Hell Hath No Fury (18 page)

Some female camp followers were extraordinarily courageous. In the Peninsular campaign during the Napoleonic Wars, Susanna Dalbiac rode beside her husband in the cavalry charge at the Battle of Salamanca (1812), clinging to the reins as bullets whistled through her riding habit. A less exhilarating ordeal was undergone by army wives during the retreat from Corunna (1808–9) as they staggered through snow and mud behind the baggage train, collapsing from exhaustion and sometimes stopping at the roadside for snatched minutes to give birth, as they were forbidden to ride in the baggage carts. In 1842, during the Afghan wars, the redoubtable Lady Florentia Sales endured an even more nightmarish journey through driving snowstorms, in which she lost a son-in-law, celebrated the birth of a grandchild, and survived numerous attacks by Afghan tribesman and ten months' captivity as a hostage of the ferocious warlord Akbar Khan. A happier time was had in the Crimean War by Fanny Duberley, a glamorous officer's wife, who cantered about on horseback wearing tight-fitting men's trousers beneath her riding habit and watched the charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava (1854) from a safe distance.

From the 1840s, the baggage trains that had accompanied the Roman legions, the Crusader armies, the hosts of the Thirty Years' War, and the men of the Continental Army were rendered obsolete by the advent of railway systems, and with them the detailed military planning that now made possible the mobilization of vast numbers of troops and their rapid delivery to the front. This spelled the end of cumbersome baggage trains with their complement of female camp followers. They were now considered examples of military backwardness, and wherever the phenomenon lingered, as with the
Vivandières
of the American Civil War (see Chapter 5) and Mexican
Soldaderas
(see Chapter 5), they were considered an anachronism, out of step with the demand of modern, industrialized warfare.

Reference: Noel T. St. John Williams,
Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady: The Army Wife and Camp Follower Since 1660,
1989.

COMFORT WOMEN

Far East Theater, World War II

A self-serving male euphemism for the countless women who were forced to work in brothels as sex slaves to the Japanese military in countries occupied by Japan during World War II. After the war, their plight was swept under the carpet, but in 1990 the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery filed suit in a Tokyo court, demanding apologies and compensation. This claim, other lawsuits, and a series of newspaper articles in Japan revived interest in this dark and disgusting footnote to World War II.

Initially, the Japanese had pandered to the first rule of war (sex for the troops) by establishing a system of military brothels. These were staffed by encouraging middlemen to advertise for Japanese prostitutes in newspapers circulating in the home islands and in the Japanese colonies of Korea, Manchuko, and mainland China. However, the military then became concerned that the use of Japanese prostitutes would tarnish the national image (in similar fashion Heinrich Himmler issued a directive that German prostitutes could not be employed in Nazi activities). This prompted them to employ local middlemen or community leaders to recruit women in Japanese-occupied territory, principally in Korea and China. Many women were tricked into sex slavery by offers of legitimate employment, or were forcibly impressed.

The aim of the brothels was both to improve the morale and military effectiveness of the Japanese soldier (military logic: the Japanese squaddie became a better man and a better fighter every time he debauched or degraded a woman). By “regularizing the system,” in effect controlling the women but not the men, the military authorities also sought to ensure effective management of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

It was also naïvely thought that the establishment of military brothels, most of them on Japanese bases but some of them close to the front line, would reduce the need to grant soldiers leave and lower the risk of random sexual violence for the women of occupied countries, as had happened in the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking) in 1937 when Japanese troops ran amok, raping an estimated 20,000 women and killing 300,000 of the city's inhabitants. Raping the “comfort women” in the comfort of their own brothels was supposed to diminish that risk. No one had yet made the simple calculation that sex and violence beget more sex and violence everywhere.

