From fierce onna-bugeisha to army brat turned army general, here are 10 badass female soldiers
and warriors.
10.
THE ‘LIMPING LADY’
Born in 1906 to a wealthy Baltimore family, Virginia Hall longed for adventure and instead
of marrying and settling down among the privileged class she was born into, she pursued a career.
Even after losing her leg in a hunting accident and requiring a heavy wooden prosthesis, Hall
became an ambulance driver for the French army.
She eventually crossed paths with a British Intelligence officer who connected her with
training to become a spy in the newly created Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Posing as a reporter, Hall conducted interviews and gathered intelligence for the SOE.
Despite her conspicuous limp, which eventually earned her the nickname “the limping lady
of Lyon.”
She initially managed to evade the Gestapo’s suspicions by playing on their sexist belief
that women were incapable of being spies.
The quick-thinking amputee established reliable connections and used clever disguises to quietly
organize a powerful underground resistance movement and smuggle crucial intelligence
reports.
She even managed to break 12 fellow agents out of an internment camp without being captured.
As suspicions grew and the war intensified, Hall fled France, only to return under the
Special Operations Branch of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
While there, she proved imperative to the resistance movement, calling in airdrops for
fighters who went deep into France and reclaimed territory before the Allies advanced into
the region.
After the war Hall worked for the CIA and never spoke publicly about her critical contributions
to the Allied war effort.
Her heroic accomplishments have only come under the spotlight in recent years.
9.
NAKANO TAKEKO
Throughout Japan’s history, very few women have held the distinction of becoming a samurai.
These onna-bugeisha, or women warriors, were trained in martial arts, strategy, and other
useful aspects of warfare.
Nakano Takeko was born into a powerful samurai family.
She followed in her father’s footsteps and became a martial arts instructor during the
1860s.
After a civil war known as the Boshin War broke out in 1868, she refocused her efforts
to defend the Tokugawa shogunate against those fighting for the restoration of the Meiji
empire.
At a time when women were not allowed to fight, 21-year-old Takeko became the leader of an
ad hoc group of female warriors who fought in the Battle of Aizu without official recognition
from the army.
The independent unit later became known as the Jōshitai, which translates to the “women’s
army.”
Using her weapon of choice -- a Japanese polearm called a naginata -- Takeko fought alongside
her mother, sister, and other brave women, including the famous onna-bugeisha Yamamoto
Yaeko.
Just as male warriors did, they courageously confronted the Japanese Imperial Army through
rain, sleet, and other unfavorable conditions.
One early morning, Nakano led a charge against enemy forces, whose commanders ordered them
not to kill the women.
Using their reluctance as an opportunity to attack, the female fighters killed several
Imperial soldiers.
Nakano killed five or six troops with her naginata before the gunfire resumed and she
was fatally shot in the chest.
As her dying wish, Nakano asked her sister Yūko to decapitate her to prevent the enemy
from taking possession of her corpse or using her head as a war trophy.
She also requested an honorable burial, to which Yūko agreed.
Nakano’s head was buried beneath a pine tree at Hōkai temple in modern-day Fukishima
prefecture.
8.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL MARCELLA A. HAYES NG
Marcella Ng, born Marcella Ann Hayes, was born in Mexico, Missouri in 1956 and she was
raised by her grandparents.
She enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, better known as the ROTC, during her
second semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and joined the Army after graduating in 1978.
The following year, in 1979, Hayes completed helicopter flight training at the U.S. Army
Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama, making her the first African-American woman in the
U.S. military to earn her aviator wings.
She accomplished this remarkable feat at 23 years old and after being in the Army for
just one year, and went on to attend and graduate jump school.
After meeting her husband, Dennis Ng, at flight school and marrying in 1980, the pioneering
pilot became the first woman and the first African-American soldier to be assigned to
the 394th Transportation Battalion.
Ng enjoyed a successful 22-year military career despite hitting some snags along the way,
even losing her flight status at one point when her superiors told her she didn’t meet
the standards.
But she regained her ability to fly and was even selected for several company command
positions in Korea and the U.S., including the 49th Transportation Battalion at Fort
Hood in Texas.
7.
