Bourges
“Mademoiselle Miss” From Iowa Works WWI French Munitions Plant
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“I have never had a sheet of paper mussed, a chair put out of place or lost the slightest object,” said Tama, Iowa, native Helen Jackson as she spoke about the women she oversaw at a munitions factory near Bourges, France, in 1918. A 1917 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Jackson held a degree in oratory and was working as a playground director in St. Louis when the director of the YWCA offered her a position in France. Iowa History, a weekly column, appears at IowaWatch on Saturdays. Cheryl Mullenbach is the author of non-fiction books for young people.