Life was nightmarish for the women made to work in the military brothels, where they were forced to endure sex with multiple men for hours on end. They were classified according to length of service, the highest category containing those least likely to suffer from STDs. When they were considered to be of no further use, they were abandoned. Many women reported that their uteruses rotted after multiple rapes and incessant disease over a period of years. As the tide of war turned against Japan and its armies retreated, many women were left behind to starve, often on remote islands in the Pacific. Only a few returned to their homes, the humiliation for themselves and their families proving impossible to bear.

It is estimated that at least 80,000 women of many nationalities were forced to work in these terrible places, including Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Malays, Thais, Filipinas, Indonesians, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indians, Eurasians, Dutch, and natives of the Pacific Islands. In his 1978 autobiography, the former Japanese prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone recounted how he had set up a “comfort house” for the troops under his command when he served as a naval lieutenant in World War II. He claimed that he was unaware that the women who worked there had been impressed, a state of innocence somewhat alarming in a man of his position.

When World War II ended, only one military tribunal was convened, in Jakarta, to address the sexual abuse of the “comfort women.” A number of Japanese officers were convicted of forcing thirty-five Dutch women into military brothels, but they were lucky enough to be white. No redress was sought for the many Indonesians or women from other ethnic backgrounds who had suffered a similar fate.

In 1965, a Treaty of Basic Relations and Agreement of Economic Cooperation and Property Claims between Japan and Korea (South and North) settled all claims that stemmed from World War II. But from 1990, the Japanese government, by now under increasing international pressure, denied any official connection with the military brothels. In 1992, however, the historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki uncovered incriminating documents in the archives of Japan's National Defense Agency indicating that the military was directly involved in running the brothels. Thereafter the Japanese government shifted its ground, admitting moral but not legal responsibility and, in 1995, set up an unofficial fund to compensate survivors of the brothels. Fifty years after the war had ended, these survivors were inevitably few and getting fewer as time went by.

In January 2005, the government of South Korea released documents relating to the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations that suggested that it had been induced not to make further claims by an offer from Japan of $800 million in grants and soft loans in compensation for colonial rule stretching from 1910 to 1945. None of this cash reached the women themselves. As the handful of surviving “comfort women” die off day by day, it seems that time is on the side of the Japanese government.

Reference: Yuki Tanaka,
Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation,
2002.

CONQUISTADORAS

Spanish Women Accompanying Husbands and Fathers in Conquest of South America, Sixteenth Century

When the Spanish adventurer Hernán Cortés landed in the Yucatán in 1519 at the head of 550 men, his small command was accompanied by twelve Castilian women who were following their husbands and fathers. Eight were white and four were black, a reflection of the increasingly multiracial nature of Spanish society in the early sixteenth century, the result of the number of African slaves and free individuals living in Spain.

Cortés was at first reluctant to allow the women to join the march on the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. He planned to leave them all behind the lines at Tlaxcala, which he had captured after a hard fight. Only their husbands the conquistadors would follow him into the Mexican heartland to seize the native people's vast hoards of jewels and gold. But when he tried to billet the women in a safe town, they all refused, vehemently protesting that “Castilian wives, rather than abandon their husbands in danger, would die with them.”

On the march, the women's duties were at first confined to domestic chores in the expeditionary force's camps, but inevitably they were exposed to battle. They were required to nurse the sick and wounded, to perform guard duties, and at times to join the fighting alongside the men. At least five of the twelve died in battle.

The conquistadoras had sacrificed comparative safety for the rigors of campaigning and the tangible but dangerous rewards it offered—prestige, land, slaves, and treasure. They fought hard to secure them. Two in particular, Beatriz Bermúdez and Maria de Estrada, distinguished themselves by ferocious courage in battle, and lived to reap the rewards. Both readily proved that they could fight as well as their men. During the battle of Tenochtitlán, Bermudez donned men's body armor and, brandishing a sword, rallied the flagging conquistadors with the words “For shame, Spaniards, turn upon these base people, or if you will not, I will kill every man who attempts to pass this way!” Fired with the same spirit, Estrada also armed herself like a man, with helmet, breastplate, weapons, sword, and shield, and rode into battle, running many of the Indian fighters through with her lance.

