Women of World War II

What I really wanted to write about two days ago is the book I just finished reading, A Life of Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm. It’s this story that moved me into thinking about women and our place in the world. The changes for women from the 1940s has been remarkable but weren’t brought about by gentlemen patting us on the head and calling us ‘little ladies.’

A book that can raise my ire, to get me stomping around the house in a rage is a book well-written and factual. It isn’t only that the women (radio operators) dropped behind enemy lines into France during that war were beaten, tortured, of course raped-violent men always rape-and tossed into gas ovens. That was certainly terrible but it was a fate suffered by men also and the women did volunteer for the duty.

After the war was finally ended the men in power wanted to keep the bravery of these women, some in their early 20s, secret. “Brush it under the rug and hide it,” they said. “Don’t let anyone know that we used women.” After all, the women who were allowed into military service uniforms were not allowed to actually carry weapons. Yuck. And the radio operators weren’t military. They were civilians.

Like a detective Vera Atkins traced each girl that she recruited from her department who did not return home after the war. She found out what happened to each one, how they died and where they died. She fought for honors and medals for them when the men of the military didn’t want to even acknowledge their existence. Regardless of who or what Ms. Atkins was, she did the right thing by these women. This all happened in England but that patronizing attitude was universal.

We have come a long way.