tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post5278200363636059752..comments2023-10-25T05:30:54.507-04:00Comments on Oh Get A Grip!: Opposites Inside MeAshe Barkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03390519279886657608noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-77949282942449169172019-06-30T14:58:14.702-04:002019-06-30T14:58:14.702-04:00I just posted a free story over on my blog, yet an...I just posted a free story over on my blog, yet another with connections to women in the military, in this case an army nurse circulated back to Walter Reed Hospital in DC from Vietnam, and taking a break to let off steam (and frustration and PTSD) in Greenwich Village, NYC, on the very night of the great Stonewall uprising. www.sacchi-green.blogspot.com Sacchi Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10801164916418570059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-43990227989758489102019-06-29T11:55:54.033-04:002019-06-29T11:55:54.033-04:00This is a fascinating footnote to your stories, Sa...This is a fascinating footnote to your stories, Sacchi. I'm often amazed at the number of women who have been involved in active combat in every human war, including Boudicca's amazing revolt against the Romans occupying Britannia in about 60 AD. Their lives intrigue me too, but unfortunately, warriors rarely seem to be heroes in real life. (Support staff, especially medical support staff, are in a different role.) One reason I miss Xena the Warrior Princess on TV is because of the moral dilemmas that constantly arise, e.g. is it ever ethical to destroy a whole village because it contains some of your enemies? Is torture ever justified, considering that it doesn't yield trustworthy information? Should child soldiers always be spared, even when they carry and use deadly weapons? (Actually, though, watching Lucy Lawless was at least half the appeal of Xena.)Jean Robertahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08805088081675965859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-83966141187416662019-06-29T11:12:54.568-04:002019-06-29T11:12:54.568-04:00Continuing! Not room in the previous comment.
My ...Continuing! Not room in the previous comment.<br /><br />My stories don’t include much in the way of actual battles, just references to memories, but in one of my anthologies, Thunder of War, Lightning of Desire (Lethe Press), some of the contributors did include some battlefield scenes, like the sharpshooters in the Siege of Leningrad. Some of these details I already knew, and I was able to track down and confirm enough of all the historical references the writers made to be confident of them. That book, sadly, has never done well—readers of lesbian erotica don’t care much for war stories, and several of my best usual contributors wouldn’t go anywhere near such a theme. Just the same, there’s some magnificent writing in that book, and excellent research behind it.<br /><br />I never served in any military, but I lived through several wars. Maybe the fact that my mother followed my father from post to post during WWII, on trains and buses, with me as baby over one shoulder and her supply of diapers, food, etc. in a set of bicycle saddlebags over the other, inoculated me with an interest in the military life. I don’t really remember that time, but I’ve heard stories over and over, about sharing the graham crackers she’d brought for me with soldiers on the train where there was no other food, about passing me from lap to lap when six people, soldiers included, had to share a four person train seat and everyone took a turn at standing. The main role I played was just existing, since my father was all packed to go to Pacific theater late in the war, but at the last minute the truce in Europe was signed, not as many troops were needed, and he had enough points with a wife and baby to be dropped from the departure list. He was in the Army Air Corps, and waned to be a pilot, but damage from an ear infection in his teens disqualified him for that, so he became an instructor in meteorology teaching pilots what they needed to know while in the air. <br /><br />Whew! Sorry for such a long, meandering post. <br />Sacchi Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10801164916418570059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-23168160938968111152019-06-29T11:10:43.621-04:002019-06-29T11:10:43.621-04:00Lisabet, there are first-person accounts of milita...Lisabet, there are first-person accounts of military women out there if you look for them. Not necessarily for the Civil War, although there are records of more than 200 women passing as men in that war, and of some who kept on living as men whose gender was never discovered until they died many years later. There were probably many more that were never revealed. In any case my characters from that era appear somewhat later, passing as men out west but remembering the war and still affected by it.<br /><br />For WWI I stuck to the well-documented women serving as ambulance drivers in France, and that sort of thing, not, perhaps, actually in the military, but equally affected by the traumas of that war. From WWII there are numerous memoirs and biographies of women who served, especially those who became pilots for the UK, the USA, and Russia. The Russians were the only ones who served officially in battle, well-publicized as the "Night Witches" (Nachthexen)they were called by the Germans being bombed at night by them. My favorite of the books about them is "A Dance with Death,' a collection of very detailed memoirs of those women, gathered by author and US pilot Anne Noggle at several reunions the Russian women pilots held in later years. There were also noted women sharpshooters serving for Russia in in battles like the Siege of Stalingrad, although I haven’t seen any first-person accounts. For the Vietnam conflict there are several memoirs and collections of memoirs by women who served as nurses, support staff, etc., some of them written by people as a kind of therapy for coping with their traumatic memories. And for the seemingly never-ending conflicts in the Middle East, there are numerous first-person accounts by women. The section of my paranormal novel set in Kurdistan was inspired by journalists accounts and interviews with women forming their own squads within the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and I was lucky enough to see a documentary by a filmmaker who was imbedded in one of these groups and traveled with them for some time, bonding with them to a great extent. That film was shown for a limited time in our Amherst cinema, and the filmmaker came with it. <br /><br />Sacchi Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10801164916418570059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9156334464585894857.post-18121947053180441072019-06-29T08:27:46.680-04:002019-06-29T08:27:46.680-04:00Sacchi, I've often wondered how you manage to ...Sacchi, I've often wondered how you manage to write military women with such confidence. I was pretty sure you'd never been in the Armed Services. <br /><br />Cowboys -- or cowgirls -- is maybe easier because there's a good deal of popular mythology about them. But female soldiers are practically invisible, at least until you bring them into the light.<br />Lisabet Saraihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05162514190572269660noreply@blogger.com