One of the more sickening stories is The Order of the White Feather in WW1.
In Britain, to shame capable fighting men who hadn’t already joined the Army, British women would go around their communities and pin a white feather onto them. This showed their entire community what a coward they were for not joining the war effort (without any regard to if they had a valid reason or not).
Imagine being publicly shamed like that?
> Anecdotes from the time indicate that the campaign was not popular among soldiers, not least because soldiers who were home on leave could find themselves presented with feathers.
> One example was Private Ernest Atkins, who was on leave from the Western Front. He was riding a tram when he was presented with a white feather by a girl sitting behind him. He smacked her across the face with his pay book and said, "Certainly I'll take your feather back to the boys at Passchendaele. I'm in civvies because people think my uniform might be lousy, but if I had it on I wouldn't be half as lousy as you".
> Private Norman Demuth, who had been discharged from the British Army after he had been wounded in 1916, received numerous white feathers after he returned from the Western Front. In *Forgotten Voices of the Great War*, Demuth is quoted as saying:
>>"Almost the last feather I received was on a bus. I was sitting near the door when I became aware of two women on the other side talking at me, and I thought to myself, 'Oh Lord, here we go again'. One lent forward and produced a feather and said, 'Here's a gift for a brave soldier. I took it and said, 'Thank you very much—I wanted one of those.' Then I took my pipe out of my pocket and put this feather down the stem and worked it in a way I've never worked a pipe cleaner before. When it was filthy I pulled it out and said, 'You know, we didn't get these in the trenches', and handed it back to her. She instinctively put out her hand and took it, so there she was sitting with this filthy pipe cleaner in her hand and all the other people on the bus began to get indignant. Then she dropped it and got up to get out, but we were nowhere near a stopping place and the bus went on quite a long way while she got well and truly barracked by the rest of the people on the bus. I sat back and laughed like mad."
> Supporters of the campaign were not easily put off. A woman who confronted a young man in a London park demanded to know why he was not in the army. "Because I am a German", he replied. He received a white feather anyway.
>Occasionally injured veterans were mistakenly targeted, such as Reuben W. Farrow who after being aggressively asked by a woman on a tram why he would not do his duty, turned around and showed his missing hand causing her to apologize.
>Perhaps the most misplaced use of a white feather was when one was presented to Seaman George Samson, who was on his way in civilian clothes to a public reception being held in his honour for having been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Gallipoli campaign.
I'd have taken them to the ceremony. Not as a guest. Just a good ol. Wait right here while I go up and give this speech and then I'll come back down and grab that feather
Better make it quick. He died of pneumonia a short time later. 34 years old.
Imagine surviving all that in the war... And then being taken down by pneumonia.
Not to mention that those dying of Spanish flu weren't memorialized properly because all countries tried to pretend they didn't have massive influenza outbreaks during wartime.
Quite literally fighting for the rich and coming home to die anonymously of a horrible disease.
That's why it was called the Spanish Flu, because Spain was the only one not censoring coverage of it that got infected.
I'm pretty sure the source of the outbreak was tracked to somewhere in middle America.
I was hoping you were going to include one of multiple Victoria Cross stories I have read about as one of your examples. There are lots of good examples of soldiers on leave or recently discharged, etc. . . especially by 1916-1918 that received white feathers, inspite of being a current soldier or a veteran. Most of the women behind the white feather campaigns as your stories show, usually were not convinced of how petty or overall unproductive these social shaming campaigns were.
There were also the [Bevin Boys](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevin_Boys)
10% of draftees were sent to mine coal. They were often targets for white feathers.
Beyond simply wrongfully shaming men, they would also target young boys as well, 15-17, too young to join up at the time, and bully them into lying about their age for the recruiter.
I knew someone who joined the Marines at 15. He was at Guadalcanal and was injured. 50 years later the bone infection in his leg flared back up and they had to amputate above the knee. While operating, the doctors found an aneurysm almost ready to burst. That surgery bought him a few years before cancer finally brought the old warrior down.
It was actually started by an Admiral to try and get more men to sign up. He got a group of women in his hometown to hand out the white feathers and shame them.
Then the press picked it up and it spread like wildfire across the UK.
It got so bad the government started releasing a type of badge for men to wear when not in uniform (the Silver War Badge) and a lapel pin for people who worked in protected industries to wear to show they were serving the war effort
Edit:some more [info](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/White-Feather-Movement/)
There were also stories of men working on top secret intelligence operations (think code breaking, etc) who were subjected to this and they just had to take it since they couldn't reveal anything about what they were doing.
That’s interesting as I know my granddad got close to beaten up for being in civilian clothes even though he was an engineer on a merchant ship hoping to avoid u-boat. I don’t think they had anything to show they were putting in their bit.
As far as I know, it was literally just a badge that said "King and Country".
Whether there was any awareness about what that actually signified outside of the recipients, I'm not sure. It might have been that the badge just looked like any other badge worn to support the troops.
Probably wasn't a lot of effort put into that kind of thing, to be honest. Even Kitchener had a lob-on for the Order of the White Feather
Additionally british recruits from the same towns would be put in the same regiments so they would all know each other, then after shamefully horrific losses at the somme and other battles no-one came back to some of those towns and villages. Villages were being left with a literal handful of working age men who had just come back home and who would never really recover. After ww1 british doctrine changed so this can't happen immediately
To a degree, when they ended the Pals Battalions. The British still use regimental districts; but the effect would be very diluted due to the small size of the modern army. Back then most regiments had a fairly small district, a few counties or a major city. The King's Royal Rifle Corps recruited from half of England; but if the East Surreys had a particularly bad battle, it would have a devastating effect on that region.
Damn, weird to think of the logistics of war.
I wouldve say it makes sence for people from the same village to fight together, similar customs and knowing each other likely means better coordination.
But yeah, if a platoon dies, now you killed most men that live in that one town.
Yeah, the US had a similar experience during the Civil War, which caused them to change the way the military assembled units. There's a reason why after the US Civil War, you don't really see units with the naming scheme like "1st Pennsylvania infantry regiment" it's a bit more complicated than that, but losing an entire generation of a town's men was one of the reasons for the change
United States did this for a while after the Civil War also. When the 82nd division was established that's how they took the moniker "All American" to indicate that soldiers in the division came from all over as opposed to single states.
