Army & Navy - Hobby's Army

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In England this week, the U.S. Women's Army Corps had the pleasantly apprehensive experience of being inspected by the Corps' Commanding Officer. Trim Colonel Oveta Gulp Hobby, head woman of the WACs, found everything in order.

She saw erect, well-dressed girls drawn up for parade. In the clammy English dawn, she saw WACs in maroon bathrobes (with boy friends' unit insignia sewn on their sleeves) dashing from tin barracks and scuttling across the mud—heading for the "ablution hut" to start the day with a shivery washup.

There was not much glamor in it, Hobby's army had found out. Living quarters were either huts heated by a single stove, or some drafty English country house. Only a few hundred WACs working in London were lucky enough to live in greater comfort. The pay was low. The hours were long. Discipline was strict. Sometimes there were bombings.

G.I. Jane. By last week 1,170 WACs, dubbed "G.L Janes" in the European Theater of Operations, were undergoing these rigors. Most of them were at General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters and Eighth Air Force stations, where they plotted, teleprinted, operated switchboards, made maps, assessed combat films, "sweated out" missions in flight control rooms.

With dignity and firm morale, they had survived dffficulties due to early mistakes in organization and many other unforeseen obstacles. They had caught on with a speed which amazed U.S. and British officers. They had distinguished themselves as nice-looking, hardworking, cheerful girls. Commanding officers recognized their work by pleading for more of them.

They managed to have some fun; they took in the sights, had more dates than they had ever had in their lives. During occasional air raids, some achieved the WAC ambition: to bolt from barracks, crouch in a slit trench and duck back to bed at the "all clear" without really waking up. Instead of, "What's cooking?" they said, "Nervous in the service?"

From three whole WAC battalions only three Janes had gone A.W.O.L. Chief gripe was "Why should we stay behind when the boys open the second front?"

Chief wonderment was over the tales from home that WAC recruiting had fallen down. They favored conscription for women. They asked: "What's the matter with them? Don't they want to live?"

The Colonel indeed had reason to be proud of her overseas troops, 3,002 of whom were serving in England, North Africa, Egypt, New Caledonia, India.

Like G.I. Joe. At home the women in Hobby's army had turned in an equally good record. The Army had anticipated emotional outbursts, resentment at having to take orders, squawks about living in barracks, feuds and cliques and general troubles with the unpredictable (to men) nature of women. Now at Fort Des Moines, oldest of the three training centers, officers were quick to say that the Army's fears were generally groundless.