Many of the arguments against women in combat contain the cry that women should not be prisoners of war, but civilian and military women have already been prisoners of war!

• During the Civil War Dr. Mary Walker was held for four months in a Confederate prison camp, accused of being a spy for the Union Army. Doctor Walker is the only woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
• Major Pauline Cushman was arrested and imprisoned by the Confederacy and sentenced to hang for being a spy. The arrival of Union troops saved her from the gallows.
• Belle Boyd (below) spied for the Confederacy by carrying important letters and papers across enemy lines. She was imprisoned in a Union prison for her espionage activities.
• Nancy Hart served as a Confederate scout, guide and spy, carrying messages between the Southern Armies. Nancy was twenty years old when she was captured by the Yankees and jailed. Nancy gained the trust of one of her guards, got his weapon from him, shot him and escaped.
• During World War One both Edith Cavell and Mata Hari were prisoners of war and were executed for being spies.
• Lieutenant Reba Whittle, an Army Flight Nurse was captured by the Germans after her hospital plane was shot down, in 1944.
• Agnes Newton Keith was imprisoned in several Japanese camps from 1941 until the end of the war. Her story was told in the movie
• Ruby Bradley and Beatrice Chambers, captured 28 December 1941.
• Navy nurses that were left behind in Manila after Army evacuates
• Beatrice Kosin was captured and burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972. Remains recovered and returned to U.S.
• Betty Ann Olsen was captured during a raid on the leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during Tet 1968. She died in 1968 and was buried somewhere along Ho Chi Minh Trail by fellow POW, Michael Benge.
• Eleanor Ardel Vietti was captured at the leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot, May 30, 1962. She is still listed as POW.
• Operation Desert Storm saw the capture and imprisonment of an Army Flight Surgeon, Major Rhonda Cornum and an Army Transportation Specialist-Sp4 Melissa Rathbun-Nealy.

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