in the naval service as yeomen and we will have the best clerical assistance the country can provide."
When the Navy's call went out in early 1917 for female yeomen, popularly christened "yeomanettes," many newspapers published bitterly critical letters from readers. Even the Navy's own board of legal advisors reacted violently. "W-o-m-e-n in the Navy, fantastic, ridiculous," they cried. "Petticoats in the Navy! Damn'd outrage! Helluva mess! Back to sea f'r me!"
It would seem no one was completely pleased with the order; the concept of women in the military was unheard of. Men were firmly in charge — women's suffrage was not yet law — and apparently intended to stay that way. But Secretary Daniels's order came from the top, and as such, it was carried out without delay. In addition, Daniels believed that "a woman who works as well as a man ought to receive the same pay." That order, too, caused great consternation among Navy stalwarts, but they obeyed, as they always did. Accordingly, in March 1917, commandants of all naval districts permitted women to enlist in the Naval Reserve Force in such essential noncombat ratings as yeomen, radio electricians, pharmacists, chemists, draftsmen, accountants, and telephone operators.
Within a month — by the time the United States entered the Great War on April 6, 1917 — 200 eager young women had become Navy yeomen, the very first officially recognized military enlisted women in the country's history. Among them was Helen Dunbar McCrery of Seattle, WA. "They needed girls who had stenographic skills; I was good at it," she recalled many years later. "I could take dictation pretty fast. It was the Gregg method of shorthand, but I invented some of my own. They gave us uniforms just as fast as they could get them made. Oh, I had the neatest suit you ever saw. We had white shirts, and they were the devil because you always had a ring around the neck. We had to have two of them, because you had to wash one every night." The numbers of female yeomen increased rapidly over the next few months, reaching a peak strength of more than 11,000 in 1918 and providing a huge pool of talent from which the Navy could draw.
Today, when women work in many traditionally masculine professions, it may be difficult to appreciate the courage and independence of the women who volunteered for Navy service in 1917. These women were born and raised in the Victorian era, when "ladies" were expected to walk a traditional, narrow social path indeed. But knowing their country needed them for broader service, and perhaps inspired by their counterparts in Europe, U.S. women stepped forward to serve. They were, in fact, eager to participate in the national effort. And they served so well that serious consideration was given to commissioning some of them as Navy officers. The war ended, however, before such promotions were realized.
There were few requirements for the first female yeomen. A woman had to be between eighteen and thirty-five years of age, of good character and neat appearance. The Navy preferred high school graduates with business or office experience but did not require a college education. A prospective yeomanette simply presented herself at a recruiting station, was interviewed for qualifications, and filled out application forms. After she passed the perfunctory physical exam, she was sworn in and signed up for a four-year hitch. The entire process often took less than a day.
The new yeomanettes, unlike their male counterparts, received no formal recruit training before starting their duties. They simply began work immediately in Navy offices all over the country. Their training, if any, would come later. Young Sarah Ellen Story was assigned to the Navy's Appraisers Stores Department in Boston, MA. Later she recalled, "I was put in the Fuel Office, headed by an old timer, Lt. Healy. He said to me, 'Do you know anything about filing?' And when I said yes, he took the entire contents of the file and dumped it on a big desk and said, 'See if you can put these where we can find them.' The bookkeepers had not found a system then, either. This was in late 1918 and I wonder how we won the war."
A young Virginia recruit, Estelle Kemper, recalled that she enlisted and reported for duty that same afternoon. "By nightfall, I felt like an old hand. After dinner I phoned my family in Richmond. My father answered the phone and I told him proudly that I had joined the Navy. Never immune to my bombshells, he gulped and said quickly, 'I'll call your mother.' When I repeated my announcement to her, she was stunned into silence for a moment, then asked weakly, 'Oh, Sister, can you ever get out?' The poor dear probably saw me in bell-bottomed trousers, swabbing decks, keeping close to the rail, for I was not born to the sea!"
Because their work was mainly clerical, some Navy women had to learn those skills, and many took additional schooling at night to study naval terminology, routine, and procedure. In many instances, their training also included military drill. For thirty minutes one day a week, some recruits practiced marching in straight columns and executing simple formations. Some carried rifles to emphasize their military readiness. The Navy was quick to realize the positive publicity generated by these women in uniform, and the female yeomen often were paraded in support of war bond drives, rallies, recruiting campaigns, troop sendoffs, and other official occasions.
At first, many of these Navy women had no uniforms. They wore civilian clothes, with armbands indicating their ratings. Secretary Daniels later took credit for the dark blue tailored uniform that eventually evolved: "Some people thought they ought to wear something like pants. Some had different ideas. The length of the skirt, that was a serious problem. Should we have a long skirt that would sweep the decks? Or something that revealed more leg? Never in my life have I attempted anything, great or small, without the wise counsel of the women. We decided on [skirts] about eight inches from the ground."