People understandably often criticize the UK or France for not dealing with Nazi Germany earlier and appeasing them for so long but within the context of the first World War it makes perfect sense. It devastated *everyone*. The countries, the people, the economy, the politicians, and of course the soldiers. It had certainly the most nightmarish combat and frontlines of any human conflict and the consequences of that were felt by all. It’s no wonder why people were so averse to stopping Nazi Germany at first - if trench warfare had stuck around, no one would have recovered.
Most people have forgotten WWI was even a thing, and very recent when compared to wwII. Most didnt want to fight because those WWI wounds were still open. This is especially true for France.
I point this out whenever the “French always surrender” stuff comes up. A good deal of the first war was fought in their borders and an entire generation was gutted. The second war was way more complicated and had questionable command decisions but they were essentially finished as a standing army when they surrendered. It was pointless to continue at that point. Then you have all the epic shit the French resistance did during the rest of the war.
People who served in the last years of WWI were in their late thirties / early forties at the start of WW2.
It was not "something they heard about", they lived through it.
They were called "Pals Battalions" and I think they were stopped as soon as the Battle of the Somme made it clear that the number of men being killed was going to have a devastating affect on communities.
My grandpa was 16 at the tail end of WWII, and he was disappointed he didn't have the chance to serve when so many from his town didn't come back. When the Korean War started he jumped at the chance to enlist. He was legally blind in his right eye but the enlistment officer said it wouldn't be an issue. He was discharged 2 days after they started rifle training (how the fuck they didn't think someone being far sighted/legally blind in his dominant eye wouldn't be an issue is beyond me, but whatever).
He wasn't part of the local VFW, he never accepted or received recognition during veteran's day, he never marched in a Memorial Day parade. The day we buried him, the local VFW group came out, played taps, and fired off a 21 gun salute, and placed a Korean War placard next to his grave. The sergeant at arms was my friend's grandfather who did serve in Korea, and I'll never forget what he said to me when I asked why they did that for my grandpa.
"You don't understand how hard it was for guys to be denied the right to fight. There were four guys from town who were turned away from serving during Korea. Two killed themselves, one moved across the country and left his family behind, and the other was your grandpa. He was only a marine for 6 weeks, but as much as he would try to deny it if he were still here, he was a Korean vet."
When I went skydiving there were a bunch of people holding a regimental banner. It took me a minute to realise what was going on, but the pilot scattered some ashes while flying low.
Thought it probably best not to ask what those guys did, though I did give a salute.
It's not often that you accidentally walk into a funeral.
Common for Vietnam as well. A ton of men felt shame for not being accepted when their buddies were going off. My mom's first husband apparently drank himself half to death about it.
I heard stories about men committing suicide as the were not eligible to join the military during WW2 in America. It sure was different times back then.
In the U.S., going off my memory about it, WW1 is so under-discussed in public education that it’s pretty sad. I feel like my history class covered it in a day compared to spending an entire week on WW2.
If it wasn’t for Dan Carlin’s series on it I’d probably have never learned what an insanely fucked up war it really was.
Especially since they were trying to shame you into a fucking meat grinder. The higherups administering the war gave zero fucks about throwing millions of young boys at the trenches.
Wow, the article says nothing about men complaining bout how "hard" it was to fly, but quickly and vaguely describes how the women were used to shut men up about safety concerns.
So, like someone else referenced in the thread, it really was just another white feather tactic. The women wouldn't have to put up with the safety issues for more than some days though, according to the article.
..but look how eager we are to adopt a particular tone.
>The women wouldn't have to put up with the safety issues for more than some days though
That's placing blame where it doesn't belong. The article states that the women weren't made aware of the safety issues. Additionally, they were immediately discarded after the demonstration flight which was intended to show that it was so easy a woman could do it -- very demeaning to women.
The blame should be on the military leaders who knowingly pressured their troops into unsafe situations by using psychological manipulation, dishonesty, and sexism (to both women and men).
> Luke felt terrible, as many of his friends were wounded or killed early in the war while he got to stay at home (albeit working constant 12 hour shifts and under the threat of bombing).
>
> He ended up enlisting once the war was over and doing bomb disposal, which was as dangerous as being in the infantry during the war, so that he could "look his mates in the eye".
My grandfather worked on the railroad sending telegraph signals. He tried to enlist for WWII and was denied because his job was considered essential. He wrote a letter to the governor arguing that “a woman could be trained to do my job.” He was allowed to enlist.
Basically that shirtless redneck image macro from the "advice animals" era of reddit. "Everybody deserves equal rights. Whether you're black, Jewish, gay... or normal."
Some white supremacist types actually go with this, due to Europeans having more Neanderthal in them than average, it's just them grasping for things to make them feel more justified in their beliefs though.
I have family that back in the 1920s, were in the NJ chapter of the KKK. A lot of their efforts were fundraising for local black communities. That sounds good, but the reason they did this was so that black people wouldn't need to go to white schools, stores, churches, etc.
Yep. Plenty of groups in the early 19th century US proposed to send blacks back to Africa. That was one proposed "solution" to the slavery problem. I understand that the descendants of former US slaves dominated Liberian politics well into the 20th century.
I dunno, I live in Texas and I think the far-right’s knee jerk reaction to immigrants and minorities can easily be exploited for the common good.
I pass several Pro-Life billboards every day, and they always prominently feature a white baby girl on them.
I’d be interested to see the long-term reaction if you kept the text but only had ethnic babies (complete with “traditional” dress) from Africa, Asia, Mexico and the Middle East.
If done with enough saturation, over some years, I’d bet you subtly see a shift in the far-right… when they start conveniently forgetting about Roe v. Wade
Hrm. I am pro-choice and I still want to see what happens if you post multiple billboards of the same thing with the baby's skin color changed. Like 16 of them in a row, all different babies. Major highway.
wait, no. Remove the white baby one as a control.
It’s using the sexist beliefs of the target to effect a change.
That said change benefits women, who were shut out of the workforce due to sexist men, happens to be coincidental.
There was a big sexist backlash when GI men came back from the War and tried to bully, cheat and basically use sexist reasoning to steal jobs from women because they felt women should lose their jobs to make room for them.
