Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Women Warriors: From Boudicca to Ukrainian Snipers

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

From Boudicca to Ukrainian snipers, battlefields have always contained a surprising number of women.Today Kate is joined Betwixt the Sheets by Sarah Percy to get to the bottom of why women were allowed to be astronauts a full thirty years before they were allowed to fight in combat.From women who disguised themselves as men in order to be allowed to fight, to the Soviet all-female regiments who Nazi Germany learnt to fear, they'll be discussing fearless women warriors on the frontline.You can find out more about Sarah's book here.If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely of the Twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here to save you from yourselves, quite frankly, definitely save you from me, save you from this podcast, save you from anything that would even vaguely upset or offend you because you are so special to me. I wouldn't want you to be upset for a second,

which is why I am here to let you know that this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way, and you should be an adult too. There's definitely going to be some swearing. There's discussions around warfare and bombs and fighting and, oh, you know the kind of stuff we're talking about by now. Let's do it! It's a mild overcast night in 1942, and we, my lovely betwixters, are on a Soviet air base. We are watching a group of 80 women dressed in hand-me-down military uniforms,

getting into old rickety wooden planes made with exposed cockpits. Underneath the planes are racks filled with bombs, four bombs per plane to be specific, and these women are preparing themselves for a covert bombing mission in Nazi Germany. Their planes, what can we say, basic? Yes, I think that that's fair. They don't have parachutes. don't have machine guns. In fact, there are no mod-cons or gadgets whatsoever. Instead,

these women are going to fly to Germany in these less than impressive planes, relying only on compasses and maps. Maps. Do you remember them? These women are the night witches. That was the name that was given to them by the Germans, and they had every reason to be scared of them. These women dropped bombs over Germany, frightening enough, but the way they did it, they would fly these rickety-ass planes, and then mid-flight, they'd stall it, they'd cut the engine, bring the plane to a close, and sort of drop, drop down to a point where they could release the bombs, and then start the engine up again. What the fuck?

The planes would swoop down almost silently. In fact, the only sound that you could hear was a kind of whoosh, wishing like a bringer. which is where the name came from, the Night Witches, and as they were dropping, they would unload these bombs. Just how brave slash mad is that? The planes flew really low anyway. In fact, if they flew any lower, the women would have been destroyed by their own bombs. But despite all of these challenges, this regiment, the Night Witches, flew 24,000 missions and became the most highly decorated female unit and were a crucial Soviet asset to winning World War II.

And today we are taking a look, not only at the night witches, but at all kinds of badass women on the front line of warfare. From Budika to the night witches, to the Ukrainian snipers, to the lasses out round Leeds in Weather Spoons on a Saturday night. We are looking at the women who did not mind rolling up their sleeves and wading into a fight. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

I make perfect coffins of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister.

Now, if I asked you to name a warrior woman, how many could you come up with? Nope, Zeno Warrior Princess does not count only real ones. What have you got? Budica, Joan of Arc, yep, Brienne of Tart. Oh no, real ones, real ones.

It's difficult, isn't it? And they've been there the whole time, you know. Women have been key players in warfare for centuries. And today, I am joined by Sarah Percy, who is going to tell us all about the history of women on the front line. And speaking of warriors, just before we get into it, I would like to ask you a little favour, lovely betwixters, if you are enjoying betwixt, we would love it.

If you would take the time to give us a vote at the Listeners' Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards. And you can do that if you follow the link in the show notes. It would honestly mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year and we just missed out and we didn't quite get it. And I don't want to have to nightwitch these people in order to get it next year. So please, please take a couple of seconds and just go and give us a vote. Honestly, it'll make me day. Right, back to the episode. Let's do this.

And welcome to Bertwicks the Sheets. It's only Sarah Percy. How are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. Very excited to be here. I've heard that you're in Australia. Is that right? That is correct. I am in Australia. I was about to start by bitching that it's really hot in the UK and I'm really uncomfortable. And then my producer said you're in Australia and I thought, well, maybe I should just shut up about that then. Well, it is winter here. What is the temperature of winter in Australia?

We're pretty subtropical here. So it's a bit chilly right now. It was about 14 when I came back to the office. But yeah, it was about 23 today. So it's actually very similar because I'm coming to the UK next week and it's very similar temperatures. Like the winter, that's the temperature. Anyway, I'm going to sit here and sweat.