LOZEN
Born during the 1840s, Lozen was the sister of a prominent Apache chief named Victorio,
whose tribe was forced onto a deplorable reservation in Arizona nicknamed “Hell’s Forty Acres”
during the 1870s.
Lozen was among a band of followers who left the reservation with Victorio in 1877 and
returned to their stolen land in New Mexico, raiding and marauding American settlers along
the way while avoiding military capture.
Victorio described his sister as his “right hand … strong as a man, braver than most,
and cunning in strategy.
Lozen is a shield to her people.”
But she also had a sympathetic side, as evidenced by her decision to lead a group of terrified
women and children to safety across the Rio Grande River as they fled from American forces.
Later in the campaign, Victorio died in battle while Lozen escorted a mother and her newborn
across the arid Chihuahuan Desert to an Apache reservation.
She avoided detection by Mexico and U.S. Cavalry forces by using a knife instead of a gun to
kill and butcher a longhorn and even stole two horses, narrowly avoiding gunfire in her
mission to ensure the mother and baby’s safety.
Upon learning of her brother’s death, Lozen rode through the desert alone on horseback,
sneaking past military patrols to reach the battle’s survivors.
She spent the rest of her life fighting for her people and later fought alongside Geronimo
in the Apache Wars.
When Geronimo surrendered, the U.S. military took Lozen as a prisoner of war.
She died in captivity from tuberculosis in 1889.
6.
‘LADY DEATH’
Born in 1916 in what is now Ukraine, Lyudmila Pavlichenko had her own child at just 16 years
old, but she did not let being a young mother get in the way of her ambitions.
On top of raising a child, working at a factory, and attending university, Pavlichenko somehow
found the time to attend sniper school under the Red Army.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Pavlichenko was one of the first to
volunteer to join the infantry.
She was ultimately assigned to the 25th Rifle Division as one of the Red Army’s 2,000
female snipers.
Pavlichenko recorded 187 kills in just two-and-a-half months during the siege of Odessa.
She went on to become history’s most successful female sniper, amassing 309 confirmed kills
throughout World War II, including 36 Axis snipers.
After being hit in the face with shrapnel from a mortar during the siege of Sevastopol,
Pavlichenko was evacuated by submarine and spent a month in the hospital.
This marked the end of her career on the front lines, and after she recovered, she spent
the rest of the war as a Red Army propagandist and training snipers for combat.
After the war ended, Pavlichenko returned to university and became a historian.
But after losing her husband in combat, she was plagued by depression, post traumatic
stress disorder, and alcoholism, which may have contributed to her early death at age
just 58.
5.
KHUTULUN
Khutulun was the daughter of the 13th-century Mongol king Kaidu, who was Kublai Khan’s
cousin and one of central Asia’s most powerful rulers, and she was the great-great-granddaughter
of Ghenis Khan.
As a skilled archer, horsewoman, and wrestler, Khutulun had a reputation for her strength
and fighting skills.
Nicknamed the “wrestler princess,” she grew rich from her victories in the ring.
She’s rumored to have said that any man who wanted to marry her had to first defeat
her in a wrestling match.
Khutulun also became known for her ferocity on the battlefield.
She rode into battle alongside her father, defending the steppes of western Mongolia
and Kazakhstan against the Yuan Dynasty of her cousin Kublai Khan.
European explorer Marco Polo reportedly described her as a top-notch fighter who was capable
of snatching a captive from enemy ranks as skillfully and fast as a hawk snatches a chicken.
Khutulun was her father’s favorite child and was slated to become his successor, but
was superseded by male relatives.
But even without inheriting the title of ruler, she went down in history and is perhaps even
better remembered than her siblings.
4.
SERGEANT SHERRI GALLAGHER
California native Sherri Gallagher was born into a family of expert shooters, so it’s
only natural that she learned how to use a rifle at just five years old and frequently
attended shooting competitions long before she enlisted in the military.
In fact, Gallagher’s passion for the sport is what led to her joining the Army.
After she won several awards, including the World Long Range Shooting Championship and
the National Rifle Championship, the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights Parachute Team invited
her to guest jump; after the jump, they invited her to enlist, according to the Foundation
for Women Warriors.
Gallagher joined the Army in 2008.
And just two years later, in 2010, she received her first nomination for Soldier of the Quarter
based on her marksmanship and went on to become the first woman to win the Soldier of the
Year competition.
