War Military Women

U.S. Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an illusive sniper on the rooftops of the city. A little past noon her helicopter was wracked by an explosion....

Women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, yet in today’s wars, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless. More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty. When Janey Comes Marching Home juxtaposes forty-eight photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war.

They marched under the heat with 40-pound rucksacks on their backs. They fired weapons out of the windows of military vehicles, defending their units in deadly battles. And they did things their male counterparts could never do—gather intelligence on the Taliban from the women of Afghanistan. Beyond the Call follows the groundbreaking journeys of three women as they first fight military brass and culture and then enemy fire and tradition. And like the men with whom they served, their battles were not over when they returned home.

The United States Naval Academy has no monopoly on heroes—naval, marine, or otherwise. But over the last 10 years, the most popular living author of American sea fiction has spent thousands of hours researching for Shipmate, the Academy's magazine. The extraordinary personal stories of adventure and courage he's collected span American history, from the Mexican War to the War on Terror.

The original international woman of mystery, Mata Hari is maligned as a spy and a traitor. Having seduced a number of the most powerful men in Europe, she was accused of spying for both Allied and Central Powers during the First World War. Mata Hari’s biography tells a different story. From her remarkable transformation from a captain’s wife and mother in the Dutch East Indies to the most celebrated stage presence in Europe, Mata Hari fought for what she believed in.

WASP of the Ferry Command is the story of the women ferry pilots who flew more than nine million miles in 72 different aircraft - 115,000 pilot hours - for the Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command, during World War II. In the spring of 1942, Col. William H. Tunner lacked sufficient male pilots to move vital trainer aircraft from the factory to the training fields. Nancy Love found 28 experienced women pilots who could do the job.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone.

Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, best-selling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

August 1943. As World War II consumes much of the globe, Americans at home have no idea the extent of the horror their servicemen face. What they also don’t know is that Eleanor Roosevelt has boarded a military transport plane, heading to the Pacific theater on a mission to discover and report first hand accounts of the war. Anticipating familiar backlash from those who would prefer a prim and proper First Lady, as well as to help ensure her safety, Eleanor and the rest of the White House keep the journey a closely guarded secret.

The wake of war leaves marks that don’t always look dramatic from the outside. Inside, a tempest of trauma rages. Consumed by darkness and depression in the aftermath of war, Ewa Reid-Hammer’s story is the journey of a terrified child’s transformation to adulthood. With reflections on the emotional wounds left not only on herself, but those close to her, Reid-Hammer’s account depicts the complexities of survival and self-recovery in the face of distress. From horror to healing, her story reveals the truth of what it is to be a child of war.

Pre-war debutantes were members of the most protected, not to say isolated, stratum of 20th-century society: the young (17-20) unmarried daughters of the British upper classes. For most of them, the war changed all that for ever. It meant independence and the shock of the new, and daily exposure to customs and attitudes that must have seemed completely alien to them. For many, the almost military regime of an upper class childhood meant they were well suited for the no-nonsense approach needed in wartime.

Clara Barton: The Life and Legacy of the Civil War Nurse Who Founded the American Red Cross chronicles her remarkable life, and the manner in which she changed nursing in America forever. You will learn about Clara Barton like never before.

From living in a tin-roofed shack north of Dar es Salaam to becoming Baroness Park of Monmouth, Daphne Park led a most unusual life - one that consisted of a lifelong love affair with the world of Britain's secret services. In the 1970s, she was appointed to Secret Intelligence Service's most senior operational rank as one of its seven area controllers - an extraordinary achievement for a woman working within this most male-dominated and secretive of organizations.

Before the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his time, and President Abraham Lincoln had even watched him perform, but his most significant performance at a theater did not take place on the stage. That night, Booth became one of history’s most infamous assassins when he shot President Lincoln. Perhaps not surprisingly, the actor’s flair for the dramatic came at a cost to the plot. It took almost no time for the shocked public and the federal government to begin unraveling Booth’s conspiracy, which had mostly faltered from the beginning.

Weaving together information from official sources and personal interviews, Barbara Tomblin gives the first full-length account of the US Army Nurse Corps in the Second World War. She describes how over 60,000 army nurses, all volunteers, cared for sick and wounded American soldiers in every theater of the war, serving in the jungles of the Southwest Pacific, the frozen reaches of Alaska and Iceland, the mud of Italy and northern Europe, or the heat and dust of the Middle East.

Throughout World War II, when Saturday nights came around, servicemen and hostesses happily forgot the war for a little while as they danced together in USO clubs, which served as havens of stability in a time of social, moral, and geographic upheaval. Meghan Winchell demonstrates that in addition to boosting soldier morale, the USO acted as an architect of the gender roles and sexual codes that shaped the "greatest generation".

Alice Green's lost and recently found eyewitness accounts of her childhood, her own war, the Golden Years of Radio, and the postwar housing shortage, are told from the light-hearted viewpoint of the shy, youngest child, who learns she can make even the stormy and outrageous characters in her own family laugh. With a little help from her son, who (just barely) lived to finish it, her story stands for unsung American women in war and survives as Alice's triumph.

Confessions of a Military Wife is an honest, witty, and often hilarious look at the life of the new-generation military wife. Mollie Gross learned the hard way to laugh instead of cry at what she could not control as a military spouse - and as she quickly discovered, nearly everything was out of her control!

Before he shot the president of the United States and entered the annals of history as a killer, actor John Wilkes Booth had quite a way with women. There was the actress who cut his throat and almost killed him in a jealous rage. There was the prostitute who tried to kill herself because he abandoned her. There was the actress who would swear she witnessed him murdering Lincoln, even though she was thousands of miles away at the time. John Wilkes Booth was hungry for fame, touchy about politics, and a notorious womanizer. But this book isn't about John Wilkes Booth---not really. This book is about his women: women who were once notorious in their own right; women who were consumed by love, jealousy, strife, and heartbreak; women whose lives took wild turns before and after Lincoln's assassination; women whom have been condemned to the footnotes of history... until now.

My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker is based on Melissa Burch's experiences as a war journalist for BBC, CBS, and other networks. Her team was one of the first documentary crews allowed in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and she was featured in a New York Times story about her time in Afghanistan. She was just in her 20s when she traveled with the moujahedeen, filmed an attack on a Soviet convoy, slept with an Afghan commander, and climbed 14,000-foot mountains in the Hindu Kush.