Regarding Memorial Day, although not entirely in keeping with those who died in service, I am going to highlight some sources new to me, and maybe to you, too, and many pertain to military women. First, per the image heading this post, there is a group of photos available from the National Archives highlighting women, such as the above photograph of the Yeomanettes from the National Archives at San Francisco.

A little closer to home for those of us in Georgia, is an image of some members of the U.S. Marine Corps, at Camp Lejeune, NC. These women are all Native American, and this photograph is held at NARA in College Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.

Regarding minorities in the military, a book I learned about this past March is written by a woman in Tampa FL, Pia Jordan, who wrote that “she knew about her mother’s career in nursing, but when she learned about her being one of the first Black nurses in the military with THE Tuskegee Airmen, she knew she had to tell anyone who would listen.” Her book, full of photographs, is called Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and her military sisters. Here is a television spotlight on this story, showing some of the many photos used in this book.

In keeping with the topic of military women, Mildred Helen McAfee (1900-1994) had a long career in education. Made president of Wellesley College in 1936, in August 1942 she took a leave of absence from that role to take another role as director of the WAVES program. The first woman to be commissioned as an officer in the Navy Reserve, she helped develop the rules and structure of the WAVES and the Women’s Reserve, and led over 80,000 women by the end of her military career. Advocating for Women’s Reserve personnel to be given equal pay and benefits to male personnel, in November 1943, due to McAfee’s hard work, Public Law 183 was established, declaring women’s benefits to be equal to men’s. Read more about her here.

Now for a Georgia woman of note: Hazel Raines (1916-1956), was the first woman in Georgia to earn a pilot’s license, was in aviation shows around Macon and was one of the South’s premier stunt flyers. She was one of only twenty-five women chosen in 1942 to fly with the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) as a ferry pilot. After a crash and hospitalization, she came back to the United States in 1943, then moved to Texas to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) as a test pilot. She was the first female reserve pilot called into active service when the Korean War began (1950). Read more about her amazing career, cut short at age forty, in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Again referencing the National Archives, read more about the the Women’s Auxilliary Ferrying Squadron at (WAFS/ WASP), part of A People at War.

And go entirely through the National Archives extensive “Remembering Vietnam: Online Exhibit” (original exhibit was in 2019), broken into nine episodes in groups of three. Also take a look at that country’s history of The Wars in Vietnam’s 19th Century, as well as the country’s Foreign Occupation. An excellent video to see here includes film taken at the time, and interviews with citizens and participants. There is much to learn here.

I will end this post with a fun, interesting, but little thought of aspect of military life, and that is Supplying Sailors with Ice Cream in the World Wars! This is part of a recent newsletter called Sea History Today produced by the National Maritime Historical Society. As early as May 1913, in an edition of Ice Cream Trade Journal, was an article called “Sailors Like Ice Cream.”  The General Order in 1914 banning alcohol on US Navy ships shifted “the focus even more on ice cream as a morale booster.” In WWII the National Dairy Council wrote that “ice cream ranks high on Navy menus. It is not only a favorite food, but it also supplies valuable vitamins, proteins, and minerals. For that reason, wherever practical, the Navy gets ice cream!..”

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