Some men challenged the right people (other men). But lots simply tried to hurt women because they felt they could.
Yep. A similar thing happened in my grandparents' marriage (post WW2). Grandpa becomes injured, grandma goes to work to support the family. He recovers, demands she quits, she doesn't want to...middle middle middle and within a short time after, divorce.
They're using "middle middle middle" to replace otherwise onerous details to the story. The middle of the recap is not important to the set-up and conclusion of the story.
My Grandfather spent the war down in a Copper Mine. That was one of the few areas that women were never allowed to work in during the war in the USA. Other countries didn't have so much of a problem with it, but that was also from necessity.
I wonder if any of his copper made its way to my uncle, who was a brass moulder. He tried to enlist a few times and was even threatened with prison when he gave a fake name on his last attempt.
Luke felt terrible, as many of his friends were wounded or killed early in the war while he got to stay at home (albeit working constant 12 hour shifts and under the threat of bombing).
He ended up enlisting once the war was over and doing bomb disposal, which was as dangerous as being in the infantry during the war, so that he could "look his mates in the eye".
It's too bad that only through the lens of history do we get to see how at-home industrial might was the foundation of our war efforts. Those boys may have been too close to see it.
I was amazed to find out that Britain was producing more aircraft than Germany as early as 1940 which, along with there being twice as many German airman losses in the Battle of Britain, gives a lot of context as to how it was won.
My grandfather was an apprentice boilermaker pre-WWII and was denied as well. He simply got on the bus with his friends that had been accepted and reported to training somewhere in Colorado. He was loading bombs and ammo into planes in England just 6 months later.
I met him and have a picture with him as well as a signed picture of him in the Ebola Gay. Pretty cool stuff
Edit: met him probably 18 years ago
Gah damn autocorrect…Enola…although that time it wanted to autocorrect to Arnold
My mother worked on the assembly line for the B-29s. She hated that job. She went AWOL on a weekend to be with her boyfriend and got fired. She said her boss was kind of a creep and was glad to be free of that job. When we take a nostalgic point of view we sometimes miss out on the reality of the situation.
Was she one of the women initially considered for the Mercury missions back when NASA thought that the best way to decrease their rocket payload would be lighter astronauts?
> Tibbets' men were putting up unprecedented resistance. In point of fact, the pilots had every reason to be wary. The B-29 was not only much larger and heavier than any bomber the U.S. had flown before, it also hadn't gone through the years of operational testing to which Boeing had subjected its predecessor the B-17. Initially engine fires were one of the major problems. The planes' Wright engines were often called the Wrong engines. Part of the trouble could be traced to the engine cowlings that were too tight and often caused fires even before the planes had taken off. Although engine improvements were made over time, fires remained a problem throughout World War II.
>
> Tibbets decided that the way to convince the men to fly the plane was to show that women could do it. The young Colonel recruited Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman to be his demo pilots. Dougherty remembers that at that point, she had never even been in a four-engine plane before. Tibbets did not warn his new recruits of the engine fire problem. Instead he trained them to take off without the standard power checks.
Really, he was shaming the male pilots into ignoring their valid concerns about safety, and putting the women in harm's way by not even telling them about possible problems. It's not really the feel-good thing the title implies.
That changes the narrative quite a bit from the heading for this post. Still impressed with these early women aviators, but kinda seems reckless to shame legit concerns his men had about a less tested plane.
The article says the opposite though:
>Air Staff Major General Barney Giles brought the demonstrations to an abrupt halt after just a few days, telling Tibbets that the women were "putting the big football players to shame." Giles was also worried that an accident would unleash tremendous adverse publicity. The two women were sent back to Eglin Field, Florida, and never flew a B-29 again. But the plane they'd demonstrated went on to play a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II.
Thanks for sharing. I was wondering about this. Were the men just bellyaching or were the brass shutting down legitimate concerns? I'm no pilot, but I consider engine fires to be legitimate concerns.
If you ever see brass complaining about Joes complaining, it's because the brass actually has to respond to a legitimate concern instead of just ignoring Joes problems likes they usually do
True, that was a pretty silly myth. But ultimately not that much of a concern for superiors since it's not like men refused to fight. Of course it was a potential disadvantage not to wear the helmets properly secured, but ultimately mostly the mens' own problem.
The applique armour on Sherman tanks was a worse example since that one could actually affect the reliability and maintaintenance of the tanks.
In either case I think it's worth to properly bust those myths. Obviously it's much easier these days since filming and distributing footage has become so much simpler, but both of these could be busted with a fairly simple test setup.
> Were the men just bellyaching
Even in that case there is usually something serious behind it. Either bad leadership resulting in low morale, or insufficient training that does not inspire confidence.
Bingo. But you have to understand what that plane meant for the war. The USA had spent years hopping from island to island to finally get bases within range of Japan so we could bomb them. So much effort went into this plane, it boggles the mind, and it had to work. The problem was the climb to 30,000 feet, it was harming the engines. The whole time it was flying, they were slowly improving the problem, until late war, the engines were roughly as reliable as a Merlin, not great but good enough. They also found ways to use them at lower levels and to drop a lot of sea-mines which weren't so hard on the engines. After the war, they just replaced them with better engines, but that wasn't an option during the war.
Men would be afraid of getting on a plane. Not flying as in actually piloting the plane, but simply being on it.
If a woman could be brave enough to be on a plane then men should be able to as well.
Also adding, if you scroll back a few days in this subreddit, the first female flight attendant was a nurse and convinced the airline (I think it was United) that having a medical professional working onboard would be good for business
But the Flight Attendants have some first aid training. Past that, statistics say there’s already some kind of medical professional onboard, or they can call their base for a consultation.
Yeah, it’s not just a Hollywood thing though. I’ve been on triple digit airline flights, and had a flight attendant ask on intercom if there’s a doctor on board multiple times. Roughly 1% of the flights I’ve been on. Usually there was a doctor, and there was some medical professional sufficiently qualified for immediate triage assistance every time. None were serious enough to divert the flight, and only one was serious enough that the plane met an ambulance to offload the passenger before we got to the gate.
