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Women have been history's designated noncombatants. Thus, the story of women and war would seem to be a story of how women have either directly or indirectly been war's victims despite their status as those who mourned or cheered or stalwartly persevered, rather than fought. As with all historical truisms, however, the story of the female noncombatant is not a simple one. There are the inevitable exceptions to the rule— with mythic examples of Amazons and Joan of Arc saints lurking in the background. World War II partisans and resistance fighters, anticolonial guerrillas, Soviet women tactical fighter pilots in World War II, American women loading ordinance or, now, piloting Navy fighter aircraft— all come to mind most immediately.