Women Warriors: La Mulâtresse Solitude

This is Solitude. Her mother was brought from Africa, possibly Sierra Leone, and she was born in Guadeloupe in around 1772 as the result of her mother's rape on the slave ship. I've found several different accounts of her life, but most of them seem to agree on this.
In 1794, the French abolished slavery in their colonies after the Haitian slave revolt, and she joined the Maroon community of La Goyave on Guadeloupe. This was a group of free Africans, from the French word meaning "fugitive".
In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte re-enstated the institution of slavery in the French colonies. Solitude and her followers from the Maroon community joined Louis Delgrès, who had been a military officer in the Revolutionary Army, to fight for freedom. Their last battle against the French Napoleonic Army was on 28th May at Matouba, where the remaining freedom fighters ignited their gunpowder supplies, committing suicide while taking as many of the French with them as they could.
Solitude survived the battle. She was pregnant at the time, so was imprisoned by the French until she had her baby. In November 1802, a day after she had given birth, she was hanged.
Slavery was finally abolished on the island in 1848.
Solitude is now remembered as a heroine on Guadeloupe.

Women Warriors: Faye Schulman, Jewish Partisan and Photographer

I haven't done one of these for a while, but I came across the story of this fascinating woman recently.
Faye Lazabnik was born in 1919, and when the Germans arrived at the village where she lived in the Lenin ghetto in Poland in 1942, all of her family were killed, along with most of the rest of the inhabitants. She was spared because of her photographic skills - the Germans wanted her to develop their photos of the massacre. She had helped her brother Moishe with his photographic business before the War.
She managed to escape during a partisan raid, and joined the Molotava Brigade, a group of mainly Soviet Red Army escaped prisoners of war. She had some knowledge of medicine because another brother had been a doctor, and she served the group as a nurse for two years, along with a vet who was their doctor.
She managed to retrieve her photographic equipment during a raid on Lenin, and documented the partisan group with her photographs. She wanted to show that the Jews had not gone passively to their deaths, but had fought back.

Here she is with some of the Russian partisans - the picture has been colourised.

After the War, she married Morris Schulman, another partisan, and they emigrated to Canada in 1948, where she still lives in Toronto. She wrote a book about her experiences called A Partisan's Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust.

Women Warriors - WAVES, American women during the Second World War

By the end of the Second World War, around 84,000 women had been accepted into the WAVES programme of the US Navy - standing for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. Around 8,000 women served as officers. Many served in secretarial and clerical positions, but there were also aviation mechanics, photographers, control tower operators and intelligence personnel. In 1944, African American women were also accepted into the programme.
Originally, it was thought that women would only join up for the duration of the war, but in 1948, the Womens' Armed Service Integration Act was passed, allowing women to serve alongside men as permanent members of the armed forces in the US.

Concerning the Crew of the Franklin

It's a well known folk song, among other things - the sad tale of the doomed expedition to the Arctic, all hands being lost to cold and starvation. The two ships commanded by Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, got stuck in the sea ice off Canada in 1846. Their final message, sent in April 1848, indicated that they were abandoning their ships to head south overland. The wreck of the Erebus was only found in 2014, and HMS Terror was found nearby in 2016.
Recently, remains of the crew have been found, both bones and mummified remains in the ice, scattered along the trail they took to try to reach safety. Researchers have been gathering DNA samples from the remains, identifying 24 individuals so far - and have found that at least 4 of the 129 crew members were women.

Women Warriors - Scottish Broadsword Champion Jean Gordon

In 1897, Miss Jean Gordon (aged 24) announced her intention to meet all comers with the sword in the Boston Illustrated Police News! She had recently defeated a Captain Tom Shields in Boston.
The paper noted that she was "very pleasant and modest in demeanour"!
In 1895, she had met the noted swordswoman Ella Hattan, also known as "Jaguarina", in a broadsword bout. One of the judges was Col. Thomas Monstery, who had trained Ella. It was reported in the Daily Inter Ocean, but I've been unable to discover who won that fight, or even if the fight actually took place.

Women Warriors - Minnie Spotted Wolf

Minnie Spotted Wolf was a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and she joined the Marine Corps Women's Reserve in 1943 - she was the first Native American woman to do so. She grew up working on her father's ranch, including breaking horses, so she was used to hard outdoor work.
During the Second World War, she worked as a driver for visiting officers in Hawaii and California, and operating heavy machinery.
Her story was even featured in a comic book of the time - "Calling All Girls".
After the war, she trained as a teacher, and she married and had four children.
She died in 1988, at the age of 65.

