ARMED FORCES: A Woman Scorned

Few World War II WACs went about the business of serving their country with more energy or application than slim, dark-eyed Alba Carmen Martinelli. Alba, one of six children of an immigrant Italian engineer, could speak Italian and French when she quit teaching school in Plymouth, Mass, to join the Army. She learned four more languages—Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Tibetan—studied at Stanford and the University of Virginia, and ended up as a major and an adviser to the Korean government.

She came back to the U.S. in 1948, married a telephone company executive named Loren B. Thompson, whom she had met when he served as a colonel of infantry in the Orient, and settled down as a housewife in East Orange, N.J. But she remained a super-active member of the Army's organized reserve, was often called upon to brief Army units heading for the Far East. Then this spring, she was summarily discharged from the reserves. Reason: she had a baby, thus making herself ineligible under postwar regulations which ban mothers of children under 18 from the service.

The ex-major was outraged. She dispatched a series of protesting letters to Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna Rosenberg. "It is true," the Assistant Secretary wrote back, "that a woman could fulfill her obligations as a membeR of the organized reserve without harm to her relationship with her children. I fear it is not true, however, that a mother could be called to full-time active duty with the armed forces and transferred about the U.S. or . . . overseas, without . . . jeopardizing her children's welfare."

Mrs. Thompson renewed her attack. Last week, before the Senate's Armed Services Committee, she set out to prove that a woman should not be denied the opportunity to serve her country "solely because she performed the function for which our Creator intended her." She argued: "If business, labor and government cannot afford to lose their married women, how can the armed services afford to be so profligate?"

Impressed, Louisiana's Senator Russell B. Long agreed that requiring mothers to leave the reserves seemed wasteful—although he felt they should be allowed to drop out if they wished. At week's end it was obvious that the Army would be a more restful institution if it took mothers back, baby carriages and all, than if it went on facing assaults from lady veterans as well trained as Mrs. Thompson.