THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS
"Now every signaller was a fine Waac,
And a very fine Waac was she—e."
"Soldier and Sailor, too."
The Waacs is the name we all know them by and shall, it seems, continue to. It will have to go into future dictionaries beside Anzac.
The deeds of the Anzacs in Gallipoli and France are immortalised in many records—magnificently in John Masefield's "Gallipoli"—an epic in its simplicity. The work of the Waacs is the work of support and substitution and its records only begin to be made.
The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is an official creation of this year. At the Women's Service Demonstration in the Albert Hall in January, 1917, Lord Derby asked for Women for clerical service in the army and official appeals were issued in February and repeatedly since that time, and now all over the country we have Recruiting Committees organizing meetings and securing recruits. They are recruiting at the rate of 10,000 a month.
The Waacs had many forerunners in some of our voluntary organizations, in the Women's Reserve Ambulance, of "The Green Cross Society," attached to the National Motor Volunteers—the Women's Volunteer Reserve—the Women's Legion—the Women's Auxiliary Force and the Women Signallers Territorial Corps. The Women's Signallers Corps had as Commandant-in-Chief Mrs. E.J. Parker—Lord Kitchener's sister. They believed women should be trained in every branch of signalling and that men could be released for the firing line by women taking over signalling work at fixed stations. Their prediction came true more than two years later, for today they are in France. They drilled and trained the women in all the branches of signalling semaphore—flags, mechanical arms; and in Morse—flags, airline and cable, sounder (telegraphy), buzzer, wireless, whistle, lamp and heliograph. They also learned map reading—the most fascinating of accomplishments. This Corps had the distinction of introducing "wireless" for women in England in connection with its Headquarters training school. When one of the Corps later accepted a splendid appointment as wireless instructor at a wireless telegraph college—the Corps was duly elated.
The Women's Reserve Ambulance had the distinction of being the first ambulance on the scene in the first serious Zeppelin Raid in London (September, 1915). They came to where the first bombs fell, killing and wounding, and did the work of rescue, and when another ambulance arrived later, "Thanks," said the police, "the ladies have done this job."
They worked assisting the War Hospital Supply Depots, that wonderful organization run by Miss MacCaul, they provided orderlies to serve the meals and act as housemaids, and make the men welcome at Peel House, one of the Canadian Clubs. Others helped in Hospitals, washing up and doing other work.
Others met and moved wounded—others at night took the soldiers to the Y.M.C.A. huts. The Women's Volunteer Reserve, too, seemed to be everywhere doing all sorts of useful, helpful things—disciplined, ready, and trained. The Women's Legion led the way in providing cooks and waitresses for camps and sent out 1,200 of these inside a year. The first convalescent camp to have all its cooking and serving done by women was managed—admirably, too—by the Women's Legion, so the Waacs had many voluntary forerunners, who are mostly in it and amalgamated with it now.
The Waacs are a part of the Army organization—are in His Majesty's Forces and when a girl joins she is subject to army rules and regulations. They are working now in large numbers in England and in France, at all the base towns, and in quiet places, where things that matter are planned and initiated.
The girl who goes to France knows she is going to possible danger by being handed, before she goes, her two identification discs.
For France, no woman under twenty or over forty is eligible. After volunteering, they are chosen by Selection Boards and medically examined. They receive a grant for their uniforms. The workers wear a khaki coat-frock—a very sensible garment—brown shoes and soft hat and a great coat. At the end of a year they get a £5 ($25) bonus on renewing their contracts, and they get a fortnight's leave in a year.
Their payment is not high—it works out about the same as a soldier's when everything is paid—and that, with us, is just over 25 cents a day, so the khaki girl, like the soldier, does not work for the money.
The whole organization is officered and directed by women. Mrs. Chalmers Watson, M.D., C.B.E., is the Chief Controller, with Miss MacQueen as Assistant Chief Controller. Under them are the Controllers—Area, Recruiting, etc., and the officer in charge of a unit is called an Administrator, and under her are deputy administrators and assistant-administrators. They are not given Military titles and do not hold commissions, but their appointments are gazetted in the ordinary way. There is always a strong feeling in England that Military and Naval titles should be strictly reserved.
The equivalent of a sergeant is a "forewoman," and there are quartermistresses in charge of stores. Rank is shown as among the men, by badges, rose and fleur-de-lys.
