The Little Colonel
Colonel Hobby and Kate Smith sharing a moment after selling World War II war bonds on Kate Smith’s radio show. Courtesy Culver Pictures.
We have a common cause, the cause of human decency. And the harder we work, the fewer lives will be lost.
OVETA CULP HOBBY
Oveta dreaded this moment. Ordering three hundred of her finest troops into a meeting room, she addressed them with her aide, Lieutenant Betty Bandel, standing by her side.
“Women,” Oveta said, “today is a glorious day in the history of our Corps. General Eisenhower has asked that I send him three hundred of my finest soldiers. Your officers have nominated each of you for these positions. I will not lie to you. You will be going overseas. You will be serving in combat zones. There’s a good chance that you may not come back home again.
“As your commander, it is my duty to inform you of the risks involved if you accept this assignment. Remember, you have no formal military status, and should you be injured or killed, there will be no remuneration for your families.
“I will not order anyone to go. I am asking for volunteers. Knowing the dangers involved, you must go of your own free will. I do not want it on my conscience that I sent even one of you into certain danger against your wishes. The need is great or the General would not have made this request. If you are willing to serve in this capacity, step forward to fill the unit.”
Of the three hundred women in the room, 298 instantly volunteered. Seeing this, Director Hobby was unable to continue speaking and hastily sought privacy in a broom closet.1
In February 1943, General White of the Army told a Senate committee that, “Wherever we have put the WAAC, they have proved highly valuable.” He also told the committee that, in his opinion, “a WAAC unit would not be able to replace an equal number of men. I have always estimated that three women would release two men.”2 By the next month, though, he had to change his tune.
Reports from the first unit at Fort Sam Houston indicated that three women had replaced not two men, but four. It was indicated that one woman could not replace men in heavy work such as motor transport, but that women stenographers, typists, and switchboard operators could often replace “two or more men apiece.”3
The first WAAC Training Center at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, was bitterly cold on Valentine’s Day 1943, when Director Hobby reviewed her troops with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.4
The women were so competent that it became clear—with a lot of hard work on the parts of Director Hobby and her staff—that women should be admitted into the regular Army. Thereafter, in 1943, the Corps received full Army status. The word “Auxiliary” was dropped from the official name, and the organization became known as the Women’s Army Corps, or WAC.
On July 5, 1943, while living in Washington, D.C., Oveta Culp Hobby was promoted to the rank of colonel and director of the Women’s Army Corps. With this appointment, she became the first woman colonel in the history of the U.S. military services. Standing a full five feet four inches tall, her staff dubbed her “The Little Colonel,” a name that stuck with her throughout her military career.
. . .
Lieutenant Betty Bandel, Oveta’s aide, wrote her family often to share her travels and adventures. From time to time, Betty’s letters provided a glimpse, as well, into the toll that being the head of the Women’s Army Corps took on Oveta.
On September 27, 1943, Betty wrote the following letter to her mother:
Dear Maw,
The L.C. (Little Colonel), poor lassie, has had a sick husband and child to look after lately. The Governor [came to Washington, D.C.] to have an operation about a week ago, and she was simply worried to death. She spent sleepless nights running out to the hospital to see him, trying to dig up a nurse (they’re scarce as hen’s teeth today), and getting somebody to look after young Jessica, who went off her feed the way children will when things are upset around them. Add to all this a small apartment, with young William and Jessica in it, and you have some idea of what [is on] that one woman’s shoulders, aside from what I consider the most trying job in the War Department.
I have seen her drag herself together for a hard conference, in which everything hung on the phrasing of an idea’s presentation, when she would have to pull herself up out of her chair by holding on to the edge of her desk—and yet when she went into it, five minutes later, with fresh makeup on, no one in the room would have dreamed she was anything but sailing along at the top of her form, full of energy, strength, composure. Don’t ever tell any of this to anyone—she never even tells people in the office of her family obligations, and has almost a fetish for refusing to place herself in a position which would seem to demand sympathy. Which fills me with such sympathy that it is sometimes hard to bear. The other day she told me suddenly of her husband’s illness; I started to ask if there was anything I could do, and found myself brought up short by a sudden and wholly unexpected full-grown set of tears in my eyes and throat; she followed suit, at the unexpected sight; and we both began to laugh, ending in near-hysterics.5
Lieutenant Bandel also wrote of their next trip to Britain, and about how she and Oveta made their way to Italy and North Africa:
While we were in Cairo, we took time off to see the Pyramids. Oveta got on a camel, Major Wally Burgoyne got on a donkey, and I decided to stay on terra firma. Our WAC skirts were short and fairly tight, and never in this world would I have gotten aboard one of those beasts unless I first had retired behind a Pyramid and put on slacks.6
Oveta Culp Hobby’s causes were legion, but she didn’t let them overwhelm her. When she learned that women were going to be dishonorably discharged for “pregnancy without permission” (i.e., getting pregnant without first being married), she got after the generals. She argued that male soldiers who fathered illegitimate children should, in all fairness, get the same treatment, and suffer the same loss of rights and pay. As a result, the regulations were changed, and the pregnancy without permission cases were thereafter given medical treatment and honorable discharges.7
Colonel Hobby posing in front of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt. Courtesy National Archives, photo no. 111-SC-241144.
