The Women's Army Corps (WAC; ) was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), on 15 May 1942, and converted to an active duty status in the Army of the United States as the WAC on 1 July 1943. Its first director was Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby. The WAC was disbanded on 20 October 1978, and all WAC units were integrated with male units.
History
World War I During World War I, the American Expeditionary Force was experiencing a manpower shortage. And various army officials, like General Pershing saw women as a solution. Women were hired as contract workers - as telegraph operations, drivers and for administrative duties. There was much criticism of how unorganized the women were, especially in comparison to the British Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. In August of 1918, Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord proposed recruiting 5,000 women and establishing a women's service corps as part of the Army Service Corps. The War Department responded that it was not feasible, but did loosen rules on hiring women for civilian employment. Similar proposals were sent by the commanders of nearly all the Army support branches. The Army was frustrated by the lack of Congressional support, especially since the Navy was enlisted female Yeomen at the time with full military status.
Interwar years In 1920, the army created the Director of Women's Services under the Chief of Staff for Personnel and named Anita Phipps to the position. The position served mainly as liaison between the army and the families of servicemen. Phipps drew up plans to create a women’s organization within the army. She did research on the Navy and British women’s organizations during World War I. Phipps sent questionnaires to all corps areas and territorial departments and found that they felt a wartime army would need female clerks, secretaries, telephone operators, laundry workers, cooks, janitors, drivers, messengers, seamstresses and laborers. She would leave the position in 1931. The War Department stated that women in the army were not currently needed and wouldn’t be unless there was a major emergency.
At the same time, the army appointed a chief planner for a women’s corp in 1928 - Major Everett S. Hughes. He slowly gained the attention of Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts. He too produced a plan that was shelved.
On 1 September 1939, Gen. George C. Marshall asked for a plan from the G-1 to study integrating women into the army, but with the caveat that women must not be given full military status and it was suggested the Civilian Conservation Corps would be the ideal model. The CCC was a uniformed military style organization, with grades of rank, under the orders of Army officers, in the Army's chain of command and under War Department regulations. The plan - like the Phipps and Hughes plans was quietly put away.
First steps In the spring of 1941, Edith Nourse Rogers, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, informed then Chief of Staff of the Army General George C. Marshall that she intended to introduce a bill to create an all-female military branch. Within one month, her idea was accepted and the issue of the bill (H.R. 4906) planned for by the U.S. Department of War. The motives of the planners were made clear in a staff memorandum from the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, who wrote:
Initially, Colonel James Taylor and Major Robert W. Berry planned for women to be inducted into the army as civilians into a branch called the Women's Army Auxiliary Force (WAAF), in order to avoid repeating errors made during World War I. Their plan stated,
The WAAF was later renamed as the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), to more closely match the British World War I organization.
Statutory origin The first authorized woman's organization, other than the Army Nurse Corp., in the history of the United States was the woman's Army Auxiliary Corp, created by an Act of Congress May 14, 1942, PL 554, 77th Congress and established by executive order of the President the following day.The Officer's Guide of the Army of the United States, 9th Edition 1943, pgs. 53-62 The Act stated that the WAAC was "with" the Army rather than "in" the Army. According to the Army Officer's Guide of the time, "{to} all intents and purposes it functions much like any other branch of the service, with certain differences, however, concerning benefits, privileges, administration of well-being and discipline and, at first, of Pay"
On 28 May 1941, Rogers introduced the bill (H.R. 4906) providing for a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. She stated:
Major Berry and other officers of the G-1 Division planned a women's organization of 25,000 that would not be a part of the army but it would work with the army, and would be exclusive of the Army Nurse Corps.
The planners noted:
Colonel John H. Hilldring, the G-1 stated in an interview after the war:
General Marshall wrote to Congress in April 1942:
Lieutenant Colonel Gillman C. Mudgett had been assigned by the War Department in December 1941 to plan to create the WAAC.
The senate approved Public Law 77-554 (H.R. 6293) on 14 May 1942 and was enacted on 15 May 1942.
