This week's post will be relatively short, as I have my Army ROTC Field Training Exercise from March 6-10. My next essay subject is 2nd Lieutenant Marion Clark Philips.
Born on November 27, 1912, Marion Philips served in the Army Air Forces as a Nurse, specifically in the Army Nurse Corps, 114th Station Hospital. She served in the North African and Italian Campaigns before her C-47 crashed into a mountain near Montieri, Italy due to extreme weather on February 2, 1945. Next week's blog post will dive deeper into her life and service to her country, but for the rest of this post I wish to highlight the services of women during the second world war.
During the Second World War, millions of American men were called to fight against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, leaving their jobs and families behind. In light of the needs of the military industrial complex and the millions of newly-opened jobs, millions of women served as welders, truck drivers, machinists, pilots and much more, including what would become a image representing women's empowerment, riveters (Rosie the Riveter). The Allied powers would not have been able to produce the guns and planes necessary to win the war without these women.
Women also flocked to join the armed forces. More than 350,000 American women joined the armed forces, serving as nurses, clerks, pilots, gunnery instructors and much more. In 1942, Congress created the Women's Army Corps, a key step towards gender equality. These servicewomen served with dignity, facing gender discrimination, but in 1948, Congress passed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, granting women the right to serve as regular members of the military for the first time.
It was not only American Women that served during World War 2. In the Soviet Union, 490,000 women served in nearly every front-line role in the armed forces, with an additional 300,000 serving in other roles. 40% of all front-line doctors were women. The famed 'Flying Witches', who flew biplanes against Nazi soldiers clad in the dark of night are one famous example. Women snipers were responsible for over 12,000 Nazi deaths. In Nazi-occupied territories, women were key in freedom-fighting units, serving as undercover agents and soldiers against their occupiers.
Without the sacrifices of women in the Second World War, which are too commonly overlooked, one can only guess how much more destruction and death would have occurred.
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