Women Warriors - Molly Rose, ATA Pilot

My Young Man shared an obituary from the Telegraph with me - of Molly Rose, who has just died aged 95.
She joined the ATA during the Second World War. Women were not allowed to be fighter pilots, but they were needed to deliver planes to airfields as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary. For much of her service - she joined up in 1942 - she was based at Hamble near Southampton, in an all-female unit.
She delivered 273 Spitfires to airfields, and many other types of aircraft including Wellington bombers, Beaufighters and Mosquitos. Later in the War she flew Tempests and Typhoons, which were higher powered Spitfire variants. Sometimes the ATA pilots flew four different types of aircraft in a single day. They flew without radio, and often to airfields which were camouflaged and difficult to find. In all, she flew 486 aircraft of 38 different types - and after the War, she never flew again. She spent the rest of her working life as a magistrate.
She married Bernard Rose, who was a Captain in the 4th City of London Yeomanry during the War, in 1939. After the War he became a Lecturer in Music at Queen's College Oxford. They had three sons. They met while she was an apprentice engineer in the family business - her father was David Marshall of Marshall Aviation in Cambridge - and she learned to fly on a Tiger Moth belonging to her brother, gaining her flying licence at the age of 17.

Women Warriors - Lyudmila Pavlichenko

Otherwise known as Lady Death, Lyudmila was a Ukranian Soviet sniper during the Second World War.

She was creditted with 309 kills, making her the most successful female sniper in history, and one of the top military snipers of all time.
Her hobby before the Second World War was shooting, and in 1941 she volunteered for the infantry, being assigned to the 25th Rifle Division, where she became one of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army - only about 500 of whom survived the war.
In 1942, she was wounded by mortar fire, and taken out of combat. Instead she was sent on a publicity tour of the USA, meeting President Roosevelt (the first Soviet citizen to be recieved by a US President). Woodie Guthrie wrote a song about her.
She also toured Canada, where she was presented with a Winchester rifle which is now on display in the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow.
In the UK, she visited the cathedral ruins at Coventry, and several factories in Coventry and Birmingham, and collected over £4,000 from Coventry workers to pay for three X-ray units for the Red Army.
Back in the Soviet Union, she became an instructor, and trained snipers until the end of the war.
In 2015, a film of her life was made, called Battle for Sevastopol ("Unbreakable" in Ukranian), and her portrait has also been used on Russian postage stamps.
She died in 1974 after a career as a historian.

Women Warriors Ethiopia 1936

In 1935 Italy, under Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia, and quickly took over the country. This is one of the Ethiopian troops defending her country.

Women Warriors - Hanna Reitsch, Luftwaffe test pilot

She was always proud of supporting the Third Reich, and was close to Hitler - she was at the Bunker during the last days of the war, when she accompanied Generaloberst von Greim as he accepted the command of the Luftwaffe after the dismissal of Goering for what Hitler considered to be an act of treason.

But her flying career was remarkable.
She started off in gliders in the 1930s and broke several records for altitude and endurance. She became a stunt pilot in powered aircraft in 1934 for the Ufa film company, and also travelled to South America with an expedition to study thermal conditions. She became a test pilot in 1935.
In 1937 she was posted to the Luftwaffe training centre at Rechlin-Larz airfield, and tested the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Dornier Do 17 barrage balloon fender projects, for which she recieved the Iron Cross Second Class in 1941.
She was the first female helicopter pilot, too.
In 1942 she test piloted the Messerschmidt Me 163 Komet, which was rocket propelled, making her the first woman to pilot a jet aircraft - and crashed on her fifth flight, spending five months in hospital. For this, she recieved the Iron Cross First Class.
In 1943, she spent several weeks touring the Luftwaffe units of the Eastern Front.
She also test piloted a manned version of the V1 rocket, and trained instructors.
After the war, she spent 18 months being held by the Americans, and after that settled in Frankfurt. As soon as she was able, she started flying gliders again. In 1952, she won a bronze medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain, the first woman to compete.
She was invited to India by Nehru to set up a gliding school there, and was also welcomed to the White House by President Kennedy. In 1962, she went to Ghana to set up the first black African national gliding school, where she became a friend of Kwame Nkrumah, the president.
She wrote several books about her life, including Ich flog in Afrika fur Nkrumah's Ghana and Fliegen, Mein Leben.
She died back in Frankfurt in 1979 and there were rumours that she had saved the cyanide pill she had been given by Hitler at the Bunker in 1945 for all that time until she, too, was ready to commit suicide.

