Shelley Saywell

An unusual book in the sense that we rarely hear about the women actively participating in war. Saywell concentrated on WW II to the 1980's as she was able to find participants who were still living. From WW II, we meet women who fought in the French, Polish & Italian Resistance movements and Russian bomber pilots who the German soldiers called "Night Witches". She tracked down women who fought during the creation of the state of Israel, a French nurse trapped at Dien Bien Phu, American nurses who served in Vietnam, a war artist in the Falkland War, and finally women guerrillas in El Salvador.
Some of the events these women describe stretch our belief for they are so extraordinary but in the epilogue, Saywell finds almost all these women believe women should be entitled to serve in combat roles. Some believe that if were to be common place, maybe we would find fewer countries going to war.
While I have read books about the Russian female bomber & fighter pilots, women resistance fighters in various countries, diaries of women who lived in Poland and Germany during the war, in this volume we have a wider volume of experiences in one book. This is a great find.… (mer)