But I'm so excited to be talking to you about your new book, which I have got here holding in my hands. How long did it take you to write this? Off and on for quite a long time, but really three years, all up. And what was it that made you want to write, I mean, I should give the full title, shouldn't I? Forgotten Warriors, the History of Women on the Front Line. What made you want to tell this story? Well, I got interested in it because I was initially extremely interested in why every state

does such different things during World War II. Because my background is international relations. And in strategic studies, people tell you when countries are at war with each other, if it's a war of national survival, they will pull out all the stops. They will do absolutely everything to avoid losing. But if you look at what happened with the mobilization of women in World War II, states did not pull out every resource they had because only the Soviets pull out women, right, in significant numbers and in combat. And the Germans basically don't really use women at all. And the British use them in this very circumscribed sort of way. And that just didn't

make any sense to me. So then I got interested in the whole idea of what women were doing in combat. And then as I explored it more, I found out things like the US has female astronauts 30 years before they're even able to conceive of the idea that they can put a woman into combat. And the British military doesn't open all combat rules to women until 2018. So this is an incredibly late change. And despite all the movement of the feminist movement on gender equality and employment rights in particular, like there's Lossie, about everything else in most countries. But in a lot of countries, there's none about women at all.

And this is the one profession, like when I was looking into it, but the only other one you can think of where women are actually banned on grounds of gender is being a priest. Fuck. And yet no one seemed to question this idea that women should be banned from combat, or it took a very long time to question it. And I got curious about why that was, too, and where it came from. And then I got even more curious because then I found out actually the idea that women could not fight is actually much newer than you would think because there were plenty of examples of women who did fight, but really nobody could be bothered to look for them.

Wow. I was just listening to that. Do you think that maybe this hasn't been such like a big issue with feminist work because at some point we were just like, actually, it's all right. We don't really want to go and fight on the front line. It's not a problem, lads, if you want to go and do it. that. We're quite, how we'll just sit this one out, shall we? Or is it more than that? No, I think that that actually has a fairly significant amount to do with it. So there's obviously very strong link between feminism and pacifism. Yep. And that link is particularly strong, probably through the 1970s, especially around the anti-war movement with Vietnam, but in general. And also, there's quite a strong feminist belief that really the military is a patriarchal institution and the only way to fix it is to get rid of it. It's not about putting women in it. And, you know, I have some sympathy on both of those positions. But one of the things that really struck me, especially when I

finished the book, is now how strongly I feel that if you don't allow women into combat rules, you create a very, very significant and almost insurmountable barrier to gender equality, because the thing that you are saying women can't do is such a big and profound thing. And it's quite telling, you know, to have the feminist movement telling women they can do whatever they want to do. And then you have military saying, well, actually, no, you know, there's this one thing you can't do. And, oh, by the way, it is an absolutely crucial way that we understand leadership, courage, bravery, physical fortitude. Oh, that's the thing you can't do. You know, I think that that's actually very, very powerful. I'd never thought of it like that. And the other thing

that I never thought of, certainly before I'd come across your book, is the women are banned from combat roles. It's not so much a question of like, we've got. these standards and women just don't meet them. It's just women just can't do it because they're women. Yes. Yeah. We don't even let you try. There's no point in letting people try it. And in fact, military is abandoned. So as a way to keep women out of combat, militaries kind of move away from that physical standards argument relatively early on because it's actually dangerous, right? Because once you start saying to people, or you can't do it, then someone's going to have a crack at doing it and probably they'll be able to, right? So militaries actually see the writing

on the wall on that one much earlier on. Through their 70s, they start backing off from the idea that they should be relying on physical strengths as the thing that's going to keep women out of combat. Wow. So what is the reason that they give? They can't just be saying because you girlies and it's, can they? Yeah. I mean, sadly. That's stupid. The other thing I think that I discovered when I was writing this book is that, you know, we talk about patriarchy and especially those of us who teach at universities, we talk about patriarchy all the time. And any time, a student writes you an essay about feminism and will have patriarchy. But actually, if you had any doubt about whether or not there was a patriarchy, you only need to look at the actions of

militaries in the post-world War to era in particular and the absolutely concentrated and deliberate attempt to keep women out of combat to see that the patriarchy is a thing and it functions and people drive it, right? And a lot of it is based on, oh, you know, women are just not capable. They're not physically strong enough. They're not going to be brave enough. They'll disrupt this essential bond between men, which if we disrupt that bond, then units won't be able to operate. The men will be distracted by the women or the women will pose some sort of terrible issue for men if they get captured because the men won't be able to cope, like all kinds of very interesting things. And again, you can see really powerful ideas about what masculinity is and what femininity is.

which underlie all of that. I mean, if you look at something like the US or the UK, women can join the military. They can serve in various posts. But is it just this rule that just, right, you can do all of that? You can be like leaders and generals and spies and drivers, but you just can't do this bit. You can't go any further than this.

Yes, you're absolutely right. There is a very clear rule that says you can't do combat. And then there are a couple of things that fall on from that. One is that there are actually a lot of jobs that you can't do in a military because you can't do combat. And for a very long time they had a problem because the only way you could get promoted was to have combatant experience.

And of course, if women couldn't get it, then they couldn't be promoted. And they began to have to change that. But to achieve the highest echelons of command, you really have to have combat experience. So this was a way preventing women who were even in non-combat rules from hitting the very, very highest type of being in generals

or if you're three and four-star generals. I had no idea. But they also had to, to devise these really crazy rules. Because in the 70s, what happens? It was quite interesting change where women haven't been allowed in the military that much between World War II and the 70s. And they're restricted to about 2% of total forces.

It's quite a tiny percentage. And they're all in auxiliaries. They're mostly not allowed to use firearms or even trained in the use of firearms. So we're really talking very conventional lady roles, clerical roles, secretaries, that kind of thing. And then there's a manpower crisis in most Western militaries. in the 70s, and it's caused by the rise in the anti-war movement, but it's also a demographic lift. There's a lot of things going on. And then militaries are like, oh dear, we need more women. So they bring them in. But then they've got a problem because they've got this force with women

in it. And if you're going to allow women to drive trucks, then how do you ensure your truck driving woman is not a combatant, which would be against the law and against what the military wanted? God, yeah. So they have to draw these very tight rules, which get seriously broke. Like they are very weird, where you get things like, well, this type of carpenter is a combatant, but this type of carpenter is not a combatant. And even the definition of combat gets manipulated. So what combat is becomes what military is needed to be, and what militaries need it to be is a definition that keeps women out of it. Fighting each other with penises, then, I suppose. It's so bonkers. Like, reading through your book, women are really good at this, actually.

There has been, of course, there's been examples of women leading armies, winning wars, being fantastic military tacticians, but they weren't allowed or they had to be that sort of go about it in quite an unusual way. One of my favourite ways that you discussed in the book is the disguise way is disguise yourself as a man and pretend to be a man and then you can go and fight. You tell the story of Hannah Snell, for example, which I thought was incredible. Yeah, so Hannah Snell, she's one of any number of women. who do this, who they dress up as men and they go off to fight. And in Hannah's case, she's actually, her husband, buggers off and leaves her alone. And so she decides she's going to go out onto the battlefield and find him.

And that's her impulse to dress up as a man and go to fight. But, you know, she joins the army. She's stuck out of the army. She joins the Marines. She gets shot. She gets wounded. That's when they discover it's a common way to be uncovered. That's when they discovered that she is, in fact, a woman.

But she's far from alone, right? This seems to be a pretty common. Certainly we have evidence of it in every European army. We have evidence of it extensively in the American revelation, but more particularly in the American Civil War. And as my children tell me, we also have it in Moulin. Yes. So, Hannah Schnell, that was 18th century and Scottish, correct?

No, I think she's English. I think she's, but she joins the Scottish regiment. Okay. And did I hear you right there that her motivation? for doing that was to go and find the husband that had abandoned her. Yeah, he wronged her. So she was going to like, what, dress up as a man, go and find him on the battlefield and go, oh, you come back here.

You bastard. One of the things that we don't know is that, or we speculate about, is a lot of these cross-dressed women who become public sensations in that period. The love element creeps in, and we do have some evidence that happened, but of course it's much more palatable to be like, oh, I'm a lady who joined because of my romantic life, not I'm a lady who just seriously like to fight. Like one of those is probably more socially acceptable than the other.

