Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Extraordinary Women Who Helped Win WWII with Lena Andrews

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

This Memorial Day we take a moment to remember the 350,000+ American women who served in uniform during the war, in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time. Their service ranged from critical support roles flying planes across the country, drawing maps to help men get through Normandy, codebreaking, and building & maintaining the behind-the-scenes infrastructural work that made the heroics possible. Sharon is joined by CIA military analyst, WWII expert, and debut author, Lena Andrews, to unveil the scale and scope of what women in uniform contributed during WWII.  Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant, you're building something big, and Square's there for all of it. Giving your customers more ways to order, whether that's in-person with Square Kiosk or online. Instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger,

and real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should too. Visit square.ca to get started. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A side, or B side, or both sides. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Hello friends.

Welcome. Delighted that you're here and happy Memorial Day. Today's conversation is very fitting for a day like today. I am speaking with historian Lena Andrews about valiant women, women who served in important military roles in the United States. And I think you'll love this conversation. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I was really excited to see your book come out because this is a topic that interests me greatly.

I have produced a number of podcast episodes and series on this topic, and I just can't get enough. It's one of those things where it's like, if I could make 25 more episodes about it, I would. So I know so many people listening to this are gonna be very, very interested in what you have to say today. So welcome, thank you for your time.

And I would love to have you give us just a little bit of an overview about what this book is about and how you even became interested in this topic. Well, it's one of my favorite questions. So thank you for asking it. Thank you for having me here. I've listened to many of your podcasts on this very topic.

So thank you for taking an interest in it. I think so few people sort of understand the scope and magnitude and you've done a lot of really great work to bring that to your listeners. So I'm delighted to be here. It's all to say. So I think as you probably know, and many of your listeners already know, we all know about Rosie the Riveter, but I think what's most interesting to me is that I consider myself a World War II expert. So I have a background in World War II. I've been studying it for a decade or more. And even someone like me was surprised at the scale and scope of women's contributions, particularly in uniform in World War II. And for whatever reason, even as we

started to get a richer understanding of women's contributions in World War II, we have sort of, I don't want to say cut out women in uniform, but I don't think they've gotten as much of the credit that they sort of deserved. Over 350,000 American women served in military uniforms in World War II. They were in every service, every theater, every combat theater and operation. And so, you know, it was enormous what they were doing,

but it wasn't just their numbers. It was the type of work that they were doing. They were in these critical support roles, like doing things as simple as drawing maps to help men get through Normandy, or flying planes across the country to make sure they were at the right bases at the right times. In all these critical support tasks, they were having a huge impact. Part of the motivation for the book was me as both a military analyst

and a woman trying to bring those things together to say, not only were women doing cool things, but there were women doing militarily important things. And so that was a big motivation for me. I mean, I think so much of, you know, of course the world, especially America, very, very interested in World War II. It's like an unflagging level of interest, which is why there's basically entire TV channels devoted to it. You know what I mean? There's tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of books written on World War II. It indicates the incredible level of interest in this topic. And so much of what gets the attention are the battlefield heroics, the race against the

Nazis. Recently, it's been more in the Oppenheimer camp of like, what were the Americans doing to try to beat Hitler, building the nuclear bomb, all of these things. And they tend to be by their very nature, male-focused stories. But guess what? Nobody was going anywhere without people in the background offering support. And I don't mean just like emotional support of like, oh, good luck. Best of luck to you. I mean, like someone needs to do all of the infrastructural

work to make the entire thing go. Because without it, there are no battlefield heroics. There are zero battlefield heroics. And I love the stories of the people in the background who make the heroics possible. And I'm sure you can relate to that, Lena. Absolutely. We can just end the podcast there. This is perfect. And that is what we have to say. Finn, we're done. It's exactly right. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. And I think we see this not just in war, although it is particularly important in war,

but in so many industries, the people in the background who are doing these support tasks. We have our administrative professionals days and things like that where you give your executive assistant a card. But what anyone who works in an office knows is without that executive assistant, the CEO doesn't get anywhere. They don't go anywhere. They don't do anything. They don't know where to go. They don't have their notes. And the same principle applies, but with much higher stakes in wartime and on a much bigger scale in World War Two.

