The Rani of Jhansi Regiment

The Rani of Jhansi Regiment was the Women’s Regiment of the Indian National Army (INA) during the Second World War. It was named after Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi, a revolutionary heroine.

The regiment was formed in 1942, along with other Indian nationalist forces aiming to overthrow the British Raj in colonial India, with assistance from Imperial Japan. Most of the 1500 women were not from India at all, but teenage volunteers of Indian descent from rubber plantations in Malaya.

The regiment was raised in Singapore and were organised into officers or sepoys (privates) based on their education. It was led by Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, who was upper-class and highly educated. The cadets were trained in the use of rifles, hand grenades and bayonet charges. Some received additional training in field medicine and jungle warfare in preparation for operations in Burma. 

In 1944 the Rani were deployed in Burma alongside other INA forces and the Japanese army. 100 Rani troops are are noted as forming a vanguard unit as part of the ongoing Battle of Imphal, while other Rani gave support to the Nursing Corps there.

By March 1945 the INA had failed at Imphal and were forced into a disastrous retreat. The Rani suffered losses from Allied air attacks during the retreat and were disbanded not long after. While Lakshmi Sahgal went on to become the Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Azad Hind government, the fate of most members of the Rani of Jhansi regiment is unknown.

Mariya Bayda

Mariya Bayda was a Russian scout in the Crimea during World War 2 who was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Having dropped out of school at 14, Bayda worked at a hospital before joining the Red Army in 1941 as a nurse. A member of the 172nd Shooting Division, she was deployed to the front lines of the North Caucasian front.

She went on to become a scout with the rank of senior sergeant. Her Hero title was awarded following a mission in 1942 where she became involved in a gun battle against an number of Wehrmacht submachine gunners. She killed several of the Germans (some reports claim as many as 15) before escaping wounded.

In July 1942 she was again wounded and then captured by German forces. She was taken to the Slavuta concentration camp in Ukraine and was later moved to Ravensbruck. She was released by American forces on May 8, 1945.

Following the war she worked as a civil servant in Sevastopol. In 1976, she was again honoured as a Hero and an Honourable Citizen of Sevastopol. She died in 2002, aged 80.

From a guide for US troops stationed in Britain in WW2

Source: http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/britain.htm

North Vietnamese soldier

North Vietnamese soldier, from documentary “Combat Women".

Maria Rukhlina

NKVD Sergeant Maria S. Rukhlina armed with PPSh-41.

Source: Enigma

Sabiha Gökçen

Sabiha Gökçen was a Turkish aviator and the world’s first female fighter pilot.

Gökçen was one of the 8 adopted children of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. It was Ataturk who gave her the surname Gökçen, meaning ‘belonging to the sky’. In 1935 he took Gökçen to the opening ceremony of the Turkishbird Flight School, which inspired her to attend the Air Force Academy the following year.

She honed her skills by flying bomber and fighter planes in the 1st Aircraft Regiment and in 1937 took part in the military operation against the Dersim rebellion, also known as the Dersim Massacre, making her the first Turkish female air force combat pilot. A report of her actions describes the "serious damage" inflicted by the 50kg bomb she dropped upon a group of 50 fleeing “bandits.” She was awarded the Turkish Aeronautical Assosciation’s first Jeweled Medal for her performance in this operation.

In 1938 Gökçen carried out a five-day flight around the Balkans to great acclaim, and continued to fly until 1964. Throughout her career, she flew 22 different types of aircraft for more than 8000 hours, 32 hours of which were active combat and bombardment missions. An airport in Istanbul is named after her.

[Read more about Sabiha Gökçen]

Vera Krylova

Vera Krylova was a Russian nurse and fighter in World War 2. 

Originally a schoolteacher, Krylova joined the Russian medical corps as a nurse in the summer of 1941. The role involved her frequently working on the battlefield, often within 100 feet of the enemy lines, where she dressed wounds of injured soldiers. She is credited with having dragged hundreds of wounded men to safety from the battlefield.

In August 1941, at the height of Operation Barbarossa, Krylova’s company became separated and was caught in a German ambush. The commanders of the company were shot, causing confusion. Reportedly, Krylova rallied the Russians by mounting a riderless horse and firing a gun several times into the air, leading them into the nearby forest for shelter. Linking up with a retreating unit of Russian artillery, she then led her men in a series of counter-attacks to keep the Germans off-balance as the company made its retreat back to Soviet lines.