So, you know, you would certainly play up that element, and you do see a lot of that. And it's so common that it's like a common figure in literature and in ballads and songs and things is the lady who's dressed up to join her lover in particular. Did you say that that's cobblers, that that's, there was something else going on because, like, you know, I've had intense crushes before and I've never felt the need to like run to the front line and disguise myself as a man and do

battle. Yeah. It's more like I'll sulk for a bit and eat some chocolate and then, you know, crack on. No, I think so. And like I say, it's the more socially acceptable. It's more socially acceptable to say, oh, well, actually, I did it out of love. And it makes a great and exciting story, right? So if you're wanting to sell your pamphlet or whatever, it's a much more exciting story in some ways. But, you know, we do know things like, for example, particularly in continental Europe and particularly during things like the 30 years war, it was an unbelievably dangerous war for civilians. So women were probably safer in the military than they were outside the military. And because, of course, you have the protection of the whole institution and all of the people around

you, plus the protection of your male disguise, which would be in itself sort of inherently protective. And then there are probably, women were probably motivated exactly the same way that men were motivated, which is it was an adventure with the American Civil War in particular. It's absolutely about the cause. Like people sign up to fight because they want to be able to fight. And the American military is unusual in that period because they get rid of all of the women. They don't have nurses. They don't have laundresses and things. The initial plan is that these will actually be two all male forces. So that excluded this form of female military service which had previously existed. So if you wanted to go fight for the North or you wanted to go fight for the South, you actually had to do it just as a man because there weren't other opportunities really to support the cause in the same way. But yeah, we definitely see a lot of the same motivations for these women that the men around them would have had. Hannah Snell was something of a celebrity, wasn't she, when she, you know, got out and she became a bit of like a one-woman show. And that was her thing then.

She had a one woman show. She either wrote or ghost wrote, more likely it was ghost written, a memoir of her time. She received a pension from the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. So this is the other thing that's really interesting about a lot of these cross-dressed women is when they get uncovered, it's not a massive scandal. And in fact, you find that quite a large number of them get pensions afterwards, just as they would if they were men who served. And then, of course, the other really cool thing is we don't really know how many of them

there were because we only know about the ones that get uncovered. Just going to ask you that. We don't know about the ones that don't. And there's certainly lots of evidence that there's way more than we think that there are. Because, for example, you know, there's some US war graves from the Civil War that have women in them. And it's hard to understand why they would be there unless they had been fighting. And we know, again, we do have quite a lot of evidence across stress fighters from the American Civil War. What about something like World War I? Was there examples of women being discovered with a fake mustache and, yeah, with a gun?

So it's less common by then, because by then, militaries have instituted physicals. Because we haven't yet talked about the fake penises. Oh, how could we make, okay. The fake penis is probably not going to withstand a physical. But in less organized militaries, it still seems to be a reasonably common way to get to the front. So the Russian military, women seem to be able to sneak into it dressed as men more commonly. But by World War I, incidences of female combat that we do see tend to be by women as women. It's no longer as common to do it as a man.

Okay. Someone like Flora Sands, for example. So she is awesome. She is the daughter of an Irish-British clergyman, and she applies to join one of the women's nursing services in World War I's Turned Down. And so she joins an ambulance detachment in Serbia, on the eastern front. Of course, the eastern front is quite different

from the Western Front, which is where I think most of our minds eye is when we think about World War I. And it's very, very brutal. And she manages to get quite close to the front because this isn't a trench warfare situation. It's very mobile war. And someone notices that she can both shoot and ride.

And the Serbian army has been encircled by the Austrian forces and they begin this retreat during which really so many people died, it's absolutely brutal. And during the course of that retreat, Flora becomes a corporal in the Serbian army. It's amazing. And she fights throughout the war. She gets wounded very, very badly.

Actually, she never really recovers physically from the wounds, although she keeps going. And she writes about her experiences. So she's a brilliant writer. She's very funny. And she talks a lot about how someone says to her, oh, you know, what's it like to be in World War I? and she said, well, imagine digging a hole in your back garden and sitting in the cold for very long time while people are shooting over your head. And that's currently what it's like where I am right now. But after the war, she goes on a lecture tour, actually, a very successful lecture to around the world, including in Australia, where people are sort of in raptures about how wonderful she is.

