Female Veterans Struggle with Identity, Recognition After Service to Country

For years, female veterans like Helen Grahl were not aware of their eligibility for health care services. Grahl became informed through Department of Veterans Affairs’ outreach aimed at female veterans like herself. She began taking advantage of VA health care earlier this year.   ¦  Loren Elliott

COLUMBIA — When someone approached Helen Grahl a few years ago to go on a World War II Honor Flight, she initially refused. That was for the men.

“They’re the ones that did the war,” Grahl said. “Yeah, I had a desk job and wore a uniform, but I didn’t do anything courageous.”

Grahl finally decided to participate in an Honor Flight in July 2012 and was one of only two females of the 64 veterans aboard. While in Washington, D.C., they visited the World War II Memorial, the Women in Military Service for America Memorial and a number of other monuments.

One stop was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, where Grahl and others viewed the “Changing of the Guard” ceremony. When the guard who had just been relieved of duty went down the line of veterans to shake hands, he stopped at Grahl. He stepped forward, hugged and kissed her.

“He said, ‘I don’t often get to see a woman veteran,'” Grahl said. “I was taken aback and absolutely thrilled.”

Although women have been a vital part of U.S. military operations since World War I, getting older women to see themselves as veterans hasn’t been easy. One result is they sometimes don’t get the benefits they’ve earned, though women 65 and older now make up 14 percent of women who receive Veterans Affairs health care.

Younger female veterans are more likely to see action, especially since the military officially allowed women to serve on the front lines in January 2013. Still, younger women veterans say, there’s a recognition problem — not within themselves, but rather from society.

The number of female veterans has increased over the past decade, and VA hospitals have responded by expanding their services to better serve the women. Of the 22 million veterans accounted for in September 2014, a little over 2 million were female — an increase from the 1.6 million female veterans recorded in 2000 and 1.2 million in 1990.

Women in World War II

Women were in high demand in World War II. Although they were not allowed to serve in combat roles, they worked as clerks, nurses and in nearly all noncombatant jobs, according to the Women’s Memorial website.

“As the war escalated and the national pool of qualified male draftees dwindled, it became clear that for every woman recruited, one less man had to be drafted,” according to the site.

Women were told they could “Free A Marine to Fight,” by joining the Marine Corps Women’s Reserves, and ultimately 350,000 women volunteered throughout the course of the war, according to the VA.

Helen Grahl was one of those women.

Now 90, Grahl is a bit of a collector. Hundreds of decorative butter plates line the shelves of her Columbia home and commemorative paperweights cover a living room table.

In one of the bedrooms off the hallway, a framed promotional poster for female Marines — a birthday gift from her son — hangs on the wall.  A faded green shirt, part of Grahl’s uniform, sits neatly folded in a dresser. These are two of the few items in Grahl’s home that reveal her military service over 70 years ago.

Grahl enlisted in the Women’s Reserve in September of 1944, just weeks after her 20th birthday.

“It was important to everybody at that time, and it seemed that everybody was doing something — either forced into it or voluntarily,” Grahl said.

At the end of October, she boarded a train in St. Louis and headed southeast to North Carolina where she began training at Camp Lejeune. Afterward, she worked at the base’s post office.

Grahl was then ordered to report to Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, at an all-women’s Marine base across the river from Washington, D.C. Grahl said she could see funeral processions at Arlington Cemetery from a window in the back of her company’s barracks.

Out of hundreds of women at the base, Grahl was chosen to be the payroll clerk. She became friends with other women, whom she traveled with to the District and other East Coast cities for the weekends. Grahl said she rarely came into contact with any men on the base.

When Grahl and the other women volunteered for the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, they signed on for the duration of the war plus six months. So when the war ended in 1945, Grahl continued working, helping muster out the women who left the corps. She was honorably discharged July 31, 1946.

Grahl said she seldom spoke about her service. It wasn’t a big deal because so many people were involved in World War II, she said. She spoke about it only if she encountered another veteran.

“It isn’t anything that you would’ve brought up over the years,” she said.

She joined the Women Marines Association in the 1990s in St. Louis, where she used to live, and attended regular meetings and wrote chapter announcements. She also became a charter member of the Women’s Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.

But after Grahl moved to Columbia in 2003, she grew distant from the association. For nearly 10 years, she didn’t participate in veterans activities — until she boarded the Honor Flight in 2012.

Viewing themselves as veterans

Until February of this year, Grahl hadn’t gone to a VA hospital. When she finally went to Truman Veterans’ Hospital, she intended to volunteer, not qualify to receive benefits.

