"My Best Soldiers"

THE WOMEN'S ARMY CORPS (841 pp.) --Lieut. Colonel Mattie E. Treadwell--The Department ot the Army ($6.25).

Before Pallas Athene sprang full-armored from his brow, Zeus had a dreadful headache. The U.S. Army had worse headaches getting the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which adopted Pallas Athene as its symbol, dressed and going. But it was worth it.

How the WAAC (later the WAC) fought to make a place for itself, how it verged on humiliating failure and how success finally came, is told with bold candor and fine humor in the Army's official history of the corps.

Symbol of Virtue. The person most responsible for the WAAC was Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, one of whose staff officers recalled: "General Marshall shook his finger at me and said, T want a women's corps right away and I don't want any excuses!' " The bill creating the WAAC was passed by Congressmen May 14, 1942, over anguished opposition (cried a Representative: "Think of the humiliation! What has become of the manhood of America?"). Mrs. Oveta Gulp Hobby, a Houston publisher, was sworn in as WAAC director. Notes the book: "Her wide-brimmed hat proved unreasonably difficult to photograph."

Mrs. Hobby had headed the WAAC's preliminary planning program, which included the unhappy task of designing a corps uniform. The members of her staff, says the history, "faithfully wore sample undergarments while carrying on preplanning ; male planners offered their best guesses in the matter, and the staff became accustomed, as one member noted, to 'seeing Lieut. F. stalk through the office with a cigar in one hand and a pair of pink panties in the other.' " The heraldic section of the Quartermaster General's office submitted designs for insignia. A first attempt "produced only a busy-bee-like insect, which Mrs. Hobby pronounced a bug, adding that she had no desire to be called the queen bee. Designers then hit upon the idea of a head of Pallas Athene, a goddess associated with an impressive variety of womanly virtues and no vices either womanly or godlike."*

At last the first class of WAACs gathered at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. "More was learned about women's uniforms than had been discovered in the past six months of research . . . When WAACs walked or marched, the skirts climbed well above the knee unless a desperate grip on the skirt was substituted for the required arm swing. Shrieks of dismay arose as the women tried on the WAAC caps, uncharitably christened 'Hobby hats.' " It soon became apparent that the WAAC difficulties were far more serious than had at first been thought. Items:

P: A vicious slander campaign threatened the existence of the WAAC, reaching its climax when New York Daily News Columnist John O'Donnell wrote (falsely) that WAACs were being issued contraceptives because "Mrs. Roosevelt wants all the young ladies to have the same overseas rights as their brothers and fathers."

P: With a premature attempt to expand the WAAC organization, physical and moral admittance requirements plunged, e.g., at least 30 pregnant women passed the physical examination for admittance.

P: The WAAC did not have full military status. Even the chaplains had to have special permission to distribute to WAACs the New Testaments that were issued routinely to servicemen. Moreover, WAACs who went overseas had no hospitalization or death benefits, and overseas volunteers were looked on as specially brave. Once, when Mrs. Hobby asked for volunteers, "there were 300 women in the room, of whom 298 volunteered upon the instant. At this, Director Hobby was unable to continue speaking and hastily sought privacy in a broom closet."

Congress did its best to remedy the situation by giving the WAAC full military status. The WAAC became the WAC. Nonetheless, in August 1943 nationwide recruiting fell to 839--and the WAC was on the brink of extinction. Then, into the mind of Captain Jessie P. Rice, a former Georgia schoolteacher and sports reporter, came the idea of the "All-States Plan," under which each state was to recruit a WAC company that would carry the state flag and wear the armband in training. Business was persuaded to help, e.g., Standard Oil Co. of Indiana sent out posters of "The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart" instead of its old sales pitch to "Drain Old Oil Now." Enlistments rose to an average 3,000 a month.

Apples & Atabrine. But even the finest recruiting techniques could not have rescued the WAC had not the women proved themselves in the field. It was discovered that of the 629 listed military occupations, women could perform more than half (instead of the handful of jobs originally contemplated). It had been thought that three women might possibly do the work of two men. Instead, it was demonstrated that three women could stand in for four men on most jobs. In the Far-East, Air General George Stratemeyer was so pleased with the work of the WACs that he authorized them to wear flowers in their hair--much to the distress of the militarily proper WAC officers.

WACs went around the world, did almost everything. There were WAC telephone operators at the Quebec Conference. WACs camped in Normandy apple orchards. WACs in the Southwest Pacific made a green and gold company flag from parachute lining dyed with atabrine and green ink. The WACs who landed in New Guinea furnish a fairly typical case history. Arriving at Port Moresby, they drove to their campsite through lines of fuzzy-haired natives and whistling G.I.s. They found the camp in a state of complete unreadiness, but were saved by a "friendly men's unit" that gave them drinking water, bread and jam. They scavenged crates, nails and broken furniture from a supply dump. New Guinea headquarters, says the history, decreed that "in view of the large number of male troops in the area, some of whom allegedly had not seen a nurse or other white woman in 18 months, WACs would be locked within their barbed-wire compound at all times except when escorted by armed guards." The New Guinea WACs, as everywhere, did their job--in this case mostly mail censorship. Said their male supervisor: "[They] possess an uncanny knack for picking up hidden security breaches."

Permanent Part. As a history, The I Women's Army Corps is not unlike the WAC as an organization: sometimes stumbling over a mass of detail, sometimes clutching self-consciously at its literary skirts, it nevertheless manages to come out smiling and moving ahead at a brisk military pace.

The book leaves no doubt that, after its dismal beginning, the WAC came to be an established and respected branch of the Army. General Douglas MacArthur described the WACs in his command as "my best soldiers." Still another tribute came when the Army Ground Forces command, long the bitter opponent of the women's service, took the lead in urging that the WAC ought to be a permanent part of the Army--and it is.

* She was, however, said to be envious and quick to anger.

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