Women Warriors - Fecht Yeah

This picture is from an article in The Village Voice which my Young Man shared with me on Facebook. I can't share it directly from there (they do Facebook, Twitter and Google+), but it's well worth a read. It's all about women who practice Historic European Martial Arts (HEMA) - which includes various forms of swordplay from longsword to rapier - in East Harlem, New York, and the women only tournament they have organised. Fecht Yeah is actually happening this weekend in New York.

"The British Are Coming!" - Sybil Ludington's Ride

Paul Revere is the famous one, riding through the night to warn the American militia that the British soldiers were on their way. But on April 26th, 1777, sixteen year old Sybil rode forty miles through the night doing the same thing, on her horse Star. Her father was Colonel Henry Ludington, and it was his men that she was riding to warn.
Here's a picture of the statue commemorating her ride.

Women Warriors - Lozen and Dahteste, Apache warriors

"Lozen is as my right hand, strong as a man, braver than most and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people." So said the Apache chief Victorio, her brother. When Victorio's band left the San Carlos Reservation in 1877, where they had been sent to live in terrible conditions, Lozen fought by his side. While retreating from the US Cavalry, Lozen led the women and children of the band across the Rio Grande while the warriors held off the cavalry.
Victorio died fighting the Mexicans in 1880. On that occasion Lozen was not with the band, having left to escort a woman and child to the safety of the Mescalero Reservation. On that journey, she stole horses, and killed a longhorn with a knife rather than shoot it so as not to betray their position.
Lozen rejoined the band, now under the command of the elderly chief Nana, as they fought their way across New Mexico.
She was also with Geronimo when he broke out of the San Carlos Reservation in 1885, in the last campaign of the Apache wars. She also acted as a prophet for the band, praying to Ussen (the supreme god of the Apache) before battles.
She and Dahteste, another Apache warrior woman, started negotiating a peace treaty with the Americans. Dahteste was fluent in English, and had worked as a scout for the US Cavalry.
During this time, the Chiricahua Apache were rounded up and sent to Florida, and eventually Lozen and Dahteste surrendered.

This is a picture of a group of Apaches waiting to be taken by train to Florida in 1886. Geronimo is somewhere near the front, and Lozen and Dahteste are sitting near the back. (Picture found on Red Power Media wordpress site).

Lozen died of tuberculosis while a prisoner of war in Alabama in 1890. She was fifty years old.
Dahteste survived tuberculosis and pneumonia and later married Kuni, another ex-scout. They lived at the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. Dahteste lived until 1955.

Women Warriors - West Point

I saw this picture on Twitter this morning. It's this year's black female graduates of West Point Military Academy. I must say, I love the way that a sword is still part of the dress uniform!

Women Warriors - Communist fighters in the Greek Civil War

In Greece, fighting did not stop at the end of the Second World War. The country had three more years of fighting in a civil war between the Greek government army, backed by Britain and the United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece - the military wing of the Greek Communist Party, backed by Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria. Many members of this army had been partisans during the War, fighting the Italians and Germans.
Government forces eventually won the civil war.

These women are part of the Communist army.

Women Warriors - the Onna Bugeisha of Feudal Japan

I got annoyed by a discussion on Historum forum, about female Viking warriors, but ranging a lot more widely. One person in particular is adamant (despite any evidence to the contrary) that even little weedy men can overpower any woman, and that therefore women were never warriors.

So here are the onna-bugeisha, the samurai women of feudal Japan, trained in the use of the naginata, kaiken (dagger) and the art of tantojutsu (a knife fighting style of martial arts). Their principle purpose was to protect the household, family and honour in times of war, but they also went into battle alongside samurai men.
In 1868, for instance, Nakano Takeko was recruited to become the leader of a group of twenty women using the naginata, who joined the 3,000 other Aizu samurai in the battle of Aizu. Unfortunately, they were on the losing side, and Nakano Takeko was killed when she was shot in the chest.
Tomoe Gozen was a samurai archer. She died in 1247 during the Genpai War. During the Battle of Awazu she is known to have decapitated an enemy warrior after unhorsing him.

