American women have served and died from the first

[PoliticAverse]

WASHINGTON (AP) — American women have served and died on the nation's battlefields from the first. They were nurses and cooks, spies and couriers in the Revolutionary War. Some disguised themselves as men to fight for the Union or the Confederacy. Yet the U.S. military's official acceptance of women in combat took more than two centuries.

New roles for females have been doled out fitfully, whenever commanders have gotten in binds and realized they needed women's help.

"The main driver is that it's been militarily necessary," says retired Capt. Lory Manning, a 25-year Navy veteran who leads military studies for the Women's Research & Education Institute. She points, for example, to creation of the Army Nurse Corps in response to the struggle against disease in the Spanish-American War.

Read the rest at: http://news.yahoo.com/american-women-served-died-first-221159980.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Molly Pitcher and Margaret Corbin

Molly Pitcher a/k/a Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Pitcher


The weather was hot, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometime during the battle, William Hays collapsed, either wounded or suffering from heat exhaustion. It has often been reported that Hays was killed in the battle, but it is known that he survived.[5]

As her husband was carried off the battlefield, Mary Hays took his place at the cannon. For the rest of the day, in the heat of battle, Mary continued to "swab and load" the cannon using her husband's ramrod. At one point, a British musket ball or cannon ball flew between her legs and tore off the bottom of her skirt. Mary supposedly said, "Well, that could have been worse," and went back to loading the cannon.[6]

Later in the evening, the fighting was stopped due to gathering darkness. Although George Washington and his commanders expected the battle to continue the following day, the British forces retreated during the night and continued on to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The battle was seen as a major victory for the Continental Army.

After the battle, General Washington asked about the woman whom he had seen loading a cannon on the battlefield. In commemoration of her courage, he issued Mary Hays a warrant as a non commissioned officer. Afterwards, she was known as "Sergeant Molly," a nickname that she used for the rest of her life.[6]

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Margaret (Cochoran) Corbin was a woman who fought in the American Revolutionary War.[1] On November 16, 1776, she and her husband, John Corbin, both from Philadelphia, along with some 600 American soldiers, were defending Fort Washington in northern Manhattan from 4,000 attacking Hessian troops under British command. John and Margaret crewed one of two cannons the defenders possessed. When her husband fell, Margaret took his place at his cannon and continued firing until she, herself, was seriously wounded. She later became the first woman in U.S. history to receive a pension from Congress for military service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Corbin