Additional instructions came later, inspired no doubt by each woman's inclination to dress distinctively. The orders came down: "No fur neckpieces, muffs, spats or other adornment shall be worn with the uniform, nor shall any part of the uniform be worn without the uniform complete." The insignia of the female yeomen, two crossed quills, was the same as that of the enlisted male yeoman of the regular Navy, and the badge was worn on the left sleeve of the uniform blouse.
A Boston newspaper observed the female enlistees and commented:
Pity the Navy's poor "yeogirls." They have to have two wardrobes in these days of the high cost of clothes. One [wardrobe] is a thing of strictly tailored garments, made according to Navy specifications and varying not so much as a hair's breadth. Government uniforms and their accompaniments have to be of good materials. One cannot scrimp in the amount of material used, or save on its cost. An average, serviceable yeowoman's suit [Norfolk jacket and skirt] costs $35 today. The winter outer garment, which has been specified as the full-length naval cape, lined throughout, is modestly priced at $45.
Then there were summer and winter hats, boots with military heels, leather gloves (although regulations specified white cotton), and tailored blouses. "It costs Uncle Sam's yeowomen $150 annually for just the bare essentials of uniform dress. This amount can be stretched to $200 easily with the addition of the white uniforms for summer, the white hats and shoes, and the extra skirts of white and serge."
As U.S. women flocked to join the colors, Secretary Daniels had other puzzlements: what to call the new female enlistees. The popular term was "yeomanette." But, said Daniels, "I never did like this 'ette' business. I always thought if a woman does a job, she ought to have the name of the job." The women enlistees were therefore known as yeomen, but a parenthetical "F" for "female" was added to distinguish them from their male counterparts when sea duty was assigned.
True to Daniels's word, the female yeomen earned the same pay as their male counterparts: $28.75 per month (starting), less twenty cents for hospitalization. They drew subsistence pay of $1.25 per day, which was later raised to $1.50. The women also received a uniform allowance, medical care, and war risk insurance. Discipline, too, was the same for the women as for the male sailors. Yeomen (F) learned to obey orders and follow routine without question. Punishment, however, did not extend to time in the brig; usually it involved loss of liberty or pay.
As U.S. participation in the war increased, more and more women joined the Navy, coming from every state in the union, and from Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. They came from every walk of life and every socioeconomic background, though most came from middle-class families. Like American men, these women traded the shelter of comfortable homes for spare, crowded living quarters, for the strict discipline and regulation of their lives, and for the long, lonely separation from families and friends — all new experiences for the protected women of that day. Many worked in hastily constructed barren, drafty buildings, and thousands toiled from early morning until far into the night under tremendous pressure in order to accomplish the necessary work of shipping vast numbers of men and supplies out to sea. They served in the bureaus in Washington, at Navy yards, in all naval districts, and at many shore stations.
Although Yeomen (F) were not permitted to go to sea, a few were sent overseas. Five Navy women went to France, for example, to work with nurses in the hospitals of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. One worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Puerto Rico, and a handful were scattered in such far-off places as Guam, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal Zone.
The Navy women often worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Although they were widely considered "the weaker sex," they asked for, and expected, no preferential treatment. They worked hard at a variety of jobs, many of them admittedly tedious. "Humdrum" is an adjective that crops up often in the memories of many of those first Navy women. Yeoman (F) Nell Weston Halstead of Chicago recalled being assigned to the file room of the Bureau of Engineering, typing endless excerpts from incoming and outgoing letters. Looking back on her service, she expressed surprise that she "didn't jump down the captain's throat ... just to relieve the monotony. One day it got my goat so completely that I boldly sailed into the captain's office — he was an oldtimer in the Navy, with basso voice and glowering eye — and I told him we didn't like our jobs and we wanted to go to France. Imagine it! Well, he just looked at me and said, 'What the hell could a girl do on a battleship? Get back to your job.' And needless to say, back I went."
But not all Yeomen (F) toiled at routine jobs. One woman directed priority orders sent to railroad officials to move the Navy's supplies. Another supervised manufacturers who produced clothing for 250,000 sailors. Yeomen (F) rapidly became the Navy's switchboard operators. Other women were commissary stewards, librarians, fingerprint experts, torpedo assemblers, telegraphers, and camouflage designers.
