Despite all the ways to help many women wanted to fight in the war directly. However, the army didn’t except women soldiers. So many women fought as men. At least four hundred women joined the military as Secret Soldiers. They made up names and pretended to be men. These women fought in battles as important and Gettysburg and Antietam. And they were hardly discovered. The ones who were discovered were usually only found out when being treated for wounds or illness. Mary Owen, called John Evans, fought for eighteen months before she was discovered while having a wound treated. Owens was sent back to Pennsylvania. Most of the women who fought in the war went home the same way when it was over, as though it had never happened. A few of these women published diaries or memoirs about their time as a soldier, but many never shared their story.