Articles from our past. . .

Bullet 'N Press Reprint from Volume 3 Number 2, June 1st, 1998 issue

Probably no place is more deserving of tribute in this issue devoted to women and guns more than the Springfield Armory, and all the women who rose to the challenge during World War II. Founded by George Washington in 1794, the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Mass., remained a National armory until 1968.  It is now operating through the National Parks Service, and therefore does not carry a political banner or participate in current social arguments regarding the second amendment.

 Springfield Armory was instrumental in the Industrial Revolution, known for mass production as well as design development and production of small arms. While women's roles were defined as wife, homemaker and mother at the onset of WWII, Springfield Armory was to become a catalyst in the sexual revolution, broadening the scope of women's roles as well as advancing the platform for rights of minorities with little known steps toward civil rights.

From Her Arms to His, an educational cassette tape produced and offered by Springfield Armory, includes documented accounts and oral interviews with former armory workers regarding the struggle of women at the home front as men answered their country's call and systematically were replaced by those remaining at home. While the battlefields of Europe surged with a wail, deep from within America's belly, her spirit, and ultimately her bloodshed were not wasted on those who worked tirelessly on behalf of the war effort.

Working an average of 56 hours per week, the armory's workforce, half of whom were women, consisted of many racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds. The tape presents historical events through a cross section of fictional characters which are related through letters written by Eta and her husband, Thomas, who is fighting in Europe. Little in history is written about the courage women demonstrated at home alone with their families, often rejoining their parents and siblings for emotional support and economic strength.

In the 1940s, we must remember, a womens place was in the home performing her duties as caretaker and nurturer. Men remained a majority in the workforce, while the role of homemaker was revered and looked on as a sign of social strength. It was unusual for a mother to work and, unless deemed a proper resolution for the household economy, it must have been approved first by the husband. Wives did not make it a practice to willfully disobey their spouses, and whether through sub-missiveness and/or humility, they made do with what their menfolk brought home from week to week. By 1942 the ratio of women to men at the armory was almost 2 to 1, and women like those depicted in From Her Arms to His had begun working, not as a means to demand equality in the workforce or to make a feminist statement, but to put themselves 100% into the war effort.

Eta, the heroine in this story, seizes the opportunity to begin work at the Springfield Armory. She needed to contribute more to ensure the well being of the American troops than collect old tires and grease to be used for explosives. Her less than enthusiastic husband is dismayed at her willingness to abandon their infant daughter while she works. Eta pleads with him to understand that her family adores the baby, who is far more loved and doted upon by the family unit than would be possible were she home alone with the child.

These characters broadly explain the efforts the entire country was making: recycling metals for bullets and casings and tires for rubber, wearing shorter skirts to save cloth for uniforms and tents, rationing sugar. But nothing meant more than for these workers, these women, then to send off M-1 barrels, precision made, which shoot straight and hold up under the drill of war. From Her Arms to His explains the cycle of labor which complemented the sacrifices of our fighting men oversees, and ultimately won back Europe. What efforts they were. The Time Life Series offers this quote, "for ultimately the war was won at home, by the home front. America's guns, generals and GIs were good, but so were the enemies. Where the US was stunningly unique was in the massive financing and production of armaments and in getting these armaments overseas.

In hindsight, these years in history challenge us to acknowledge the unfair labor practices which paid minorities less than whites and women less than men for the same work. It was a checkpoint in history where the first discrimination suit was filed against the armory, in December of 1943, by Mrs. Rosa Ward, a Negro woman, citing prejudice in job assignment. In response to Mrs. Ward's complaint, a statement was issued stating, "no barrier was ever raised against the Negro at the Armory". By April 1944, an impartial investigation was offered into Mrs. Ward's grievance. It was a hearing she would never receive. This complaint labeled "Negroes", as one woman put it, "unpatriotic" and many were ostracized as the result of Mrs. Ward's actions. In our story, Eta says to one such woman, "Maybe it would have been better to have waited until after the war?" After first explaining to Eta that she, herself, had filed and polished barrels for three years before Eta began working at the armory, receiving half the pay as well, her stern reply was, . . .and when would have been the right time? She explains that Mrs. Ward protested her transfer from a position as a machine operator, paying piece-work wages, to a filing job at a much lower day rate. When she contested the demotion, her supervisor threatened to slap her. (Piece-work depended on the number of pieces an employee was able to complete in one workday.  Higher production rates enabled a woman to earn the equivalent of a man's salary.)  She further explains that while she, herself,  is an excellent typist, when she applied for an office job she was told, "the colored are not allowed to work in administration".

