We've come a long way....
 

Taken from the Women in Military Service for America Memorial website:

... that for service in the American Revolution, Margaret Corbin, dubbed "Captain Molly," became the first American woman to receive a military pension? At the defense of Ft. Washington, when her husband John Corbin was killed at the cannon, she assumed his post and was wounded. On July 6, 1779, the Continental Congress granted her money equal to one-half pay drawn by a soldier and one suit of clothes. Captain Molly is buried at West Point.



She did it for the same reason the rest of us have served...it was something she believed in her heart was right.
DL