![]() ![]() ![]() All believed they were being inducted into the Army, following the precedent of females welcomed into the Navy and Marines. Closely following a handful of Signal Corps members, Cobbs reveals that they joined partly out of patriotism, partly to seek adventure. ![]() These volunteers vastly outnumbered those with telephone experience, and they learned technical skills on the job. Besides needing nimble fingers, the Army also needed bilingual operators to communicate with the French military. For the first time in war, the telephone became the essential form of communication, requiring skilled workers to nimbly manipulate “jacks, sockets, ringers, and buzzers on the boards of busy switching stations.” In the U.S., this job fell to women, who, claims the author, “may possess advantages over males in multitasking.” Since they did not have advantages over males in finding jobs, many opted to become operators, which paid better than most white-collar employment available to women. The Hamilton Affair, 2016, etc.) focuses on more than 200 telephone operators who supported combat soldiers in Europe soon after the United States entered the war in 1917. In an informative history of women’s military work, Cobbs (Chair, American History/Texas A&M Univ. As members of the Army’s Signal Corps, women played a critical role in World War I. ![]()
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