For many of them, the Navy experience changed their lives. Helen McCrery embarked on her career as a Yeoman (F) in the spring of 1917, just days before the United States entered the European war. Her orders arrived from Seattle, WA, dated April 3, 1917, sending her to duty at the Thirteenth Naval District, Navy Yard, Puget Sound, WA, where she would be in charge of forty young women on the Bremerton base. Thus began one of Helen McCrery's "busiest and happiest experiences." She recalled:
Three weeks after I enlisted, I became chief yeoman to Rear Admiral Robert E. Coontz, commandant of the Navy Yard. He was the kindest, nicest man I ever knew. He always wanted me to march right behind him in our parades, because, he said, 'I want people to see that we have girls in the Navy.' We marched in all the parades. We took great pride in our marching. We broke our necks never to lose a step. But the thing was, the men marched with a 30-inch stride. That was too long for us and I protested. I showed them my short step and they decided, 'Well, I guess the fellows had better shorten their stride.'
Gertrude Madden, believed to be the youngest of the Bremerton Yeomen (F), also had fond memories of Admiral Coontz. "Knowing that he often went to his office on Sundays," she recalled, "I called him to get permission to go to a picnic 'out of uniform' that day. He said, 'Going out of uniform is permitted only when going hunting or fishing. Will there be boys there?' I answered in the affirmative. He replied, 'Well, then, you'll be fishing, won't you?'"
As U.S. women flocked to enlist, seventeen-year-old Frances Treherne watched with envy as the new Navy women "strutted proudly" around New York in their smart uniforms. "I was so impressed. I set right out for Washington to enlist, but I was too young. On my eighteenth birthday, though, I was sworn in." That was in September 1918. Miss Treherne was appalled, however, when her uniform was issued. "We stood in line to get those snappy uniforms, and an old 'chief' kept us in line with a stick. He kept prodding us along with his stick, and I thought, 'Don't you dare touch ME.' When I picked up my uniform, I was just sick. It was such poor material, just trashy, and the color was horrible. Someone had been profiteering. You see, cheating the government was going on then, too. Eventually we were issued good uniforms, and I was always proud to wear mine."
One of the Navy's first enlisted women, Lou MacPherson Guthrie, was a rural schoolteacher from North Carolina working with the Bureau of War Risk Insurance in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1917. She clearly remembered the "wildly exciting day when the American Navy called for 100 women war workers to enlist and do accounting work at the Navy Yard. This would release sailors to man the warships." Lou and three of her friends passed enlistment examinations with high marks and were assigned to the Navy Yard. For a time, Miss MacPherson worked the graveyard shift, midnight to 8 A.M., at the Navy Yard. "We liked it, even though we had to get off the street car at midnight in the worst section of the city and walk down the wharf. Here wharf rats nearly as big as opossums scuttled across our path in the moonlight. But it was quite safe. There was very little crime recorded in the city then. We felt no timidity about walking alone at midnight on poorly lighted streets."
In time, of course, many more young women enlisted in the Navy, and the unique glamour of the uniform seemed to evaporate. Lou MacPherson recalled, "The work was becoming routine; the boys were overseas. We felt stalemated in Washington." The declaration of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, provided a great deal of excitement for Lou and her friends. "It was so thrilling! The war was over! All the offices closed and we literally danced in the streets with any passersby who came along. Next day, it was hard to get back to our humdrum duties."
Ann Dunn was one Yeoman (F) who stayed on at her Navy job even after the war ended. Following her enlistment in 1918, Miss Dunn was assigned "keeper of the logs," and held forth in a locked room on the third floor of the Navy Building in Washington, DC. In that room were 14,000 volumes filled with stories of heroism, conquests, and daily combat with the sea, all written by men of the Navy, dating back to 1861.
From Navy ships all over the world, commanders each month sent their log books to Washington to be filed by the devoted Yeoman (F). If a monsoon happened in the China Sea, or a sailor developed measles in the North Atlantic, no time was lost in getting a terse but complete report of the incident to Miss Dunn. To her, the most gripping story in her files was told in the log of the USS Mount Vernon, a World War I transport that fell victim to a German U-boat attack off the French coast in September 1918. Thirty-five men were killed when the torpedo smashed into the Mount Vernon's boiler room, and the vessel seemed doomed. But every survivor rushed immediately to his post. Guns of the Mount Vernon barked. Engineers braved death to fire up the boilers. And the ship limped back to Brest.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from American Women in World War 1 by Lettie Gavin. Copyright © 1997 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Introduction,
Map,
1. First Women of the Navy,
2. Women Marines,
3. The Army Nurse,
4. The Hello Girls of the Army Signal Corps,
5. Reconstruction Aides,
6. Women of the YMCA,
7. The Woman Physician in the Great War,
8. Red Cross Volunteers,
9. The Salvation Army,
Appendix A: Chemical Warfare and Shell Shock,
Appendix B: For the Record,
Index,
What People are Saying About This
"An excellent array of well-chosen photographs informs the text and allows the reader to develop a real sense of the spirit of the women who served and the conditions under which they did so. . . . Gavin has clearly managed to contact many of the first [women] in each of the nine branches of the services and to obtain from them insight into conditions and experiences from 1917 onwards."
—H-NET reviews, H-Minerva, and Minerva