Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[Pete]

This is off-topic, for Kiwigrunt.

A branch of my family emmigrated from Cork, Ireland to New Zealand circa 1850. They were from an old prominent Anglo-Norman Catholic family that had been stripped of its lands by Cromwell. In 1855 they emmigrated to San Francisco. The first Prendergast there in my line was said to have been the strongest man in San Francisco and he did steel work building the dome of the state capitol building in Sacramento. His son, my great-grandfather, joined a cavalry unit in the California National Guard during the Spanish-American war. He never made it closer to the Spanish than the old Camp Lewis, Washington. Grandma told me he'd scare her mother half to death when he'd get out his Army Colt .45 revolver and fool around with it when he was half-way through a bottle of whisky. "Garry Owen" and all that.