I dedicate this article to the women who fought, died and tragically were lost.
Alongside the brave men who did the same.
I dedicate it to the women who kept the wheels turning on the farms and in the mines and in the factories and in the family homes.
There is great equality in life and in death. But nowhere as great as in the love we feel in our hearts.
Women sent their men to war knowing that this was the only way their lives and the lives of their children could be kept safe. More importantly, men went to keep their women safe.
The role of women in times of war are well known. Whether it be in the hospitals at the frontline, treating our injured and traumatised, or by staying home and keeping the farm going or working in a munitions factory.
Yet so many died in the service of our Nation. And we must never forget.
Australian nurses in Egypt during the First World War, and, inset, nurses treating wounded soldiers and Dame Maud McCarthy. Pictures: Australian War Memorial
The role of women was important - they provided much needed support to those who were at the battlefront who needed to know that they were fighting FOR someone. Our men NEEDED to know that they were achieving something honourable and worthwhile.
Our women needed to know that they were giving their menfolk the support that they needed in order to get on with the job.
Our Nurses volunteered to tend the wounded and hold a hand or hear a young soldier talk about his "girlfriend " back home. If he had been blinded or unable to write, she could not only salve his physical wounds but also the wounds in his soul. She could read a letter, write a letter or simply hold his hand and listen and offer a soft and feminine touch that was so foreign in the battlefield that was his body and his mind.
I think this was a D Day photo but it evoked the emotion
Did that young soldier want that Nurse to be wielding a rifle beside him in the trenches or be taken prisoner and subjected to heaven knows what?
No!
He was there to keep her safe. That was his driving force. His reason for being there. For his Mum, his sisters, his daughters and his belief in everything he held dear.
And MEN, REAL MEN, have not changed.
Many years ago, I knew a man who was a Police Officer. He was on duty at a New Years Eve event and he was rostered to work in tandem with a young female officer who was about 5 foot tall. She was 7 months pregnant. He said to me that he was more worried about her getting hurt than doing his job.
Our women did fight in our wars. They fought in the farm fields of Australia and the daily heartache of waiting for a telegram that they prayed that they would never get.
They fought in the heartfelt belief that they could contribute to our fight against foreign oppression.
Lest We Forget the role that so many played and the work of the women from the Boer War right through to the modern day.
Raped and murdered, all bar one — and the survivor wasn’t permitted to tell the full horrific tale (Image via awm.gov.au)
In the fall of Singapore, the sole survivor, Australian nurse Vivia Bullwinkell’s was a tale of horror.
It was a story of the cowardly and notorious massacre by Japanese soldiers of a group of 21 nurses from the Australian Army Nursing Service, and a civilian woman, in the waters just off Radji Beach on Bangka Island, near Indonesia’s Sumatra, Despite being in their nurses’ uniforms, all with the Red Cross emblem on their sleeves, no mercy was shown to the women.
They were directed to walk forward into the sea only to be mercilessly gunned down from behind by their captors, who paddled into the Bangka Strait to bayonet to death any women still alive.
Yes, women fought in the Defence of our Nation.
Just look at Nancy Wake, a spy, who Kiwis and Australian's share with equal pride. Known as “The White Mouse” Nancy led the French Resistance in its final days.
She was born in New Zealand but grew up in Australia and travelled to Europe as a Journalist. In 1939 she married a French man who was killed during the war. Nancy then joined the French Resistance with the name " The White Mouse ". She went on to become a Special Agent working for the British and in 1944, was parachuted in to France to help the Resistance gear up for the Allied D-Day landings. After the war, she worked for British Intelligence at the British Air Ministry before returning to Australia in the 1960's.
After the war none of the British,Australian or NZ establishments would embrace her as one of their own and she was left destitute as all of her late French husband's assets and business in France had been lost under Nazi occupation. Prince Charles ( now King ) stepped into the breach and funded her until she died.
Despite receiving the George Medal and other British awards, no country was willing to take on her social security requirements as she did not "qualify", hence Prince Charles came to her rescue.