Still campaigning years later, the Spanish women had not lost their appetite for a fight. Battling to take Morelos in 1522, Cortés announced that the soldier who led a charge against hostile Indians would be rewarded with a grant of land. This prompted Estrada to mount up with lance and shield and beg her commanding officer to allow her to charge the Indians as proof of her valor. Cortés granted her request and Estrada charged, shouting, “St. James, attack them!” and driving many of the Indians into a ravine. As a reward, she was granted the towns of Telala and Hueyapan.

In contrast, Isabel Rodrigo, who had some medical knowledge, devoted her time to caring for the wounded and, according to contemporary accounts, healed their injuries by the laying on of hands. The Spanish crown bestowed on her the title of “Doctor” and gave her permission to practice medicine in New Spain.

Reference: Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas,
The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America,
1740.

LEAGUER LADIES

United Kingdom, Eighteenth Century

“Leaguer ladies” was the name for prostitutes, usually drawn from the region in which the soldiers were encamped. They were encouraged not to flaunt their profession in dealing with both officers and men, and many of them gambled on the outside chance of finding a husband as an escape from poverty. Sometimes the leaguer lady was the widow of a soldier. Those fortunate enough to win a husband often remarried several times, usually having lost the current spouse in battle. This way of life often led to large families, and officers sometimes recorded in their diaries an anonymous delivery on the march, with the mother stopping to give birth, swaddling the baby, and then pressing on (see also
Soldaderas,
Chapter 5).

Sutlery cooks, who were responsible for feeding the troops, often employed women to help them with preparation and serving. Some of these women became sutleresses, scraping and saving enough money to survive the campaign and return home. Wives acquired abroad followed their husbands back to Britain, as a soldier would have to buy his way out of the army if he wished to remain in his wife's country. The wives were obliged to pay for their passage home by ship.

As camp followers, the leaguer ladies were in theory subject to the harsh discipline of the Articles of War and the Mutiny Act. However, punishment for an offender was generally limited to drumming a woman out of the regiment. One savage punishment reserved for women was the “whirligig,” a pivoted cage whose rapid rotation reduced the inmate to violent vomiting and uncontrolled defecation and urination. Another form of rough justice was the shaving of women's heads or forcing them to parade naked.

Reference: Noel T. St. John Williams,
Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady: The Army Wife and Camp Follower Since 1660,
1989.

LYNCH, ELISA

Irish Adventuress, 1835–1886

In a cemetery in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, a monument marks the last resting place of one of the most extraordinary adventuresses of the nineteenth century. It states simply, “Homage of the people, government and armed forces to Elisa Lynch.”

Now neglected and little visited, it stands as a reminder of the remarkable career of one of the great anti-heroines of Latin America, a woman both reviled and respected, hailed as the faithful companion of Paraguay's General President López and damned as a malign enchantress, hell-bent on the single-minded acquisition of colossal wealth.

After an upbringing in Ireland that remains obscure, Elisa was taken by her mother to Paris, where in 1850 she met a soldier, Lieutenant Xavier de Quatrefages, on leave from the French colony of Algeria. She married him in Folkestone, Kent, in June of that year. The new wife accompanied her husband to Algeria but within three years had left him and gone to Paris, where she became a courtesan and met Francisco Solano López, the son of the dictator of Paraguay, Carlos Antonio López. When López returned to his native country in 1854, Elisa followed him.

The Paraguay of the 1850s was an exotic, impoverished backwater, but the tall, red-haired, self-styled “Madame” Lynch, now installed as López's principal mistress, was determined to transform Asunción, its flyblown capital, into an imperial city and herself into its empress. She launched a vainglorious building program, erecting opera houses and palaces, all of which went unfinished or remained uninhabited. She controlled access to López, who succeeded his father in 1862, and used the influence she gained thereby to amass a considerable fortune.