Friday, October 23, 2020

Female Spoils of War

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Women as spoils of war at the end of World War Two | DW Doc > .

Flikke, Colonel Julia

.42-3-13: Julia Flikke, Army Nurse Corps, 1st female Colonel in USA - HiPo > .

Flikke (1879-1965) was born in rural Wisconsin, but moved to Chicago following the death of her husband from tuberculosis in 1911. Here she trained at the Augustana Hospital School of Nursing, returning a few years later as assistant superintendent after post-graduate study at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York.

Flikke enrolled in the Army Nurse Corps in March 1918, and traveled to France where she served as chief nurse. After a short period in the United States after the war, she completed tours of duty in places such as the Philippines and China before spending a number of years at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. where she was promoted to the rank of captain and appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps.

In 1937 Flikke succeeded the highly respected Julia Stimson as Superintendent, and was promoted to the rank of major. This was the highest rank available to women at the time, although it was much lower than the men who headed up other parts of the Army.

As the advent of the Second World War saw the United States Army expand at a swift pace, Flikke oversaw the growth for the ANC from around 700 nurses in 1940 to tens of thousands by 1943. It was during this period that the government passed Public Law 828, which authorized commissions up to the rank of colonel for Army nurses.

Three months later, on 13 March 1942, Flikke became the first woman in the United States Army to hold the rank of colonel. Although her rating was only temporary, it marked in important step towards the Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 that made such appointments permanent.

Julia Otteson Flikke (March 16, 1879 in Viroqua, Wisconsin – February 23, 1965) was an American nurse. Her service to the United States Army Nurse Corps spanned both world wars and included overseas assignments in the Philippines and China. In 1927, she was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the ANC and was promoted to the relative rank of captain. In 1937, she succeeded Julia Stimson as Superintendent with the relative rank of major. She was the last superintendent to hold the office before the statutory limitation of four years was placed on the tenure. She was also the first woman to hold the rank of full colonel in the Army. Although the rating was temporary then (1942), it marked a step forward to granting of full military rank and privileges in 1947. She retired [age 65] due to disability in June 1943.

Julia O. Flikke was born in Viroqua, Wisconsin, on March 16, 1879. She would receive her early education there. Flikke married in 1901, but her husband died ten years later. The following year, she entered the School of Nursing of the Augustana Hospital in Chicago. She graduated in 1915, and, after several months of postgraduate education, Flikke accepted a post as assistant principal of her old school. She would stay there until entering the United States Army Nurse Corps on March 11, 1918, and (after being promoted to chief nurse) serving in Lakewood Township, New Jersey as well as Staten Island. Flick moved to Base Camp No. 11, in France in 1918, serving in several hospitals before returning to the United States in 1919. She first worked at Camp Upton, and subsequently travelled around the country, before setting in Walter Reed General Hospital, where she would work for twelve years.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Hello Girls - WW1


When the first members of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in 1917 they found that the telephone lines already in operation were overloaded. To solve the problem, John J Pershing called for experienced, bilingual switchboard operators, which meant women. Hundreds would don the uniform and answer the call as “Hello Girls”, serving in the Signal Corps.

The St. Francis Dam was a curved concrete gravity dam, built to create a large regulating and storage reservoir for the city of Los Angeles, California. The reservoir was an integral part of the city's Los Angeles Aqueduct water supply infrastructure. It was located in San Francisquito Canyon of the Sierra Pelona Mountains, about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of the present day city of Santa Clarita.

The dam was designed and built between 1924 and 1926 by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, then named the Bureau of Water Works and Supply. The department was under the direction of its general manager and chief engineer, William Mulholland.

At 11:57 p.m. on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood killed at least 431 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The disaster marked the end of Mulholland's career.

Friday, October 16, 2020

Maureen Colquhoun - 1st Lesbian MP


Maureen Morfydd Colquhoun (née Smith, 12 August 1928 – 2 February 2021) was a British economist and Labour politician. She was Britain's first openly lesbian member of Parliament (MP).

Colquhoun was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton North at the February 1974 general election, and identified with the Tribune Group, and served as the group's treasurer.  Arguing in favour of creche facilities for female delegates at the following year's Labour conference, she said in October 1975: 
"It is outrageous that we have to ask for this. The Labour Party pays mere lip service to International Women's Day. ... Young women are deterred from coming because there is no provision for their babies. Those who do are not even allowed to bring their toddlers into the gallery."
In 1975 she introduced the Balance of Sexes Bill with the objective to require men and women on public bodies in equal numbers. She had identified 4500 jobs appointed by Ministers, and 174 public bodies that were almost entirely male. In her speech to introduce the second reading of the Bill, she commended changes that had been made to the nominations process for the 'central list' from which candidates for government bodies could be selected, although she doubted that it was sufficiently broad to encourage applications from all areas of society. The Bill did not become law.

In 1976, Colquhoun was among nine Labour MPs advocating in a letter to The Times an "alternative policy" on Northern Ireland, including the removal of British troops from the country. She drew a negative response from members of her constituency party, in an area with a significant non-white population, for appearing to defend Enoch Powell in January 1977. 
"I am rapidly concluding that Mr Powell, whom I had always believed to be a racialist before I went into the House of Commons, is not one". 
She thought that sometimes it was wrong for members of her party to stop listening to what he was saying, and that the "real bogeymen are in the Labour Party" who do not improve the conditions for people in the multi-racial inner-cities. In February 1977, she expressed regret for her comments to her constituency party, withdrew any suggestion she supported Powell's opinions, and affirmed her support for a multi-racial society.

In 1979, she introduced the Protection of Prostitutes Bill into the House of Commons, turning up with 50 prostitutes in order to campaign for the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Colquhoun was Britain's first openly lesbian MP. In 1973, as a married mother of three teenage children, she left her husband of 25 years, Sunday Times journalist Keith Colquhoun, for the publisher of Sappho magazine, Babs (Barbara) Todd.

Colquhoun was deselected due to her sexuality and her feminist views; in late September 1977, members of her constituency party's General Management Committee voted by 23 votes to 18, with one abstention, to deselect her, citing her "obsession with trivialities such as women's rights". The local party chairman Norman Ashby said at the time: 
"She was elected as a working wife and mother ... this business has blackened her image irredeemably". 
"My sexuality has nothing whatever to do with my ability to do my job as an MP", Colquhoun insisted in an article for Gay News in October 1977.
The vote by her constituency party was overruled in January 1978, as supporters of Colquhoun appealed to the National Executive Committee, who agreed that Colquhoun had been unfairly dismissed owing to her sexual orientation. Colquhoun wanted to put the past behind her and work with her local party, but the Vice-Chair of the General Management Committee said he thought that was impossible as many members were unwilling to work for Colquhorn's re-election, the prospects for which he thought were not promising. At the 1979 general election, she lost her seat to the Conservative Antony Marlow on an 8% swing.

She divorced her husband in 1980. Babs Todd was still her partner at Todd's death on 13 February 2020. Colquhoun died on 2 February 2021 at the age of 92.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...