This was the diciest job in the whole armaments factory, but this Rosie was up to the task. She hoisted the shell with delicate skill. It was heavy, and frightening. You had to have nerves of steel, but this Rosie could do it. Her job was to lift a hundred shells per shift, each weighing a ton, from the rolling bench to the drilling machine. The Rosie steeled her courage. She could do it! When her sweetheart had been shipped off to fight in Europe, Jane the riveter had summoned up her courage and volunteered at the war office. Now she found herself working ten hours a day in this factory. She knew the dangers of her work. She did the same task over and over every day, knowing it might go terribly wrong at any moment. She was paid a pittance; just a few dollars for all those long days. But it was all to help the Allies put a stop to the conflict that was tearing Europe apart. Jane the riveter clenched her fists. She wanted to do it, and she knew she could do it, and they would win.
Over six million women had joined the effort to support the Allied Forces. Women had come from all across North America to help their men die for their homelands. These men had been conscripted and enlisted in the armed forces to go and fight against the enemies of freedom. All the women who worked in the textile factories had been redeployed to the armaments and munitions industries. For many of them, like Jane loading shells into the drilling machine, the work was dangerous. If the bomb went off in her hands, she would leave this world far too soon. But it would only be a drop in a vast ocean of explosives, for there were munitions factories running at full tilt all across the country. If they were to free Europe from the yoke of the Third Reich, they needed power in their corner.
Jane the Riveter lifted a shell with care, and set it gently on the feeder tray for the drilling machine. She waited a few moments for the holes to be made. Now she had to set it in a wooden crate, nose pointing up. Everything would then be transported by boat to the UK, to be detonated somewhere in Germany. It was a brutal war, a horrible thing, with millions of innocent men dying every year. Jane concentrated. She did not have time to think about her sweetheart. In his last letter he’d told her about landing on the beaches of Normandy, in France. Jane the Riveter recalled the letter, whose lines she knew almost by heart: “Every puddle of blood I saw on the beaches of Normandy made me think of you. There were so many dead men, it was like a graveyard dug up by a thunderstorm. The German gunners shot us down like rabbits. We were trapped in hell during the landings. The soldiers fell screaming, begging God for mercy, calling for their wives or their mommas. So many of them boys had no idea what kind of hell they were wading into. Dodging bullets that whizzed all around us, trying not to get pinned against the shore barriers the Nazis had set up. War is a terrible place. I love you so much...”
Jane pulled off her bandana. She was proud to be a Rosie. The Allies would win this war, she knew – but if it weren’t for all those women, over six million of them, who had helped the soldiers land in France, if it hadn’t been for all those Rosies who’d stood up to do their part, perhaps America would never have been able to join the fight. Jane took a deep breath, and clenched her fists.
After all, wasn’t she a Rosie?
Alan Alfredo Geday