Waging an overseas war was not only costly in terms of people power; it also took a lot of money to subsidize the military operations. The U.S. had suffered the Great Depression from 1929 to 1941, and the government was hard-pressed to pay for these huge new military operations. Franklin D. Roosevelt reinstated the use of the “war bond” as a means of raising money to pay for the ramp-up in military spending. Essentially, a war bond is a loan made to the government. A person could purchase a bond for as little as $18.25 and be repaid $25 by the government ten years later. The idea was that the government needed the money now to help pay for the war and ten years would be a long enough time period for the war to have ended and the economy to have recovered so that the loan could be repaid.
Many celebrities donated their time and energy to raise money for the war effort. One of the greatest fund-raisers was the nationally known singer Kate Smith. Kate had her own one-hour radio show on which she sang Irving Berlin’s anthem, “God Bless America.”8 She participated in two radio marathons to sell war bonds. One of the most successful single events was a sixteen-hour marathon radio broadcast on CBS, during which nearly $40 million worth of bonds were sold. Patriotism and the spirit of sacrifice could be expressed with war bond purchases, and millions of Americans jumped aboard the effort.9 Over the course of World War II, Kate raised $600 million in war bonds.10
The Women’s Army Corps was riding high on its successes, and by the time General Dwight Eisenhower was in England preparing for D-Day, his call was constant: “Send me more WACs!” By 1944, WAC headquarters had requests from commanding generals around the world for six hundred thousand women—three times the total authorized strength of the corps.11
But for Colonel Oveta Hobby, the days, weeks, and months of nonstop traveling and constant stress finally began to impact her well-being. In the summer of 1944, Colonel Hobby took a six-week medical leave to recover from exhaustion and illness.12
On January 8, 1945, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson awarded Oveta the Distinguished Service Medal for outstanding service. She became the first woman in the history of the military to receive the medal.
Her citation read, in part:
Without guidance or precedents in the United States military history to assist her, Colonel Hobby established sound initial policies, planned and supervised the selection of officers and the preparation of regulations. The soundness of basic plans and policies . . . is evidenced by the outstanding success of the Women’s Army Corps . . . Her contribution to the war effort of the nation has been of important significance.13
Working twelve- to fifteen-hour days continued to take its toll on the forty-year-old colonel. By July 1945, Oveta Culp Hobby was exhausted and ill. She knew she had completed the work she had been asked to do. When she requested permission to resign, on July 12, 1945, she was asked to take her final physical examination at the Pentagon because it would be less noticeable. “If you go to Bethesda,” Pentagon officials explained, “we’ll be bombarded by people wanting your job for somebody.”
Drooping with fatigue, Colonel Hobby walked the long corridor from the driveway ramp to the Pentagon dispensary, not sure she would get there. She emerged with a card certifying that she was fit for overseas duty. On her release, Governor was waiting for her with a stretcher. He took her to the train and directly from Washington to Doctors’ Hospital in New York for rest and treatment.14
On July 15, 1945, Lt. Betty Bandel wrote her mother about the latest development in Oveta’s career:
Well, this week saw the end of an era. Little D-WAC [referring to Oveta, standing for “Little Director, Women’s Army Corps] had to do what Jess and I have feared she might have to do at any time for the last 12 months: go home. Her own health has been anything but good for long months, and now various family problems have arisen—business and things. Do not pass this on to anyone, as she does not wish to air her problems to the world. Some brief explanation will probably be made to the members of the Corps, and to the world, this next week. I have never felt so sorry for anyone.
She fought through the battle of wondering whether she should leave, for her own health, six months ago, and had determined to stay on until the end, when suddenly about two or three weeks ago other things came up that made it imperative for her to leave the service. She told only four of us, before the press conference last Wednesday . . . Poor Westray, who has to take over her job, only knew about it three days before it all happened.
Her name has been inextricably linked with the WAC. She . . . began her outfit and worked with it throughout its period of growth. It will be quite something for the public to get used to anyone else as the Director, WAC. But it will mean the final integration of women in the military service.15
Oveta almost made it to the end of World War II, which ended on September 2, 1945. She initially identified fifty-four jobs that women were qualified to perform in the Army. By 1945, that original list had expanded to 239 jobs, ranging from riveters, interpreters, balloon-gas chemists, surveyors, and boiler inspectors in such far-flung places as India, North Africa, and Egypt.16 By April 1945, the WACs had recruited over 99,000 women, with WACs qualifying for 406 of the 628 military occupations.17
Oveta Culp Hobby was a woman of great vision and understood the role she and the women of the WAC had played in shaping the course of history for women in America. In an interview in 1980, she said, “I think women working during the war had a tremendous influence on moving women into the labor force—not only those who served in the military, but also those who held jobs in the factories and other war-related jobs. When I went to say goodbye to General Marshall when I left, he said, ‘When you’re rested, write a memorandum to the file on utilization of women power.’ . . . I smiled at him and I said, ‘General, I’ll write it if you tell me to, but if you need to recruit women in such numbers again, the conditions will be different! You have no idea what is going to happen in the woman power field as a result of this war, because of women in the armed services and in the civilian jobs that they took during the war.’”18
