But, just like the soldiers who rushed into battle risking, and in many cases giving, their lives in defense of the United States, those women are veterans, too.

Women make up about 25 percent of all active duty armed forces, says Carole Turner, deputy director of Nevada's Office of Veteran Services. Of the total veteran population, approximately 7 percent are women.

In Nevada, there are about 24,000 women veterans out of about 300,000 veterans, Turner says.

Many people, including veterans, don't have a clear understanding of what a veteran is, Turner says. A common misconception is that a person must have been in battle to receive the designation of military veteran. And that has led many women veterans to deny themselves the benefits that are provided to those who served in the U.S. military and were honorably discharged.

"I never felt like I was qualified to be called a veteran," says Billie D'Entremont, who served in the Coast Guard during World War II. "I would be at gatherings and people would say 'Would the veterans stand up?' I wouldn't stand up. I thought the people wanted to see these fellows."

Turner hopes to reach out to local women veterans and educate them about their status and benefits.

With Veterans Day coming on Tuesday, the Review-Journal asked five women veterans to share their stories.

BILLIE D'ENTREMONT, YEOMAN 2ND CLASS, U.S. COAST GUARD WORLD WAR II

Billie D'Entremont, now 89, was only 24 when she enlisted in the Coast Guard's Women's Reserve in 1943.

It was only during World War II that the United States started allowing women to serve with some level of military rank and status and in fields other than nursing. But the idea of women in the ranks was controversial; many felt they didn't belong.

That attitude was well-known but didn't deter D'Entremont. Living near Lake Michigan, she developed a deep respect for the Coast Guard, which played an integral part in her city, patrolling the waters.

"I joined because I felt I should be doing something, which was the general opinion of so many people during World War II," she says.

Still, she had no idea what to expect once she left "boot training."

"I remember we were all enthusiastic," she says of her fellow SPARs, the term used to refer to Coast Guard women. "The men's response wasn't exactly great. Fellows would say, 'My sister's not going to join.' People thought we were to go in to be pleasant to the men."

Once, while walking down the street in her uniform, some women spit at D'Entremont.

"I knew they felt that way but I thought, 'How uninformed.' A lot of people didn't think that was the right thing to do," D'Entremont remembers.

She ended up stationed in Hawaii, where she worked as a medical yeoman, or a receptionist in a doctor's office. After some initial resistance, D'Entremont fit right in.

"I felt sometimes I had to prove myself, but nothing was ever mean spirited. I didn't feel like I was being taken advantage of because I was a woman," she recalls.

The mother of four and grandmother to eight says though she made personal sacrifices to join the military, she never quite considered herself a veteran. That changed in 1995, when she was asked to join a group for women veterans. They visited a naval ship and met the skipper, a woman. She walked up to D'Entremont's group, shook their hands, looked them "square in the eye" and said, "Thank you. If you had not paved the way, I would not be here today."

"From that day on, I felt more like a veteran," she says.

PEGGY RANDLE, CORPSMAN, U.S. NAVY, KOREAN CONFLICT

Peggy Randle, 72, joined the Navy in 1955 hoping to get a little education.

"Which I did. On many levels, believe me," says Randle, who served two years active duty and then seven in the reserves. "I learned pretty quickly we were about as popular as a skunk at a picnic."

Women were still new to the armed forces in the mid-1950s, and Randle remembers how the men accepted them: They didn't.

During boot camp, when Randle and her unit of women marched to the chow hall, male enlistees would line the path. They couldn't talk to the women or say disparaging things, she recalls, but they could certainly give hand signals. And they did.

They were called W.M., for women marines, but the initials took on all kinds of meanings, such as "walking mattress."

"Women who joined the military then were considered whores. But we were a determined group. I'm pretty stubborn, I pretty well stand up for what I believe," Randle says. "If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gone into the service."

Despite the resistance, Randle carved out a memorable service record, working in an operating room and becoming a cross-service medic for the Army and Air Force.

"I like to fly anyway," Randle says of her days flying in helicopters as a medic. "Lifting off in a helicopter with no doors is a real trip. (The military) was fun, I enjoyed it."

For a long time, women veterans didn't get their due, she says, but that's changed in the past few years.

