Hidden Army
In
an era when "men wore the pants" these wartime produced documentaries
were designed to recruit women and remind them that there was no limit to what
they could do.
Actress
Katherine Hepburn narrates a film written by Eleanor Roosevelt, which answers
the question "What did our mothers do in the war?"
How
many different ways were women involved in the war effort?
British women were not the only high-spirited women offering there services in the war effort. Women constituted a large part of the American war struggle in Europe. Women’s roles as pilots, spies, industrial workers, mariners, relief workers, nurses, and others became possible under the vision of Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Congresswoman
Rogers introduced a bill May 28th, 1941 to establish a Women’s Army
Auxiliary Corps as a division of the United State’s Army.
The bill was refuted at first, but then on May 14th 1942 the bill to
"Establish a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps" became law and Oveta Culp
Hobby, wife of the former governor of Texas, was named director.
During
this same time the first Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps contingent was serving
at the Allied Forces Headquarters in Algiers, North Africa.
In
January of 1944, they arrived in the Pacific and in July of 1944 they landed on
the beach at Normandy. There were over one hundred thousand women in uniform at
this point in time. Nurses were already serving in England and Egypt.