Role Of Women In Wwii Essay Research

Role Of Women In Wwii Essay, Research Paper

When I previously thought about the participants of World War I, I imagined brave, young men fighting fearlessly for the country they believed in. I envisioned the war fields dotted with machinery, trenches and fortresses that helped to protect the heroic men who fought continuously until the end. I pictured the victorious soldiers returning home to accepting and joyous companions whom they had been away from for so long. Not once did I think of the women volunteering for the war. I figured they simply sat at home praying for the safe return of their loved men. However, in closer examination of The Great War, I have learned of my naivety. In reality, women were as much a part of the war as were men. Although women played distinctly different roles, their experiences were often virtually indistinguishable to those of their male comrades. For example, women and men had the same pressure put upon them to volunteer for the war. Once involved in the war, both genders were forced to question their previous beliefs and their learned virtues while discovering that this great war wasn t what had been expected. Men and women had to suffer from extremely horrible living conditions, face the fact that they were simply a number to the country they were fighting so valiantly for and learn to psychologically deal with experiences nobody had ever fathomed before. And when those who were lucky enough to survive returned home, they had to reevaluate their relationships with those they had left behind, often times discovering that the only thing that war had provided was an uncertain future.

I often wonder if as many men and women would have volunteered for the war if they had known what they were up against beforehand. Deductive reasoning tends to tell us they would have been more reluctant, but the pressures from their countries were so intense that many may not have had much of a choice but to enlist. Volunteers entered the war in order to please their families and peers at home; entering was equated with pride, bravery and selflessness. Messages were given similar to those introduced by Anarchists of the late nineteenth century, making volunteers for the war men of courage willing not only to speak but to act, pure characters who prefer prison, exile or death to a life that contradicts their principles, bold natures who know that in order to win one must dare (Tuchman 32). And not only were citizens expected to enlist, but were intended to prepare to die for their country: It will be more beautiful and wonderful to live forever among the heroes on a war memorial in a church than to die an empty death in bed, nameless (Bond 76). Women, as well as the men, were to go on doing [their] bit, because England [was] proud of her brave daughters (Smith 31). But as thousands lined up to show their respect and honor for their country, possibly with their very lives, others already involved in the battles discovered that war wasn t all it was cracked up to be.

The men and women, who had been so eager to fight for what they believed in, soon understood that those at home did not fully comprehend the realities of war. Oh, the people who were sleeping in a bed and who tomorrow, reading their newspaper, would say joyously they are still holding! Could they imagine what that simple word hold meant. (Horne 177). Every truth, every virtue, every principle that they had held before becoming direct participants was questioned. Some even began to resent the country that had sent them there. It seemed while those at home were admiring the members in battle, those actually taking part in it were disgusted with those who had put them there. Nevertheless, because many chose not to elucidate the realities of the war, most citizens were oblivious to the atrocities facing their own allies. One woman ambulance driver explained, tell them all the ideals and beliefs you ever have had have crashed about your gun-deafened ears and they will call you a hysterical little girl (Smith 30-31). But in keeping the actualities hidden from those on the outside, the men and women who had come to hate their own societies were essentially contributing to it. So what were the men and women of war experiencing that made them transform into whole new human beings.

Maybe the most horrendous aspects of war were the unbearable conditions that both men and women had to endure on a daily basis. Food, drink, sleep and warmth were all luxuries of very few. Sickness and illness went untreated, reinforcements were lacking and wounds were not properly cared for. As a soldier in Verdun remembers, I saw a man drinking avidly from a green scum-covered marsh, where lay, his black face downward in the water, a dead man lying on his stomach and swollen as if he had not

stopped filling himself with water for days (Horne 183). Probably the vilest condition that was faced was in being forced to live among the dead. The sheer number of corpses was enormous and often there was not enough space, time or manpower to properly bury all those that had died. You found the dead embedded in the walls of the trenches, heads, legs and half-bodies, just as they had been shoveled out of the way by the picks and shovels of the working party (Horne 176). Women also had to cope with injured or deceased men every day and often had to see their own colleagues die as well. Images of shelves of mangled b