So I like to point out the fact that like there were a lot of women, for instance, doing something as simple as filing paperwork. In the book, I spend probably four or five full pages talking about the system for filing that the Army used for the reason that they're filing millions of pieces of paper a day by hand, it was pre-computers. So if a soldier's record is not in the right place or if a battlefield report is not in the right place or an intelligence report is not in the right place, a general has to go and find it

or someone has to go and find it and it's a delay, right? And delays in war are costly. And especially in a war like World War II, those delays compound over time and over space in ways that are just enormous. So it's exactly right. It's those little kind of unglamorous things that women were doing that all add up.

But at the same time, you also make an excellent point, which is it's other sorts of non-secretarial tasks at the time that people don't know as much about, but are equally critical. So one of my favorite stories is of a woman named Jessie Contrabecky. I had the privilege of talking to her and she works at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. She's very, very detail oriented and she happens to have very

small hands, which is not a material point, except that she is tasked with fixing altimeters and gauges for Navy planes that are being fixed and maintained at Jacksonville so that they can go back to the Pacific and fight in the offensive that ultimately ends the war in Japan. So if you don't think Jesse Contrabecki is important, you're missing the point of World War II. And the guys on the front line are the first to say this. That takes 10, 15, 500 people behind them to allow them to do their jobs.

And they are often the most stalwart and loudest proponents of this. So I'm so glad you said it. I'm so glad you put it. I'm so glad you put it that way. I think we see it everywhere. And World War II is of course no exception. It's in fact just a higher stakes, bigger scale scenario. So it's really a huge part of the book. Yeah. Without the woman with the tiny fingers who can precision tune the altimeter, who knows what would have happened, possibly mission failure for that pilot. Right?

Like we're not winning anything. We're winning zero things without those kinds of critical infrastructure that a large portion of which was born on the backs of women. What kind of women decided, like, I'm going to see if I can get one of those uniforms. I'm going to sign up to do that unglamorous job that no one in history will remember me for. Right, right, right. Exactly.

I'm going to join whatever group in whatever branch of the military will have me. I'm going to do what they need me to do. What kind of women, by and large, were they? I love this question because as a group, interviewing the women that I was able to interview, this was like the most joyful and interesting and inspiring experience I ever had because they are a inspiring group of women,

but they're also sort of contradictory in some ways. So on the one hand, they're just kind of average women who wanted to do their part and their brothers and their dads and their uncles and their cousins were all signing up. They all went straight to the recruiting station at Pearl Harbor and they similarly just wanted to participate, wanted to do their part. And so I think a lot of them had family who were in the services and so felt like they also wanted to participate in that way. So they're sort of ordinary in that respect. This is the 1940s. This is a very different time. So think about in this context,

being among the first women to say, I am going to sign up to put on a uniform, a military uniform, even though I know there will be extraordinary backlash and there will be probably a lot of sexism and discrimination and harassment, and I'm going to still do it anyway. So these are pretty plucky women as a group. They are very devoted and patriotic. I think almost all of them in after action reports said patriotism was their main motivation. But they are also pretty brave in that way, not just sort of to say I want to go and serve, but I want to be the first to serve in a uniform and be a woman. So I think they're sort of trailblazers in that respect. And you get a little bit of that sense

when you're able to talk to them or read about them. But that's what makes them so interesting. And I think is important for listeners to know is that they're pretty average women who did a pretty extraordinary thing at the time. I love that these were not people who were like, I'm going to get into West Point. So one day when the world goes to war, I'll be first in line. Nope. These were just ordinary products of their time, middle of the road, normal people who were faced with a choice and made a choice that required a considerable amount of courage. They could have stayed home.

