Military Archives - Page 39 of 41

Grace Banker

Grace D. Banker served during World War I (1917–1918) as chief operator of mobile telephone communications for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. She led 33 women telephone operators, popularly known as Hello Girls. From New York, they were assigned to travel to France to operate telephone switch boards at the war front in Paris, and at Chaumont, Haute-Marne. The women also operated the telephone switch boards at First Army headquarters at Ligny-en-Barrois and later during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. After returning to civilian life, Banker and her team members were treated as citizen volunteers and were not initially given recognition as members of the military. In 1919, Banker was honoured with the Distinguished Service Medal for her services with the First Army headquarters during the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne Offensives and received a commendation.

Ada Armytage

Ada Armytage’s photographs document life within the stately Como House (which her father owned) and among the social elite of her time. Ada’s photographs and her sisters’ diaries, letters and journals make up the Armytage family archive, which preserves the significant moment in history.

Irena Sawicka

Irena Scheur-Sawicka was a Polish archaeologist, ethnographer, and educational and communist activist who joined joined the Polish Workers’ Party during World War II. She was active in the Polish resistance during World War II and, as a prominent member of Żegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews), she helped Jewish refugees from the Warsaw Ghetto through the non-violent Polish resistance efforts, such as the underground education and rescue of Jews. She died in the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.

Irena Iłłakowicz

Irena Morzycka-Iłłakowicz was a intelligence agent and second lieutenant of Poland’s National Armed Forces, which fought against Nazi Germany and communist partisans during World War II. She was also a polyglot who spoke seven languages: Polish, French, English, Persian, Finnish, German and Russian. Irena was murdered in unknown circumstances during the war; the following year, she was posthumously promoted to second Lieutenant. In 1995 she was awarded the military Krzyż Narodowego Czynu Zbrojnego (Cross of the National Armed Forces).

Irene Morales Infante

Irene Morales Infante was a Chilean soldier who served in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) between Chile, Peru and Bolivia.

Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson CBE was a pioneering English aviator, and the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia over 19.5 days in May 1930, doing so with little flying experience at the time (she had only received her license in 1929).
She set many long-distance records throughout the 1930s, across Europe and to Moscow and Tokyo. In 1931 she married fellow aviator James Mollison and quickly broke his record for flying from England to South Africa. In 1936, she broke the record again, flying 22,530 kilometers in 12 days. The couple flew the Atlantic together in July 1933, but crashed on landing at Bridgeport, Connecticut.. Johnson and Mollison made it as far as India during the 1934 MacRobertson Race from England to Australia, and divorced soon after. Johnson flew military missions during World War II as a part of the Air Transport Auxiliary and died during a ferry flight.

Dr Florence Stoney

Irish medical doctor who was the first female radiologist in the United Kingdom

Jhalkaribai

Jhalkaribai was a soldier who served in the Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi’s women’s army and eventually rose to a position of a prominent advisor to the queen herself, including analysing and strategising battle tactics. At the height of the Siege of Jhansi during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, she disguised herself as the queen and fought on her behalf, at the front, allowing the Queen to escape.

Sybil Ludington

Sybil Ludington was an American Revolutionary War heroine. On April 26, 1777, at age 16, she made an all-night horseback ride to alert militia forces in the towns of Putnam County, New York, and Danbury, Connecticut, of the approach of British forces. She rode twice as far as Paul Revere did, by herself, over bad roads, and in an area known to be inhabited by outlaws.

Mary Hallaren

Mary Agnes Hallaren was an American soldier and the third director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) at the time when it became a part of the United States Army. As the director of the WAC, she was the first woman to officially join the U.S. Army. When she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which later became the WAC, in 1942, a recruiter reportedly asked the five-foot-tall Hallaren how someone her size could help the military. She responded, “You don’t have to be six feet tall to have a brain that works.” As a captain, she commanded the first women’s battalion to go overseas in 1943. She served as director of the WAC personnel attached to the 8th and 9th Air Forces, and by 1945, she commanded all WAC personnel in the European theater as a lieutenant colonel.
On 7 May 1947, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson promoted Hallaren to full colonel and appointed her director of the WAC. On June 12, 1948, when the WAC was officially integrated into the Army, she became the first woman to serve as a regular Army officer (there had been female members of the Army Medical Corps since 1947).
During her tenure, she led the effort to gain Regular Army and Reserve status for WACs; directed the processes for assimilating WACs into the regular and reserve components between 1948 and 1950; supervised the revival of WAC recruiting and the opening of the WAC Training Center; and led the Corps through most of the Korean War. After leaving the position, she served on active duty for seven more years before retiring in 1960 at age 53. She was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal. She then served in the United States Department of Labor as director of the Women in Community Service division. She retired in 1978 but continued to serve in an advisory capacity. In the 1990s, she was a leading advocate for the Women In Military Service For America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which was dedicated in 1997.