WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Mary Bankston, Mary Barlow, Dolores Brown, and Elizabeth Richardson are the only women interred at the Normandy American Cemetery in France. Although women were not formally allowed to serve in the military until 1948, four years after the D-Day invasion, the significant contributions of these four women to the war effort have earned them the distinguished honor of burial at this cemetery.
Bankston, Barlow and Brown were assigned to the Women’s Army Corps 6888 Postal Battalion.
“Their work was to ensure the delivery of mail between the families and the service members,” historian Anthony Folquier said.
Elizabeth Richardson was in the American Red Cross. She was assigned to a “clubmobile” unit, a vehicle placed behind friendly lines so that the service men fighting for the cause could have a short moment of rest.
Richardson would supply the men with newspapers, cigarettes, everyday items; but most importantly she brought them food. In those intervening times, Elizabeth came to be known as the “big sister.”
“Many of these men she met during the war used to share – with her – all the feelings they had such as missing home, missing family, loneliness, fear, anger. Not joyful feedings, but human feedings,” said Folquier.
Richardson did not die on the battlefield. “She was killed [in] a plane accident while she was trying to reach the Red Cross headquarters in Paris. Her plane was taken in a storm, crashed in fog near the city of Rouen in Normandy,” said Folquier. That was July 25, 1945.
“She was a civilian. This is a military cemetery. But for what she did during the war, her family had the same choice and her family decided to have their daughter resting here forever,” said Folquier.
There is no specific order to the arrangement of graves at the Normandy American Cemetery. People of any rank, religion, age or gender are honored equally for the sacrifice they made.