An unconfirmed story tells of another engagement Krylova was involved in a year later, where she hurled grenades to against a German tank formation to buy time for her comrades to escape.

While accounts of Krylova have been skewed by the attention given to her by the Russian media, it is known that she survived the war and later returned to teaching.

Emilia Plater

Emilia Plater was a Polish noblewoman who fought in the November Uprising against Russia in 1830-31.

The estranged child of a noble Polish-Lithuanian family, Plater’s childhood was mostly spent in Latvia but she was raised to value her Polish ancestry.  When the November Uprising against Russia occurred, Plater decided to join, declaring it to be a moment she had been hoping for her whole life. Cutting her hair short and wearing a uniform of her own devising, she assembled a volunteer army which contained 280 infantrymen, 60 cavalry and 700 peasants armed with war scythes.

In April 1831 her army crossed the border from Latvia into Russian-controlled Lithuania, where unconfirmed reports say she seized the town of Zarasai. She later joined with Polish forces to take part in the Battle of Prastavoniai and also fought at Maišiagala.

In May, Plater crossed swords with the Polish General Dezydery Chłapowski, who was unimpressed with her and advised her to return home. She refused adamantly, insisting she would wear her uniform until Poland was free. She became a Captain in the Polish–Lithuanian army and fought against the Russians until late June, when heavy losses caused Chłapowski to order a retreat to Prussia. Plater disagreed with the order and refused to follow it, choosing instead to try and break through to Warsaw. However shortly after separating from the main force she became seriously ill and died.

In death Plater was hailed as a hero of the uprising by the Polish press, and has since been immortalised in a number of paintings and poems still popular in Poland today.

Congolese Para-Commando

A Congolese female para-commando during jump training at Leopoldville in 1967.

Source: Wikipedia

Soviet Sniper

Photo taken between 1941 and 1943.

Source: Soviet Partisans

Eleonore Prochaska

Eleonore Prochaska was a German soldier who fought in the Prussian army during the Napoleonic Wars. 

Born in 1785 to a poor Prussian army officer, Prochaska spent her childhood in an orphanage following the death of her mother and seemed destined to a life of domestic service. However when war broke out against Napoleon in 1812 she chose to disguise herself as a man and enlist in the army under the name August Renz. She had no qualms about the deception, and in a letter to her brother wrote that she was convinced of the rightness of her actions.

As a member of the 1st Jägerbataillon of the Lützow Free Corps, Prochaska served first as a drummer and then as an infantryman. Her military career was cut short however when she was severely wounded at the Battle of the Göhrde. The surgeons treating her discovered she was a woman and took her to Dannenberg, where she eventually died of her wounds three weeks later.

Retrospectively Prochaska was hailed as a war heroine and was seen as a ’Joan of Arc’ of her time. Her life inspired numerous plays and poems, as well as a piece of music dedicated to her by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Linda Bray

Linda Bray was a Captain in the US Military Police who became the first woman to lead US troops in battle.

Bray commanded a unit of 45 soldiers in the 988th Military Police Company during the US invasion of Panama in 1989. During this time a routine mission went awry when her unit encountered a unit of Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) stationed at a dog kennel. The 40-odd PDF troops refused to surrender their position, leading to a firefight that lasted 3 hours.

Eventually Bray’s unit took the kennel and forced the PDF into retreat, having killed 3 PDF soldiers and taken 1 prisoner while suffering no casualties of their own. Judging by the money, uniforms and arsenal of weapons discovered within the kennels, it is assumed that it was in fact a Special Ops base for the PDF.

Instead of being praised for her actions, Bray came under serious criticism by her superiors as military police are supposed to be non-combative. “The responses of my superior officers were very degrading, like, `What were you doing there?’” Bray later said. “A lot of people couldn’t believe what I had done, or did not want to believe it." 

Disenchanted by her experiences, Bray requested to be discharged from the army. She received the Army Commendation Medal for Valor. Her actions sparked a controversial proposal in US congress that women should be able to perform all roles within the US army, which was ultimately defeated. When similar legislation was successfully passed more recently in 2013, Bray stated that she was "thrilled”.

Maria Bochkareva

Maria Bochkareva was a Russian soldier who fought in World War I and the founder of the Women’s Battalion of Death.

A peasant girl from Novgorod, Bochkareva suffered two abusive romantic relationships until the beginning of the World War 1 when she left her partner to join the army. While initially rejected she made a personal petition to Tsar Nicholas II who granted her request. 

