"They Work Too Hard"

The WAACs training on the elm-shaded Fort Des Moines parade ground were dead serious. In the classroom they took notes on everything but the instructor's "Good Morning." They saluted so often, so insistently that visiting regular Army officers had to use liniment on the arms that returned those salutes.

The soldiers in skirts were evidence that creation of a skirted auxiliary was a shrewd Army move. When first the WAACs rolled into Fort Des Moines the burden of proof was on them. They had to prove that: 1) they were emotionally suited to Army life; 2) they were adaptable enough to take to the Army's ways and like them; 3) they were intelligent enough to master what they had to learn in a brief six weeks.

They are proving out. "We have only one trouble here," explained lean, benign Don C. Faith, the Fort's colonel-commandant. "They work too hard." Repeatedly the meticulously soft-spoken colonel has warned the WAACs to slow down, to budget their energy.

No Guardhouse. The atmosphere in the WAAC study hall is tense, like that in college before mid-year exams. They study overtime (sometimes risking demerits for reading under the red EXIT lights in the barracks after taps).

They drill after sundown in small groups, grimly determined to pivot smartly on the command of "Squads right." They swallow their bitterest potion--barrack life, bunk to bunk--without a murmur on the invasion of their privacy. (One WAAC did use her weekend liberty two weeks after induction to take a large double room in the Fort Des Moines Hotel and sit happily alone in the middle of it.) For four hours a day, for a full day and a half at week's end the WAACs can do what they please. When the study hall closes at 7 p.m. until taps at n they are free to don their fanciest clothes and do the town. That generally means a visit to a neon-lighted eatery in Des Moines.

They may date enlisted men and noncommissioned officers until they are graduated. Dates with officers must wait until they are officers themselves. But no WAAC has yet been disciplined for conduct unbecoming an officer candidate. No recalcitrant WAAC will be sent to the guardhouse. Svelte, smart, serene Oveta Hobby, the director, suggests: "Dock'em." Colonel Faith's idea: "Curtail their privileges."

Fort Des Moines's student population is 800 officer candidates and 500 auxiliaries (privates). Barracks and training facilities can handle 1,300. Semi-permanent buildings are mushrooming to house 3,100 more by mid-September. The brick stables, last vestige of the days when Fort Des Moines belonged to the cavalry, are being made over into barracks. Last week the Army took over three hotels in Des Moines to take care of 2,000 additional auxiliary specialists.

By December the school will be graduating 1,000 WAACs, enrolling as many new ones, each week. By April 1943, the present 25,000 quota of the WAAC will be filled.

Where the WAACs will fit into the Army remains to be seen. Some of the subjects now in the curriculum: Army cooking, motor transport, aircraft spotting, close-order drill, use of civilian and military maps, practice in gas mask use, leadership, organization of the Army and the WAAC, methods of training and, above all, company administration and property accountability.

But one WAAC has been trying to get official sanction for a class in jujitsu, and another has growled: "We ought to issue each and every WAAC a Garand [rifle]."

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