Recommended Reading


The author of this selection spoke at a Naval Conference in Washington, D.C.   Of course!  I purchased the book!

https://store.nationalww2museum.org/we-band-of-angels-pb/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-9/u-s-surrenders-in-bataan

I attended the reception for this exhibit. 

https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/exhibit-explores-legacy-of-native-american-military-service/article_bd9b3d81-9e47-481c-be44-206064f3894b.html

Do you remember Lori Ann Piestewa?  She was honored at the Irving museum exhibit and I recognized her the moment I saw her picture on the storyboard.  I still remember how it felt when the news was released of her injuries in battle, capture, and death in an Iraqi hospital.  I felt the punch in my gut again.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lori-Piestewa

"We Band of Angels" is written by a woman, with the distinct imprint of a nurses' heart. It is deeply personal.   I love it because of my own service in Fleet Hospital Dallas as a member of the nurse corps.  The sacrifice of the women and their courage and conviction leap from the pages in quiet manner.

But there is a "Gulf of America" - a disparity - in autobiographical war chronicles between the genders.  Testosterone-laden stories of war sell better than that of a female galley cook performing her duties at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.  This quiet soldier is awakening at three a.m. every morning to prepare chow for the warfighting community.  CONUS - she just might have left behind two small children.  I do know that during our entrance into Iraq after 9/11 a nurse who was still breastfeeding her baby received orders to report to duty.   Nurses... critical deficiencies... are placed on a stop loss order in time of war.  Women serve.  And they do it with just as much grit and fidelity to duty as the men. They are forgotten - unless achieving flag rank.

Does anyone remember me?  smile

Isn't it time that (as a nation) the role of women within the ranks receive greater attention from our institutions and best writers?  Our current fetishization of a "Warrior" culture at the Pentagon - with an unreasonable amount of attention devoted to the men - can inadvertently marginalize the 18 percent of our active duty forces who are women.

Just my morning thoughts, friends.

HarvInf (Harvested Information from AI)

  • For women's war autobiographies, fewer than 20 percent were published by commercial presses, often appearing as small, local pamphlets that are difficult to locate compared to the over half of men's autobiographies published during their lifetimes. 

  • Today, while women are increasingly serving in combat roles and writing about their experiences, stories about female veterans remain nearly absent from mainstream culture and literature compared to the extensive collection of male war memoirs. 



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