The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
You have taken off silk and put on khaki.
You have a debt and a date.
A debt to democracy, a date with destiny.
OVETA CULP HOBBY
When Oveta Culp Hobby attended her swearing-in ceremony as director of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, on May 15, 1942, she was wearing a dress, a fancy hat she had chosen, and white gloves because there was not yet a military uniform for women.1 Her military career then began in earnest.
On May 27, 1942, the first women could officially enlist in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). In Washington, D.C., the WAAC headquarters was stormed on recruiting day by 750 candidates, over three times the number anticipated. Twice during the day, officials ran out of application blanks. By the end of the day, 13,208 women from all over the country had filled out applications to join the corps.2
In June of 1942, the first WAAC khaki uniform was delivered, specially made for Director Hobby. She put it on and reported to the chief of staff. When she returned to her office, she was wearing a colonel’s silver eagles, which he had pinned on and directed her to wear.3 She was not officially promoted to the rank of colonel until a year later.
“I never did learn to salute properly or master the thirty-inch stride,” Oveta Culp Hobby said, noting that Army regulations prohibited her from attending officer’s training since she was the director of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Courtesy Corbis Images.
Oveta’s job as director of the newly organized WAAC was allconsuming. She traveled constantly, speaking to large audiences of both men and women on the radical subject of the time: enlisting volunteer women in the Army. She traveled with an electric fan and an iron so that at each overnight stop she could wash, dry, and iron her khaki uniform—still the only women’s uniform in existence at the time.4 Director Hobby soon enlisted the help of well-known designers to make a WAAC uniform that would be attractive to large numbers of young women. However, the Army Quartermaster Corps vetoed the uniform’s belt as a waste of leather and the pleats in the skirt as a waste of cloth, so the final WAAC uniform was a variant on the basic design of the Quartermaster Corps’ uniform.5 It was not very attractive. The hat became known as the “Hobby Hat,” because the women claimed that Oveta was the only person who actually looked good in it.
The WAACs occupied a unique place in the government—or rather, a lack of a place. Because Congress was unwilling to make the women’s corps an integral part of the Army, the women in the War Department found themselves in a holding pattern. For instance, when Director Hobby sent requests to Army engineers for plans for WAAC barracks, the engineers replied that they worked only for the Army, and the WAAC was not Army. As a result, Director Hobby and her staff had to draw up their own barracks plan.6
Since women had never been in the Army before, each and every contingency had to be addressed. Director Hobby had literally thousands of decisions to make, and very little information with which to make those decisions. Though the WAAC was a military organization, in the beginning it didn’t offer Army rank, officer status, equal pay, or Army benefits such as retirement and veteran’s rights. These assets wouldn’t happen until 1943.7
Bringing into being an entire Army Corps is a daunting task, even for trained military professionals. The workload at the WAAC headquarters—never light—suddenly became so great as to seriously threaten efficiency. A fourteen-hour day and a seven-day week became standard in the director’s office. Staff members reported that for days at a time, Mrs. Hobby and her assistants worked every night until three, five, and sometimes seven o’clock in the morning. They averaged only two or three hours of sleep each night or merely went home for a quick shower and coffee before returning to work.8
Director Hobby and her WAACs suffered many indignities and faced many barriers to the acceptance of their place in the Army. Commanding officers were horrified at the thought of women soldiers. Most Army sergeants had their own jeeps. Although she was a U.S. Army officer, Oveta had to call for a car from the transportation pool.9 She was also invited to use the facilities of the Army-Navy Club; the club official asked, however, if she would mind coming in by the back door.10
On July 20, 1942, 440 chosen women arrived at Fort Des Moines in Iowa to attend the WAAC’s first officer candidate class. Oveta herself applied for the school so she could understand through her own experience how a woman adjusted to military training. Her shocked advisors had no luck changing her mind. Finally, General George Marshall told her firmly that such an action was impossible under the Army’s system of rank.
“It never would have crossed my mind to command an army of women. I never did learn to salute properly or master the thirty-inch stride,” Oveta said.11 She had been at Fort Des Moines since the first day, observing the women in training somewhat wistfully. On the fourth day of their enlistment, she addressed the ranks of newly minted soldiers.12
Despite the WAAC’s early recruiting success, their maltreatment by some Army personnel continued. For instance, on the WAAC’s first payday, the comptroller general’s office decreed that it could not pay the WAAC women doctors. The comptroller was only authorized to pay “persons serving as doctors in the military service, and women are not persons.” Secretary of War Stimson had to make a rush trip to Capitol Hill for a special act of Congress to enable Director Hobby to pay her physicians.13
Colonel Hobby made sure that even though the troops had to be segregated by race, black women officers led the black women soldiers. Here, she is speaking with Mary McLeod Bethune, who later founded the National Council of Negro Women. Courtesy Corbis Images.
