The Hello Girls of WWI
As I've mentioned before here in the Margins, now and then a bit of history begins to track me down. A name, event, or idea piques my interest and suddenly I stumble across it everywhere. Or at least in the footnotes to books on tangentially related subjects.
Lately the "Hello Girls" of the first World War have been dogging my heels.
I had long known that the U.S. Navy had enlisted young women as yeomen in the war, with the idea that they would "free a man to fight". (You've probably seen the posters.) I had no idea that the army "enlisted" female telephone operators to serve on the western front.*
The telephone transformed military communications in the first World War, just as the telegraph did in the Crimea War and the American Civil War. For the first time, commanders could be in instant communication with front line officers hundreds of miles away, connected by lightweight wire and the help of an operator.
General John Pershing soon realized that the operators were the weak point in the system. When the United States entered the war, the army's Signal Corps had 55 officers and 1,570 enlisted men--most of whom were involved in maintaining telegraph cables.** Adding trained operators to the system wasn't as simple as recruiting men from AT&T.*** Eighty percent of American telephone operators were women. If the army was going to use the telephone, they needed to recruit women.
Pershing placed a request with the US Department of War for one hundred uniformed female telephone operators who spoke fluent French.**** While upper level bureaucrats and military lawyers fussed over whether the women would be the army equivalent of "yeomen-ettes" or civilian contractors, more than 7600 trained women operators applied for the first hundred positions. (Just for the record, the original advertisement, sent out by a Lieutenant responding to Pershing's request, called for women to serve overseas in the army.)
Called "Hello Girls" by the soldiers, they made army communications possible. Most worked behind the lines, but a few traveled with Pershing. Like the soldiers with whom they worked, they risked their lives. Unlike those soldiers, they had to fight to be recognized by their country when they returned. *Sigh*
If you're interested in a more detailed account of the Hello Girls, I recommend Elizabeth Cobb's The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers.
*I put enlisted in quotations because there was a great deal of ambiguity about the relationship between the army and the women who worked for them as switchboard operators. Ambiguity that was not resolved until 1979, when they were finally recognized as World War I veterans--too late to do most of them any good.
**Armies always prepare to fight the last war.
***Though the army did just that. Fourteen Bell Battalions, staffed entirely by AT&T employees with their supervisors as officers, joined the Signal Corps. But they weren't operators. Their job was installing and maintaining equipment alongside the advancing armies. No small task.
****In addition to being ham-handed at managing the switchboard, hastily trained enlisted men for the most part didn't speak French, a liability when working with their counterparts in the French telephone system.
The Empress Maud (aka Matilda)
I was first introduced to the Empress Maud and her battles to regain the throne of England by mystery writer Ellis Peters.(1) The war between Maud and her cousin Stephen is the immediate background against which her Brother Cadfael mysteries are set. (One step behind that stand the Crusades--a deft way to place her stories within their larger historical context and to give her main character a broader view of the world than many of the people around him.) Both Maud and Stephen are distant figures in the book and Peter's main characters are Stephen supporters, so for years I never thought about why a medieval noblewoman would feel she had a right to the crown.
Since then I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about Maud within the context of women warriors.(2) It turns out she had a good reason to claim the crown. Here's the short version.
Born in 1102 CE, Maud was the daughter of Henry I of England and Normandy.(3) When she was twelve, she was married to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, who was almost twenty years her senior.(4) By all accounts, she was a hardworking empress and well-regarded by her people: her German subjects called her "the good Matilda". She may have even been happy.
In 1125, the Emperor Henry died. If he had left an underaged son as heir to the throne, Maud would no doubt have served as the child's regent.(5) Since they were childless, she was left as a dowager empress at the relatively young age of 23. The options for a surplus empress were limited, though Maud clung to the title, calling herself "Matilda the Empress, daughter of King Henry".
