Product Overview
In the summer of 1942, 440 women walked through the stone gate of Fort Des Moines to become the first female military officers in American history. In the months and years to come, thousands of women would follow, serving in non-combat roles in order to free thousands more men to fight on the front lines against totalitarianism during the bloodiest conflict in human history, World War II. Among these women was a red-headed farm girl from Illinois, Carrie Jones LeFew.
Married to a soldier who became Missing in Action when the Philippines fell to the Japanese in May 1942, Carrie joined the Women s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) for the same reason thousands of others did: to do her part to bring the war to a swift end so that her life with the man she loved could begin again. She was assigned duty at Fort Des Moines where she would spend most of the next four years of her life as she moved up the ranks of the military, eventually achieving the officer's rank of captain. Her wartime journal provides a personal and poignant frame for this story of the fort she came to love.
Today, most of the historic fort, once called the West Point of the Midwest, has been demolished. The few remaining original buildings have been renovated and now represent the Fort Des Moines Education and Research Center, which opened in July 2004. The center pays homage to the entire history of Fort Des Moines, from its earliest days as a cavalry post which saw the first African-Americans become army officers to its role as the first home of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in World War II.
My Mother's Fort: A Photographic Tribute to Fort Des Moines, First Home of the Women's Army Corps captures this entire history both through the words of those who served at the fort and hundreds of photographs from its earliest cavalry days to its current renovation. The book is the culmination of over three years of research, including extensive interviews with former WACs and others who lived at the fort, the study of every primary source available on its long history (including many published and unpublished WAC memoirs), and on-site research at the current fort. As a result, this book offers the only comprehensive history and photographic documentation of Fort Des Moines.
