1908: The U.S. Navy Nurse Corps is established. It is all-female until 1965. [4][5]
1912: Rayna Kasabova during the Balkan War was the first woman to fly as observer on combat missions in the history of military aviation. She carried out a number of sorties dropping propaganda materials and bombs on Turkish positions during the siege of Adrianople.
World War I (1917-1918): During the course of the war, 21,480 U.S. Army nurses (military nurses were all women then)serve in military hospitals in the United States and overseas. Eighteen African-American Army nurses serve stateside caring for German prisoners of war (POWs) and African-American soldiers. The first female members of the military killed in the line of duty are World War I Army nurses Edith Ayres and Helen Wood. Nurse Ayres and Nurse Wood (nurses held no rank during World War I) are killed on May 20th, 1917, while with Base Hospital #12 aboard the USS Mongolia en route to France. The ship’s crew fired the deck guns during a practice drill, and one of the guns exploded, spewing shell fragments across the deck and killing Nurse Ayres and her friend Nurse Helen Wood. The U.S. Army recruits and trains 233 female bilingual telephone operators to work at switchboards near the front in France and sends 50 skilled stenographers to France to work with the Quartermaster Corps. The U.S. Navy enlists 11,880 women as Yeomen (F) to serve stateside in shore billets and release sailors for sea duty. More than 1,476 U.S. Navy nurses serve in military hospitals stateside and overseas. The U.S. Marine Corps enlists 305 female Marine Reservists (F) to "free men to fight" by filling positions such as clerks and telephone operators on the home front. More than 400 U.S. military nurses die in the line of duty during World War I. The vast majority of these women die from a highly contagious form of influenza known as the "Spanish Flu," which sweeps through crowded military camps and hospitals and ports of embarkation. In 1918 twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker of the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve become the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard. [6][7][8]
In October 1916 during the first battle of Jiu Ecaterina Teodoroiu transfers from the Romanian Army's all-female nurses corp to the Reconnaissances Corps. Serving as a scout she was taken prisoner but managed to escape by killing two, or perhaps three German soldiers. In November, she was wounded and hospitalized, but came back to the front where she was soon decorated, advanced in rank to Sublocotenent (Second Lieutenant) and given the command of a 25-man platoon. For her bravery she was awarded the Military Virtue Medal, 1st Class. On September 3, 1917 (August 22 Old Style), she was killed in the Battle of Mărăşeşti (in Vrancea County), where she was hit in the chest by German machine gun fire. According to some accounts, her last words before dying were: "Forward, men, I'm still with you!"
1920: During the Turkish Independence War, Kara Fatma and her gang carried out operations against the British, Armenian, French, Italian and Greek soldiers. They are well-known for killing those who raped young girls.
1920: Army Reorganization Act (1920): A provision of the Army Reorganization Act grants U.S. military nurses the status of officers with "relative rank" from second lieutenant to major (but not full rights and privileges).
1924: Lottorna, or The Swedish Women's Voluntary Defence Service, is founded.
1937: During the Dersim uprising, Sabiha Gökçen, the first female aviator in Turkey and the first female combat pilot in the world carried out sorties in operations against the guerrillas.