World War: Do Women Fight?

Last week the Russians made two statements about women in war. One concerned Russian women, and was true. The other concerned German women, and was good propaganda.

Amazons. Broadcasting from Washington, Mme. Constantine Oumansky, wife of the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., flatly denied that women were fighting in the Red Army. This was no propaganda ghost-laying. All women who are attached to the Red Army are technicians, radio operators, cooks, messengers, engineers, drivers—and are no more formidable than Britain’s ATS, WAAFS and WRENS, who do exactly the same jobs, and who also wear uniforms. There are no female combat privates in the Red Army, Nazi statements to the contrary. A few young women have been admitted as sharpshooters into OSOAVIAKHIM, Russia’s Home Guard. Aside from them, any fire-spitting Amazons captured by the Germans are operating strictly on their own.

Trojan Whores. A Russian dispatch from the front last week said that the Germans, unable to force a crossing of an unnamed river, brought up a large number of prostitutes from Hamburg, undressed them, sent them wading in the river opposite the strongest Russian defenses. Simultaneously, the story went, the Germans tried a crossing at another place. The strong Red Army men, said the dispatch, “were not fooled.”