Knapsacks and Roses: Montana Women Veterans of World War I

On the centennial of America’s victory in World War I, a new nonfiction book about intrepid Montana women who volunteered for the Great War; they served mostly as nurses in the Army Nurse Corps. Facing enemy fire and hostile conditions, while serving an indifferent federal government denying them equal status as the men, these women of the big sky country served with honor and courage in one of the worst conflagrations the world had yet seen. After the war these women came home alone, unheralded, and mostly forgotten. With foreword by Diane Carlson Evans, nurse, Army Nurse Corps, Republic of Vietnam, 1968/69, who helped create the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington D.C., Saunders, a war veteran himself, illuminates these World War I women veterans with their stories and official reports of the day, told among the harsh panoramas of war. A century after their service, Saunders shines the light of honor on these women - and all America's women veterans of World War I - richly deserved and long overdue.