As a staunch supporter of civil rights, Oveta campaigned to make sure that not only were black women represented in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, but that they were also invited to be part of the first class of Corps officers. She wanted to be sure that even though the women were segregated according to race, the black women would have qualified officers of their own race as leaders.14 When Director Hobby again visited Fort Des Moines in September 1942, she found conditions for the women unacceptable.
Lieutenant Betty Bandel, Director Hobby’s aide, wrote about that visit:
It was snowing! As soon as I hit the post, I realized the winter uniforms had not yet been issued—the new companies did not even have their complete summer outfits! And mud and slush was a foot deep . . . Then I discovered there was no heat in many barracks. Shortage in metal pipes made it impossible for plumbers to install radiators . . . [T]he mills had fallen down on the clothing deal, and it was impossible to outfit all the kids with winter uniforms.
Incidentally, this is the first time in 67 years snow has fallen in Des Moines in September. It’s usually hotter than anything. Friday night I got together with some of the officers, and they thought there were enough pieces of clothing in the warehouses to wrap something around each girl, if you paid no attention to sizes. Saturday morning I reported that to the Colonel, giving her a picture of what I had seen . . . She, with a gleam in her eye, sailed up to Colonel Morgan and asked for an order issuing every piece of warm clothing, no matter what the fit or anything, on a temporary, emergency basis. Even enlisted men’s coats, if there were any, were to be issued. By mid-afternoon the kids were getting a coat here, a raincoat there, a sweater in the next place . . . [T]hat is a sample of how the Little Colonel works.15
Colonel Hobby had an uncanny ability to garner her troops’ support, as Lt. Bandel reported:
Saturday morning, I called the Colonel up and asked her if she wanted to wear wool or khaki to inspect her troops. She said, “What is your thought, Lieutenant? That if most of the women don’t have wool, we shouldn’t wear it?” I said, “Well, er—”
She said, “Correct. Summer uniform.”
In summer stuff, and the regular light raincoat, she inspected barracks and mess halls—and one hour later it was all over the post that she had done so, and the girls were eating out of her hand. She spoke at graduation—in summer uniform—and personally presented diplomas.16
The initial success of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps depended, in large part, on the ability of Director Hobby and her staff to actually recruit and enlist the thousands of women nationwide needed to fill its ranks and perform the duties required to help support the male troops in the field. Although the recruits had to be trained on every phase of military life, from how to wear the WAAC uniform to marching and saluting, it wasn’t long before the women showed their colors and new recruits began enlisting in record numbers.
One of the recruitment tools was a series of promotional films showing the training requirements for becoming a WAAC. Some of these films have been preserved and can be viewed online on YouTube.
• Women’s Army Corps, Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALow_k85n2s&feature=related
• Women’s Army Corps, Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efCMW1qOiks&feature=related
• Women’s Army Corps, Part 3 (Contains an officer’s graduation speech given by Director Hobby with her famous quote, “A debt to democracy, a date with destiny.”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxML6I2JGbo
In October, 1942, Director Hobby and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were invited by Queen Elizabeth to visit England and see how the British women were aiding in the war effort.17 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:
On October 21, [I] appeared at the airport on Long Island at the appointed time, together with Director Oveta Hobby, head of the Women’s Army Corps, Lieutenant Betty Bandel, her aide, a courier from the State Department, and Mr. Slater, one of the vice-presidents of the American Export Lines. It was a nonstop flight, one of the first to be made. We were luxuriously taken care of and had only one piece of excitement on the way, when we were allowed to look down on a convoy below us—little tiny specks on the ocean. It was hard to believe that those ships were in danger and that some of them might suddenly be torpedoed. . . .
Our first bad weather was in Foynes, Ireland. We had expected to transfer there from our plane to another and continue on to London; but as we landed on the water, a small boat came out from shore and we were told that our flight to London had been canceled because of weather . . . We climbed out after making sure that our military ladies were unmilitary in dress; if they had gone ashore in military uniform they would have been interred because that part of Ireland was neutral.18
Lieutenant Bandel, Oveta’s aide, described Director Hobby’s frustration at the bureaucratic procedures to make things happen. “She has a true newspaperwoman’s 24-hour deadline sense, and the way War Department people will take a week or two to make up a plan when some big thing is being held up waiting for it drives her wild. They work thoroughly and well, and she would be the last one to advocate sloppiness or error, but, as she often says, ‘We can dot the I’s after the war is over.’”19
Lieutenant Bandel later wrote, “At Claridge’s, we had a suite of a living room and two bedrooms. She was working on a speech at a desk and looked over at me and noticed a button on my jacket was hanging loose. ‘Take off that jacket,’ she said, and suddenly she realized that she was sewing a button on my uniform. She pointed a finger at me and declared, ‘You’re fired!’ Fortunately for me, she was kidding.”20
Despite the challenges, the all-volunteer WAACs quickly showed that one WAAC could often do the work of two men in certain tasks—from secretarial work to PBX operation to kitchen patrol to parachute folding.21
