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.