Photo Courtesy Naval Historical Center

SOME THOUGHTS REGARDING THE FEMALE PRISONER OF WAR

These days, during this Second Gulf War,

if a female soldier is captured or killed

someone will say, I don't think

women should be in the line of fire

or in a place where capture is

a possibility. Just call me old-fashioned.

But female POWs and casualties

are not new.

I've done some research and

found this to be  true.

Women have been captured,

raped and tortured, or killed,

by invading and conquering armies for as

long as such things have occurred....

We lump the three words "Prisoner of War"

into POW, a simple-sounding one-syllable word.

There were nurses captured at Corregidor,

women and children captured in Hong Kong,

a woman who died in the jungles of Vietnam

and was buried by a fellow prisoner.

A nurse was taken at Dien Bien Phu ~

later released, with  a number of wounded,

she stayed with them and was called their "Angel",

because her honor, loyalty, and her sense of

duty were real and true.

There is a woman still MIA in Vietnam...

she'd been working at a leprosarium.

Women in Europe who resisted the occupation

of their countries, with great courage,

and helped downed pilots escape,

at great risk to themselves.

If caught, they were imprisoned,

tortured and sometimes, killed.

Women band together in such situations

if they can.

The Japanese discovered this when the

women in their camps would sing, and help each other,

when an orphaned child was "adopted"

by a surrogate mother,

and no matter what the Japanese did to their

small communities, they could not break

their spirit.

Lately, we've had Shoshanna and Jessica

one black and one white.......

who, when shown on television,

eyes wide with pain and fright,

caused our hearts to skip a beat.

We brought them home.

There were Civil War women who

became Prisoners of War...on

both sides. Confederate women

who would not accept defeat.

They were all the women

imprisoned at Auschwitz and

Bergen-Belsen and many another site

who endured, and survived,

numbered, and scarred,

to forever awaken, frightened at night,

rising in the morning light to raise their

children, to remember.

There were Christian women who took

Jewish children in, who were imprisoned

and whose own children were hung

from balconies, until dead.

They placed themselves in harm's way

Because it was the right thing to do, they said.

A woman whose family, whose children

have been harmed, has little to lose,

and is a formidable foe.

It seems there is no weakness in women

that cannot be overcome by loss, you know.

Women who join the military

understand the risk they take.

Just like the men, if they are taken

prisoner, they endure, they rely on faith,

they know the importance of the

choices that they make.

The Female POW is:

Strong, Scared,

Lonely, Courageous, Fierce,

Angry, Loyal, Formidable, Sad;

She may be many things

but she is never Weak.

She's her parents' beloved Daughter

A Proud Nation's Child;

She can be called one of the best we had;

And it is on HER BEHALF I speak.

©Christina 2-04

Webmaster: Thurman P. Woodfork

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