Building the WAAC The WAAC was modeled after comparable British units, especially the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), which caught Marshall's attention.Bernard A. Cook, Women and war: a historical encyclopedia from antiquity to the present (2006). Volume 1. p. 242. On 16 May 1942, Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby took oath as the director of WAAC. The training of WAAC was first conducted on 20 July 1942 at Fort Des Moines Provisional Army Officer Training School. Women studied field sanitation, first aid, military customs and courtesy, map reading, defense against chemical attack, defense against air attack, marching and drill, physical training, guard duty, company administration, army supply and mess management. On 29 August 1942 the first officer class of 436 WAAC officers graduated, including Charity Adams Earley, the first African-American female commissioned officer in the U.S. Army.
The first enlisted WAAC auxiliaries started training 17 August 1942, and the Army hoped that 450 WAACs would graduate each week freeing up that many men for combat duties.
The WAAC were first trained in three major specialties based on competence. The brightest and nimblest were trained as switchboard operators. The following set of members were mechanics, who were required to have a high degree of mechanical aptitude and problem solving ability. The bakers were usually the lowest scoring recruits. The workforce was later expanded to include several other professions such as postal clerks, stenographers, and clerk-typists. WAC armourers maintained and repaired small arms and heavy weapons that they were not allowed to use. However, most of the enlisted WACs were assigned in clerical duties.
A physical training manual titled You Must Be Fit was published by the War Department in July 1943, aimed at bringing the women recruits to top physical standards. The manual begins by naming the responsibility of the women: "Your Job: To Replace Men. Be Ready to Take Over."W. A. C. Field Manual Physical Training (FM 35-20). War Department, 15 July 1943. United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. It cited women's commitment to the war effort in Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan, and emphasized that the WAC recruits must be physically able to take on any job. The fitness manual was state-of-the-art for its day, with sections on warming up and progressive body-weight strength-building exercises for the arms, legs, stomach, neck and back. It included a section on designing a personal fitness routine after basic training and concluded with "The Army Way to Health and Added Attractiveness" with advice on skincare, make-up, and hairstyles.
Inept publicity and the poor appearance of the WAAC/WAC uniform, especially in comparison to that of the other services, handicapped recruiting efforts. A resistance by senior Army commanders was overcome by the efficient service of WAACs in the field, but the attitude of men in the rank and file remained generally negative and hopes that up to a million men could be replaced by women never materialized. The United States Army Air Forces became an early and staunch supporter of regular military status for women in the army. Nearly 40,000 WACs served in the Army Air Forces and were informally called "Air-WACs." In 1943, Major Betty Bandel was made the Air WAC Officer in charge.
In September 1945, the total strength of WAC was 86,541, among them 5,694 were officers, 60 were warrant officers and 80,787 were enlisted personnel. While the conservative opinion in the leadership of the Army was initially opposed to women serving in uniform, as was public opinion, the shortage of men necessitated a new policy.
While most women served stateside, some went to various places worldwide, including Europe, North Africa, and New Guinea. For example, WACs landed on Normandy Beach just a few weeks after the initial invasion. One of the most famous WAAC/WAC units to serve in the North African and Mediterranean theaters was the 6669th Headquarters Platoon, assigned to Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army. The unit consisted of 10 telephone operators, 16 clerk-typists, 10 stenographers, seven clerks, and one administrative clerk.
Slander campaign
In 1943 the recruiting momentum stopped and went into reverse as a massive slander campaign on the home front challenged the WACs as sexually immoral. Many soldiers ferociously opposed allowing women in uniform, warning their sisters and friends they would be seen as lesbians or prostitutes. Surveys found that the majority of Army enlisted soldiers thought that women of "poor quality" became WACs, and would tell sisters or girlfriends to not join; only 17% or less would tell them to become WACs. 72% of civilian women in a 1944 Gallup Poll said that Army men had influenced them to not enlist. Criticism of WACs also came from other women: Servicemen and officer's wives' idle gossip, local women who disliked the newcomers taking over "their town", female civilian employees resenting the competition (for both jobs and men), charity and volunteer organizations who resented the extra attention the WAACs received, and complaints and slander spread by disgruntled or discharged WAACs. One WAC recruiting officer said that at her post, many believed that Army women had deserted husbands and children to consort with male soldiers. Many civilians described WACs at local bases as heavy drinkers who frequently slept with men. Alternately, wanting to become a WAC was regarded as a possible proof of lesbianism, or of conversion by the WAC into such; one female reporter wrote of her surprise that Hobby looked feminine, and not "an unmarried woman with ... a Gertrude Stein haircut".