0.2 The great war (part i)  (Page 11/14)

The first group of women to join the ranks of the US Army had to be fluent in both English and French. Approximately 300 American women volunteered and after training that included self-defense (just in case their units were overrun by Germans) more than 75% of those original volunteers were sent to Europe with the rank of lieutenant (the same rank as female nurses). They were subject to the same military regulations (Court Martial) as their male counterparts, plus ten other rules supposedly to protect women’s virtue. Yet, those additional rules seem to have disappeared into the historical abyss, not unlike the details of the women who served this country as unequal citizens as American women did not enjoy universal suffrage, such as the nineteen-year-old Oleda Joure, from Marine City, Michigan. Of course, by the time Joure turned 21, the Nineteenth Amendment will be adopted and this veteran of the Great War will be allowed to vote.

Most of these telephone operators were stationed with Pershing at Chaumont, but they also served throughout France and England. Distinctions were far and few between but one decorated woman Signal Corps volunteer was Grace Banker, the chief operator for the First Army headquarters. She received a Distinguished Service Medal for her wartime efforts. This was a new award, authorized by Congress in the summer of 1918, went “to persons other than members of the Armed Forces of the United States for wartime services only.” In other words, this was a medal for civilians only.

Shortly after the Armistice went into effect, nearly all of the women of the US Army Signal Corps were rotated back to the United States. In 1919, the chief of the Signal Corp reported that “[t]he use of women operators throughout the entire war was decidedly a success…”. Although the federal government will not act on their advise, the American Medical Association and the US Surgeon General, Major General William Gorgas supported granting military rank to women who served as doctors and surgeons “engaged in war work.”

African Americans and the Great War

Over 400,000 African-Americans entered the ranks of the US military during World War I. As the US was a segregated society, so too was the military which consisted of all-white and all-black units. The latter included such famous and highly decorated units as the 369th Infantry known as the “Harlem Hell Fighters,” the 803rd Pioneer Infantry Band, No. 16, and the 370th Regiment, Illinois National Guard, to name a few. Most “all-black” units were under the control of white officers and such was the case of Col. William Hayward and the Harlem Hell Fighters. That unit was one of the most highly decorated US military units of the war. They were the first US unit to be awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Pershing “loaned” the 369 ^th to France and thus this nearly-all-black unit saw some of the most brutal combat to include Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood where nearly 10,000 Allied troops were killed or wounded. They spent 191 days in the trenches (longer than any unit from either side) and they were the first allied unit to cross the Rhine.