One of the WW II exhibits at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. Photo from their web site

A swing onto the serious side and a reminder for anyone who is, or knows of, a woman who is a veteran. World War II is essentially when women entered the U.S. military in significant numbers and laid the foundation for so much of what came after them. There had been nurses and administrative positions for a long time, but more and more roles were at least temporarily opened for women to fill as men were needed in combat units. There is a wonderfully rich repository of these contributions at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial located at Arlington Cemetary in Washington, D.C. (http://www.womensmemorial.org). I wrote a specific post about this earlier and would once again urge you to go to their web site, make a visit if you are in the area, and most especially, encourage women veterans to register with the museum. There is no cost and it is a simple process. You might be surprised to find grandmothers and great aunts who served and for whatever reason, don’t talk about it.

I also created a passage in Irises to Ashes about a character who served as one of the female pilots who helped ferry airplanes across the Atlantic during World War II. The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a special program where women piloted all type of aircraft in training and other capacities that were not directly combat related. Although in the novel, I used it to illustrate a woman who chose an unconventional route for her life, the real stories, as with much of history, are fascinating.