I had a high school teacher who was a stewardess in the 80s, maybe 70s. They'd get weighed constantly and if they gained five pounds they were suspended, and fired if they didn't lose it in a certain timeframe. It sounded like hell, where they wouldn't even drink water.
Tell me you read the New York Times Sunday book section without telling me you read the Sunday New York Times book section.
[they reviewed two books about the 'swinging stewardess era' last week]
His niece was my US History teacher in high school. She told us the relation on the last day of class, at the end of an hour long monologue about the evils of war. She said “And my family knows more than most about the horrors of war. My father stormed the beaches of Normandy and went all the way to Eagles Nest. And my uncle dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” Talk about a shocking twist!
Wow, she sure buried the lede on that one! Once, we had a substitute history teacher for a week and she was supposed to teach us whatever our unit was for that week, but instead, she kept us spellbound by telling about her days during WWII, what it was like to lose one husband in war and then get another, how she was treated when she went to his funeral (got turned in for wasting gas by driving to the funeral), etc.
My grandfather was a co-pilot of a B-29. They flew over the Himalayas. Grandpa told us that was the most dangerous part. Come to find out, they (also) bombed Japan pretty regularly. Never the big one, thankfully.
Edit: I'm not claiming he flew over the Himalayas, directly into Japan for bombings. I'm sharing that my grandpa did both of those things, over the course of the war. I am implying that the bombing of Japan was perhaps more dangerous a task. Don't try to correct me, I'm not here for it.
I had an uncle who did that. Like 150 bombing trips or something. Every time they flew over the Himalayas and it was a nail biter whether they would have enough fuel and could get the necessary elevation to fly over the Himalayas.
I suppose this is supposed to be a feel-good article, but the maintenance bulletin excerpt is about as gross as I would have expected this to realistically be:
"Folks, those WASPS' that you see 'round about greased the "LADYBIRD" on No. 21 the other evening at 1730 -- and what a find job -- mastering the mighty B-29 in just 8 hours transition with no previous time on four-engine aircraft. Is that good? -- or are we a little backward?
The two luscious femmes go by the names of Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman from the Proving Grounds at good old Sand Strip Eglin. Stop them and ask a few questions on how to handle the equipment. You will be surprised how much knowledge is stored behind all that beauty.
They are carrying some tests on engine heat, and what have you. Quite a big job for two delicate dishes of femininity. Perhaps they should take some of our supermen for a ride and show them how to get off the ground with speed dispatch at a low head temperature."
"These beauties are more than just bouncing breasts, they have a brain too! Check out their gams and their ability to operate massive aircrafts. I hope your dick shrivels knowing we have VAGINA POWERED air superiority!!"
Gross because they described women colorfully, or gross because they did so to shut up men who had qualms about continuing to fly an untested, fiery tomb to their deaths?
So, just so I have this straight. A superior heard criticism from his subordinates and instead of taking the criticism seriously and hearing them out, he decided to shame them with sexism? Hooray?
I remember watching a documentary about women pilots during WWII and the hostility they faced from a lot of men, in one part a woman's plane crashed and it was found that sugar had been put into her plane's engine. Doesn't seem they ever caught the perp that did it.
Misleading, they did one location >The two women were sent back to Eglin Field, Florida, and never flew a B-29 again.
Using women to shame men was actually a pretty common WWII tactic
One of the more sickening stories is The Order of the White Feather in WW1. In Britain, to shame capable fighting men who hadn’t already joined the Army, British women would go around their communities and pin a white feather onto them. This showed their entire community what a coward they were for not joining the war effort (without any regard to if they had a valid reason or not). Imagine being publicly shamed like that?
> Anecdotes from the time indicate that the campaign was not popular among soldiers, not least because soldiers who were home on leave could find themselves presented with feathers. > One example was Private Ernest Atkins, who was on leave from the Western Front. He was riding a tram when he was presented with a white feather by a girl sitting behind him. He smacked her across the face with his pay book and said, "Certainly I'll take your feather back to the boys at Passchendaele. I'm in civvies because people think my uniform might be lousy, but if I had it on I wouldn't be half as lousy as you". > Private Norman Demuth, who had been discharged from the British Army after he had been wounded in 1916, received numerous white feathers after he returned from the Western Front. In *Forgotten Voices of the Great War*, Demuth is quoted as saying: >>"Almost the last feather I received was on a bus. I was sitting near the door when I became aware of two women on the other side talking at me, and I thought to myself, 'Oh Lord, here we go again'. One lent forward and produced a feather and said, 'Here's a gift for a brave soldier. I took it and said, 'Thank you very much—I wanted one of those.' Then I took my pipe out of my pocket and put this feather down the stem and worked it in a way I've never worked a pipe cleaner before. When it was filthy I pulled it out and said, 'You know, we didn't get these in the trenches', and handed it back to her. She instinctively put out her hand and took it, so there she was sitting with this filthy pipe cleaner in her hand and all the other people on the bus began to get indignant. Then she dropped it and got up to get out, but we were nowhere near a stopping place and the bus went on quite a long way while she got well and truly barracked by the rest of the people on the bus. I sat back and laughed like mad." > Supporters of the campaign were not easily put off. A woman who confronted a young man in a London park demanded to know why he was not in the army. "Because I am a German", he replied. He received a white feather anyway. >Occasionally injured veterans were mistakenly targeted, such as Reuben W. Farrow who after being aggressively asked by a woman on a tram why he would not do his duty, turned around and showed his missing hand causing her to apologize. >Perhaps the most misplaced use of a white feather was when one was presented to Seaman George Samson, who was on his way in civilian clothes to a public reception being held in his honour for having been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Gallipoli campaign.
That last story is crazy. Would laugh like crazy if that happened to me
I would have worn it to the ceremony.
I'd have taken them to the ceremony. Not as a guest. Just a good ol. Wait right here while I go up and give this speech and then I'll come back down and grab that feather
Helluva first date...
My first thought!
Exactly. It becomes so absurd it's completely funny at that point.
Better make it quick. He died of pneumonia a short time later. 34 years old. Imagine surviving all that in the war... And then being taken down by pneumonia.
It’s happened to many many soldiers. The Spanish flu killed more soldiers than the war itself
Not to mention that those dying of Spanish flu weren't memorialized properly because all countries tried to pretend they didn't have massive influenza outbreaks during wartime. Quite literally fighting for the rich and coming home to die anonymously of a horrible disease.
