This poster, depicting a telegraph from a wounded sweetheart at the battlefront, suggests that women enlisted in the Navy to support their male loved ones, as an act of patriotic duty. Undoubtedly, this motivated many women to join, but women joined for other reasons, too. Some women had never left their hometowns and yearned for the excitement of travel, jobs and new friends. Others joined to escape unfulfilling, low-paying jobs, the isolation of an "empty nest" or the routine of full-time housework.