Learning from 100 years of women at war: one Veteran’s perspective

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Put a bunch of women Veterans in a room, give them a mission to accomplish, and something almost magical ends up happening. I’ve seen this over and over in women-Veterans-only writing workshops. And it happened in each of the four weekend sessions of the program “100 Years of Women at War,” a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored program presented by staff from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

At each of the four workshops, more than a dozen women Veterans – active duty, Reserve, and Guard; officer and enlisted; and one courageous male spouse – engaged with documents and artifacts from women who served in World War I and women who served in the most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We read memoirs and diaries, examined photos and artifacts from the museum collections, listened to expert speakers, and wrote reflectively about their experiences and our own. Most importantly, though, we connected.

The connection was first made over a pair of high, laced black boots with pointed toes and blocky high heels.

Sixteen of us were packed into a cramped storage room at the Smithsonian. Several uniforms had been mounted on mannequins in preparation for an upcoming exhibit; others were laid out on steel tables for examination as if we were biology students conducting a dissection. One table held Representative Martha McSally’s government-issue abaya: the stiff black fabric seemed to radiate malevolence, even though it was trimmed in delicate black embroidery.

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