Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In" is seemingly about physical freedom in a wide-open landscape, and the recording by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in late 1944 was not inspiration to the women who answered the call to duty after Pearl Harbor. But the phrase "Don't Fence Me In" is in some ways a very accurate reflection of the attitude many of the Red Cross Girls held. They were trailblazers, independent thinkers, and pushed up against and beyond barriers on many levels in their lives -- both before, during, and after the war. Freedom undergirded it all.
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| Camouflaging the Clubmobile - Normandy 1944 |
All the women the Red Cross selected through a rigorous interview process for overseas service were resilient and fiercely independent self-starters. Many were single and had been working in a professional capacity for several years (which was one of the Red Cross requirements). Most craved even more freedom and autonomy -- perhaps escaping family members who were pressuring them to settle down into domesticity or seeking the lure of adventure and duty in the thick of the action. And as the war wore on and the Red Cross Girls increasingly recognized their own worth, many dreaded returning home, fearing that they would face pressure to give up their careers or that the opportunities in post-war America would go mostly to the returning male soldiers. One Red Cross Girl wrote her boyfriend that he should understand that she could no longer see herself ever being happy as a housewife and that he should be prepared to carry some of the domestic load because she intended to continue her career.
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| Florence, Italy 1944 |
They experienced unprecedented responsibility and freedom during the war, and many were concerned about adjusting to post-war realities. Based on the numerous memoirs and oral history interviews I used in my research, many of them refused to scale back their aspirations or relinquish the additional freedom they experienced during the war years. Many of these women went on to resume their careers or pursue a new profession, learning how to balance their professional and home lives. I like to think that the daughters of these trailblazing WWII heroines led the charge for women's rights in the 1960s. But the Red Cross Girls (and many other women in the era) played a large role in pushing boundaries and resetting expectations.
I have a new release coming out this month -- a Clubmobile Girls "short" for your holiday reading. This is the first of a planned anthology of stories set in the Arctic locales of Iceland, Greenland, Alaskan Territory, and the Aleutian Islands. In At His Side for Christmas, Elise Macalester, serving as a Red Cross Girl in Iceland, puts aside her shyness to help reconnect two brothers torn apart by combat. Can she overcome self-doubt and tragic circumstances to find her way to love and happiness?
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You can find my Clubmobile Girls series on Amazon. At His Side for Christmas is available for pre-order now!
5 comments:
My mom was a new mom (I was born November 1941 when the the US entered the war. My dad was drafted in 1942 or maybe 1943. She was raised to be a stay-at-home mom supporting her husband's career. I think for many of the women who were "back home", they were for the first time, free of social/cultural restraints. All the "Rosie The Riveters", had a taste of that independence and many of them fought returning to the circumscribed pre-WWII life. My mom didn't work in a factory. She worked in a department store. While she did not continue working, she was one of the Classroom Mom's, PTA Mom's, Church Mom's as well as being a Stay-At-Home Mom.
Glad to see a new release from you. You mention Amazon. Will it be available through other vendors? When you have a few more of the stories written will you but them together in a print book?
Hi Judith -- yes, the home-front women also had more freedom and flexibility during the war years too -- good point. They were able to work, certainly in the defense industry but also as you say in businesses as well.
I listed my first novel in all the platforms -- have never sold a single one on B&N, maybe 1 or 2 on google books, none on Apple. So it's just too much work with too little payoff to list a short like this anywhere other than Amazon. I do plan to compile all 4 of the Arctic shorts into an anthology that will be offered in a print version though!
Know you have a buyer for the Anthology. I'm doing something along that line with the children of the women in The Sacred Women's Circle series. I'm excited to catch up with them (there are six of them) and yet not enough to write a full novel.
I upload to D2D and they send it out wide. That means I only do it once and yet have the opportunity to be seen on 20+ platforms. And D2D is a fairly easy program to use. I'm still not reading on phone, tablet or laptop or desktop. Maybe one of these days I'll take the plunge. I'm not good at keeping things charged.
I'm not familiar with D2D, but I will look into it -- thanks!
ELeri, I love every time you post more about the Red Cross girls. Having been born in 1954, I was a post war child. Someone who grew up in the sixties and early seventies when those women's rights were being fought.
There are many times throughout history where women step to the forefront and handle jobs that they weren't allowed to do in the past. It seems that, once the men return, it is very difficult to give up those freedoms. I wonder how many women went back to traditional male/female roles and hated it but put up with it.
Cultural change and acceptance is so very slow. Those women, like some of your characters, were the trailblazers to say: What I want matters, too, and you better get used to it. I really admire that, and think it is a message that needs to continue to be empowered even today.
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