Monitor File Photo
VFW Auxiliary Post 4376 President Kathy Jensen (left) passes out gift bags as Auxiliary Post Patriotic Instructor Gay Compton cuts the cake during a Women Veterans Day reception June 12 at the Seven Points VFW Hall.

Courtesy Photo
Loretta Walsh is America’s first official enlisted woman when she joins the Navy during World War I.

Courtesy Photo
Esther McGowin Blake is the first woman to serve in the U.S. Air Force.

Editor’s Note-The following article was provided to The Monitor by the Sarah Maples Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
While the oldest military service in America does not officially state who the first woman to join its ranks was, most historians agree that it was Deborah Sampson. An indentured servant during the Revolution, Sampson joined the Continental Army in May 1781, and because women were not permitted to serve in the military, she disguised herself as a man by the name of Robert Shurtliff, her deceased brother. After being wounded, the doctor discovered her secret, but did not tell. Finally, during a pandemic when she became unconscious, he had to report her to the commanding officer. Gen. George Washington authorized her honorable discharge, and she eventually got a military pension from the state of Massachusetts. Her tombstone reads: "Deborah, wife of Benjamin Gannett, dies April 29th, 1827, aged 68 years." The reverse side of her tombstone reads: "Deborah Sampson Gannett, Robert Shurtliff, The Female Soldier Service 1781-1783."
Many other women fought in the Revolution, although not enlisted, and followed their husbands to battlefields, including Martha, Gen. Washington’s wife. While most cooked, mended, and tended to the soldiers, some had to actually take up their wounded husband’s gun to fight for their lives.
During the Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to know with any certainty how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army, and perhaps as many as 400 in both armies – Confederate and Union.
During World War I, the whole country was engaged in some aspect in helping the U. S. win the war. This was the first time in history that women of all classes were working together to help the war efforts. Upper-class women founded many voluntary war organizations while middle and lower-class women worked in these organizations by working as nurses or by filling in the jobs of men. On March 21, 1917, Loretta Walsh became America's first official enlisted woman of any service when she joined the Navy and also became the first female chief petty officer.
Twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker transferred from the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve to the Coast Guard during World War I. While women served the Coast Guard as far back as the 1830s as civilian lighthouse keepers, it wasn't until World War I that they would wear the uniform of their service. The Baker sisters came over to the Coast Guard from the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve, where they were previously serving; however, Myrtle R. Hazard is the first woman to take the oath of enlistment for her service officially on Jan. 21, 1918.
The first woman to join the Marine Corps was Opha May Johnson joined the Corps on Aug. 13, 1918 -- before she (or any woman, for that matter) was even allowed to vote.
Esther McGowin Blake was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Air Force. Her motivation to join the military was deeply personal. In 1944, the B-17 her son was piloting was shot down over Europe. Her younger son was also serving and Blake was widowed. Blake first joined the Army Air Force in 1944 and was the first woman to enlist for regular Air Force duty when service within the newly founded branch was authorized for women on July 8, 1948. With the announcement of "free a man to fight," Blake rushed to the recruiting center and enlisted on the first hour of the first day the Air Force announced that women would be allowed to serve. The end of the war saw the reunion of Blake and her two sons.
During WWII, in total, 6 million women were added to the workforce in what resulted as a major cultural shift. With the men fighting in the wars, women were needed to take on responsibilities that the men had to leave behind. World War II involved global conflict on an unprecedented scale; the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. Rosie the Riveter became an emblem of women’s dedication to the traditionally male labor during this time.
With this expanded horizon of opportunity and confidence, and with the extended skill base that many women could now give to paid and voluntary employment, women's roles in World War II were even more extensive than in the First World War. By 1945, more than 2.2 million women were working in war industries, especially in munitions plants. They participated in the building of ships, aircraft, vehicles, and weaponry. Women also worked on farms, drove trucks, provided logistic support for soldiers and entered professional areas of work that were previously the preserve of men. According to historian D’Ann Campbell, “Between 1942 and 1945 140,000 women served in the WACs, 100,000 in the WAVES, 23,000 in the Marines, 13,000 in the SPARS, and 74,000 in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps”. Women became officially recognized as a permanent part of the U.S. armed forces after the war with the passing of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948.
Signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on June 12, 1948, as the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, it enabled women to serve as permanent, regular members of not only the army but also the navy, marine corps, and the recently formed air force.
Little official data exists about female Vietnam War veterans, but the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation estimates that approximately 11,000 military women were stationed in Vietnam during the conflict. Nearly all of them were volunteers, and 90 percent served as military nurses, though women also worked as physicians, air traffic controllers, intelligence officers, clerks and other positions in the U.S. Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines and the Army Medical Specialist Corps. In addition to women in the armed forces, an unknown number of civilian women served in Vietnam on behalf of the Red Cross, United Service Organizations (USO), Catholic Relief Services and other humanitarian organizations, or as foreign correspondents for various news organizations.
Five female Army nurses died over the course of the war, including 52-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Annie Ruth Graham, who served as a military nurse in both WW II and Korea before Vietnam and suffered a stroke in August 1968; and First Lieutenant Sharon Ann Lane, who died from shrapnel wounds suffered in an attack on the hospital where she was working in June 1969. Lane was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Bronze Star for Heroism. Colonel Graham is one of eight women whose names are listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
Early on, the U.S. Army resisted sending women other than nurses to Vietnam. The Women’s Army Corps (WAC), established during World War II, had a presence in Vietnam beginning in 1964, when General Westmoreland asked the Pentagon to provide a WAC officer and non-commissioned officer to help the South Vietnamese train their own women’s army corps. At its peak in 1970, WAC presence in Vietnam numbered some 20 officers and 130 enlisted women. WACs filled noncombat positions in U.S. Army headquarters in Saigon and other bases in South Vietnam; a number received decorations for meritorious service. No WACs died during the conflict.
Members of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps also played an important role in the conflict beginning in 1963. Apart from nurses, only nine Navy women–all officers–served in Vietnam, including Lieutenant Elizabeth G. Wylie, who worked in the Command Information Center on the staff of the Commander of Naval Forces in Saigon beginning in June 1967; and Commander Elizabeth Barrett, who in November 1972 became the first female naval line officer to hold command in a combat zone.
Women also served as members of the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps and the Women’s Air Force (WAF) during the Vietnam conflict. The U.S. Marine Corps had a more limited female presence in Vietnam, as until 1966 only 60 female marines were permitted to serve overseas, with most of those stationed in Hawaii. From 1967 to 1973, a total of 28 enlisted Marine women and eight officers served in Vietnam at various times.