The Duffel Blog guide to Women's History Month
Meet the greatest gen-Her-ation
By Blondes Over Bagdad
It’s Women’s History Month, the one time of year that the military somehow how finds enough women’s history to fluff out to fill up an entire month of social media content about badass ladies who leaned in. Want to learn more about some of these awesome ladies? Check out a few of these powerful #GirlBoss stories about women who could have won wars, but instead did it their own way and embraced the #PowerOfShe.
A barracks room of her own
You probably haven’t heard of Willow Van Thorpe, but her work as a cybersecurity analyst would have prevented hundreds of breaches. Instead, the husband she met in officer basic encouraged her to exaggerate her back pain until she could get out of the military early and now she sells vitamins on Pinterest.
Boss babe tendencies
Meet Liesel. Liesel singlehandedly created a network to smuggle Jews out of Germany which eluded Hitler's best intelligence officers. She saved 80 lives. She’s a little thicc in the hips, and doesn't look like she could do a leg tuck, so I’m not sure why we're talking about her. Standards are standards.
The greatest gen-Her-ation
Another lady you should know is Phyllis. Phyllis was a whiz at chemistry and would have cracked the code on atomic weapons six months earlier, hastening the end of World War II and saving tens of thousands of American lives. But she found a husband and never worked a day after college. Congrats, Phyllis!
Beauty and a Beast?
Meet J--. J-- desperately wanted to join the infantry, but she has a vagina and so was only allowed to be military police. She volunteered for Iraq and went on the same patrols at the boys. Then she volunteered for Afghanistan and served in an infantry battalion. In between, she endured unspeakable harassment by her male colleagues. She got out afterward, rather than wait for the Marines to allow women in the infantry. Incidentally, she’s never been photographed in a picture where she wasn't flying the Confederate flag. So yeah, guess we dodged a bullet with that one!
Follow your Arrow
Tonya was the best theater logistics planner in the Army. She would have been the perfect soldier to plan the Afghanistan withdrawal, she got pulled off the project early so that she could plan the battalion Christmas party. It’s honestly a shame because the mashed potatoes were not very good and there was no bounce house for the kids.
Hashtag HerStory
Meet Akar Letho! She had an idea for a trenched warfare system to defend her native land of Tibet from Hun cavalry. She was thrown out of the great hall by the elders and forced into turnip duty. She ended up being a war-bride after her entire city was razed to the ground. After caving her captor's skull in with a rock, she froze to death fleeing through endless snowdrifts while humming a melody her grandmother used to sing to her as a child.
Put your own mask on first
Cute! The insight Kristen got from a female engagement team on how Afghan women convince their husbands and brothers not to join the Taliban could have disrupted terrorist networks, but She got food poisoning from eating undercooked goat, failed a PT test, and got passed over for command.
Bonus: Herstory’s First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt modernized asymmetrical warfare by secretly backing the OSS, but she wore pants so….she was probably a dyke.
Blondes Over Baghdad lets someone else take the top block because it’s the selfless service thing to do. She’ll go to ranger school when there’s a 3-beer policy. Follow her on Twitter at @BlondsOvrBaghd
She wore pants so she was probably a Dyke you guys kill me
As my wife used to remind me in the last century, "Behind every successful soldier is a wife propping him, sobering him up, pinning his brass on straight and pushing his worthless ass out the door so he won't be late for first formation." She also loved to quote that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels.