Great War Relics
Military Stuff Shop 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
World War I marked the first war in which American women were allowed to enlist in the armed forces. While thousands of women did join branches of the army in an official capacity, receiving veterans status and benefits after the war's close, the majority of female involvement was done through voluntary organizations of the war effort. Additionally, women made an impact on the war indirectly by filling the workforce, becoming employed in the jobs left behind by male soldiers.More than 1,476 U.S. Navy nurses (American military nurses were all women then) served in military hospitals stateside and overseas. Over 400 U.S. military nurses died in service, almost all from the Spanish flu epidemic which swept through crowded military camps, hospitals, and ports of embarkation. The first American women enlisted into the regular armed forces were 13,500 women admitted into active duty in the U.S. Navy. They served stateside in jobs and received the same benefits and responsibilities as men, including identical pay (US$28.75 per month), and were treated as veterans after the war. The U.S. Marine Corps enlisted 305 female Marine Reservists (F) by filling positions such as clerks and telephone operators on the home front. In 1918 during the war, twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker transferred from the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve and became the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard. Before the war ended, several more women joined them, all of them serving in the Coast Guard at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington. These women were demobilized when hostilities ceased, and aside from the Nurse Corps, the uniformed military became once again exclusively male. In 1942, women were brought into the military again, largely following the British model.