Although the Great War lasted four years and included summer and winter campaigns, the image that symbolizes that conflict is one of the soldiers huddled in freezing, mud-filled trenches and civilians in shattered villages, desperately short of food and fuel, sheltering in the basements of bombed-out buildings.  This month’s selections feature stories about intrepid women who tried to help both the soldiers and the civilians caught up in that miserable conflict. We begin with two books that feature a little-known group of women who made an immense contribution to the war effort in the Army Signal Corps.  Jennifer Chiaverini’s SWITCHBOARD SOLDIERS tells the tale of a group of elite women volunteers who answer their country’s call for highly skilled telephone operators to work on the front lines in World War I.  When General Pershing brought Americans to join the fight in June 1917, he immediately recognized the need to establish reliable communication between headquarters and field units.  At the time, most trained telephone operators were women—who were not allowed to join the Army.  As often happens, desperation overrode convention, and the U.S. Signal Corps started recruiting operators fluent in French who were willing to work under dangerous conditions and would…