Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I

During the First World War, thousands of American women sailed to Europe, some to try to end the war, most to participate in its conduct or succor its victims. A few hundred were members of the U.S. Army; more than 10,000 held quasi–military status as nurses (but without military pay, benefits, or pensions); another 10,000 found or created their own wartime jobs. Although most of these women have vanished completely from memory, the accounts they left of themselves remain to reveal them in all their remarkable diversity. Memoirs, letters, newspaper reports, novels and diaries, from doctors, pilots, photographers, journalists, interpreters, telephone operators and entertainers tell the story of these neglected veterans of World War I.