There were documented women who served, and were pensioned. Not all were discovered. There’s a really nice book called, “I’ll pass for your Comrade” it’s in my library, and I own a copy. I tell ya what, some of those gals made mighty handsome dudes.
imho the point is, compared to the number of troops overall, the number of women who mustered in and managed to stay in for any significant length of time was miniscule, statistically a blip. Women who mustered in for any time at all represent a bigger percentage, but still statistically negligible.
We attempt to counter that by explaining that "many women mustered in and stayed without being discovered, so of course we don't have a record indicating the full number of women that accomplished it" But I think in this we kid ourselves. We actually only know of a dozen or so who famously fessed up after the war, becoming celebrities. Properly skeptical to our inner selves, we actually realize that those women were celebrities specifically because they were a rare occurrence. Yet we can't help wanting to make more of it, that "surely those dozen or so were representative of hundreds more."
Let's be properly skeptical and just admit that we want it to have been that "many" women mustered in as soldiers. Why? Because we want to acknowledge and promote that the study and interest in the CW is inclusive of girls and women. Perhaps it seems a bit exclusionary to promote only those roles that we know for sure thousands of women and girls participated in: nursing, home front, manufacturing, farming, sewing and fairs.
Bottom line: the "women as soldiers" thing is far overplayed. To attend reenactments and living histories today, even visit a high school history classroom, you'd think women as soldiers was common. I reject that.
It should be enough to promote that thousands of women and girls bravely and faithfully fulfilled their service in the CW in other ways; that being of military rank is not the ultimate badge of war service.
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