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Showing posts with the label women soldiers

Non-fiction review: And If I Perish

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I picked this book up at the library because my brother was reading it (we both sometimes share Mom's account for ebooks, so we see what everyone's reading--sometimes it's fun to guess who's reading what) and it looked interesting. I wasn't wrong.   Title :  And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II 
 Auth or: Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee 
Publication Info : e-book 2007 Anchor (Original hardback 2003 by Knopf, 514 pages). 
 Source : Library   

Publisher’s Blurb (from Amazon) :  In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as U.S. Army nurses. When the war began, some of them had so little idea of what to expect that they packed party dresses; but the reality of service quickly caught up with them, whether they waded through the water in the historic landings on North African and Normandy beaches, or worked around the clock in hospital tents on the Italian front as bombs fell all around the...

Non-fiction review: A Woman of No Importance

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Title:  A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II Author: Sonia Purnell Publication Info: Viking Press, 2019. 368 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty ...

Book Review: Women Heroes of World War I

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  Title: Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics Author: Katheryn J. Atwood Publication Info: Chicago Review Press, 2014. 256 pages (hardcover) Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb: In time for the 2014 centennial of the start of the Great War, this book brings to life the brave and often surprising exploits of 16 fascinating women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most of them didn’t even have the right to vote. Readers meet 17-year-old Frenchwoman Emilienne Moreau, who assisted the Allies as a guide and set up a first-aid post in her home to attend to the wounded; Russian peasant Maria Bochkareva, who joined the Imperial Russian Army by securing the personal permission of Tsar Nicholas II, was twice wounded in battle and decorated for bravery, and created and led the all-women combat unit the “Women’s Battalion of Death” on the Eastern Front; and American journalist Madeleine Zabrisk...