Gallagher has amassed numerous awards from shooting championships.
During her tour in Afghanistan, Gallagher taught basic marksmanship to female soldiers.
She went on to receive several more military awards, including the President’s Hundred
Tab, Basic Airborne Wings, a Meritorious Service Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, and four
Army Achievement Medals.
3.
FU HAO
Fu Hao, a priestess and one of the many wives of the Shang Dynasty king Wu Ding, became
the first known female general in Chinese history.
This happened aout 3,000 years ago, when women of her social ranking had only ever served
as high priestesses.
She began her rise to power when she became one of Wu Ding’s three consorts and the
secondary queen among his 64 wives.
The king entrusted Lady Hao to conduct important rituals and sacrifices that he had ultimate
authority over and which were typically off-limits to women, and he also gave her considerable
military power.
Artifacts found in Fu Hao’s tomb at the Yinxu archaeological site in central China’s
Henan province reveal that she was a general who led several major military campaigns for
the Shang Dynasty in a bid to conquer enemies and neighboring territories.
With two high-ranking generals and as many as 13,000 soldiers serving under her, Fu Hao
controlled a very powerful army.
She defeated the Tu-Fang in a single battle generations after their fighting against the
Shang Dynasty started.
Another one of Fu Hao’s campaigns, against the ancient neighboring state of Ba, is considered
the earliest recorded large-scale ambush in Chinese history.
Around 2,000 items were found in Fu Hao’s tomb, including 100 weapons and numerous oracle
bone inscriptions, which offer limited insight into her life and military career.
Researchers only know what they’ve learned from the grave goods because the Shang Dynasty
preceded the invention of paper and any other records may have been destroyed over time.
But the objects are enough to show that Lady Hao was an impressive figure who managed to
defy tradition in unprecedented ways.
2.
FIRST FEMALE FOUR-STAR GENERAL
As a stereotypical “Army brat” whose father was a career army officer, Ann Dunwoody spent
her childhood moving from place to place.
She initially had no plans to pursue military service, but nevertheless found herself on
that path after attending a four-week Army introductory program, which led to her full
commitment in 1975.
Dunwoody became a fourth-generation Army officer and achieved several firsts as a female soldier.
Starting in 1992 during the First Gulf War, she became the first woman to command a battalion
in the 82nd Airborne Division.
She was humble about the promotion, stating “I have never considered myself anything
but a soldier.
I recognize that with this selection, some will view me as a trailblazer.
But it’s important that we remember the generations of women, whose dedication, commitment
and quality of service helped open the doors of opportunity for us today.”
In 2000, Dunwoody became Fort Bragg’s first female general officer; then, in 2004, she
became the first woman to command the Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, Virginia.
Dunwoody’s biggest accomplishment came in 2008, when she became the first woman in U.S.
military history to achieve the rank of four-star general.
From then until shortly before her retirement in 2012, she served as the Commanding General
of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
In addition to these impressive titles, Dunwoody advocated strongly for a significant reduction
in sexual assault within the U.S. Army, an ongoing issue that comes with disproportionately
high statistics.
1.
VELU NACHIYAR
As a child growing up in southern India’s Ramnad Kingdom during the 18th century, Rani
Velu Nachiyar trained in martial arts and learned how to use weapons and fight on horseback.
She grew up to become queen of the Sivaganga estate, also known as the Kingdom of the Lesser
Marava.
Nachiyar’s husband and daughter were killed when the British invaded her kingdom in 1772,
prompting her to form an army and fight back against the intruders.
She formed an alliance with Hyder Ali, the Sultan of a neighboring kingdom, and launched
a campaign against the East India Company in 1780, making Velu Nachiyar the first Indian
queen to take up arms against the company.
After learning where the EIC stored some of its ammunition, she orchestrated a suicide
attack by covering one of her female followers in oil and having her set herself on fire,
triggering an explosion and depleting the enemy of critical supplies.
Nechiyar secured a victory against the British and continued to rule the kingdom for another
decade, until her daughter Vellacci inherited the throne in 1790.
Historian Kirti Narain, helped to bring Nechiyar’s under told story to light in recent years
after uncovering forgotten records documenting the efforts of women who fought to free India
from British rule.
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