Notable Women In World War 1 Essay

Notable Women in World War I:

-Edith Cavell, a British nurse, humanitarian and spy who helped some 200 allied soldiers escape from German—occupied Belgium to Holland during World War I. She was court-martialled and was sentenced for treason and killed by a firing squad.

-Mata Hari- Was a Dutch exotic dancer, whose real name is Gertrude Margarete Zelle, who was shot by the French as a spy on October, 15,1917. Still unclear about her alleged spying activities, in The Hague in 1916 she was offered cash by a German consul for information on her next visit to France. Mata Hari admitted she had passed old, outdated information to a German intelligence officer when later interrogated by the French intelligence service. Mata Hari herself claimed she had been paid to act as a French spy in Belgium (then occupied by German forces), although she had neglected to inform her French spymasters of her prior arrangement with the German consul. She was, it seemed, a double agent,
if a not very successful one. She was consequently arrested by the French on 13 February 1917 in Paris. She was sentenced to death by a firing squad. To many she remains the unfortunate victim of a hysterical section of the French press and public determined to root out evidence of a non-existent enemy within.

-Evelina Haverfield _was the daughter of the third Baron and Lady Abinger.
She grew up in a family which valued public and military service. A aprominent activist in the women's suffrage movement before 1914, at the outbreak of war Evelina rallied women to help meet the threat of a possible German invasion of Britain. She originally proposed forming a women's volunteer rifle corps for home defence to support the Territorials defending the coast. This initial idea rapidly grew into a much broader support for the war effort, in the Women's Emergency Corps, the Women's Volunteer Reserve, and the Women's Reserve Ambulance (Green Cross) Corps. Under appalling conditions of poverty and military oppression, Evelina and those with her, struggled through the winter to provide food and basic care for their wounded Serbian patients and some of the local population. In the spring of 1916, Evelina and the other 'Scottish Women' were released through the International Red Cross and returned to
England.
In August 1916 Evelina went to Romania in charge of 18 ambulance and transport vehicles as part of two units of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. These units were in support of Serbian soldiers fighting on the eastern Allied front. The stronger enemy invading armies drove the Russian, Romanian, and Serbian defenders out of southern Romania and north of the Danube river delta. During this two-month retreat by the Allied forces, Evelina and the transport drivers were working non-stop under constant enemy fire, in desperate situations, while rescuing wounded soldiers and driving them to safety. By early 1917, with the fighting on the eastern front over, and unable to return to Serbia because of the enemy occupation there, Evelina returned to England, where she remained until after the Armistice of November 1918. In England she raised money for clothing and canteens for Serbian soldiers, gave public speeches on behalf of Serbian relief, and helped to found a Serbian Red Cross Society in Britain.
After the Armistice she returned to Serbia to supervise the distribution of much needed food, clothing, and medical supplies. When this was done, in 1919, she made plans to found a home for Serbian war orphans in a Serbian mountain village. It was there, in Baijna Bashta, that she contracted pneumonia, probably brought on by overwork and fatigue, and died prematurely at the age of 52, revered and honoured by the Serbs for her five years of humanitarian work on their behalf.