Women’s History Month: Honoring Unsung Heroic Women Who Served in Wartime

When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Alma Foerster was assigned to the Red Cross Commission to Romania. The unit faced severe food shortages, extreme weather and typhus while establishing medical clinics. Forced by political unrest to leave Romania in March 1918, the Commission spent seven weeks traveling through Russia to safety in England. Foerster then found herself in Archangel, Russia, as part of a special relief commission. Despite devastating conditions, 37 degree-below temperatures and little equipment, they opened a hospital in record time. Dangerous travel conditions stopped the arrival of relief nurses and Foerster did much of the cooking herself and enlisted the help of local women for cleaning and sewing hospital articles. She was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1920, the highest international Red Cross distinction a nurse can receive, for her service to the sick and wounded in both peace and war.

Red Cross volunteer Florence Bessie Skivens went to France during World War I as a searcher with the Home and Hospital Bureau. Florence arrived in Paris, France, on November 11, 1918, the day of the armistice. She began her Red Cross work at Evacuation Hospital 36 in Nantes, France. During her time there, Florence wrote letters to families of soldiers lost or injured during the war, collecting as much information as possible to keep the family informed. When she wasn’t collecting information or writing letters, she was providing support to the recovering soldiers by helping with social activities and even making treats for them. The work done by Florence and other searchers left a mark on the recovering soldiers ─ in her diaries and letters, she often mentions the soldiers visiting her and sending her letters once they left.

There are almost 9,400 Americans buried at the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach in France. Among them is Elizabeth A. Richardson, who joined the American Red Cross in 1944 during World War II. Sent to England, she staffed a Clubmobile fitted with items such as coffee and doughnut-making equipment, magazines, newspapers, a phonograph and records. Like most Clubmobile volunteers, Richardson grew close to the soldiers with their stories of combat, fear, regrets. Liz wrote her parents: "If you only knew what combat does to these boys — not in the physical sense, although that's bad enough — but mentally." At the Le Havre airport on the morning of July 25, 1945, Liz, who was 27 years old, jumped into a two-seat military plane to fly to Paris. Near Rouen, France, the plane crashed, tragically claiming the lives of Liz and the pilot, Sgt. William R. Miller of the Ninth Air Force.

Lois Laster served with the Red Cross during World War II. She directed recreation clubs for African American service members in England and Austria and, later, the first integrated club in Korea. Serving from 1944 through 1948, one of the clubs Laster was assigned to was about eight miles from the war front. "We never knew where the V-2s were going to go, it was frightening," said Laster, of Washington, D.C. "The people were almost devastated by bombs in my area. It was emotionally a little harrowing because we became so attached (to the troops and each other). We were not scared much. We were young and we were never going to die. We were well-protected." In later years, Lois volunteered weekly with the Red Cross Service to Armed Forces program and was a founding member and the president of the American Red Cross Overseas Association (ARCOA), an organization which served to renew and continue friendships created while in Red Cross service overseas.

Juanita Morrow and Wilhemina Barrow, both from New York City, served as American Red Cross Donut Dollies in October 1945 in Maryville, France, where they served troops of the 27th Chemical Company after travelling 100 miles in a truck to deliver cookies, doughnuts and coffee. The Donut Dollies officially began traveling with American soldiers during World War II. After a Donut Dollie completed her training, she was sent overseas, where she would often operate a “Clubmobile,” which was a mobile army clubhouse that was able to travel directly to soldiers stationed at faraway bases or camps in the field.

Helen Day Stevenson joined the Red Cross during the Korean War. Following training in Washington, D.C., she arrived in Japan in November 1950 and worked long days at a station military hospital at Johnson Air Base in Irumangawa, Japan, comforting and entertaining sick and injured soldiers. A few months later, Helen arrived at the American Red Cross club in Pusan, Korea. Thousands of soldiers visited the club every day, either heading to or returning from the front. Helen was also assigned to a Clubmobile to carry coffee and donuts to isolated units in the areas surrounding Pusan. She continued her work with the Red Cross until she left Korea for home in January 1952.

Kathy Hoff joined the Red Cross in 1969 and spent the next year in Vietnam, offering morale support for the troops as a Donut Dollie. The Dollies would run recreation centers, put on programs to entertain soldiers and visit hospitals, which was difficult and heart-wrenching for Hoff. “As long as we could take the guys’ minds off the war, that was our main aspect of having them do these games. A lot of times I would just sit and talk. I did not like going to the hospital, because I had to smile and be cheerful, and seeing these guys that were my age and younger, and what they’ve been through . . . that was really challenging,” she said. Hoff’s Red Cross service continued with several deployments supporting disaster victims. She deployed for Hurricane Katrina and disasters in California, Iowa, Texas, and Hurricane Sandy in New York.

Maggi Ware from Keene, New Hampshire, served as a Red Cross Clubmobile girl during the Vietnam War. In June 1967, she returns by helicopter from a visit with troops in a forward area. "I like the mobile visits to the forward units best," she says. "It's great to see the reaction of the men to our visits, especially the line troops who have been out in the remote forward areas for weeks and weeks without seeing anyone.

Hospital Field Director Lucille Caldwell, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina unpacks recreation supplies sent by the Red Cross Chapter in Cleveland, Ohio, which acted as "Helpmate" for Red Cross staff assigned to the Third Field Hospital in Saigon, South Vietnam in February 1969. Red Cross chapters in many cities send supplies for use in Red Cross recreation programs across 18 hospitals and two hospital ships in Southeast Asia.