Word: waacs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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...
...When the WAAC was first organized, Congress grudgingly admitted that women could do 54 different Army jobs; under Oveta's constant nudging, they eventually came to fill 239 types of jobs-almost the whole sweep of noncombatant military duties. When the WAC was a year old, she proudly escorted Commander in Chief Franklin Roosevelt on his first full-dress review of the Corps. By 1944, WAC headquarters had requests for 600,000 women-more than three times the authorized strength of the Corps-from commanders all over the world...
...simply listed the lady lieutenant colonel's schools (Boyles Business College, Omaha, Neb., the University of Maryland Extension in Heidelberg, Germany), her record in ten years in uniform (her present post: chief of the WAC Training Center, Fort Lee, Va.) and her medals (Commendation Ribbon, Army of Occupation WAAC; American Theater and European Theater Ribbons, World War II). The present director's comment on her successor-"wholesome, energetic and efficient" -was also regular (male generals usually refer to their successors as "fearless, brilliant and dynamic"). But it was evident, nevertheless, that WAC brass is still feminine in exercising...