Military women of note

The first International Women's Day was celebrated in 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. To correspond to International Women's Day, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a Women's History Week in 1978. From that Sonoma event grew a National Women's History Week. Then in 1987, Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as "Women's History Month." 

Over the centuries, more than 3,000,000 women have served in the United States military. It is likely there is an interesting story about many of them. This article will highlight only a few.

Deborah Sampson

Deborah Sampson was born in 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts. She was the first known woman to fight in the Revolutionary War. In 1782, as the war raged on, the patriotic Sampson disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtleff and joined the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. Sampson was selected to serve in the Light Infantry Troops. They were referred to as "light" because they traveled with fewer provisions than the regular infantry. Specific physical requirements for Light Infantry Troops were that they had to be at least five feet, five inches tall and able to keep a fast and steady marching pace.

Deborah served in many dangerous missions and was not discovered for a year and a half. Even when she was wounded, she extracted the bullet herself. She was ultimately found out in Philadelphia when she became ill during an epidemic, lost consciousness and was taken to a hospital.

After she was discovered, she admitted she "swerved from the accustomed flowery paths of female delicacy." She was the first American woman to earn a full military pension.

Congress recognized her in enacting the Deborah Sampson Act of 2020, 38 U.S.C. § 7306 et seq. The law is aimed to reduce difficulties to healthcare for women veterans and increase essential services to address issues like homelessness, harassment, assault, and child-care.

Didi & Dora

Development of the Boeing "superfortress" bomber, the B-29, began in 1939. It was the largest bomber the world had ever seen. Its initial flight was in September 1942. As a reminder, it was a B-29 that carried the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Early on, however, military pilots were afraid to fly the B-29, believing it unsafe. They feared the plane would crash if one of its four engines failed.

That's where Didi Moorman and Dora Daugherty entered the picture. Didi and Dora were part of the Women's Air Service Program, the WASPs. The 1,800 WASPs who served during World War II were barred from combat. But they ferried aircraft and guided radio-controlled target drones.

The same pilot who flew the plane over Hiroshima, General Paul Tibbets, was also in charge of overseeing the B-29's entry into service in 1942-43 at Elgin Field, now known as Elgin Air Force Base, in the western Florida Panhandle. Realizing that military pilots were afraid to fly the B-29, Tibbets proposed to his commander, a two-star general: "If you let me train two women to fly the B-29, I'll show the men that the plane is safe." The commander approved the plan.

While the male pilots would not dare get into a B-29, Didi and Dora jumped at the opportunity. Tibbetts spent three days training them. When one of the engines caught on fire mid-air, Didi and Dora feathered the engine, pulled out the fire extinguisher, and landed the massive bomber perfectly with the other three engines.

An article in the National WASP WWII Museum newsletter says male pilots were embarrassed by their timidity at the sight of two women exiting the massive warbird that wasn't supposed to be flyable. They quickly got over their fear and began training to fly the B-29.

A 1997 article in Florida Today says the two women helped break the fear factor of male aviators.

Charity Adams

Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams was the first African American woman to be an officer in the Women's Auxiliary Corps, the WACs. In 1944, Adams was chosen to be the commanding officer of the first and only unit of WAC African Americans to go to Europe during World War II. Her unit was the 6888^th Central Postal Directory Battalion. Their mission, in Birmingham, England, was to organize and direct mail to U.S. servicemen which had gone undelivered for years, resulting in low morale among the troops.

The battalion was faced with air hangers full of undelivered post, which needed to be sorted and redirected. The women worked around the clock in three shifts, for eight hours per shift, seven days a week. They were tasked with clearing the 17 million pieces of backlogged mail in six months, but they were able to accomplish their goal in three months. The 6888^th Central Postal Directory Battalion was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022.

Last December, Tyler Perry's film, "The Six Triple Eight" was released on Netflix. It highlights the discrimination faced by Adams and those under her command. The women endured with quiet and dignified pluck.

Fort Lee in Virginia was originally named after Confederate States General Robert E. Lee, a slave owner. In 2023, it was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams after Lieutenant General Arthur J. Gregg and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams, both African American soldiers.

Anna Mae Hays

Both of Anna Mae Hays' parents were officers in the Salvation Army. Anna Mae played the piano, the organ and the French horn. She wanted to study music at the Juilliard School, but due to lack of funds she went to nursing school instead. She graduated from the Allentown General Hospital School of Nursing in Pennsylvania in 1939.

During World War II, she served in India and was deployed to Inchon throughout the Korean War. She later became head nurse at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. When President Dwight Eisenhower became ill, she was selected as one of his three private duty nurses.

From 1963 to 1966, Anna Mae Hays was assistant chief of the Army Nurse Corps. In 1967, she was promoted to Colonel and became chief of the Corps. During the Vietnam War, she traveled three times to Vietnam to monitor the nurses stationed there.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon appointed her a brigadier general. She was the first woman general officer in American military history.

The first thing she did after leaving the White House with her general's star was to ask to be dropped off at the front entrance of the officers' club. Although entitled to use the officers' club before her promotion, women were expected to use the side entrance.

Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays walked right through the front door.

Pamela Donovan

Pamela Donovan is one of the eight women whose names are on the Vietnam Wall. She died while serving in Vietnam during the war.

A little background is necessary to explain why I know anything at all about Pamela. Eight nurses who served in Vietnam were selected to travel there with The Greatest Generations Foundation, TGGF, in March 2024. I was one of them. But the government of Vietnam refused visas for the group, so we didn't go.