Administrators are being trained in large numbers. They have a short course of drilling, learn to fill up Army forms, make out pay sheets, how to requisition for rations, catering generally, and how to run a hostel. They also attend practical lectures on hygiene and sanitation. When this is done, they go to camp for a fortnight's training under an administrator in actual charge of a Unit. If they have not done well in this course, they are not appointed.
An administrator receives a $100 grant for her uniform and is paid from $600 to $875 a year out of which $200 is deducted for food. There is generally one officer to every fifty women.
The administrator must drill her girls. The W.A.A.C. is proud of its tone and its discipline. Its officers make the girls feel much is expected of them, because of the uniform they wear, and the girls have made a fine response. There are very few rules and as little restraint as possible. The girls are put on their honour when not under supervision. The administrator has considerable disciplinary powers, but they are very little needed.
It does not seem to be by discipline that the officer succeeds best. There is a nice story told of an Administrator who had been away from her unit some days, returning and being met at the station by one of the rank and file who had come for her bag.
"I am glad to see you, Ma'am," was the greeting, so emphatic a one that the Administrator inquired nervously if something were wrong.
"Oh, no. Seems as if Mother had been away, Ma'am," explained the girl.
The Administrator can help her girls by sorting them out well, putting friends and the same kind of girls together; it makes so much difference.
The Administrator has not only to handle her own sex—she has to deal with men officers and quartermasters, and she succeeds in doing that well, too.
Our Administrators are naturally women of education and carefully chosen and there is plenty of opportunity of rising "from the ranks."
The girls cross over to France on the gray transports, are received by the women Draft Receiving Officers, and go up the lines to their assigned posts.
The women are billeted in some of the base towns in pensions and summer hotels that have been commandeered, in big houses and in one case in a beautiful old Chateau where the ghosts of dead-and-gone ladies of beauty and fashion must wonder what kind of women these khaki clad girls are. The girls in these make their rooms home-like with photographs, hangings, and little personal belongings.
The greater number of girls live in camps, and different types of huts have been tried. Some of the camps are entirely of wooden huts—large and roomy. Other camps have the Nissen hut of corrugated iron, lined with laths wood floored and raised from the ground. These have been linked together in the cleverest way by covered ways. In the sleeping huts the beds are iron bedsteads with springs and horse-hair mattresses. Each bed has four thoroughly good blankets and a pillow. No sheets are given—there is no labour to wash the thousands of sheets, and the cotton is needed. Each woman has a wooden locker with a shelf above, and a chair. Washing and bathing is done in separate huts, and in every camp hot and cold water is laid on.
The mess room is a big hut. The girls wait on themselves and the food is excellent. They receive in rations the same as the soldiers on lines of communication—four-fifths of a fighting man's ration and whatever is over is returned and credited, and the extra money is used for luxuries, games and for entertaining visitors from other camps.
Here is a typical week's meals and it shows how well they are fed:
MONDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, baked mince, jam. Dinner: Cold beef, potatoes, tomatoes, baked apples, custard. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Welsh rarebit, bread, butter, jam.
TUESDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, marmalade. Dinner: brown onion stew, potatoes, baked beans, biscuit pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: Savoury rice, tea, bread.
WEDNESDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, veal loaf. Dinner: Roast mutton, potatoes, marrow, bread pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, marmalade, jam. Supper: Rissoles, bread, butter, cheese.
THURSDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Meat pie, potatoes, cabbage, custard and rice. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread and jam.
FRIDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, rissoles, marmalade. Dinner: Boiled beef, potatoes and onions, Dundee roll. Tea: tea, bread, butter, jam, slab cake. Supper: Shepherd's pie, tea, bread, butter.
SATURDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, jam. Dinner: Thick brown stew, potatoes and cabbage, bread pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: Toad-in-hole, bread jam.
SUNDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Roast beef, potatoes and cabbage, stewed fruit, custard. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread, butter, cheese.
They are divided into five big classes for work. There are large numbers of them cooks and waitresses, and many of these cooks come from the best private houses in England, so the Waacs and the soldiers fare well. In one camp in the early days sixty women cooks walked in and sixty men out, released for the fighting lines. The saving in fats done by the women is very great and their economies admirable and the women are waitresses in the camps and messes.
In one base in France when twenty-nine cooks came to take charge in the early days the commanding officer issued an order that expresses very well the spirit in which the women are regarded.