"It has changed for the woman veteran," she says, recounting the time she was at a veteran's memorial celebration and a retired Air Force colonel shook her hand and thanked her for her service. "I was blown away. It left me speechless. All I could think to say was, 'Thank you, sir, for yours.' "

Randle says she's always tried to help those who don't have a voice, and she continues that tradition today in her role with the Women Veterans of Nevada. Once a week, she presides over funeral services for indigent veterans at Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery. Along with other members, Randle gives the veterans a military burial.

"It needs to be done. Someone needs to recognize their service," Randle says.

PAMELA ROBINSON, STAFF SERGEANT, U.S. AIR FORCE, DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM

Though her Vietnam veteran father inspired Pamela Robinson, 48, to join the Air Force in 1979, she was well aware of the path carved by women who preceded her.

"I was always very thankful of the women who went before me. They had it a lot worse than I did," says Robinson, who served as a flight engineer on C-130s.

Though women had come a long way in the military by the time Robinson joined, she still felt some resistance to her sex. The Navy was her first choice, because she thought it would be cool to work aboard a ship. But at that time, she was told women weren't allowed to serve on Navy ships. That actually changed in October 1978, when the Navy began assigning women to noncombatant ships.

Her reasons for joining the military weren't much different from a man's reasons, she says. The economy was bad in the 1970s, gasoline was expensive and jobs were scarce. With job security, the military was very appealing.

"I just thought it was a really cool life, because you got to go out and see the world," she recalls. "We had a lot of kids in the family, so we had to earn our own college money. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, if I serve my country, I could get an education.' "

The Air Force was making a conscious effort to integrate women into male-dominated career fields, Robinson says, so she went into AWACS, Airborne Warning and Control System, flying aboard airplanes that conducted surveillance and searched for enemy aircraft. The job required her to go through basic survival school, prisoner of war training and water survival school. She and 11 men spent a week in the woods, learning to evade capture, how to make an outhouse and how to use a parachute for things other than jumping out of an airplane.

Though she endured some situations that "they call sexual harassment now," Robinson, who left the Air Force in 1991, didn't let that have a negative impact on her service.

"The way I looked at it, when I was in that uniform I wasn't a man or a woman, I was an airman," she says. "When you were a flier, you were a flier, you were a crew member. Not a man or woman."

SARAH JOHNSON-ROBLES, TECHNICAL SERGEANT U.S. AIR FORCE, VIETNAM, DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM

Sarah Johnson-Robles, 56, knows the question is inevitable. When someone discovers that she is an Air Force veteran, they ask her what kind of plane she flew.

"I tell them a BD4D. Big desk, four drawers," says Johnson-Robles, who retired in 1993 after 21 years working in administration.

When she wears her Thunderbirds Polo shirt -- during part of her career, she was assigned to the Thunderbirds Squadron, and once a Thunderbird, always a Thunderbird -- people are more likely to assume she's a military wife and not the veteran.

Still, it seems easier for the women serving in the military today, she says. Gone are the makeup classes in basic training, where women were taught how to apply foundation and blush. Women seem to be respected more, she says.

"Even though I had my records, I had to re-establish my credibility with every new assignment I had in the Air Force," she says. "That attitude has changed."

The Air Force did for Johnson-Robles what it does for a lot of men: It got her out of a small Arizona town where she had no job or education prospects.

SHARON DIXON, STAFF SERGEANT, ARMY NATIONAL GUARD OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

Sharon Dixon, 49, signed up for the Army National Guard thinking she would dedicate one weekend a month plus two weeks a year to the military. Until Sept. 11, 2001.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks, Dixon's Nevada Guard unit was activated and deployed to California for a year. Only four months after returning home, the grandmother and longtime Las Vegan was on her way to Iraq, where, as military police, her unit was charged with the task of guarding prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Dixon's military experience illustrates how far women have come since World War II, when they were restricted to mostly secretarial and nursing jobs. In Iraq, Dixon carried a 9 mm pistol, an M-16 rifle and a shotgun. She performed the same duties as men of her rank; her life was as much at-risk as any other.

"Before we left Washington for Iraq, our first sergeant said some of us wouldn't come back," Dixon remembers.

Only a month after being in the country, Dixon was injured when her truck, carrying nine soldiers, was hit by an explosive device. She sustained a head injury, the effects of which she still suffers from.

She received a Purple Heart but feels like she has to battle the Veteran's Administration over benefits. The men who were on her truck don't seem to have that problem, she says.

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4564.