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Women In M ilitary Service For America Memorial Moments by Anna Krawczuk, UNWLA Honorary President The Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia On October 18, 1997, a memorial complex situ ated at the gateway of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, was dedicated to women in the military serv ice of America. The Women’s Memorial was officially opened to the public on Monday, October 20, 1997. It recognizes and acknowledges women who gallantly served the United States of America for more than two hundred years. On October 18, 1997, to complement the dedication and opening ceremonies for the new memorial, the United States Postal Service issued a 32 cent commemorative stamp which honored the nearly 2,000,000 women volunteers who have served our country from the American Revolution to the present. Visitors to the Women’s Memorial have ac cess to the computerized Memorial Register - a listing of American servicewomen. Here one can find a rela tive, comrade, or friend, information about their mili tary service history, and more often than not, a photo graph.* The Women’s Memorial houses an Educa tional Center with the largest archive collection ever assembled on American women in the military. The archival collection includes historic documents and other memorabilia on women from every generation, every service branch, and every era. Women who were on active duty during the Civil War, World W ar I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Bosnia, and Kosovo are represented as are those women who are currently deployed in military units in the Middle East. But the history of women in America’s mili tary is a history of women whose military service was often marked by gender discrimination. During the Civil War, for example, both the Union and Confeder ate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Woman soldiers had to assume masculine names and disguise themselves as men. Some were killed in action. Many others were taken prisoner of war. Others were wounded, and when it was discovered that they were female, they were quickly dismissed from military service. Discharge documents dated April 20, 1862 for John Williams, for example, indicate the reason for mustering out was “that he was found to be a woman.” The most documented cases of women serving their country as men during the Civil War era are those of Sarah Edmonds (alias Franklin Thompson) and Mary Galloway (alias Albert D.J. Cashier). Edmonds was a registered nurse; Galloway was a mail and dis patch carrier. Mary Galloway, wounded in the chest during the Battle of Antietam, was nursed by the fa mous Clara Barton. Barton coaxed her into revealing her true identity and her military career ended. Sarah Edmonds, however, received a government pension in 1886. But despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the United States Army tried to deny that women played a role during the war between the states.
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