Here Are Some Important Women Who Served In The War In Some Way.
helen fairchild
Helen Fairchild was born in Milton, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 1884. She graduated from PA Hospital in 1913, four years before world war one. A few years later, she and 63 other nurses from PA Hospital volunteered to serve in Europe. She was exposed to mustard gas during November 1917, and began suffering severe abdominal pains. Fairchild continued to work until, just before Christmas, a Barium meal x-ray revealed that a large gastric ulcer was blocking her pylorus. Fairchild underwent a gastro-enterosomy operation on January 13, 1918. At first, Helen did well, but on the third day she began to get worse and after going into a coma, she died on January 18, 1918.
Flora Sandes
Flora Sandes was born in 1876. She was the daughter of Samuel Sandes, a Scottish clergyman. On the outburst of World War one, Sandes joined an ambulance unit in Serbia on the eastern front. Sandes joined the Serbian army when it retreated into Kosovo. Even though she was nearly forty, she was promoted to the rank of sergeant-major. In an effort to raise funds for the Serbian forces, Sandes wrote and published the novel, “An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army” in 1916. After the war, Sandes remained in the Serbian Army and had reached the rank of major by the time she retired.
Marina Yurlova
Marina Yurlova was born in a small village in the Caucasus Mountains in 1901. When she was fourteen she joined the Russian army. First she worked as a cleaning lady in Armenia, but after two months she was sent to fight the Turkish army. In 1915, Yurlova was wounded while she was blasting bridges across the Erivan River. After she was treated at the Red Cross hospital in Baku, Yurlova returned to the Eastern Front.
Katharine Furse
Katharine Symonds was born on November 23, 1875. She had intended to train as a hospital nurse but changed her plans after meeting the artist, Charles Wellington Furse. They married in 1900 but Charles died four years later, leaving her to care for two young children. In 1909 Katharine Furse joined the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment that was attached to the Territorial Army. On the outbreak of world war one, Furse was chosen to lead the first Voluntary Aid Detachment unit to be sent to France. In November 1917, she and several of her senior colleagues resigned. Furse was immediately offered the post as Director of the Woman’s Royal Naval Service.
"I am not exaggerating when I say that I felt no remorse and no fear. I was a Cossack. As with my companions, so with me it was a blind instinct to follow men to war. And beside that, to me - caught up in all this violence and carried helplessly along - here was an adventure, the sort of adventure I had dreamed about." -Marina Yurlova