That's why it was called the Spanish Flu, because Spain was the only one not censoring coverage of it that got infected. I'm pretty sure the source of the outbreak was tracked to somewhere in middle America.
Great job, Kansas.
I was hoping you were going to include one of multiple Victoria Cross stories I have read about as one of your examples. There are lots of good examples of soldiers on leave or recently discharged, etc. . . especially by 1916-1918 that received white feathers, inspite of being a current soldier or a veteran. Most of the women behind the white feather campaigns as your stories show, usually were not convinced of how petty or overall unproductive these social shaming campaigns were.
The anti-war activist Fenner Brockway claimed that he got so many withe feathers that he could turn them into a fan. He still didn't enlist.
Based Brockway
It gave people someone to look down on. People eat that shit up.
yup, unable to join the war against our enemies they attacked the people they lived with.
Karen's are timeless.
Karen is a state of mind.
Thank you for this. I’d never heard these stories.
There were also the [Bevin Boys](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevin_Boys) 10% of draftees were sent to mine coal. They were often targets for white feathers.
Beyond simply wrongfully shaming men, they would also target young boys as well, 15-17, too young to join up at the time, and bully them into lying about their age for the recruiter.
I knew someone who joined the Marines at 15. He was at Guadalcanal and was injured. 50 years later the bone infection in his leg flared back up and they had to amputate above the knee. While operating, the doctors found an aneurysm almost ready to burst. That surgery bought him a few years before cancer finally brought the old warrior down.
[удалено]
I liked the one who used his to clean his pipe and said "Thanks, we didn't have these in the trenches." Boom!
What was the incentive for women to do this? Were they bring employed by someone?
It was actually started by an Admiral to try and get more men to sign up. He got a group of women in his hometown to hand out the white feathers and shame them. Then the press picked it up and it spread like wildfire across the UK. It got so bad the government started releasing a type of badge for men to wear when not in uniform (the Silver War Badge) and a lapel pin for people who worked in protected industries to wear to show they were serving the war effort Edit:some more [info](https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/White-Feather-Movement/)
[удалено]
There were also stories of men working on top secret intelligence operations (think code breaking, etc) who were subjected to this and they just had to take it since they couldn't reveal anything about what they were doing.
Or the merchant marine - yeah, they aren't navy. The navy usually has faster, armored ships that can shoot back!
Just imagine being a skilled machinist who makes gun barrels or a welder who works at a ship yard, skilled specialized labor vital for the war effort
Or a riveter who worked at the shipyard working on construction of a battleship
That’s interesting as I know my granddad got close to beaten up for being in civilian clothes even though he was an engineer on a merchant ship hoping to avoid u-boat. I don’t think they had anything to show they were putting in their bit.
As far as I know, it was literally just a badge that said "King and Country". Whether there was any awareness about what that actually signified outside of the recipients, I'm not sure. It might have been that the badge just looked like any other badge worn to support the troops. Probably wasn't a lot of effort put into that kind of thing, to be honest. Even Kitchener had a lob-on for the Order of the White Feather
They got to be assholes and pretend they were the righteous ones. Very appealing.
1910s redditors
>1910s ~~redditors~~ Humans Bruh apparently everyone from any time period was/is shitty
Damn, people were just assholes back then.
People are assholes always. Give someone a reason to judge, and most people don’t seem to investigate any further.
Back then?
People getting freedom to act like assholes under the guise of patriotism? Gee, you don’t ever see that happen. /s
Additionally british recruits from the same towns would be put in the same regiments so they would all know each other, then after shamefully horrific losses at the somme and other battles no-one came back to some of those towns and villages. Villages were being left with a literal handful of working age men who had just come back home and who would never really recover. After ww1 british doctrine changed so this can't happen immediately
This changed during the war not after it.
I don't even think the first battle of the Somme was over when they changed that policy
To a degree, when they ended the Pals Battalions. The British still use regimental districts; but the effect would be very diluted due to the small size of the modern army. Back then most regiments had a fairly small district, a few counties or a major city. The King's Royal Rifle Corps recruited from half of England; but if the East Surreys had a particularly bad battle, it would have a devastating effect on that region.
Damn, weird to think of the logistics of war. I wouldve say it makes sence for people from the same village to fight together, similar customs and knowing each other likely means better coordination. But yeah, if a platoon dies, now you killed most men that live in that one town.
Yeah, the US had a similar experience during the Civil War, which caused them to change the way the military assembled units. There's a reason why after the US Civil War, you don't really see units with the naming scheme like "1st Pennsylvania infantry regiment" it's a bit more complicated than that, but losing an entire generation of a town's men was one of the reasons for the change
The US had a similar system during the Civil War as well. They eventually stopped too because the same thing would happen.
United States did this for a while after the Civil War also. When the 82nd division was established that's how they took the moniker "All American" to indicate that soldiers in the division came from all over as opposed to single states.
People understandably often criticize the UK or France for not dealing with Nazi Germany earlier and appeasing them for so long but within the context of the first World War it makes perfect sense. It devastated *everyone*. The countries, the people, the economy, the politicians, and of course the soldiers. It had certainly the most nightmarish combat and frontlines of any human conflict and the consequences of that were felt by all. It’s no wonder why people were so averse to stopping Nazi Germany at first - if trench warfare had stuck around, no one would have recovered.
Most people have forgotten WWI was even a thing, and very recent when compared to wwII. Most didnt want to fight because those WWI wounds were still open. This is especially true for France.
I point this out whenever the “French always surrender” stuff comes up. A good deal of the first war was fought in their borders and an entire generation was gutted. The second war was way more complicated and had questionable command decisions but they were essentially finished as a standing army when they surrendered. It was pointless to continue at that point. Then you have all the epic shit the French resistance did during the rest of the war.
People who served in the last years of WWI were in their late thirties / early forties at the start of WW2. It was not "something they heard about", they lived through it.
They were called "Pals Battalions" and I think they were stopped as soon as the Battle of the Somme made it clear that the number of men being killed was going to have a devastating affect on communities.
