In honor of the women who served

OMAHA BEACH, France — Women didn’t get much of a mention in the 75th anniversary commemorations of D-Day that focused largely on the fighting exploits of men, yet without them Adolf Hitler wouldn’t have been defeated.

Legions of women built weapons of war that men fought and killed with. By ensuring production of planes, tanks and other material, they freed up men sent into combat on all the fronts of World War II.

Women fought, and died, too. French Resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac was pregnant when she sprang her husband, Raymond, from Nazi captivity in October 1943. Across France, many schools are named after Aubrac, who died in 2007, aged 94.

Women nursed the wounded and comforted the traumatized.

“If I had to do it over just like the boys, I’d serve again,” war nurse Leila Morrison, now 96, said as she came back last week to Normandy, where she served in the 118th Evacuation Hospital after nearly 160,000 men landed in Nazi-occupied France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

“It changed my life completely, my outlook in every direction, and I am so thankful for it,” Morrison told The Associated Press in an interview

In short, women were vital cogs in the Allied and Soviet war machines that eventually overpowered those of Germany and Japan.

“We must depend upon you — upon womanpower,” exhorted a recruitment flyer distributed in Alabama, in February 1942. “Every housewife should ask herself and answer this question: Can I be of greater service in my home or in a war plant?’ ”

Jean Harman, then 17 and already taking flying classes when Japan sprang its surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet, didn’t hesitate to offer up her skills to the WASPs, the pioneering Women Airforce Service Pilots.

Women went on to pilot almost every type of wartime plane, including the massive B-29 Superfortress and swift P-51 Mustangs that safeguarded heavy bombers on raids to Berlin and back.