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.