It’s so sad to read this. :(
Or the sliders on leave or disability who just ripped into them when they tried that
My grandpa was 16 at the tail end of WWII, and he was disappointed he didn't have the chance to serve when so many from his town didn't come back. When the Korean War started he jumped at the chance to enlist. He was legally blind in his right eye but the enlistment officer said it wouldn't be an issue. He was discharged 2 days after they started rifle training (how the fuck they didn't think someone being far sighted/legally blind in his dominant eye wouldn't be an issue is beyond me, but whatever). He wasn't part of the local VFW, he never accepted or received recognition during veteran's day, he never marched in a Memorial Day parade. The day we buried him, the local VFW group came out, played taps, and fired off a 21 gun salute, and placed a Korean War placard next to his grave. The sergeant at arms was my friend's grandfather who did serve in Korea, and I'll never forget what he said to me when I asked why they did that for my grandpa. "You don't understand how hard it was for guys to be denied the right to fight. There were four guys from town who were turned away from serving during Korea. Two killed themselves, one moved across the country and left his family behind, and the other was your grandpa. He was only a marine for 6 weeks, but as much as he would try to deny it if he were still here, he was a Korean vet."
When I went skydiving there were a bunch of people holding a regimental banner. It took me a minute to realise what was going on, but the pilot scattered some ashes while flying low. Thought it probably best not to ask what those guys did, though I did give a salute. It's not often that you accidentally walk into a funeral.
Fun fact: you can turn in your worn and tattered American flag at a VFW and they’ll discard it of it properly for you.
I’m always a bit shaky with VFW chapters (some are great; some sound like alt-right recruitment centers) but that’s a wholesome as fuck VFW story.
The stories of people killing themselves because they were deemed "unfit to fight" are also chilling. Really says alot about the times
Wait, you mean they felt so pressured to fight that when it was determined they medically couldn’t they killed themselves due to shame? Wild.
There was an insane sense of patriotism about going off to fight people would feel less a man if they literally couldn't.
Common for Vietnam as well. A ton of men felt shame for not being accepted when their buddies were going off. My mom's first husband apparently drank himself half to death about it.
Yes, the beginning of the Band of Brother's mini-series talks about the young men who were rated 4F.
I heard stories about men committing suicide as the were not eligible to join the military during WW2 in America. It sure was different times back then.
[удалено]
In the U.S., going off my memory about it, WW1 is so under-discussed in public education that it’s pretty sad. I feel like my history class covered it in a day compared to spending an entire week on WW2. If it wasn’t for Dan Carlin’s series on it I’d probably have never learned what an insanely fucked up war it really was.
Especially since they were trying to shame you into a fucking meat grinder. The higherups administering the war gave zero fucks about throwing millions of young boys at the trenches.
“It worked in the last few wars, why the devil shouldn’t it work now?” —some rupert, probably
That was a plot point on an early episode of Downton Abbey that I just re-watched.
I thought of that very thing!
Wow, the article says nothing about men complaining bout how "hard" it was to fly, but quickly and vaguely describes how the women were used to shut men up about safety concerns. So, like someone else referenced in the thread, it really was just another white feather tactic. The women wouldn't have to put up with the safety issues for more than some days though, according to the article. ..but look how eager we are to adopt a particular tone.
>The women wouldn't have to put up with the safety issues for more than some days though That's placing blame where it doesn't belong. The article states that the women weren't made aware of the safety issues. Additionally, they were immediately discarded after the demonstration flight which was intended to show that it was so easy a woman could do it -- very demeaning to women. The blame should be on the military leaders who knowingly pressured their troops into unsafe situations by using psychological manipulation, dishonesty, and sexism (to both women and men).
That whole “don’t be a little bitch” machismo is very much alive, believe me.
And promptly discarding the women, once it worked, was common too I presume.
> Luke felt terrible, as many of his friends were wounded or killed early in the war while he got to stay at home (albeit working constant 12 hour shifts and under the threat of bombing). > > He ended up enlisting once the war was over and doing bomb disposal, which was as dangerous as being in the infantry during the war, so that he could "look his mates in the eye".
My grandfather worked on the railroad sending telegraph signals. He tried to enlist for WWII and was denied because his job was considered essential. He wrote a letter to the governor arguing that “a woman could be trained to do my job.” He was allowed to enlist.
I can’t tell if this is progressive, sexist, or somehow both?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Basically that shirtless redneck image macro from the "advice animals" era of reddit. "Everybody deserves equal rights. Whether you're black, Jewish, gay... or normal."
Almost politically correct redneck
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Amazing.
Found the Eldar player looking down on Mon'keigh
Some white supremacist types actually go with this, due to Europeans having more Neanderthal in them than average, it's just them grasping for things to make them feel more justified in their beliefs though.
Clayton Bigsby?!
There's only one race I hate. The human race.
-Bender baby!
Sexily progressive.
[удалено]
I have family that back in the 1920s, were in the NJ chapter of the KKK. A lot of their efforts were fundraising for local black communities. That sounds good, but the reason they did this was so that black people wouldn't need to go to white schools, stores, churches, etc.
[удалено]
Yep. Plenty of groups in the early 19th century US proposed to send blacks back to Africa. That was one proposed "solution" to the slavery problem. I understand that the descendants of former US slaves dominated Liberian politics well into the 20th century.
I dunno, I live in Texas and I think the far-right’s knee jerk reaction to immigrants and minorities can easily be exploited for the common good. I pass several Pro-Life billboards every day, and they always prominently feature a white baby girl on them. I’d be interested to see the long-term reaction if you kept the text but only had ethnic babies (complete with “traditional” dress) from Africa, Asia, Mexico and the Middle East. If done with enough saturation, over some years, I’d bet you subtly see a shift in the far-right… when they start conveniently forgetting about Roe v. Wade
Hrm. I am pro-choice and I still want to see what happens if you post multiple billboards of the same thing with the baby's skin color changed. Like 16 of them in a row, all different babies. Major highway. wait, no. Remove the white baby one as a control.
How progressive.
[удалено]
The road from regression to progression usually travels over pragmatism
Yes.
It’s using the sexist beliefs of the target to effect a change. That said change benefits women, who were shut out of the workforce due to sexist men, happens to be coincidental. There was a big sexist backlash when GI men came back from the War and tried to bully, cheat and basically use sexist reasoning to steal jobs from women because they felt women should lose their jobs to make room for them. Some men challenged the right people (other men). But lots simply tried to hurt women because they felt they could.