When Britain entered the Second World War in September 1939, Our dear Princess ( Later to become Queen ) Elizabeth was not even fourteen years old.
The long-serving British Conservative politician, Douglass Hogg, the Viscount Hailsham, had recently retired from government, but still had the ear of those at the top of British society. He suggested to the Royal Family that the young Elizabeth and her sister Margaret should be evacuated to Canada, but the princess’ mother replied in no uncertain terms.
“The children won’t go without me,” she said, “I won’t leave without the King, and the King will never leave.”
It was as she approached her eighteenth birthday that she enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. The ATS, as it was known, was the women’s branch of the British army, and ATS women saw service in France and at home, working in many supporting roles, though never in front-line combat. Some worked as radio operators, and teams of ATS women crewed anti-aircraft guns and spotlights, among many other roles.
Princess Elizabeth trained as a mechanic and a truck driver, learning to work on the engines of many different kinds of motor vehicles.
King George famously said, when asked about his daughter's new role in the war effort that the subject of conversation at dinner was now " about engines and oil. "
God Bless her
Women from all over the world fought. Women like Mariya Oktyabrskaya.
Hell has no fury than a scorned woman. This best describes Mariya and how she found herself in the battlefields of the Second World War.
She was born in 16th August 1905 in Ukraine during the Soviet era. In 1925 at the age of 20 years she got married to a Soviet soldier Ilya Oktyabrskaya. When Germany invaded in 1941 her husband went to serve in the frontline.
Unfortunately she got news that her husband llya died in August 1941 fighting the Nazis. This angered her greatly that she took an action that would alter her life and be forever remembered in history. She sold all of her possessions and decided to purchase a tank (T-34) that she would use to personally fight the Nazis.
She personally wrote a letter to the Soviet leader Stalin to be allowed to drive the tank and name it the Fighting Girlfriend. Stalin offered approval and she underwent 5 months of tank training. Most male soldiers thought this was a publicity stunt.
The training was over and the Fighting Girlfriend saw action in 1943 with the 16th Guards Tank Brigade. Her courage was evidenced here as the Fighting Girlfriend was able to breach German lines earning admiration from her male counterparts.
In another battle she risked her life to continue fighting. Her T-34 tank was hit and the tread damaged, instead of waiting for help she got out of the tank and repaired it herself. She managed to do this and continued fighting. This move on her part was insane, risky and crazy because bullets and missiles were still flying around, it’s a war.
Sadly the 17th of January 1944 would be last time the Fighting Girlfriend would terrorize the Germans. It was during a night attack on a heavily fortified German position. Her T-34 was spearheading the assault and German fire was focused on her. They managed to destroy the treads stalling the tank, as usual Mariya got out of the tank to repair it.
This is where she was wounded badly, shrapnel managed to hit her head rendering her unconscious. She was rushed to a medical facility where she was in a coma for two months but eventually succumbed. Mariya died on 15th March 1944 at just 38 years old. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for her bravery and heroism.
On March 6, 1945, at just 22 years old, Ensign Jane Kendeigh – a Navy nurse – landed on Iwo Jima and made history. She was the first U.S. Navy flight nurse to fly an evacuation mission to an active battlefield, and the first to land on a Pacific battlefield.
As a flight nurse, Kendeigh was trained as a nurse and trained in crash procedures, survival, and how to adjust treatments on patients in high altitude.
Kendeigh and her fellow flight nurses would go on to evacuate approximately 2,393 Marines and sailors from Iwo Jima, attending to their patients in the process of transporting them to forward operating hospitals.
Of the 1,176,048 military patients evacuated on these dangerous flights throughout the war, only 46 died en route.
Meanwhile back home, women tended the farms and the children and waited - not idly by but with guts and determination - women fought alongside their menfolk and provided the support both emotional and material for our armed forces to keep fighting.
But they all fought for the same thing: the future of our families. Our ways of life. Our futures.
Men and women fought together, died and sacrificed so that we could live this life, our life.
If we don't fight for our women and kids, there is no one left to fight for.
Men and women have done it before. And we can do it again.
Together.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” ― Ronald Reagan March 30, 1961
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