Book Review: Sisters in Arms
A novel by Kaia Alderson
In “Sisters in Arms,” Kaia Alderson endeavors to tell the enormous story of America’s first “Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps” (later renamed simply the “Women’s Army Corps” or WAC) including the “Negro Women’s Army Corps,” created during World War II. This arm of the military was intended to take over administrative and other non-combatant tasks, freeing up male soldiers to fight.
As with most things in our patriarchal country, from our nation’s founding to (essentially) modern day, the women who enlisted had to work at least twice as hard and demonstrate strength and tolerance in a largely misogynistic military structure just to be considered merely competent when compared to the average male soldier. The women, particularly Black women, were expected to fail due to their “inherent weakness and frailty,” and thus were frequently pushed harder and tested even more to demonstrate their worth, toughness, and resilience in the face of challenges.
Alderson gives us a glimpse of their division’s officer training corps candidates (and beyond) by following the lives of two fictionalized characters, Eliza Jones and Grace Steele, from just prior to enlistment through their discharge from the service. To help establish the historical setting of her story, she uses some actual accounts and named members of the WAAC/WAC officer training classes including, as mentioned in her end notes, her hero Major Charity Adams.
Coming from a family of means, Eliza Jones is a young reporter at a Negro newspaper in New York with a college degree from Howard University. Her initial struggle against the patriarchy is literal and personal — fighting with her father, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper where she works. Eliza wants him to see her as an adult and recognize her talent, intelligence, reporting skills, and ambition. Spoiler alert (not really): he does not.
Unbeknownst to Eliza, her mother does see her potential and uses her a notable connection to bring her daughter to the attention of prominent people (well, just one person at first) in Washington who are establishing both the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps and the Negro Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. The U.S. Army was still segregating troops by race, and was adding a segment by gender. Eliza is invited not merely to enlist but is recruited for their new female Officer Candidate School.
On the heels of a flustered Julliard audition, state college graduate Grace Steele receives a similar letter of invitation from the folks in Washington to apply for OCS in the WAAC. Grace comes from a family of lesser means, though not an impoverished one. They live in Harlem where her mother is an independent business woman, a seamstress (despite some chronic conditions), and her father travels three of every four weeks a month with the railroad. At a desperate personal crossroads, Grace too accepts the Army’s offer as a means to escape expectations. In her case, it is her mother (like Eliza’s father) who doesn’t approve.
The two young women first meet in the Enlistment line and become anything BUT fast friends. Grace is put off by Eliza’s obvious economic advantages and a perceived haughtiness, despite Eliza’s enthusiastic demeanor and attempts to be friendly. Her bubbly personality and talkative manner rub this grieving, withdrawn former child piano prodigy in all the wrong ways. But wish as she might, she and Eliza continue to be thrown together by circumstances, causing each women to evolve personally and in their relationship.
The novel, while following the journeys of these two women, also shares the trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumphs of other members of OCS, who will eventually become U.S. Postal Battalion Six Triple Eight (6888) and deploy to Europe to support the war effort in a real and humanitarian way. While medical units, including female nurses, treat the physical wounds, the Postal Battalion tackled the enormous task of getting the mail through to troops stationed throughout Europe. Personal letters and packages from home were a lifeline, playing an essential role in the mental and emotional health of troops as well as overall troop morale.
The author chose to share a few overt racist encounters, including a couple graphically violent ones, no doubt merely skimming the surface of the type of appalling treatment that the actual Black female battalion encountered from bigots both at home and on deployment.
That said, I appreciated that she kept them to a representative minimum, not to diminish or turn a blind eye to what Black women and Black people in general have suffered at the hands of white America, but because “trauma porn” as it’s been called particularly in the Black community recently is not necessary to report on and illustrate the injustices suffered by Black Americans since there was an United States of America. (Finding a balance between reporting injustices and piling on traumas is something our country, particularly news networks and social media, struggles to balance to this very day.)
Through the characters, Alderson confirms that women soldiers, regardless of race, were not permitted to be trained in or carry firearms during the war. Not only that, but they were initially given NO training in hand-to-hand combat or self-defense maneuvers. Of course, this made them vulnerable not only to any enemy troops they might encounter but to physical or sexual attacks from some fellow troops or local civilians with low morals or entitled or bigoted beliefs. Additionally, the female battalions were often exposed to POWs who were treated in U.S. medical installations or housed or worked on bases.
I appreciated the writer’s choice to include a conflict related to the economic class system and how it can divide even those who would benefit more from standing together. It was particularly effective in that it addressed the resentment Grace felt for the well-to-do Eliza rather than perpetuating the idea that everyone with advantage can’t wait to look down on someone of lesser means. From my own observations, stoking this type of resentment between economic classes (within and across racial populations) has been a tool that racists use to maintain divisions and keep lower economic communities segmented when they might have greater success advocating for their rights if they could come together.
Alderson’s novel is well written, engaging, and thought provoking. There were a few moments where I held my breath as I read the outcome of a situation, and at least once where I stay up far too late plowing through chapters eager to learn what happened to a character.
So I guess one could call this a page-turner, even in digital age when my turning of pages is simulated, and I can carry not only this nearly 400-page book but the rest of my digital library (as well as access to online reference materials at the swipe of a finger) with me on a device the size of a slim novella. I truly enjoyed this work of historical fiction and can easily recommend “Sisters in Arms” (Kindle | Paperback) to anyone else who enjoys this genre.
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© 2023 Leigh-Anne Dennison, writer. All rights reserved. Inclusion of the book’s cover art falls under the fair use doctrine of the United States copyright statute, when reviewing a literary work.