Nobody was forcing these women to sign up. There was no draft of, you're coming with us. This was a voluntary service and they knew what they were up against and they probably did not go into it feeling like, I got this. Everything is going to be fantastic. I'll face no adversity because I already know what's expected. No, it required a tremendous amount of courage. They decided that it was the courage that was required was something they could find and decided

to move forward. Probably scared, but doing it anyway. And I love that about them. And I have to say, I'm just going to, if I can, this is a perfect opportunity for me to highlight the thousands of women of color who did this also, and did it in the face of knowing that they were going to go into an army that was going to be segregated and they were going to be treated as second class citizens, and still felt compelled to do this, not just because it was the right thing to do, it was the patriotic thing to do, but because it was an opportunity for them to show that despite being denied sort of justice and fairness at home, they were willing to fight for it abroad. It was that important of an ideal. And my favorite, I have several women of color who are featured in the book. My favorite is Charity Adams. She's a becoming better known. She will be the subject of a Tyler Perry Netflix film, I am told, in the coming months, so that's very exciting. But she led the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, which was the largest group of black army women

to be sent overseas. And they were phenomenal at their jobs. And they were also, they crushed it. It was amazing. Tell everybody the gist of the story, because it is an incredible story. So here's the deal. People don't think mail matters in war,

like literal physical air mail, but it's a lifeline. And at the time, mail is the only way that soldiers are able to sort of communicate with them. It was such a big deal that when people got mail, they would read it aloud to their unit so that they could all feel connected to what was going on at home. So the first thing I like to sort of dispel is that mail didn't matter. Charity Adams is selected to take the 6888,

which is a unit of all Black Army women, to Europe to basically sort mail and be in charge of mail. Now that, again, doesn't sound like it's particularly a hard hitting job, but they arrive at the warehouse where all the mail is being sorted right at the basically the start of the battle of the bulge, very important time. And it's backlogged, it's vermin infested, it's like not organized. And she and her unit clear the backlog of six months of mail, I think in three months, they're able in a one eight hour shift to sort over 65,000 pieces of mail. That's Incredible, right? They break every record and they do it despite the fact that they're serving in a segregated army overseas So they're dealing with racism and sexism not just from run-of-the-mill American GIs, but also from the local community

so you have all these horrible stories of Charity Adams having to send her units out after midnight because they needed to prove to the local population that they didn't have tails that came out after midnight. Or being told that they weren't the Red Cross told them they couldn't use the same recreation facilities. So Charity Adams says, look, if your facility isn't good enough for us,

then the equipment is like, we're not gonna take it. We'll do our recreation somewhere else. So without fail, Charity Adams and her unit just respond with such incredible integrity while they're doing this incredibly important job. And to me, it is such a, it's both such a contrast and such an inspiration. I think rightly history is starting to remember what it should about Charity Adams and her unit, which is that she did something incredible. The unit just got the congressional gold medal. And we don't remember the people

who thought they had tails after midnight. We remember Charity Adams and her unit. And that is the key thing to me. It's Truck Month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 Sierra 1500 Pro Graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months. With an available 5.3 liter V8 engine,

20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off road suspension with available two inch factory installed lift kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13,200 pounds, you'll be ready for anything this truck month. Truck month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer for details. We don't shy away from the big stuff,

like politics, current events, and what it means to stay informed and engaged without losing your mind. On For the Love, we've welcomed brilliant voices like Sharon McMahon and Lisa Congdon to help us make sense of it all. If you're looking for clarity without the chaos, join us for thoughtful, hopeful conversations. For the love, wherever you get your podcasts.

You've got unlimited access to music, but time, now that's limited. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard gets you unlimited PC Optima points, free grocery delivery, and It's even difficult to quickly and easily verbalize what a true disaster that mail warehouse was when they arrived. This was not a like, wow, well, there's a lot of work to do. No, no, no, no. It was a six-month backlog, and we're talking about literal hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail that were in complete disarray in horrible conditions. Like you mentioned, vermin infested, I mean like rat filled warehouse stacked to the ceiling

basically with paper. Women arrive and are told to make sense of it because the war effort depended on their work. As you mentioned earlier, getting male was an enormous morale issue. Everyone who knows anything about the military will tell you that morale is incredibly important. It's incredibly important for unit cohesion and for following a chain of command orders. There's all kinds of reasons why morale is incredibly important, why it cannot be overlooked. I really dislike people's attempts to minimize what a big deal it was that they came in and

