Customer Reviews

Full Metal Corset: Secret Soldiers of the Civil War

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There are at least 100 documented cases of women fighting as men in the Civil War. Rather than tell about any of those, this program went with two very dubious examples. Why? Because they were easy. Both women cashed in with memoirs that are highly exaggerated and fictitious, and the entire DVD program seems to be based primarily on those "novels," while even admitting that they were suspect near the end of the program.

Take Loreta Velasquez. She claimed to have been in the capture of Ft. Donelson in February 1862. All of the Confederates there were surrendered to General Grant except Nathan Bedford Forest's cavalry. Thus, Velasquez, a would-be lieutenant was captured, one must assume. All the officers from there were sent to Camp Chase, then on to Johnson's Island military prison. Neither Velasquez nor her nom de guerre appear on the rolls of either prison. Somehow she turned up at the battle of Shiloh two months later, without explaining how.

Later Velasquez claimed to have become a Confederate spy, now in women's apparel, traveling with apparent ease through the lines. One of her escapades involves her managing to get inside the stockade at Johnson's Island in 1864 to deliver secret messages. But there is no mention of this anywhere else, including the 46 diaries I have from Johnson's Island, or in dozens of prisoner memoirs, or in the Official Records, or in the local newspaper that made special note of female visitors to the prison.

It is unfortunate that there is little mention of the women who actually fought, with some losing their lives in battle. Alas, their accounts would not have been so flashy--or so bogus.

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The cast and crew did a great job bringing to light the stories of two courageous young women in time when courage was common. I knew that women had served, but I was never clear on how they where able to pull off their charade. The constant threat of discovery must have been nerve wracking.

The legions of women veterans and active duty soldiers, sailors and marines are cut from the same cloth as those depicted in the show.

The redneck part of my nature tells me that war and combat are domains of and for men, but experience tells me this is not the case.

Of one thing I am sure. A woman's place is anywhere she wants to be, and always has been.