First in line, a 39-year-old Washington clerk enlists in the Marine Corps
The Marine Corps had never taken a woman into its ranks until Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels approved reserve enlistment for women on August 8, 1918, to free men for combat overseas. Five days later, on August 13, 1918, Opha May Johnson, a 39-year-old civil service clerk born in Kokomo, Indiana, was first in line at Marine Corps Headquarters to sign the papers. She was put to clerical work, managing enlistment records for the women who came in behind her. By year's end, roughly 300 women had followed her into the Reserve.
Johnson was the first woman allowed into a Marine Corps that had excluded women since its founding in 1775, and the roughly 300 women who followed her that year became the institution's first female reservists. Her promotion to sergeant weeks later made her the highest-ranking woman in the Marine Corps during her time in service.
QHow old was Opha May Johnson compared to the typical Marine recruit of 1918?
Johnson enlisted at 39, a good deal older than the teenage and early-twenties men who filled most Marine Corps ranks during World War I. At 39, she was already an experienced civil servant, not a fresh recruit. Rather than combat training, she went straight into clerical work at Headquarters Marine Corps, managing enlistment paperwork for the women who signed up behind her. Her age and clerical background suited her for the desk work the Corps needed filled, work meant to free younger men for the trenches in France.
