Dan Snow's History Hit - Warrior Women: Boudicca to Ukrainian Snipers

Episode Date: July 24, 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: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/sarah-percy/forgotten-warriors/9781529344318/Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Got something very special for you today. Well, we have something special every day, but it's a particularly special one today. A real gem from one of our other history hit podcasts, Betwixt the Sheets. The smash hits from the brilliant Dr. Kate Lister. It's a deep dive into the world of warrior women, from Boudicca, warrior queen of the Iceni, to the snipers fighting the Russians in Ukraine today. There have always been women fighting the front line. They've often been overlooked. Well, this is the story of Women in Combat. Enjoy. Hello, my lovely Betwixters. 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 adult way. And you should be an adult, too. There's definitely going to be some swearing. 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 airbase. And we, my lovely Betwixters, are on a Soviet airbase. 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. They don't have machine guns. In fact, They 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 whooshing like a broomstick, 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 Boudicca, to Night Witches to the Ukrainian snipers to the lasses out round Leeds in Wetherspoons 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 in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing it.

Come on, ERA! Let's go! Come on, ERA! Let's go! Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful times. Goodness, I've nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and 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. Xeno warrior princess does not count. Only real ones. What have you got? Boudica. Joan of Arc. Yep. Brienne of Tar... 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 Listener's 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. Hello 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 from 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 was gonna 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 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 roles to women until 2018. So, you know, 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 lawsuits 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 seems 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 you there. 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 that, we're quite happy. 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 a very strong link between feminism and pacifism. 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 roles, 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 militaries 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. 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, oh, 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 the 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're 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, we'll have patriarchy in it. 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 II 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 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, 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 of preventing women who were even in non-combat roles from hitting the very, very highest type of being a general, sort of your three or four star generals. I had no idea. But they also had to devise these really crazy rules because in the 70s, what happens is quite interesting change where women haven't been allowed in the military that much between World War Two 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 blip. 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 gets seriously baroque. 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 military is needed to be is a definition that keeps women out of it. Fighting each other with penises. Yes. It's so bonkers. And like reading through your 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 technically allowed or they had to be that sort of go about it in quite an unusual way one of my favorite ways that you discuss in the book is the disguise way. It's disguise yourself as a man and pretend to be a man. And then you can go and fight.

You tell a 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 is 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 and fight. But, you know, she joins the army. She's chucked 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 discover 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 Mulan.

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, oi! Yeah, 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, 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 do you think that that's cobblers that that's just 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. 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 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 outed 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. Oh, wow. 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 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 of cross-dressed 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. Someone like Flora Sands, for example. So she's 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 turned down. And so she joins an ambulance detachment in

Serbia on the Eastern Front. And of course, the Eastern Front is quite different from the Western Front, which is where I think most of our mind's eye is when we think about world war one 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 austro-Hungarian forces and they begin this retreat during which really so many people die. 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 a 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 tour 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. To be continued... in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. there's so many amazing names that come out through your book and the whole way through i'm 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 on to 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 Zephyrine. 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. 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's a pretty tall order. Like how would you blend it? And clearly peeing is up there.

I hadn't even thought of it. Yes. Because the other bits you can disguise. So there are lots of boys in 18th and 19th century armies. So not being hairy and stuff is not as noticeable. And it would also explain being smaller. Yep. And, you know, you can bind your breasts so they're not as noticeable.

But the peeing thing is a 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 shiwi. Oh, my God. So that she could stand up and wee. 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 that 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 out the problem of brothel attendance? And so sometimes the fake penises seem to have come into play in that scenario. And sometimes women just say things like, oh, I went and I did some carousing. And that seems to have come into play in that scenario. 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 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 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're

a man. And so anyone who's in 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 signature. 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 to all the wearer trousers, there must be a man and that's enough. Yeah. Just to be completely blind to all the wearer trousers, there must be a man and that's enough.

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. And I'm thinking of someone like Boudicca, the Iceni warrior chieftain who defeated the Romans. And people still talk about the way. She's remembered about today. It sort of seems odd that there's that legend.

But even after things like that happened, everyone went, yeah, women can't fight. Well, clearly they can. What's your take on Boudicca's legacy? 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 barbarian. Ultimately, the Romans subdue her with their civilized military forces, which are much better organized. And it's the disorganization of Baraka's troops that cause her to be defeated. And so they can say, look, you know, 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 Jenga, 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 kindergarten.

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 adopts 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. 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. 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-eating harem starting menace. And it was abhorant and 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 scholar but i don't remember her making baby paste no but she's

magic right oh she's magic is either very successful militarily because she's a witch or because God has granted her the miraculous gift of being militarily successful. So it's the only way her contemporaries can explain why a girl who is about 17, 18, 19 is capable of such great military success is magic. 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. 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, sure there was Joan of Arc, but 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 saint 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, is the story of the Night Witches in World 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 whooshing sound. And then the Germans thought it sounded like broomsticks. So they called them Nachthexen 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 Witch witches 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 they're 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... I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

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Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Svetlana 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 like 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 i was like a wooden plane but you said that in order to drop the bombs they had to basically stall the plane midair so what it just fell they had to cut the engine and then the plane fell and then what they turned the engine i'm no aviation expert right so don't 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 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 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 quite, 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 old 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 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 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 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. 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 combat, in conflicts around the world, like the conflict in Ukraine rumbles on? I mean, are women on the front line in that or? Yes, but only on one side. Right. So one of the things that's very interesting is that the Ukrainians have 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 just is 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 bare chested and, you know, emphasize their manliness all the time. And also Putin has made some very retrogressive 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 authoritarian 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 of like it just didn't occur to them. Like it wouldn't have even been a conversation that 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 is this suffragette poster that they use to poke fun at the suffragettes.

And it's of a cat who's voting. And the reason why it was funny is because it was like, ha, ha, ha, ha, 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 this. And 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 ideal of the angel in the house,

the delicate lady, becomes either the dominant type of femininity or the aspirational type of femininity in society, it's not surprising that you would think that those ladies couldn't fight, right? Absolutely. You know, you tied them up in their corset. 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 obsess 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, 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 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 your book. I was always of the kind of viewpoint of like, well, I don't want to go to 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 has had profound implications and i think the reason why you see this very strong very powerful efforts to keep women 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. It's 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, they google me and i'm on twitter where you will find dog and book content mostly oh thank you so oh what's it 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. Oh, it's a pleasure.

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