But she's almost completely forgotten. I mean, people know who she is. But given the level of fame that she clearly had at the time of her exploits, it's amazing how quickly it dissipated. I'll be back with Sarah to talk more women warriors after this short break. I'm James Patton Rogers, a war historian, advisor to the UN and NATO, and host of the warfare podcast from History Hit. Join me twice a week every week as we look at the conflicts that have defined our past and the ones shaping our future.

We talk to award-winning journalists. ISIS, this peculiar strain that we all came to know very well in the mid-2010s, really got its start because of the US-inventure. We hear from the people who were actually there. The Sudanese have been incredible. They have managed to get supplies to people, to individuals who are suffering. And we learn from the remarkable historians shining a light on forgotten histories. For the most part, the millions of people who were taken to those camps were immediately murdered.

Auschwitz combined the functions of death camp and concentration camp and slave labor. labor. Join us on the Warfare podcast from History Hits twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. There's so many amazing names that come out through your book and the whole way they're thinking, I don't know this person. I've never heard of them before. And then when you're listing the things that they did, it's a strange phenomenon that they seem to have been able to achieve a lot of fame in their lifetime, but not hold onto it after death. They vanish. I think what's cool about Flora too is not only does she have this level of fame and it vanishes and it's very sad, but she's a very ordinary person.

There's nothing about her. She can ride and she can shoot. I mean, some of the women in the book are plainly extraordinary and unusual. So Flora has a French contemporary. She wants to enter the Tour de France. And of course, women aren't allowed to do that. So she just takes her bicycle,

which, by the way, has a name. It's called Zepherine. And she rides her bicycle behind the men, one day behind the men, does the entire Tour de France. And so she is obviously an extraordinary person, and she joins the French military in various capacities.

But Flora is just normal. And what I think is interesting about her and all of the other normal women is they show what can happen if women are given the opportunity to do stuff, which historically just really didn't happen as much as it should have. But the idea that you have to have some sort of extraordinary talent or be a she woman or, you know, be some sort of massively strong person, it wasn't actually true. And so within women, just as in men, some people have the capacity to actually be really good. at this if you give them the opportunity to try. We've got to talk about the fake penises. I mean, you brought that up and now I need to know what that was. Well, obviously, disguising yourself in the context of a battlefield is a pretty tall order.

Or we would think with our modern eyes on that that's a pretty tall order. Like, how would you blend it? Yeah. And clearly, peeing is up there. I hadn't even thought of it. Yes. Because the other bits you can do. disguise. So there are lots of boys in 18th and 19th century armies. So not being hairy and stuff,

it's not as noticeable. And it would also explain being smaller. And you know, you can bind your breasts so they're not as noticeable, but the peeing thing's problem. And so women seem to make both fake penises often out of leather and also use straws to wee out of. So like a she we, Oh my gosh. But rather so that you could stand up and we. But they did clearly think about this. And some of the penises may have been used in sexual activity. So some of the penises may have been actually convincing enough.

Because of course the other thing the military men of this era do is that they visit the ladies. And if you're going to be convincing, you're going to have to figure out a way to how do you work up the problem of brothel attendance. And so sometimes the fake penises seem to have come into play in that scenario. Wow. And sometimes women just say things like, oh, I went and I did some carousing. And that seems to have been sufficient. I suppose you'd also have to like squash your boobs down, wouldn't you? Yeah, squash your boobs down.

I mean, there's a lot of speculation about women's physical size. So a lot of these women would have been not as well fed. And so perhaps there would be less boobs to squash down. They probably wouldn't have had periods or much. Many of them probably wouldn't have had periods for similar reasons. But there's some really interesting ideas to all of the things that really blew my mind is you get a lot of these. I don't talk about them as much in the book because I'm really interested in land combat. But these women appear in navies as well, dress up as women.