“Historically, the VA had been an old boys’ network,” said Stephen Gaither, the Truman Veterans’ Hospital spokesman. “World War II veterans never thought they’d go to the VA or knew they were eligible for care.”

Cindy Stivers, the Women Veterans Program manager at the Truman Veterans’ Hospital, said female veterans of Grahl’s generation don’t view themselves as veterans because they weren’t given full military status until 1943. After the war, people still didn’t perceive them as full veterans.

Stivers, 42, is a Marine Corps veteran herself. She said women also don’t make their veteran status as visible as men.

“You will not hardly ever see us wear a ball cap saying ‘Air Force’ or ‘Marines,'” Stivers said. “We just kind of blend back into the civilian life.”

Stivers recalls going to an Applebee’s on Veterans Day with her family, and the server assumed her husband was the veteran. Stivers said that’s because people generally think of veterans as men.

A 33-year-old veteran in Columbia, Heather Brown, had a similar story. She served for eight years as a civil affairs specialist during the war in Iraq. But when she and her husband walked up to the Lowe’s counter to get the military discount, the cashier looked straight at her husband and thanked him for his service.

“It just didn’t cross their mind that a female could be the one, until I was like, ‘No, I’m the service member,'” Brown said.

Heather Brown, who was diagnosed with PTSD after serving in the military, is now employed at Truman Veterans’ Hospital as a communications specialist where she helps veterans take advantage of VA services.   |  Loren Elliott

Increasing numbers, expanding coverage

The Truman Veterans’ Hospital had 2,582 female veterans in fiscal year 2014, Gaither said. Yet, a big hurdle to overcome is female veterans’ perception that the VA health care system is oriented to males. The VA system is changing that perception over time, he said.

Stivers said the services the Truman Veterans’ Hospital provides include fertility treatments, maternity care and breast cancer screenings. It also provides treatment for military sexual trauma, which affects about 25 percent of military women, according to the VA.

Still, Stivers said it seems to her that female veterans are not treated differently from their male counterparts. That’s because women’s roles in the military are becoming more similar to men’s roles.

Since February 2013, women have been able to serve on the frontlines in the military, but even before that, women were doing what men were doing.

With the end of the draft in 1973, the military needed more volunteers, including women, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. That led to fewer restrictions on women’s jobs in the military.

Women took on major roles in the 1990s, flying combat aircraft, manning missile placements, serving on ships in the Gulf and driving convoys in the desert, according to the VA.

Brown, who began serving in 1998, said she was one of between 10 and 15 women in her company. Her job was to act as a liaison between the civilian population in Iraq and the military.

The men in her company were protective of the women at first, imposing curfews and not allowing men in their rooms, Brown said. She and the women explained those rules were not going to work.

“We told them that we’re not their children; we’re not their sisters; we’re not their mothers — we’re soldiers alongside them,” Brown said.

Over time, she said, the men learned to worry less about the women’s safety and better integrate them into the team.

Even Brown’s younger brother, a biomedical technician in the military, struggled with her status as a female soldier. When the two were on vacation in Germany, they had a huge fight, she said.

“He was so upset because I, as his sister, went to Iraq, and he as the man should’ve gone instead,” Brown said. “… I saw it as I’m the big sister — I need to protect my brother.”

Brown said her brother’s job as a biomedical technician was crucial to the war effort, though.

But women also did crucial work, some of it called for because of traditional Muslim culture. For example, male soldiers were not allowed to speak to Iraqi women, but female soldiers could speak to both women and men.

Although she struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after her deployment, she sought treatment at the Truman Veterans’ Hospital, where she still receives care. She became a health benefits adviser at the hospital, helping other veterans receive their benefits. Now she works as a social media and communications specialist.

When Brown worked as a health benefits adviser, some older male veterans assumed she hadn’t served in the military.

“They’d say, ‘You, little girl, don’t know what what it’s like to be in the military.’ — That’s the one thing that would get me a little more heated than anything else,” she said. “I’d say, ‘Now you can stop making assumptions. I was in the military. I was in a combat zone. I know what it’s like.'”

She said it’s important for women to assert their roles as veterans and receive their benefits.

“We matter just as much as the men,” Brown said. “Not more, but just as much.”

Supervising editor is Katherine Reed.

Addressing military sexual trauma

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Military sexual trauma affects about 25 percent of women and 1 percent of men serving in the military, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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