they were just like, we're fixing it. We're going to get this mail where it needs to go. Somebody has a new baby born in one of these letters. Somebody's grandma died. They need to know. We got to get this stuff where it goes. I just love that story. I think it's such a good one. It was freezing cold and full of rats and mail to the ceiling. They just turned it around, turned it around where no one else could. Yeah. Think about the time in the war also, right? This is right before the Battle of the Bulges is like the final throes of Germany's last resort to try and

get out of this war, you know? And so there, this is a critical inflection point in the war. And these women arrive and they have like, I think something, the Charity Adams estimates that there were probably 700 John Smiths in one warehouse and they've got to figure out where he is and tell him about his baby that was born or whatever, you know, whatever was happening at home. You're exactly right, I think they do this incredible work and yet it's one that if you don't know the kind of full story of morale and cohesion and military support operations and how all these things work together, you can easily miss and I think we often have missed,

but fortunately, you know, it's starting, like you said, people are starting to put all the pieces together and realize that war is actually a team sport. It's not just the guy at the front. It's the six or 700 women who are sorting his mail 50 miles down the road. So we know women were serving overseas.

They were doing things like working in mail processing facilities. What other kinds of jobs did these valiant women have in the military? So all of them, basically. Aside from carrying the guns on the front lines, they were everywhere. I'll highlight a few that are, I think, particularly unexpected for people because I want folks to understand just how close they were to the action. I think many people can imagine a secretary in Wilmington, Delaware, putting together files, critically important job, not to diminish it, but it's harder to imagine, say, an army nurse or an army flight nurse who is on her way into Italy to pick up injured troops, gets stranded, and has to crash land in enemy occupied Albania

and make her way out over the course of several weeks behind enemy lines. That is a woman named Agnes Jensen, who was part of the Army Nurse Corps and wrote a whole memoir. So they were nurses, but not just your average nurse. They were flight nurses doing really dangerous work. They were, like I said, Jessie Contrabecki is a favorite example. She's doing maintenance work. They were all over doing really dangerous work. They were, like I said, Jessie Contrabecki is a favorite example.

She's doing maintenance work. They were all over the maintenance establishment, both in the field and at home. They were pilots. So as I mentioned, the Women's Air Force Service pilots, which at the time were a civilian organization but were later recognized for their military service, were some of the most advanced and incredible pilots who were flying combat aircraft around the United States to make sure they were in the right places. It's the women like Anne Baumgartner who test flew the B-29 Superfortress.

So if anyone has seen Oppenheimer in the past several weeks, that's the Enola Gay. It's the one that the plane that drops the bomb on Hiroshima and then later Nagasaki. So they are literally everywhere and they're doing sort of every imaginable military task. And I think at one point the army estimated that they were in two-thirds of the available military occupations, which included things as insane as like pigeon trainers, you know. But they were doing it all. They were stuffing parachutes, which they called parachute rigging at the time. Like I said, they were flying, they were fixing the planes, they covered the whole waterfront. And that's what's so fun. And I hope that readers take away in the book. It's not like I'm focusing on just

one woman. There are 30 veterans featured. So I can show that scale and that scope is enormous. I especially love the stories of the pilots because first of all, as you mentioned, there was so much sexism when it came to women's ability to do these sort of complex mechanical tasks. Women had been flying since the early days of the airplane, but it was still a rarity. It was still a kind of a sideshow of like, dang, look at that little lady flying those loop-de-loops. You know what I mean?

Like, it was still like that kind of a vibe. These are tremendously, widely varied planes. We're talking about flying a super fortress plane very, very different than flying other types of aircraft. Just because you have a pilot's license doesn't mean that you are an expert in all of the different types of aircraft most pilots specialize in or they have to get special training on a specific aircraft in order to be familiar enough with it to fly it in all kinds of different circumstances. So the fact that women were able to master all of these different types of military aircraft, and then of course we're like changing design during World War II. We're like, what we have now is not good enough.

