“August 10, 1917
I get my appointment and go loco w joy. It seems to me my reason for existence is explained. All my training and experience seem to have fitted me for just this. Bradford Knapp talks and I get two ideas. Unless one gives all one is not giving enough, and if one can go one should. The other thing was that to our generation has come this great chance for sacrifice. There is a joy in my heart that this has come. Everyone is awfully good about my going away. I did not know how much my work meant to me.”

–Diary of Mary Paxton Keeley

On April 6, 1917, Congress voted for a declaration of war on Germany. War had already been raging for three years. And for the whole of those three years, American women had been involved in the care and comfort of European soldiers and civilians. Now that American men would be fighting, American women took on service as a patriotic duty.  But not all women were given an equal opportunity to serve, nor did all American soldiers receive equal access to the welfare services.

Recommended Reading:

America’s Women:  400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, Gail Collins

The Women Who Fried Donuts and Dodged Bombs on the Front Lines of WWI, Smithsonian Magazine

Credits for Primary Sources:

Diary of Mary Paxton Keeley, read with permission from the State Historical Society of Missouri

Letters of Emma Young Dickson, read with permission from the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries

The overseas war record of the Winsor school, 1914-1919, (Constance Cunningham’s letter)

Canteening Overseas, 1917-1919, (Memoir of Marian Baldwin)

Into the Breach, American Women Overseas in World War I, Dorothy and Carl Schneider