When the going got tough during World War II, America’s women got going. By the millions, housewives and mothers took off their aprons and stepped into factories, offices, hospitals-anywhere capable hands were needed to replace those of the husbands and sons now battling overseas. The eleven fictional stories in this remarkable collection are based on real women whose experiences were at once typical and extraordinary. Irene bucks rivets in an aircraft factory while Doris learns to pilot military planes. Marjorie survives the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor while Jean spends three years under guard in a Japanese internment camp. Lucy joins the segregated Women’s Army Corp and Kathryn joins the Red Cross-shipping off to the front lines where she dances in combat boots with American GIs. From the topsy-turvy days following Pearl Harbor, through four long years of hardship, to the post-war campaigns to put women back in their place, these stories reveal the many facets of women’s lives as they gave their all for the war effort.
To Touch the Stars: A Story of World War II (Jamestown American Portraits # 11)
When the United States enters World War II, Americans everywhere look for some way to help. With the help of her younger brother, 18-year-old Elizabeth Erickson of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, finds a unique way to support the war effor and realize her dream of becoming a pilot. While training for the army air force’s ferrying program, which put more than 1,000 women to work delivery airplanes for the military, Elizabeth discovers her own courage and resourcefulness and puts a troubling family mystery to rest.
Rose for the Anzac Boys
The ‘War to end all Wars’, as seen through the eyes of three young women
It is 1915. War is being fought on a horrific scale in the trenches of France, but it might as well be a world away from sixteen–year–old New Zealander Midge Macpherson, at school in England learning to be a young lady. But the war is coming closer: Midge’s brothers are in the army, and her twin, Tim, is listed as ‘missing’ in the devastating defeat of the Anzac forces at Gallipoli .
Desperate to do their bit – and avoid the boredom of school and the restrictions of Society – Midge and her friends Ethel and Anne start a canteen in France, caring for the endless flow of wounded soldiers returning from the front. Midge, recruited by the over–stretched ambulance service, is thrust into carnage and scenes of courage she could never have imagined. And when the war is over, all three girls – and their Anzac boys as well – discover that even going ‘home’ can be both strange and wonderful.