BASE DEPOT.
The Officer Commanding Base Depot wishes to draw the attention of all ranks to the following points in connection with the Domestic Section of the Women's Auxiliary Army, which is employed in this depot:
These women have not come out for the sake of money, as their pay is that of a private soldier. In nearly every case they have lost someone dear to them in this war, and they are out here to try to do their best to make things more comfortable for the men in regard to their food.
It, therefore, is up to all ranks to make their lot an easy and not a hard one during their stay in France. If any man should so forget himself as to use bad language or at any time to be rude to them, it is up to any of his comrades standing by to shut him up, and see that he does not repeat this offence.
To the older men I would say: Treat them as you would your own daughters. To the younger men: Treat them as you would your own sisters.
——, Comdg., Base Depot.
They are doing the clerical work more and more, and in a few weeks have become so technical that they know where to send requisitions concerning 9.2 guns or trench mortars or giant howitzers. There is a favourite story told against an early Waac that when a demand came for armoured hose, she sent it to the clothing department, but she knows better now.
French girls are also helping in the clerical department, working side by side with the Waacs.
Others, the telegraphists and telephonists are in the Signalling Corps and these are the only ones who wear Army badges. They work under the Officers Commanding Signals and are so successful that the officers want thousands more.
Another small group are called the "Hush Waacs." There are only about a dozen of them and they have come from the Censor's Office and between them have a thorough knowledge of all modern languages. They are decoding signalled and written messages, script of every kind.
Numbers more are motor car and transport drivers working with A.S.C.
An intensely interesting piece of work at the front in which the Waacs now are, and in which French women have worked for a very long time, and are still working in large numbers, is the great "Salvage" work of the Army. In the Salvage centre at one ordnance base 30,000 boots are repaired in a week. They are divided into three classes—those that can be used again by the men at the front—those for men on the lines of communication—those for prisoners and coloured labour, and uppers that are quite useless are cut up into laces. They salve old helmets, old web and leather equipments, haversacks, rifles, horse shoes, spurs, and every conceivable kind of battlefield debris.
The work of repair and of renewal of clothing, which goes over to England to be dealt with, is a wonder of economy.
The women are helping in postal work and we handle about three million letters and packets a day in France for our Army there.
One other piece of work that falls to trained women gardeners in the Corps, is the care of the graves in France. There are so many graves in little clusters, lonely by the roadside, and in great cemeteries. They mark them clearly and they make them more beautiful with flowers. No work they have come to do, is done more faithfully than this act of reverence to our heroic and honoured dead.
The Y.W.C.A.'s Blue Triangle is going to be the same symbol for the Waacs as the Red Triangle for the Soldiers. They are building huts everywhere in France and in England, and the girls like them as much as the men do.
In these recreation huts the girls enjoy themselves and there are evenings when the soldier friends come in, too, and have a good time with them, for Waacs and the soldiers know each other and meet at all the Bases and Camps.
They dance and play games, and act, or sing, or come and talk, and one visitor tells us of seeing a girl doing machining at the end of a hut with one soldier turning the handle for her and another helping.
One evening at a dance some gallant Australian N.C.O.'s arrived carrying two enormous pans of a famous salad, that was their specialty, as their contribution to the provisions. So life in the Waacs is not all work—there is play, too, wisely. Every camp has a trained V.A.D. worker to look after the girls in case of sickness. If the case is bad they are sent over to Endell Street Hospital in London.
The Navy is going to follow the Army—so our women will be "Soldier and Sailor too," and we shall have to sing, "Till the girls come home," as well.
The Admiralty has decided to employ women on various duties on shore hitherto done by naval ratings, and to establish a Women's Royal Naval Service. The women will have a distinctive uniform and the service will be confined to women employed on definite duties directly connected with the Royal Navy. It is not intended at present to include those serving in the Admiralty departments or the Royal Dockyards or other civil establishments under the Admiralty. There are thousands of women in these already, as there were in Army pay offices, etc., before the Waacs were formed.
Dame Katherine Furse, G.B.E., will be Director of the Women's Royal Naval Service, and will be responsible under the Second Sea Lord, for its administration and organization.
Already we hear they are likely to be known as the "Wrens." And so our women are inside the organized forces of defence of our Country—the last line of usefulness and service.