One woman, against her husband's wishes, goes to work at the armory, where he is also employed. When he confronts her about lifting the M-1s off the conveyor, as it is "man's work", she sternly replies, ". . .and which of the five children who grew to 10, 20 and 30 pounds or more, that I carried on my hip, did you offer to hold for me?  If I can lift them, I can lift a nine pound M-1 off an assembly line!"

Not uncommon among the archival and oral histories,  was that of a man who accused his wife of 25 years of putting love notes in the cleaning kits. It took a boy in war to make you show jealousy after all these years! She yanks one such note out and confronts his remark with; "Here's your sexy love note: Dear son, give em hell, love Mom". It doesn't take much to share in her emotion. One passionate act leaves us wondering how many such notes uplifted the spirit of lonely GIs amid the cruelty and loneliness of war as they savored those simple, tiny messages from home.

When it wasn't quite understood why the barrels were cracking when they were quenched after being heated, it was a woman's voice in the armory which cried out, "If I take a hot pan out of the oven, I let it cool before I put it in the sink." "I let my frying pan cool by the north wind before I put it in the sink. I want it to come out the same way it went in." Yet it was a man who received the award for his successful discovery of the delayed quench.

Eta is promoted to the skilled labor force at the barrel shop. The factory, as she describes it ". . .swallows her up more with each step". The loud machines, dark windows and high ceilings are in sharp contrast to the chorus of women workers singing in their labor, in the absence of any leering supervisors. Singing to their men, singing from their soul to share in the joy from each precious moment of solidarity and patriotism. Unlike the dark description of rude, hardened women which Thomas had warned Eta about, and it being "no place for a lady", these women were friendly and happy to welcome her into their workplace.

Society was changing. At the peak of the war fourteen thousand people were employed at the Armory, 48% of whom were woman. Before the end of the war over four thousand women were employed in every capacity imaginable. Due to the fact that men had been drafted and promised their jobs upon their return home, women were were given their two-week notice in June of 1944. Some women left to seek other machinist's jobs saying they would no longer work as clerks, while some said they would return to work at some time in the future.

Perhaps it may be argued that this did not benefit the nuclear family in society, considering some of the disturbing headlines we read in today's newspapers. It cannot be disputed, however, that the women's presence in the workplace benefitted all efforts to support the fighting GIs.  Were it not for the willingness to give these women a real place in the workforce, we might have lost Europe.

At the close of our story, Eta's husband, who  struggled with his private prejudices and chauvinistic attitudes during the entire war, is coming home, wounded but alive. In a letter to the women at the armory, Thomas details the invasion of Normandy, "with nothing but bullets to greet us". Challenged by his convictions, he hears his commander who was running away from the battlefield, shouting, "Run for your lives!" Having just witnessed the massive casualties in the bloody water, where men were drowning amid the sound of unrelenting gun-fire careening past his ears, he clenches his rifle as he starts to turn away. He holds it so tightly that his knuckles begin to turn white. It is then that his rifle "speaks" to him, crying out in the words of his ever loving-wife Eta. "Look down at my barrel! From my arms to yours, my barrel shoots straight."

At last the cycle of labor and the labor of love become clear. He writes, "I was fighting with you, Eta, and I started shooting back. And I killed for the first time, even after I took a bullet in the arm." The sacrifice of the women at home who labored without complaint was clear.  It wasn't about money, or power or love, honor and obey. It was about each individual man and woman working side by side in a labor of love for their fathers, their husbands, their sons, their brothers, and most of all, their country. It was a labor of love and dedicated desire to make their country whole again, and to bring their men home safely.

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