However, in planning for the trip, the eight of us decided that we would each select one of the women whose names are on the Wall, and generally honor that woman during our trip.

I selected Pamela because I felt we had a lot in common. We were both Irish. We were both lieutenants in the Army Nurse Corps. We were both assigned to the same duty station, the 85^th Evacuation Hospital in Quinhon, albeit at different times. The war caused both of us to question our Catholic faith. We were both hospitalized in our own hospitals while in Vietnam [I contracted dengue fever].

There wasn't much about Pamela on the internet, but I found a book written by Pamela's mother, Joyce Donovan, "Grasping the Nettle," and I read it.

Little did I know when I began digging for more information about Pamela that I would end up puzzled over the cause of her death.

In a letter home around May or June 1968, Pamela said she became aware of the existence of a heroin ring in the hospital and felt she had a duty to report it. Her parents wrote back and warned her to be careful because she might place herself in "extreme danger."

On July 4, 1968, Pamela's parents received a cable from Vietnam stating that Pamela had been placed on the seriously ill list on the 3rd of July, as a result of an overdose of barbiturates, stating that she had been found unconscious in her billet and was hospitalized in Vietnam. Another cable arrived from Vietnam saying that Pamela was still unconscious and was being flown to the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon where she could receive more appropriate treatment. On July 9, a "high ranking officer" arrived in a limousine at her parents' home in Brighten, Massachusetts. He informed the parents that Pamela had died the previous day and that the cause of her death was pneumonia.

Pamela's father telephoned the Army Nursing Recruitment Headquarters in Boston where Pamela had enlisted. He also contacted the Red Cross. The parents had many questions but never received "proper answers." They wrote Pamela's Commanding Officer and the Chaplain in Vietnam but received no response. Joyce Donovan's books says "the Senior Army Officer handling the case" in the U.S. intimated that if they would stop asking questions Pamela would be given a full military funeral - the obvious implication being that a military funeral would be refused if they continued their inquiries." They asked no further questions.

On July 12, the post office brought a letter to Pamela's parents from their dead daughter, dated July 3, the day she was admitted to the hospital:

"Dearest Mummy and Daddy, I know over the years you have been unhappy, as I have been unfaithful to the Church and to going to Mass and the Sacraments. Well, I want you to know that last night I went to the Chaplain out here to Confession, and this morning I went to Mass and Holy Communion. I feel a new person..... All my love Pamela. "

On July 18, Pamela's parents received a death certificate: "Died 8 July 1968 in Vietnam from pneumonia secondary to overdose of barbiturates." In September the family received a second death certificate with an additional sentence added: "Self destruction while mentally unsound."

Six months after her death, a nurse friend of Pamela's from Vietnam called to tell her mother "the truth" about what had happened to Pamela. Joyce Donovan wrote that the nurse then said: "No I can't tell you. I am too afraid of what might happen to me," and hung up. A few weeks later, there was another call from a different nurse who said she wanted to tell the truth but was too afraid.

The bottom line is that all I know about Pamela is that she was one of the 58,220 United States soldiers who died while serving their country in Vietnam.

Lori Piestewa

Lori Piestewa was a member of the Hopi Tribe. She was the first Native American woman to ever die in combat and the first woman killed in the Iraq War. She was 23 years old.

Lori served in the Quartermaster Corps in the United States Army in Iraq. It was a support unit of maintenance and repair personnel. She was traveling in a convoy through the desert when they were ambushed on March 23, 2003.

Trying to avoid the enemy attack, Lori drove her Humvee at high speed until a rocket-propelled grenade hit the vehicle, sending it into the rear of a disabled tractor-trailer. Lori, Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch all survived while three other soldiers in the Humvee died. The three survivors were taken as prisoners of war.

All around Tuba City, Arizona, where Lori lived, signs read: "Put your porch light on. Show Lori the way home."

Both Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch were rescued by American forces. But Lori had a head injury and died before she could be rescued.

To honor Lori, the state of Arizona changed the name of Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak in mountains near Phoenix. She was also memorialized with a plaque and ceremony at Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in La Jolla, California.

Linda Fagan

Linda Fagan, from Columbus, Ohio, graduated from the United States Coast Guard Academy with a degree in marine science. She also attained a Master of Science in Marine Affairs at the University of Washington, as well as a Master in National Resource Strategy degree from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

While in the Coast Guard for four decades, she served on all seven continents, from the snows of Ross Island, Antarctica to the heart of Africa, from Tokyo to Geneva, and in many ports along the way. She earned the distinction of receiving the Coast Guard's first-ever Gold Ancient Trident award that recognizes those with personal character and performance standards that reflect the core values of the Coast Guard.

As Admiral Linda Fagan, she was nominated to be Commandant of the Coast Guard. She was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in May 2022. That made Admiral Fagan the first female chief of a branch of military service.

In response to the increase in cases of sexual harassment since 2017, Commandant four-star Admiral Fagan directed her senior officers to prepare to educate the Coast Guard on the principles of service. Fagan said she wanted new training courses, and the development of new policy frameworks that will ensure accountability, especially in matters of sexual harassment. Admiral Fagan stated: "We each must ensure every Coast Guard workplace has a climate that deters harmful behaviors and gives everyone the positive Coast Guard experience they expect and deserve." 

On Jan. 21, 2025, Admiral Fagan was relieved of her duties.

Conclusion

Perhaps Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs in Iraq in 2004 when the Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, said it best about remembering military women: "Female service members are so integrated into the military, so critical and vital to all functions of the military, from combat service support to combat support, to direct combat, that we could not go to war as a nation - we could not defend America - without our women."