We need to make the following changes. They really had to keep up with technology in order to be successful at that job. And again, nobody's going anywhere if they don't have equipment on the ground when and where they need it. Yeah. And I mean, the Wasps are one of my favorite groups of women in many ways because they are, it's so hard to explain that they were these sort of celebrities and sportsmen and also technicians and they were everything brilliant and they were super famous at the time. So Jackie

Corcoran who ends up running the the Wasps is an extremely famous pilot, probably second only to Amelia Earhart. And one of my favorite stories of the entire book is about how basically trainers, pilots, would use the women very strategically to motivate other younger, specifically younger male pilots. So there was this one plane in particular called the B-26 Widowmaker. It wasn't called, it was not called the Widowmaker. Its nickname was the Widowmaker because it was really hard to fly and it was particularly hard to land.

And so it would often crash and kill the entire crew. It was a really sad story. So men stopped wanting to fly it. And in an effort to get men back into the cockpit at one of the major Air Force training centers, they brought all the pilots out to the line, did a demonstration, had the B-26 doing its loop-de-loos. And at the end of it, they land the plane and two WASPs, women, walk out of the cockpit.

And I'll tell you, one way to motivate a pilot is to show them that a woman can do their job and is not afraid of the plane. And after Action Reports, they asked sort of, well, how did you know how to land it? And the women responded, we just followed the instructions. It just turns out. It was like the perfect- We read the manual. We read the manual. We we just followed the instructions. It just turns out. It was like the perfect. We read the manual. We read the manual.

We're really good at details. And so to me, it's like the perfect epitomization of how women could be used in these really strategic and creative ways. And so I really love that story for lots of reasons, but that one really stands out to me because it's just the perfect way of showing that women have these incredible skills and

Also these sort of sneaky little ways of motivating men and I should add right like it's a very funny story But it is also in some ways a really difficult story because a lot of the women would end up in these sort of operationally Incomplete planes so they were in a lot of situations where either the maintenance wasn't as good or the planes themselves were not up to snuff. And so they were often in some really dangerous situations. So, you know, in this case, it was like a great little clever anecdote that they could get the guys to fly the B-26. But in other cases, it really ended up like these women were taking extraordinary risks in order to do their jobs and really were not recognized for it. So it's a

classic 1940 story where you're like, that's so funny and also, whoa, that is kind of horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that feeling many times when we're talking about women in World War II, where we're dropping her out of a plane via parachute in the middle of the night into occupied France, and she's going to have to run, run through the field. She'll be fine. And hope to not get caught and hopefully she didn't break any bones on the way down. That happened for real, many times. Just like that's the plan. Wow. That's the plan. Huh. You know, like many times. I'm sure you've had that reaction where you're like, that was the plan? Wow, that was the plan.

Okey dokey. We'll just run with it, I guess. We'll just go with that then. Jump out of the plane. Yep. Okay. And I'm sure, I mean, as much as we two women in 2023 are like, wow, that was the plan. Imagine being in 1943 and being told,

just jump out of the plane, that's the plan. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? Like here we are with our microphones and we're talking about it. Imagine that being the actual plan that people were like, that's what you're doing and you actually have to do it.

Right, and I often tell my editor this when I'm having a hard day or whatever, I'm trying to decide what bassinet for my child I need to like order. I'm like, you know, it really puts it in perspective when I'm writing the story of Florian Miller who like gets in an accident in a P-47, has to crash land with no landing gear. I'm like, OK, I think I'll go with the UPPA baby. You know, like that.

It really changes and puts everything in perspective. I feel that. I have thought the same thing many times of like, you know what, given everything that other women have been through, I feel like either one of these choices, I'm going to be okay. Yeah. I'll survive. I'll survive.

