Glamor in Arms

Last week Britain's armed forces got their youngest and sweetest general. Mrs. Jean Knox, 33, a neat brunette with quick blue eyes and smileable lips which she colors vermilion, took over as Chief Controller (feminine counterpart of Major General) of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (feminine counterpart of the Army*).

Jean Knox's advancement had been spectacular. In three years she rose from the rank of happy housewife, cooking and sewing for her R.A.F. squadron-leader husband and her 14-year-old daughter in her country home in Hertfordshire, first to plain volunteer, then to Chief A.T.S. Recruiter, then to idea-woman, inspecting camps, grooming lady officers, clearing up gaffs such as the male Army command referring to A.T.S. passes: "Members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service will show their pink forms whenever called upon to do so." Last week, as Chief Controller, she became Britain's top-ranking A.T.

She replaced a veteran hatchet of war, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, 62, who typified the terrifying old guard among Britain's womanhood just as the red-faced cavalry general did Britain's manhood.

But young Jean Knox is entirely different.

Jean Knox knows that it is not enough for women of the A.T.S. to feel they are freeing men for active service, not enough to sit at a teletypewriter, be a clerk in a canteen, help run a searchlight, run errands at headquarters, cook Army meals, work rangefinders, decode messages--not enough to man a military job: they must also occasionally do a job on a military man. Accordingly she wants her women to be as attractive as they are efficient.

Jean Knox's formula for womanly morale: "No woman can be happy in her job unless she's well-dressed." Her first plans last week were to redesign the A.T.S.' ungainly bell skirt, do away with Mrs. Bloomer's famed undergarment. She instructed camp tailoresses: "Take an inch up on the shoulder, raise the shoulder line, shorten sleeves, give more wrapover in front. . . ." Busting tradition as wide open as the male generals who tolerated tanks in place of horses, she made rayon panties standard equipment for the A.T.S.

Jean Knox wants to increase the efficiency, prestige and numbers of A.T.S. There are now 50,000. She wants 150,000 by Christmas, 200,000 next year. If she has her way they will be very useful in the terrible war against Hitler--without forgetting all about that nice war between the sexes.

* Feminine counterpart of the Navy: the "Wrens" (Women's Royal Naval Service); of the R.A.F.: the W.A.A.F. (Women's Auxiliary Air Force).

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