Wyoming was the first US state to allow women to vote and first state to have a female governor. How, exactly, did a sparsely populated frontier land of cowboys end up on the cutting edge of gender equality decades ahead of the 19th amendment? In a uniquely Wyoming way, including frontier politics that bamboozled the patriarchs of congress, and what was called at the time the “only thoroughly trained and fully equipped Companies of Girl Guards in the world.”
By September of 1944, the Western Allies had broken out of the Normandy beachehead, and suddenly and quickly moved across northern France . By September 7th, the 90th division was stretched across the northern sector on Patton’s Third Army’s left, advancing slowly northeast. As they did so the German defenders made a risky attack in an effort to spoil the allied advance, cutting through Allied lines in a surprise action at the small town of Mairy-Mannville.