Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II by Lena Andrews (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @marinerbooks for the review copy of Valiant Women by Lena Andrews.

Do you like to read non-fiction?  What type of non-fiction do you like to read?  I love learning about new pieces of history that I never knew about before.

“More than three hundred and fifty thousand American women served in uniform during World War II.  They served in every service, in every combat theatre, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time.”  Valiant Women is their story.  “Not only did women work behind thousands of desks doing clerical and administrative tasks, but they also worked, often for the first time, in an extraordinary diverse set of military occupations.  They served as pilots, aircraft trainers, photo interpreters, gunnery instructors, radiomen, metalsmiths, machinist’s mates, chemists, codebreakers, classification experts, lab technicians, translators, parachute riggers, ordinance experts, weather observers, control tower operators, mechanics, truck drives, radarmen, quartermasters, pigeon trainers, and much more.”

The primary source material for Valiant Women were interviews of women that worked in the variety roles telling their personal stories of their World War II experiences.  It also explains how the women units for each branch of the military were put together.  The military realized before the war began that they didn’t have enough white males in the right age range for the large undertaking this war would be.  Not only did they need men on the front lines to fight, but they needed men to be making the weapons and supplies for war and they needed these materials to be transported to the front.  They realized that women could be an important resource that could help fill in the gaps.  At first, they were in more traditional roles such as nurses and clerical staff, but they soon branched out into mechanics and so much more.  For these women, it was an exciting new opportunity to help their nation in a time of need.  Unfortunately, there were many hurdles including terrible misinformation that was spread about the reputation of the ladies.  African American women were also important members of the military as well, and they faced their own unique challenges.

An interesting epilogue also detailed what a difference these ladies made for the role of women in the military moving forward.  The sources section was very detailed and included the women who were interviewed.  I also enjoyed the pictures that were sprinkled throughout the text. 

I thought this book was fascinating and I read it very quickly for a non-fiction book.  I’ll admit that although I read historical fiction and like to watch movies set during World War II, I had no idea on the extent that women served in the military during World War II.  I knew about women aviators that were WASPs from visiting aviation museums and reading about aviation, but I had no idea about the rest of the branches of the military.  I loved learning this history and I wish it were in history classes more and also represented in movies.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would love to learn more about history.