And when cross-dress women appear in Tahiti, in Europe and in Western society, the trousers in this period are such a strong signifier of maleness. Like you only wear trousers if you were a man. And so anyone using trousers, your brain just sees the trousers, right? It's like, oh, well, trousers, that's men. But they go to Tahiti and the local people are like, why are those ladies wearing the funny pants? Because they don't have trousers as the big signifier. So they can immediately pick out the disguised women

because they're not sort of taken in by the pants or what I would call pants. Oh, my God. Yeah. Just to be completely blind, all the wear trousers must be a man and that's enough. Yeah. that's crazy. I love that story. We should probably talk about some of the really famous women warriors throughout history because they're there. You can talk a bit more about them, but they sort of become iconic. I think it's someone like Budica, the Isini warrior chiefsend who defeated the Romans. And people still talk about the day she's remembered about today. It sort of seems, oh, that there's that legend, but even after things like that happened, everyone went, yeah, women can't fight. Well, clearly they can. It's like, what's your take on? So I think Boudicca is really interesting because she's not alone in being considered by her adversaries to be a barbarian. And the handy thing about calling your adversary a barbarian is you can

dismiss them. You can say, okay, well, whatever that is, it's not proper fighting. So it's not that different. Remember how I was saying, if you want to make sure your lady truck driver is not fighting, you just call it not fighting. And you get the same phenomenon with a lot of these earlier people as well, is that she's a barbler. Barbarian. Ultimately, the Romans subdue her with their civilized military forces, which are much better organized. And it's the disorganization of Bautica's troops that cause her to be defeated. And so they can say, look, whatever this is, it's not proper fighting. And therefore, we don't actually need to take it very seriously. She just had a lot of people. They were a rabble. They were bloodthirsty.

They didn't behave in the way we expected. So they had a few early victories against us, but fundamentally our superior military organization smashed them. But to dismiss something as alien, that happens quite a lot. So the other really famous one I talk about in the book, or perhaps not as famous as she should be, is Jinga, who is a queen in what is now Angola in the 17th century. And she is an extraordinary military leader. So she rules for about 40 years.

But it's in a context where the only way power transitions is normally you murder your adversary who has the crown. and everybody around them. So it's like Game of Thrones makes it look like a hundred garden. And so she stays in power throughout that whole period, not just fighting against her own people, but also fighting against colonial incursions

and learning how to play off foreign colonial enterprises against each other and things. However, she is clearly adopt some practices that Western observers find absolutely startling, and they are startling. So it looks very much like she made a, paste out of babies that she ground up in a mortar and pestle and the baby paste would render you immortal.

Okay. Male lovers and made them dress as women. There is an extensive academic debate about whether or not she engaged in cannibalism and if she did, whether or not it was for religious reasons or just to be a cannibal. So, you know, she is a person whom the West finds very difficult to understand. Yeah. And so all of her military successes, you can just sort of throw them away because you can say, well, she's a deeply distasteful person.

And therefore, the military success is nothing compared to this. This is nothing that should be emulated, right? This is barbarism or savagery in the parlance of the Western observers of the day. So, yeah, she was really good at it, but it was only because she was a baby-eaten Harim starting menace. And it was a barrenton, it was a complete aberration. That's how it's been framed. Yeah, exactly.

Wow. So what about someone like Joan of Arc then? because, I mean, I'm not a huge Joan of Arc Scullab. I don't remember her making baby paste. No, but she's magic, right? Oh, she's magic. The Joan of Arc is either very successful militarily because she's a witch or because God has granted her the miraculous gift of being military and successful.

So it's the only way her contemporaries can explain why a girl who is about, you know, 17, 18, 19 is capable of such great military success, is magic, even though military historians have looked at what she did, and a lot of her military successes seem to have been related to her use of gunpowder, and gunpowder is the cutting-edge military technology of the day. And in fact, that maybe because she was an ordinary girl, peasant girl, she would have been able to talk to the gunpowder soldiers who were not upper-class men, unlike the people who were military leaders, and just listened, you know. Like there is, there are non-magic explanations for why Joan of Arc might have been militarily successful. But again, it's really easy to say, oh, well, you know, sure there was Joan of Arc, but, you know, she was magic.

So ordinary women couldn't do the things that she did. I'd never thought of it like that. But yeah, she was burnt as a witch. And then even if you were on her side, she was the virgin saints prophesied from God and spoke to Jesus. And yeah, that's true. That she wasn't just good because she was just good. it had to be that she was magic. Yes.

Interesting. There's many fascinating stories in your book, but I think one of my absolute favorite ones, and I hadn't heard of it before I came to your book, the story of the night witches in World War II. I was fascinated by them. So the Soviets are amazing in World War II because they have between 800,000 and a million women under arms.

