My mom died at 102. One of the points she liked to make about her extended longevity was that she was born one year after women got the vote. “Think of it,” she used to say. “All that I have seen.”

What I love about my mom’s maxim—“Think of all that I have seen”—is that it implies a delicious sense of curiosity toward events as they unfolded and awe in considering them as a whole.

One of those events was the role of women in World War I. The Great War (as it is often called) was by all accounts a ghastly “first” in many respects—its magnitude of carnage, the new and inventive ways to kill one another, and the surprising role of working women.

War, especially this one, was man’s business; there was no place in it for women. But that did not stop the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, George Horace Lorimer, from coming up with the brilliant idea of getting the “women's perspective” on the war. Why not send women as war correspondents and journalists? What could go wrong?

He recruited Mary Roberts Reinhart, an accomplished writer, and Corra Harris, a southern writer and journalist, to go to Europe and have a look at the Belgian Front. Once these reports became available, the readership of the paper doubled.

Left to right: Corra Mae Harris and Mary Roberts Reinhart

Not to be outdone, the Chicago Tribune sent Eunice Tietjens to Paris in 1918. Her reports were first-hand narratives of “our boys,” along with poignant descriptions of refugees coming into the city.

Madeleine Doty—lawyer, activist, and Smith Graduate—arrived in Paris in March of 1918. She was a seasoned journalist having covered wars in Russia while traveling, always writing about women. Her observations are eerily prophetic, seeming to say—After all, war is man’s business; just ask them.

“[Women] have poured themselves into the business of war. They have done the drudgery, tilled the fields, preserved the food, mended the clothes, and through it all kept charm and grace alive.” Her memoir, Behind the Battle Line: Around the World in 1918, gave much richer descriptions of the trials and tribulations of the young American soldiers and the women who bandaged and buried them.

All of these women, as brave and inventive as they were, arrived to cover a war at which they were clearly not wanted. They soon discovered that the generals running it were less than enthusiastic at their appearance as, in the generals’ eyes, war correspondents were men, plain and simple. Not to be deterred, many of the women became ambulance drivers, medics, and served in refugee camps. They made their way to the front lines and wrote home about it, and their descriptions were poignant.

The role of women reporters was not just confined to Americans. Elizabeth Fraser, an English reporter, wrote an arresting account of life at the front, describing the ambulances that delivered the wounded throughout the night:

I have passed the main evacuation hospital men silent, immobile, blanket-swathed figures, whose white bandages showed deep crimson stains. The battle, what had happened up there, still intoxicated them, still held their brain in thrall. They talked of horrible, grotesque and sanguinary things in low, level, dispassionate tones, as if they were discussing the weather: ‘I saw my captain and my lieutenant blown straight to hell; it was a head-on collision with a high explosive.’ It’s heartbreaking work, if one’s got any heart to break.

(For a truly wonderful read on this topic, try An Unladylike Profession: American Woman War Correspondents in World War I by Chris Dubbs; Potomac Books, 2020.)

Returning to my mom’s maxim, as my own birthdays roll along, I wonder what each generation will say about “All that we have seen” and how we will say it. Will it be with the curiosity and amazement of someone who was gobsmacked by all that had occurred in a lifetime? Or will it be with something else, something darker and perhaps jaded. Whichever way, as always, it is up to us.

-Bird Jones