Black Sailors at Trafalgar

It's slightly before Victoria's reign, but does show how black people were an integral part of major British events as far back as 1805.

I was listening to a piece on Radio 4, where a historian was saying that 20% of the sailors in the British fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar may have been black. He also pointed out that there is a figure of a black sailor on the plinth of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and another black sailor in the painting of the Death of Nelson now held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. As he said, the painter and sculptor weren't putting those figures in to be politically correct - they were putting them in because the sailors had been there.
After doing a little research myself, I see that it's not actually that easy to determine how many black sailors there were - the muster rolls didn't indicate race, but they did usually say where the sailor came from. Here's the list from the Victory, taken from an article in the Independent:

"Nelson's Navy may now be seen as being as English as boiled beef, but the Victory muster book listed only 441 English on board on the morning of the battle. The remainder were a seafaring United Nations: 64 Scots, 63 Irish, 18 Welsh, 3 Shetlanders, 2 Channel Islanders, one Manxman, 21 Americans, 7 Dutch, 6 Swedes, 4 Italians, 4 Maltese, 3 Norwegians, 3 Germans, 2 Swiss, 2 Portuguese, 2 Danes, 2 Indians, 1 Russian, 1 Brazilian, 1 African, 9 West Indians, and three French volunteers."

Also on the Victory was "William Brown", who was dismissed from the British Navy in 1815 after serving eleven years and becoming captain of the foretop on the Charlotte - because she was female. Two women are also in the painting of the Death of Nelson, on board the ship as wives of members of the crew.

57 of the crew of the Victory died during the battle or of their wounds in the next few days, with 102 being wounded.

Women Warriors - Kurdish rebels

ISIS is "afraid of girls."

Posted by INSIDER on Thursday, 10 December 2015

I hope this works - a short video on the young women Kurdish rebels who are fighting Daesh/ISIS.

Women Warriors - Lakshmi Bai

Lakshmi Bai was the Rani of Jhansi in India under the British Raj. When her husband the Maharajah died, he had no male heir. A boy had been adopted shortly before the maharajah's death, but the British would not accept him as the new maharajah, and annexed Jhansi, sending an official of the East India Company to deal with administrative matters. The Rani was only twenty two years old, but she refused to cede Jhansi to the British.
This was in 1854, and by 1857 the British had more to worry about than one small Indian state, as the Indian Mutiny had begun (with a rumour that the rounds of ammunition issued to the Indian troops were greased with beef and pig fat). Lakshmi Bai was proclaimed Regent of Jhansi, and asked the British official there for permission to raise troops for a bodyguard. Shortly after that, local Indian troops massacred their European officers - and Lakshmi Bai got written permission to manage the District for the British until a Superintendant arrived. Other forces which were rebelling against the British invaded Jhansi, but when she appealed to the British for help she got no reply, as by this time the British believed that she had been responsible for the massacre of the European officers.
So she set up a cannon foundry and prepared to defend the city herself.
When the British finally turned up, they found the city well defended, and the Rani refused to surrender to them.
After two weeks of fighting, the British took the city, but the Rani escaped and joined other rebel forces.
She remained with the rebel forces, though the campaign was by this time going badly for them. She died at Gwalior, in battle, dressed as a cavalry officer.

Trowelblazer and Woman Warrior - Dorothy Garrod

Here's Dorothy Garrod in Palestine in 1931, with Theodore McCown and Francis Turville-Petre.

She studied anthropology at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, where her father was Regius Professor of Medicine, though she got her first degree in Cambridge. There she was inspired to become an archaeologist, and studied with Abbe Breuil, which led to her excavating on Gibraltar in the 1920s, where she found a Neanderthal skull.
She was in Palestine, though, to excavate at Mount Carmel, where she worked closely with another woman archaeologist, Dorothea Bate. Her work on the site convinced the authorities not to use it as a quarry, and she continued to investigate three caves there. Her work was a major contribution to the understanding of the prehistoric sequence in the region. In those days, the bulk of the labour was usually done by local people, with the archaeologists supervising, and Dorothy Garrod hired mostly women from the surrounding villages.
From 1939 to 1952 she was Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, though during the Second World War she served in the Women's Auxilary Air Force, at RAF Medmenham, where she was a section officer in a photographic interpretation unit - which makes her a Woman Warrior as well as a Trowelblazer. She was, in fact, the first female professor at Cambridge. It was not until 1947 that women students gained the same rights as male students at Cambridge.