And included in that is both fighter and bomber pilots. there was an all-female regiment called the night witches and the reason why they were called the night witches is because they flew wooden planes they were very old planes wooden planes and they were absolutely silent because what they would do is they would swoop down low

over the Germans and they would cut the engines and so they would just make a whoishing sound and then the Germans sounded like broomsticks so they call them Nachtexan night witches and that's how they get their name but they had to be very skillful pilots to fly these wooden planes carrying bombs. And it was very difficult to load the bombs onto the planes,

which you can understand, given the nature of the apparatus. But yes, many of the women in the night, which has become heroes of the Soviet Union, which is the highest military honor. And they are extraordinarily brave. They're often flying many, many, many more missions than some of the male pilots in different detachments. And so they are quite remarkable, but they're not alone.

So they're very famous and they're very, cool. But in that huge number of women, part of the reason why the number is so big is because medics in the Red Army are trained in the use of firearms and are required to be armed. And that's not always the case. And it's certainly not the case with female medical personnel in non-Soviet militaries. But also within that number, we know probably about 800,000 women who are doing things like their regular infantry troops, they're driving tanks, they are snipers, they are doing every job that can be done in infantry is being done by women. And you have situations where women are in command of men. And it just seems to be quite normal and accepted during the war. But after the

war, the women are sort of firmly put back into their box. So they're not allowed to march in victory parades. And in fact, very few of these stories were even known because the women were discouraged from speaking. So in the early 1980s, quite a famous Russian journalist called Svetlan Alexievich goes and interviews a lot of these women. And that was sort of the first time that it was really publicly talked about, even within what was then the Soviet Union. I just wanted to clarify something because I was reading it and listening to you, and I'm trying to visualize what these women were doing in these wooden planes.

I'm sure that the men were flying wooden planes too, but just when I read that, it was like a wooden plane. But you said that in order to drop the bombs, they had to basically stall the plane mid-air. So it just fell? They had to cut the engine and then the plane fell and then what, they turned the engine?

And I'm no aviation expert, right? So I don't want to get it wrong. My understanding is they cut the engine, they glide down, they drop the bomb and then they turn the engine on and fly it up again to allow them to get close enough. That's insane.

Yeah. So very, very dangerous flying. And also, they were incredibly brave. And yes, I wouldn't want, want to say for certain that the wooden planes were only flown by the women, but they're definitely given the planes because initially it's a bit of an experiment, right? So they're initially, they're not going to waste the really good planes on the women. And then, of course, they adapt a way to make them very successful. The bravery in that is unbelievable. You're flying a rickety

or plane, cut the engine off, let it fall low enough. And they flew really low, didn't they? We're talking like a thousand feet or so. Yeah. And then turn the engine back on and hope for the best. Yeah. Fuck. I need to keep going with the interview, but I'm so stunned by that. I'm just like trying to wrap my head around it.

All the female pilots in World War II. So I talk in the book about the air transport auxiliary in the UK. Their job is to reposition aircraft during World War II. So you get women who are trained to fly every single plane in the Royal Air Force. The only ones that can't fly is the type of flying. boat, you know, water landing aircraft. It's really heavy, but not that many men are actually trained to fly. Everything else they can fly. So all of those famous World War II aircraft that you hear about women can fly. But they're often flying them because they're broken or because they've

come out of the factory and the equipment isn't fully functional yet. So they're flying them sometimes without radio. And they're also flying them in that they are not permitted to engage with the enemy because they're women. So, you know, they're not allowed to carry arms. They're not allowed to do anything. They do get shot at. The same thing happens in the American context, but in the British context is much more dangerous because obviously there is a prospect you would get shot at. Yeah. But also, it's in a context where, you know, the Battle of Britain causes this massive shortage of pilots. And they all have all of these female pilots. And I always find it amazing that No one says, you know what we do have is all these pilots who are really good.