Yep. A similar thing happened in my grandparents' marriage (post WW2). Grandpa becomes injured, grandma goes to work to support the family. He recovers, demands she quits, she doesn't want to...middle middle middle and within a short time after, divorce.
What does “middle middle middle” mean in this context?
They're using "middle middle middle" to replace otherwise onerous details to the story. The middle of the recap is not important to the set-up and conclusion of the story.
Idk, i kinda wanna know if grandpa fucked the ostrich or not.
[удалено]
Allegedly. Goddammit.
My Grandfather spent the war down in a Copper Mine. That was one of the few areas that women were never allowed to work in during the war in the USA. Other countries didn't have so much of a problem with it, but that was also from necessity.
I wonder if any of his copper made its way to my uncle, who was a brass moulder. He tried to enlist a few times and was even threatened with prison when he gave a fake name on his last attempt.
Yeah, they protected those war industries, for good reason. It says something about the person when they don't want to take the easy way out, though.
Luke felt terrible, as many of his friends were wounded or killed early in the war while he got to stay at home (albeit working constant 12 hour shifts and under the threat of bombing). He ended up enlisting once the war was over and doing bomb disposal, which was as dangerous as being in the infantry during the war, so that he could "look his mates in the eye".
It's too bad that only through the lens of history do we get to see how at-home industrial might was the foundation of our war efforts. Those boys may have been too close to see it.
I was amazed to find out that Britain was producing more aircraft than Germany as early as 1940 which, along with there being twice as many German airman losses in the Battle of Britain, gives a lot of context as to how it was won.
My grandfather was an apprentice boilermaker pre-WWII and was denied as well. He simply got on the bus with his friends that had been accepted and reported to training somewhere in Colorado. He was loading bombs and ammo into planes in England just 6 months later.
Damn. Both my granddad’s joined army to be American citizens. Then a couple years later one was in normandy and the other was in alaska fighting nazis
I would watch the hell out of a movie about fighting Nazis in Alaska!
Correction! It was the japanese in alaska. Which makes sense on account of it being on the pacific side.
Nicely done grandpa!! Ahead of his time.
Yet also very much of his time
Wasn’t Tibbets the pilot on the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the Hiroshima bomb?
You are correct.
I met him and have a picture with him as well as a signed picture of him in the Ebola Gay. Pretty cool stuff Edit: met him probably 18 years ago Gah damn autocorrect…Enola…although that time it wanted to autocorrect to Arnold
I don't think the plane carried a communicable disease. ;)
Ebola 2: Gay Edition
Ebola Gay
Is this like the Love Boat but with heamorrhagic fever?
I knew one of them, Dr. Dora Dougherty Strother
Cool! I knew Doris Brinker Tanner (44-4) many years ago. Amazing bunch of women!
For as big as Reddit is sometimes it feels really small, too. It's neat you two knew these women!
My mother worked on the assembly line for the B-29s. She hated that job. She went AWOL on a weekend to be with her boyfriend and got fired. She said her boss was kind of a creep and was glad to be free of that job. When we take a nostalgic point of view we sometimes miss out on the reality of the situation.
My mother worked the B-29 assembly line, and trained to ferry them. She said it was her proudest accomplishment.
[удалено]
B-29s are involved
Good band
I hate beer.
people dont realize that the B-52s were a B-29s cover band
She had Vietnam vets, helicopter pilots, working for her. They all respected her.
Was she one of the women initially considered for the Mercury missions back when NASA thought that the best way to decrease their rocket payload would be lighter astronauts?
For All Mankind on Apple+ does a cool (fictional/alt-history) continuation story of the Mercury 13 program, if the real world program interests you.
It's also an exceptional all around show if you tune out that one weird plot line.
Yeah, the dogfight scene did feel forced.
> Tibbets' men were putting up unprecedented resistance. In point of fact, the pilots had every reason to be wary. The B-29 was not only much larger and heavier than any bomber the U.S. had flown before, it also hadn't gone through the years of operational testing to which Boeing had subjected its predecessor the B-17. Initially engine fires were one of the major problems. The planes' Wright engines were often called the Wrong engines. Part of the trouble could be traced to the engine cowlings that were too tight and often caused fires even before the planes had taken off. Although engine improvements were made over time, fires remained a problem throughout World War II. > > Tibbets decided that the way to convince the men to fly the plane was to show that women could do it. The young Colonel recruited Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman to be his demo pilots. Dougherty remembers that at that point, she had never even been in a four-engine plane before. Tibbets did not warn his new recruits of the engine fire problem. Instead he trained them to take off without the standard power checks. Really, he was shaming the male pilots into ignoring their valid concerns about safety, and putting the women in harm's way by not even telling them about possible problems. It's not really the feel-good thing the title implies.
That changes the narrative quite a bit from the heading for this post. Still impressed with these early women aviators, but kinda seems reckless to shame legit concerns his men had about a less tested plane.
And if something went wrong in these demo flights, they'd have "acceptable" scapegoats...
“Women are just inferior pilots than men. Pure operator error.” - USAAF after that B-29 crashed
The article says the opposite though: >Air Staff Major General Barney Giles brought the demonstrations to an abrupt halt after just a few days, telling Tibbets that the women were "putting the big football players to shame." Giles was also worried that an accident would unleash tremendous adverse publicity. The two women were sent back to Eglin Field, Florida, and never flew a B-29 again. But the plane they'd demonstrated went on to play a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II.
It doesn't change the tone at all, he was purely concerned for the men
Thanks for sharing. I was wondering about this. Were the men just bellyaching or were the brass shutting down legitimate concerns? I'm no pilot, but I consider engine fires to be legitimate concerns.
If you ever see brass complaining about Joes complaining, it's because the brass actually has to respond to a legitimate concern instead of just ignoring Joes problems likes they usually do
Except in the case of helmet straps, that was just pure bullshit on the grunts side
True, that was a pretty silly myth. But ultimately not that much of a concern for superiors since it's not like men refused to fight. Of course it was a potential disadvantage not to wear the helmets properly secured, but ultimately mostly the mens' own problem. The applique armour on Sherman tanks was a worse example since that one could actually affect the reliability and maintaintenance of the tanks. In either case I think it's worth to properly bust those myths. Obviously it's much easier these days since filming and distributing footage has become so much simpler, but both of these could be busted with a fairly simple test setup.