Either one, yes. What was the general public's attitude for these women in service? Was the general public like, yeah, good for you, go for it. Or did they face a lot of backlash? What was that like? Yeah, you know, it was a mirror, I think, of the preexisting feelings that the population or the particular individual had at the time. So many women were fully supported by their families and they were excited to put another star

in their window and they were really progressive in that way of saying everybody should serve and my daughter's a person who can serve so she should. At the same time, unsurprisingly probably to many listeners and to you, that was not the only reaction that people had and on the other side of the coin there were equally strong reactions negatively. You know it's such an interesting contrast in some ways to like the Rosie the Riveter story where there was this real honesty around women doing war work and being sort of like part of the machine and they kind of had a bit of a harder image in some ways. You know they were doing like mechanical work whereas with the women in the military service, there's an obsession over keeping an image up of real poise and grace and always in a press skirt

and wearing makeup. And there was a real femininity that they were always trying to convey, I think because there was a big concern about the sort of masculinization of women by allowing them into the military. And so leaders, the military leaders were obsessed with this from the very start. So that undertone, I think, was warranted, and it reflected a sort of controversy that many military leaders saw coming about the femininity of these women. And that really hit crescendo in 1943 when there was a slander campaign essentially in the media against women in the army, the women's army corps in particular, basically alleging that they were prostitutes and playing off of this sort of camp follower

trope that wasn't true, of course, but was very easy for someone to take up if they were already skeptical of women serving in uniform. And so there was like an FBI investigation of all of this. Of course it wasn't true. Eisenhower comes out and says, it's not true. Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, all of them say, of course this isn't true. This is ridiculous. These women are patriots.

They're doing good work, but it destroyed recruiting for the army midway through the war, which is devastating. You know, we're in the middle of this national crisis and based on basically lies and rumors, we now have another manpower crisis, except this time it's a womanpower crisis. And so, you know, I think it's this interesting tension because military leaders were very concerned with image and it was sort of tricky in many ways, looking back on it historically. But it was also warranted because lots of the population

took up this rumor so quickly and were so fast to believe it because they thought it could be true. And so that tension is something that I really try to address in the book, that people really impose. It was like a Rorschach test. People really impose their own views about what women should be and should do on these women in uniform who are, by the way, just trying to do their jobs, trying to be patriots, trying to

get the job done. But it is probably on the other side of the equation, the biggest example of how women were mistreated just for trying to do their jobs. Yeah. They're over there like, listen, do you think it's really fun to sort mail 12 hours a day in an unheated warehouse with rats? I mean, how dare you? Nobody wants to be accused of that no matter their profession, right? That's very offensive. It had to be even extra offensive when you are serving overseas, often very close to

the front lines depending on your job. There is in some cases very real danger to your life and to have your contribution so questioned and to have so many people being willing to believe it so easily. That had to be really, really offensive. I would have been offended if I was them. I would have been very offended. On their behalf, we are both offended.

Yes, I'm offended. We're all offended, yes. That's ridiculous. And it's offensive, it's ridiculous, and it's heartbreaking, and are both offended. Yes, I'm offended. Yes. That's ridiculous. It's offensive. It's ridiculous and it's heartbreaking. You're like, who could do this? Who could create this narrative in the middle of a national crisis? Then you realize, of course, we've lived through this many times.

In some ways, it's immaterial how big the crisis is if you have really strong views about what women should or should not be doing and some line in your mind gets crossed. And I think they, you know, the folks who believe this genuinely, they were protecting American womanhood and manhood. So that I think is the tricky part of it is just you can sort of both at once understand that if you believe that to be true, then of course it would be really problematic. But the fact is it wasn't. And they had to do an FBI investigation to confirm to folks that it wasn't, you know, an access plot or whatever. So that was one of the more heartbreaking things

to write up, but I think it's really important for people to understand about women's experiences. They were not easy at all. They wanted to believe it. And so they saw a straw and they grasped it because they wanted it to be true. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart

shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I also think it's interesting the point that you made that there was almost like a hyper fixation on women not becoming too masculine. Not a hyper fixation on like, hey, we got to make sure that our GIs are not sexually assaulting or harassing these women, but a hyper focus on you need to look like a girl. You need to wear a perfectly pressed skirt. need to wear a perfectly pressed skirt. You need to do your hair every day and wear your makeup every day. This focus on this preservation of hyper femininity