In fact, the death of her brother some years previously meant that Maud was once again a factor in Henry I's dynastic calculations. Henry could have named one of his twenty-some illegitimate sons as his successor or one of his numerous nephews, Instead he called his now-marriageable daughter home, named her as his successor, and forced his council of nobles and bishops to swear fealty to her as "lady of England and Normandy". He then made the mistake of arranging another political marriage for her, this time to the teenaged son of the Count of Anjou, whose lands lay next to Normandy.
When Henry died in 1135, Maud was in Normandy. Her cousin Stephen of Blois had himself crowned in Westminster Abbey before a very pregnant Maud could hurry across the Channel and claim her throne, plunging England into nineteen years of civil war, known as the Anarchy. (6) The English nobility took sides, and sometimes changed sides depending on who seemed to be winning.
Finally the war ended with a compromise. Stephen kept the crown accepted Maud's young son, the future Henry II, as his heir. (Which, if truth be told, was probably Henry's intention in naming Maud his heir--women who inherited thrones or titles were often seen as the conduit between two generations of men.) The Empress Maud settled for the title Lady of the English.
As for me, I'm now squarely on team Maud.
(1) I realize not all hard-core history buffs agree, but I find that well done historical fiction is an excellent doorway to history itself. If you want to see my full opinion on the subject, you can find it here. No need to repeat myself.
(2) She was the first woman that I had to cut from the book because she didn't fit even my broadest definition of woman warrior. Just about broke my heart.
(3) Just to help you keep track: He was the son of William the Conqueror. Hard to tell the players without a program.
(4) That sounds horrible enough to a modern reader. Consider this: she was betrothed to him at the age of eight and sent immediately to Germany. Once there, her future husband sent away her English attendants and did his best to turn her into a good German. Now picture yourself at eight.
(5) Mothers were often preferred over uncles or grandfathers as regents, under the (usually correct) assumption that they were less likely to get ambitious and/or greedy and seize the throne for themselves.
(6) He claimed that Henry had changed his mind and named Stephen his heir on his deathbed. It may even have been true--primogeniture was not yet a settled theory of inheritance and thrones tended to go to the man most able to seize them. (There are echoes here of the rival claims to the English throne that led to the Norman Conquest. Or is that just me?)
From the Archives: Word With a Past: Mausoleum
Among other things, I'm currently working on the story of Artemisia II, the widowed queen in the story below. I'm ashamed to realized that I did not mention her by name: my own small contribution to erasing women from history. (I've corrected that in this re-run.) While we don't know a great deal about Queen Artemisia, she did more than simply build an amazing memorial to her husband. She also defended her kingdom against a revolt by men who didn't want to be ruled by a woman, defeating the rebels with a clever bit of military sleight-of-hand.
She was also known as a botanist and has a plant genus named after her. Mugwort, wormwood and the like may not be romantic but they are useful and smell good. You could have a worse monument. 
So here it is, a word with a past:
When King Mausolos of Caria * died in 353 BCE his widow, Artemisia II, decided to honor him by building a marble tomb more wonderful than any building known to man. (We've seen this kind of thing before. Taj Mahal anyone?) She sent to Greece for the best architects and sculptors. When it was completed the Mausoleum (literally, the tomb of Mausolos) at Halicarnassus was declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. **
[Brief pause while I do the math] The tomb of Mausolos amazed travelers for more than 1500 years. Travelers commented on its beauty well into the twelfth century CE, even after an earthquake or two damaged the walls and sent the sculptured chariot on the roof crashing to the ground. The tomb ceased to be a wonder in the thirteenth century, when the Knights of Malta arrived at Halicarnassus. From the crusaders' point of view, the ruined tomb was a great source of building materials.
Today, the only things left of Mausolos' tomb are an archaeological site, some carved pieces of marble in the walls of the crusader castle, and the word "mausoleum"
Mausoleum: A tomb of more than ordinary size or architectural pretensions, especially a grand monumental structure.
* Now the modern Turkish resort town of Bodrum
** On one list, at any rate. Listing the seven wonders was a favorite pastime for traveling Greeks in classical times. One man's wonder was another man's Wonder Bread.