Warrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism

So George Clemenceau, then mayor of Montmartre, recalled the women of the Paris Commune who manned the barricades at France's republican uprising of 1871. Fighting to the last under a relentless bombardment as government troops stormed the city, they died like men too. History has seen many such arts of courage, daring, and self-sacrifice by women like these. These traits are to be found today, in the opening years of the 21st century, in such women as US Army helicopter pilot Major Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs when her Black Hawk was shot down in Iraq in 2004 and Colonel Martha McSally who flew A-10 ground-attack missions in Afghanistan and became the first woman to command a United States Air Force combat squadron.