despite, you know, wearing a military uniform. I find very interesting, like as though the worst thing that could happen to you is that you become too independent and too whatever male characteristics you might adopt, too aggressive or too headstrong. That's the worst thing that could have happened to you according to some people in the military is that you would become too much like a man. Yeah. And it's so, I really try and lay out this contrast as best I can in the book itself. So you have all these memos of the women who run the women's programs being super concerned

about like women kissing in public, or God forbid they have a drink. Those are the concern, very bad, like gosh, how could they do that to just stay in on womanhood or wearing pants to do something like be a mechanic? Like those are the controversies over what women are doing. And at the exact same moment, you have memos from male commanders,

essentially saying, laying out what is like the most absurd rules around how men will engage with women in the theater. So there was this really kind of appalling memo that I read in which one of the commanders is like, women can't go to the same movie nights if they're on base, but outside of their barracks, they have to be escorted by a military police officer. They have to basically be under lock and key at all times.

We have to know where they all are. Why? Because they were worried that GIs would attack or assault the women who were like sort of picked off from the group. And it's just such an extraordinary contrast to see the women's programs hand-wringing about drinking in public or kissing in a park, and the men's programs actually preparing for violent assaults at the exact same moment. And you're sort of like, didn't someone point out that that's a little contradictory? Like, aren't we more worried about the guys who

apparently can't control themselves around women than the women just living their lives in uniform? And so it's something again, that is really hard to think about, but also I think probably sounds pretty familiar to many women today. It's one of those that really last. Still to this day, even women in the military today still sounds pretty familiar that the onus has always been and is still in many ways on women to protect themselves and the onus is not on men to control themselves. Yep, absolutely. What happened to the women who served after the war ended? It wasn't the women who were getting the ticker tape parades and all of the like, welcome home to our best

ladies. But did they get pensions? Did they get, you know, all of the benefit? Did they get the GI bill? Like what happened after women returned? So two points of fact in response to your question, and then I'll answer it sort of more broadly. The points of fact are this. One, the Women's Army Corps, which became the WAC in 1943, didn't start out that way. They were the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, but that meant that they were technically civilians. So this created all sorts of problems with exactly what you just talked about, GI benefits, pension issues. And eventually the army gave in and said, okay, fine, we can just make them a part of the army because the logistics of this are far too complicated.

A similar sort of thing happens with the WASPs, the Women's Air Force Service pilots, but on a much longer timeline. So they were civilian, which means that if they died while training or doing a mission, they had to pay for their own funerals. That was not rectified until the 70s. They were not given military status and military benefits until much, much later, which is in and of itself a whole nother podcast episode. So that is a sort of troubling undercurrent of how all this happened.

The Navy did sort of write in some ways by their women and from the start had them integrated fully. Now, what's really interesting, the broader sort of sense aside from those two little points of fact is that a lot of these women, like I think a lot of people can relate to now after having been through a cataclysmical global event like COVID, everybody just wanted to go back to normal, which today means like going to the movies and having dinner with friends. Then it meant for women going back to the home, becoming homemakers, having children,

you know, one day they're briefing generals, the next day they're making pot roast. And there was really, I think, an undercurrent. One part is generational. Just this generation didn't want to talk about World War II, so that's fine. But I do think there is a sort of undercurrent in which we message to women that even if they served in uniform, their contributions were small,

they were feminine, they were support, they weren't combat. And so they weren't really worthy of talking about or celebrating in the same way, especially when we all want to get back to normal and normal as a woman in the home. And so I think in a lot of ways the larger narrative about sort of women's progress has cut out these women because they were quiet about the contributions that they made in large part because they were told to be. So, you know, for me, a big part of writing this book was simply giving voice to the women who were told to be quiet. And I think now we can appreciate that was the wrong thing to tell them. And I wish they had been louder about it then. And if they can't do it now,

you know, I'll do it for them. I love that. It's almost like we learned nothing from World War I, where we did the exact same thing to women. It's almost like in the following almost 30 years, where we told women, you guys were civilians, even though you wore a uniform. No, you're not entitled to any of those benefits, even though you wore a uniform. The generals treated you like members of the military and gave you all kinds of military

decorations, but you know what? You were civilians. You get nothing. And in some cases, the women of World War I waited until the 70s, waited until Congress was like, I guess we should fix this. It's almost like we learned nothing over those decades. Almost, almost. That wasn't gonna work out, yeah.

