Battlefield 1 and Female Soldiers: We Have Always Fought
You need to know about Milunka Savic.
So, that video game set during WWI isn’t going to have female soldiers. They they are citing “realism” as their reason.
This is nonsense.
Which is to say, you need to know about Milunka Savic, Serbian heroine and literally the most decorated woman soldier in recorded history. She served during the Balkans War and WWI.
WWI is also the era of the Women’s Battilion of Death in Russia, founded by Maria Leontievna Bochkareva. Fourteen other battilions were created at the same time. This was also the era of widespread lying to the recruiting officer. Age was not the only thing that was fudged.
Princess Eugenie Shakhovskaya[1] flew reconnaissance missions for the Russian Czar in 1914. Marie Marvingt served in disguise as a man on the front lines as well as flew bombing missions over Germany (for which she recieved the Croix de guerre).
To our knowledge, only one Englishwoman fought and it was Flora Sandes. She was separated from her St. John Ambulance unit while in Serbia and subsequently enrolled as soldier with a Serbian regiment. You can literally read her autobiography, An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army[2].
This list is not even slightly complete.
Whilst female soldiers were not by and means the bulk of the fighting force, they were undoubtedly present. Not all were secret as they were given honours and medals. Their history is complicated and mired ideas and expectations about gender; the Russian’s women battilions were formed in part to inspire and shame the men into greater bravery.
But it is fundamentally inaccurate to say that no woman fought. To pretend otherwise is just nonsense.
Furthermore, video games are about exceptional people[3]. Thus I can’t help but feel a WWI game wouldn’t be complete without Savic running across No Man’s Land with three bandoliers of grenades slung around herself and charging machine gun nests. She single-handedly captured twenty three Bulgarian soldiers.[4]
But more importantly, please don’t forget: We Have Always Fought.
[1] “Princess Eugenie M. Shakhovskaya was Russia’s first woman military pilot. Served with the 1st Field Air Squadron. Unknown if she actually flew any combat missions, and she was ultimately charged with treason and attempting to flee to enemy lines. Sentenced to death by firing squad, sentence commuted to life imprisonment by the Tsar, freed during the Revolution, became chief executioner for Gen. Tchecka and drug addict, shot one of her assistants in a narcotic delerium and was herself shot.” Women Combat Pilots of World War I
[2] She published it to raise funds for the Serbian army. Due her grenade-based injuries, she had to stop fighting and spent the remainder of a war running a hospital.
[3] And arguably almost all stories. Which is also an idea worth exploring and deconstructing. Stories about the unexceptional are worth telling, but this is unlikely what Battlefield 1 is interested in.
[4] Badass stories about Savic are almost endless. Despite her injuries and her female identity being discovered, she stubbornly insisted her commanding officer reconsider his decision to reassign her to a nursing unit. She would not accept any position that did not allow her to carry a gun. When he told her that he would think on it, she stood to full attention and said to him: “I will wait.”
An hour later, she was promoted and told she could stay. That line is immortal.
