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!