Well, and it's so interesting you say that because one of the greatest advocates in Congress for women in World War II is this woman, Edith Norris Rogers, who's an incredible person, if you don't know her, a Googler. But the reason in large part that she was so vocal and so pushy about women in World War II was because of her experience in World War I, seeing many of the women come back and not

get the benefits that they deserve, suffering from PTSD, suffering from all sorts of comradadjacent issues and just having no resources. She's sort of the best example of evolution, unsurprisingly, one of the few women in Congress is the one who actually gets the message. But in general, I think you're absolutely right. There was just no, there was very little thought given to it. Now, I will say in 1948, women are integrated on a permanent basis into the armed forces. And that sort of starts this much longer process of integrating women fully into the military, but it's not until

very recently, in most of our recent memories, that women are actually allowed to serve in every combat and non combat position in the US Armed Forces. So it takes a long time for us to learn this very big lesson. What do you hope that the reader takes away from Valiant Women? It is such a good book and such an interesting collection of fantastic stories of people you've never heard of but should have, of, you know, really illustrates the full scope of how women helped win World War II. They absolutely did.

It would not have worked without them. There are no battlefield heroics without women. That's just like period. What do you hope that the reader who picks up Valiant Women and closes the final page, what do you hope they take away? You hit the nail on the head. First and foremost, women help in World War II. You have a whole series on this. I hope that everybody gets this.

If you haven't gotten it yet, I hope that you get it now even more sort of intimately than you may have before. But the broader ask that I have of readers, the broader hope that I have for readers and for listeners is this. Women veterans are as deserving of our admiration and of our attention as anyone else. And they are living among us, believe it or not. They're not dinosaurs. They still exist. In fact, women are increasingly part of and at the heart of military operations in the United

States. And so if you have the opportunity of knowing a woman veteran, I just would encourage you to ask her about her story. Listen really, really carefully to what she says. And if you're like me, you'll find yourself two years later writing a whole book about it. They are just an incredible group of people and their stories are as worthy of listening to and telling and shouting from the mountaintops as anyone else. So please remember them, talk to them, get to know them. They're among the best of us. I have one other little thing to add to that which is to have their stories recorded somewhere. Yes. And to put it somewhere where somebody can find it someday so that people like you, Lena, can come along and actually access their

stories. This is one of my fears learning about history is that with the digital age, so much of the information that we share is password protected and going to be, unless we create some kind of system or change in the future, going to be very difficult to access what somebody really thought about something or like, what were the conditions like? You might've shared it on Facebook, but unless your status is set to public, I can't see it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the idea that it's just as important for us now to be recording histories for future generations as it has ever been despite us sharing so much of our lives. I think it's also really important to encourage people, women veterans, just your ordinary person to record their stories. They are important and they do matter. And Valiant Women is a great example of the myriad of ways that these women's stories matter. Exactly right. And for those of you who are looking for a repository, great pitch, the Library of Congress holds the VHP, which is the Veterans History Project, where you can

literally record these things. They have whole guides about how to do it and then you can upload them and they will be remembered forever. So like little nerdy people like me, like you said, can one day go back and listen to you interviewing your aunt, Vera or whatever about her experience. So please, please take our word for it. It's so important. Don't password protect it. We need it. We need it. History needs it. Thank you, Lena. This was absolutely fantastic. I loved the book and I loved chatting with you today. Thank you. It was so delightful. I just love this. Thank you. I love chatting with you today. Thank you, it was so delightful. I just love this, thank you.

You can buy Valiant Women by Lena Andrews wherever you get your books. You can also visit her website, lenaandrews.com. She has a newsletter that you can sign up for there to get even more information. Thanks for being here today. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting.

If you enjoyed today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show? That helps podcasters out so much. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck-Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.