WOMEN WARRIORS


FIGHTING ON MANY FRONTS FOR THE RIGHT TO SERVE


BY ANNE BOLEN O


la Mildred Rexroat didn’t even know how to drive a car when she climbed into a cockpit for her first flying lesson in 1940. Born in 1917 in Kansas, where her father


was a newspaper publisher, her family would later move to the Pine Ridge Indian Reserva- tion in South Dakota, where her Oglala Lako- ta mother taught at the local school. Rexroat would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of New Mexico in 1938. But as the United States prepared to enter the Second World War and called for pilots, she was drawn to flying. With the few dollars a month she earned from working at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers helping to build airfields, she paid for the 35 hours of flying lessons she needed to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, in 1944. Rexroat was the only American Indian among the 1,074 WASP who served during World War II. As women weren’t allowed into combat at


the time, the WASP ferried planes and officers from base to base, tested new planes and some- times trained other pilots. They also towed targets, 20-foot-wide wire circles, that gunners would practice shooting using live ammuni- tion from the air or ground. “They would turn their aircraft so they estimated when they made a 90-degree turn and were headed at a right angle toward us, then they could begin firing at our target—or were supposed to fire at the target and not the plane,” she said, as they had a few near-misses. “I know you heard that joke about that WASP who said ‘Hey, boys, I’m tow- ing the target—not pushing it!”


18 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2020 Despite the WASP’s consistent success, the


male-dominated U.S. Armed Forces thought “every time a woman climbed into a cockpit, it was an experiment. They were waiting for them to fail,” says Nancy Parrish. She and her mother, Deane, one of the few surviving WASP, found- ed Wings Across America to document the women’s stories, including the one about tow- ing targets Rexroat recounted in 2001. In spite of the constant struggle to prove herself, Rexroat— nicknamed “Rexy”—was always a positive force for her sister WASP. “Her spirit lifted everyone,” says Nancy Parrish.


FORMIDABLE FORCES


Native women have led and served their people in and outside of war long before and after the United States was formed. In addition to cooking, providing needed sup- plies and caring for wounded, they have taken up arms. For example, the Oneida tell of the woman Tyonajanegen who fought on horseback alongside her husband, an army officer, at the 1777 Battle of Oriskany during the American Revolution. After he was shot in the wrist, she loaded her husband’s gun for him so he could keep fighting. Some Indigenous women courageously


plowed through glass ceilings, becoming among the first Native women to support or serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. Judith Bel- lafaire, curator of Women in Military Service for the America Memorial Foundation, de- scribes Cora E. Sinnard (Oneida) and Cana- dian Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (Six Nations of the Grand River) as being among the 14 Indigenous women who served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in World War I. The


Army Nurse Corps grew from 2,000 to nearly 60,000 during World War II. Some nurses, including Lakota Marcella Ryan LeBeau (see page 23), followed the front, treating the wounded in makeshift hospitals. Even before the United States entered


World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. military enlisted the help of Alaska Natives to patrol their homelands against Japanese invasion. Of the nearly 6,400 volunteers and the few employees who formed the Alaska Territorial Guard (ATG), only a couple of dozen were women. One was sharp-shooter Private Laura Wright, who once hit a target 49 out of 50 times. Wright was part of the ATG from 1942 to 1947. Her granddaughter Sheila Ezelle says she would keep her eye out for invading Japa- nese while delivering mail on skis or by dog sled. She continued to serve her community


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