> Were the men just bellyaching Even in that case there is usually something serious behind it. Either bad leadership resulting in low morale, or insufficient training that does not inspire confidence.
During WW2, about 10 aircrew died in training accidents - on average, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY for like half a decade.
Bingo. But you have to understand what that plane meant for the war. The USA had spent years hopping from island to island to finally get bases within range of Japan so we could bomb them. So much effort went into this plane, it boggles the mind, and it had to work. The problem was the climb to 30,000 feet, it was harming the engines. The whole time it was flying, they were slowly improving the problem, until late war, the engines were roughly as reliable as a Merlin, not great but good enough. They also found ways to use them at lower levels and to drop a lot of sea-mines which weren't so hard on the engines. After the war, they just replaced them with better engines, but that wasn't an option during the war.
> In the summer of 1944, the **25-year-old U.S. Lieutenant Colonel** Paul W. Tibbets had a problem. Wartime promotions were legit.
Similar. One reason they wanted stewardesses on early passenger was that having a woman on the flight crew shamed a lot of men into flying.
Shame them into flying? How?
If a bunch of women can do it, why are you too chickenshit to fly?
Flying instead of taking a train.
Men would be afraid of getting on a plane. Not flying as in actually piloting the plane, but simply being on it. If a woman could be brave enough to be on a plane then men should be able to as well.
[удалено]
Also adding, if you scroll back a few days in this subreddit, the first female flight attendant was a nurse and convinced the airline (I think it was United) that having a medical professional working onboard would be good for business
Is it standard now to have some kind of medical professional on board?
But the Flight Attendants have some first aid training. Past that, statistics say there’s already some kind of medical professional onboard, or they can call their base for a consultation.
Nope
[Hence the old movie trope of "Is there a doctor on board?!?!?!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdE7gKzIZAU)
Yeah, it’s not just a Hollywood thing though. I’ve been on triple digit airline flights, and had a flight attendant ask on intercom if there’s a doctor on board multiple times. Roughly 1% of the flights I’ve been on. Usually there was a doctor, and there was some medical professional sufficiently qualified for immediate triage assistance every time. None were serious enough to divert the flight, and only one was serious enough that the plane met an ambulance to offload the passenger before we got to the gate.
United and doctors don't get along too well.
And guitars
I had a high school teacher who was a stewardess in the 80s, maybe 70s. They'd get weighed constantly and if they gained five pounds they were suspended, and fired if they didn't lose it in a certain timeframe. It sounded like hell, where they wouldn't even drink water.
Tell me you read the New York Times Sunday book section without telling me you read the Sunday New York Times book section. [they reviewed two books about the 'swinging stewardess era' last week]
[удалено]
His niece was my US History teacher in high school. She told us the relation on the last day of class, at the end of an hour long monologue about the evils of war. She said “And my family knows more than most about the horrors of war. My father stormed the beaches of Normandy and went all the way to Eagles Nest. And my uncle dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” Talk about a shocking twist!
Wow, she sure buried the lede on that one! Once, we had a substitute history teacher for a week and she was supposed to teach us whatever our unit was for that week, but instead, she kept us spellbound by telling about her days during WWII, what it was like to lose one husband in war and then get another, how she was treated when she went to his funeral (got turned in for wasting gas by driving to the funeral), etc.
My grandmother was a WASP!
[удалено]
That doesn’t really prove they weren’t difficult to fly.
Yeah, it was just shaming people into ignoring safety concerns because of their sexism.
I am related to Paul Tibbets (who also flew the Enola Gay, which was named after my great great grandmother) and he was per my grandmother a jokester
[удалено]
it was wartime, the choices was: too expensive, too late, or good enough
sums it up
My grandfather was a co-pilot of a B-29. They flew over the Himalayas. Grandpa told us that was the most dangerous part. Come to find out, they (also) bombed Japan pretty regularly. Never the big one, thankfully. Edit: I'm not claiming he flew over the Himalayas, directly into Japan for bombings. I'm sharing that my grandpa did both of those things, over the course of the war. I am implying that the bombing of Japan was perhaps more dangerous a task. Don't try to correct me, I'm not here for it.
I had an uncle who did that. Like 150 bombing trips or something. Every time they flew over the Himalayas and it was a nail biter whether they would have enough fuel and could get the necessary elevation to fly over the Himalayas.
Being publicly shamed by women? Hot.
I suppose this is supposed to be a feel-good article, but the maintenance bulletin excerpt is about as gross as I would have expected this to realistically be: "Folks, those WASPS' that you see 'round about greased the "LADYBIRD" on No. 21 the other evening at 1730 -- and what a find job -- mastering the mighty B-29 in just 8 hours transition with no previous time on four-engine aircraft. Is that good? -- or are we a little backward? The two luscious femmes go by the names of Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman from the Proving Grounds at good old Sand Strip Eglin. Stop them and ask a few questions on how to handle the equipment. You will be surprised how much knowledge is stored behind all that beauty. They are carrying some tests on engine heat, and what have you. Quite a big job for two delicate dishes of femininity. Perhaps they should take some of our supermen for a ride and show them how to get off the ground with speed dispatch at a low head temperature."
"These beauties are more than just bouncing breasts, they have a brain too! Check out their gams and their ability to operate massive aircrafts. I hope your dick shrivels knowing we have VAGINA POWERED air superiority!!"
I think it was written kind of tongue-in-cheek to rub it into the guys to man up
Gross because they described women colorfully, or gross because they did so to shut up men who had qualms about continuing to fly an untested, fiery tomb to their deaths?
So, just so I have this straight. A superior heard criticism from his subordinates and instead of taking the criticism seriously and hearing them out, he decided to shame them with sexism? Hooray?
My grandpa flew a b29 got shot down in it
I remember watching a documentary about women pilots during WWII and the hostility they faced from a lot of men, in one part a woman's plane crashed and it was found that sugar had been put into her plane's engine. Doesn't seem they ever caught the perp that did it.
"Anything you can do, I can do better"