Bochkareva endured ridicule and sexual harassment within her regiment, but also won many of her fellow soldier’s respect. In her first battle, following an ill-fated attack by her unit, Bochkareva crept out into No Man’s Land and dragged over 50 wounded men to safety before she was herself wounded in the leg. Bochkareva participated in at least 100 more excursions into No Man’s Land over the course of the war, during which she was wounded twice more and decorated three times for bravery.

After the Tsar’s abdication in 1917, she petitioned the Minister of War for permission to create an all-female shock battalion. After a month of intensive training the Battalion of Death, numbering 300 women, was deployed to the Russian Western Front. The Battalion performed admirably in battle near Smorgon, taking three German trenches. However it was later disbanded due to male hostility amid the crumbling war effort. 

Bochkareva’s political opposition to the Bolsheviks put her life in danger following the October Revolution and she was forced to flee to the US. There she met with President Woodrow Wilson, who was reportedly moved to tears by her pleas that he intervene in Russia. She returned to Russia in August 1918 in hopes of raising a peasant army to fight the Bolsheviks, but this ultimately failed. She was later captured by the Bolsheviks, stripped of her uniform and executed by firing squad in 1920.

[Read more about Maria Bochkareva]

Jeanne de Clisson

Jeanne de Clisson, also known as the Lioness of Brittany, was a Breton pirate who launched a reign of terror across the English Channel in the 14th century.

Jeanne became embroiled in the events of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France when her husband, Oliver, placed his support behind the English candidate to rule Brittany. For this he was tried and executed for treason by King Philip VI of France.

Enraged, Jeanne swore vengeance for the betrayal. She sold her husband’s remaining land so that she could buy three warships, which she had painted black with red sails. Under Jeanne’s command the ‘Black Fleet’ raided the English Channel for the next 13 years, destroying any French warships they came across. Each time Jeanne had the crew slaughtered, save for one or two French sailors which she sent back to the French king to let him know what she had done.

While an independent privateer, Jeanne formed an alliance of convenience with the English and helped to keep supplies available to the English forces for the Battle of Crécy in 1346. Even after Philip VI died in 1350, Jeanne continued to wreak havoc on French shipping. She made a point of targeting ships carrying French noblemen, which she boarded so that she could personally behead the aristocrats with her axe. 

In 1356, Jeanne retired from piracy and married an English lieutenant. She later returned to France, where she died in 1359.

Frances Wills and Harriet Ida Pickens

“Frances Wills (left) and Harriet Ida Pickens being sworn in as Apprentice Seamen by Lieutenant Rosamond D. Selle, USNR, at New York City. In December 1944, they became the Navy’s first African-American “WAVES” officers.”

Source: demons

Soviet Sniper

Source: Unknown. Sorry.

The Aufseherinnen

The Aufseherinnen were female guards in Nazi concentration camps during The Holocaust, of which there were about 3,700.

Aufseherinnen recruits were primarily trained and worked at Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp, but as World War II escalated they were often transferred to other camps to help with manpower shortages. SS men were instructed to treat female guards as equals and comrades in their work and the Aufseherinnen received similar training to male guards

Herta Ehlert, an SS woman, described her “physically and emotionally demanding” training as including how to punish prisoners and how to look out for sabotage and work slowdowns. However toward the end of the war little, if any, training was given to fresh recruits, many of which were forcibly transferred from factory work.

The enthusiasm with which Aufseherinnen embraced their work varied greatly. Ilse Koch, the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp was infamous for her cruelty and her war crimes trial after the war received worldwide media attention. Conversely, a camp guard named Klara Kunig is recorded as being dismissed for being too polite and kind toward the inmates.

As the Allies liberated the camps, SS women were generally still in active service and many were captured. The US imprisoned between 500 and 1000 SS women, although the majority were later released and only the higher ranking Aufseherinnen went to trial.

Soldiers fighting for Franco

Female soldiers fighting for Franco, 1936.

Source: titovka-and-bergmutzen

Soldiers of the Free French Forces

“Soldiers of the Free French Forces (Forces françaises libres), military units who joined “Free France” (la France libre), the Resistance organisation founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1940, assist in mopping up pockets of the German garrison in Paris just prior to Germany’s capitulation and withdrawal from the city. Paris, Île-de-France, France. 16 August 1944.”

Source: bag-of-dirt

Finnish soldiers bandaging a wounded Russian female soldier

Poventsa, 1942.01.07

Source: http://sa-kuva.fi/