And maybe we can divert them across. But I don't think it ever would have occurred to anybody at the time. So bringing it right up to modern day, where are we at today with women in conflicts around the world? Like the conflict in Ukraine rumbles on. I mean, are women on the front line in that? Yes, but only on one side. Right. So one of the things that's very interesting is that the Ukrainians have one.

women. They have between 15 and 20 percent of the Ukrainian forces are women. And again, this is something that has gotten a lot of press attention because it's interesting, but a lot of the press attention has been like, well, the Ukrainians don't seem that fussed about it. Like they have women commanders, they have women in combat. There are mothers who have young children who are fighting and it's just as part of the course. The Russians, on the other hand, there are women in the Russian army, but not women in combat. And I find this fascinating. They have actually had to get convicts out of jail to conscript. They're using the Wagner group, which are a bunch of mercenaries, and they have a significant manpower problem, but they're not trying to solve that problem using

women. And given the history, I find that absolutely fascinating, right? Like, it's not like they have any shortage of examples of how Russian women are really good at fighting. But it's no coincidence, I think, that you have a highly autocratic regime that plays around a lot with gender politics. So, you know, very few world leaders ride horses bear-chested and, you know, emphasize their manliness all the time. And also Putin has made some very retroaggressive steps. Again, this is part of the authoritarian playbook is you dial back women's rights as a tactic to sort of enhance your own authority. And so it's not really surprising that we would find that Putin's Russia does not have women in combat because it would very much go against, I think, the style and the nature of the authority. playbook. It's kind of bonkers, though. Like, that comes through in your book, like, all the

way through it is, like, they would rather lose wars than let women join in. Actually, having read through it, I think that I'm kind of more with you, like, it just didn't occur to them. Like, it wouldn't have even been a conversation that you could, you could draw upon this huge woman power. But Russia, basically, women aren't getting in. They'd be happier to lose the war. I think a lot about there's this suffragette poster that they use to poke fun of the suffragettes. and it's have a cat who's voting. And the reason why it was funny is because it was like, a cat voting.

That's as outlandish as the prospect of a lady voting. And I think that is very much the mindset, right? Like it is actually impossible. It would be as ludicrous as imagining your cat going to combat to think that a woman might be capable of doing it. So that's something else that I found really interesting when I was working on the book is feminine ideals have a lot to answer for, right? And by the time the feminine

an ideal of the angel in the house, the delicate lady, becomes either the dominant type of femininity or the aspirational type of feminine in society. There's not surprising that you would think that those ladies couldn't fight, right? Absolutely. You know, you tied them up in their corset and I mean, I'm from Yorkshire, so I know only too well that women can get into conflict and are pretty damn lethal when they do. But it's so incompatible with the idea, isn't it, is women on the front line. Yeah. Would it be interesting to think about what our world history would have been like if women

had been in combat roles in all of these wars? Yeah, I do think about that a lot because it remains such a quintessential way to demonstrate your leadership. So, you know, very famously, nearly every US president between FDR and Bill Clinton, in fact, I think everyone between FDR and Bill Clinton had military service. So it becomes a way in which you demonstrate your bona fides, right? Like you say, not only can I lead, I can lead people in the heat of battle. And also, it's very interesting that we never obsessed about whether or not generals are super strong.

So we've had this whole conversation about are women physically strong enough to fight. Well, you know, maybe they are and maybe they're not. But I would love to survey the physical size of the world's greatest generals. And I bet very few of them were really good at hand-to-hand combat because it's not necessarily the skill set that you need. It's actually a different skill set. but if you're trying to keep women down, preventing them from demonstrating that they can do everything exactly the same way as men is an awfully good way to do it. You have completely blown my mind with that.

I had literally never thought about it like that until I came to a book. I was always of the kind of viewpoint of like, well, I don't want to go at war anyway. Fuck off. Actually, the way you dig into the history and the way that you unpack it, it is a huge barrier, isn't it? Because it's like this big line in the sand of you can't do that. you can't compete, you cannot enter this realm. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's had profound implications. And I think the reason why you see this very strong, very powerful efforts to keep them and out of combat is exactly because of this. And even before you have the sense that we must keep them out because it's the law, it's, well, it's easy for us to dismiss all of these previous examples. You know, we just, we don't need to worry about them. They don't count. They're not real combat.

not a proper war. They were magic. They're barbarians. They're magic. Yeah. Any of the excuses you'd like to come up with. Sarah, you have been incredible to talk to today. Thank you so much for joining me. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Oh, well, they can Google me and I'm on Twitter where you will find dog and book content, mostly. Oh, thank you so. Oh, so give us your Twitter handle. Oh, it's at S. V. Percy, S for Sarah, V for Victor Percy. Brilliant. I have enjoyed every minute of this. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Sarah for joining me.

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