Along the lines of communications in France, stretching from the bases to within earshot of the guns, women's camps have sprung up like shacks in a mining town. They have been built, and others are in course of building, to house the women who have come out to set men free, hitherto employed at the base, to go up the line and strengthen the fighting units.
Some of the camps are full, but far too many are empty and ready, waiting for the skilled women who can help as much as the men they are relieving to end the war. Commanding officers at the great hives of industry at the base are asking day after day for them, and day after day the area controllers of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps have to tell them that the women have not answered in anything like sufficient numbers and distribute parcimoniously the signallers, the clerks, the warehouse women, the cooks-those who have answered the call. Their coming means a great deal to the fighting men who pour ceaselessly up and down the line, marching briskly on their way to the stoutly held front, or war-weary trudging back to the rest camps.
In May, 1915, the colonel in command of the vast Ordnance Department at one of the bases - a man who controls an organization that is the Whiteleys of the Army, supplying such diverse commodities as howitzers, cycles and boots, and with advanced branches near the activities of the different armies - first startled the War Office by suggesting that women could be used in many departments of his work. Shortly after a commanding officer of Engineers diffidently and independently suggested that women might be employed in the several branches of Signals. And also in or about the same time the Women's Legion was started as a voluntary organization to supply motor-drivers and cooks in great numbers for the home commands.
The innovation of women at the bases in France seemed at first sight too stupendous, and it was not until the excellent work done by Lady Londonderry's voluntary organization and the obvious conclusion that carefully selected women would not prove an unsettling influence, that the suggestion bore fruit.
During the time of trial, Ordnance and Signals grew and grew as the army grew and made insatiable demands for skilled men for the bases, and it became evident that permanently unfit men sent down from the front could not entirely replace Category A men who were needed for the line. The office work at the bases had to be done and efficiently done; the men in the great mileage of camps had to be fed and efficiently fed, and yet it seemed an anomaly that fit men should be clerking and signalling, doing warehouse work and cooking under conditions varying little save in matters of discipline from civil life. Ordnance and Signals kept up their cry for women, and then like Minerva leaping full-armed from the head of Jove, the formation of a Women's Army was suddenly and unexpectedly announced on February 27 of this year, and the men at the head of the important work of Ordnance and Signals were appropriately pleased.
Already they have done well. In a journey round the bases that ceaselessly feed our armies with materials of war, I heard how they did their part in the recent great battle of the mud. When our men performed feats that have never been equalled in this war or in any other that history can tell, wading to their objective, fighting waist-high in the mud, Signals, the whispering gallery of the great armies, with its many khaki women wearing the blue and white brassard of their service, stood staunchly by them. From the General-in-Chief of the great armies has come the praise of their recent work at wire and telephone, in the official words "equal to that done by the men whom they relieved." From the officers commanding the fighting units has come equal praise for the women in the great camp-kitchens who rise long before dawn to feed the men going up the line, knowing there is "little between a man's best and worst, but a platter of food."
The Queen, on her recent visit to General Headquarters, inspecting the wonders of the bases, said to the General in Command, "I don't think the people at home know the wonderful work you are doing at the base." "No, ma'am," said the General, "and very few at the front either."
The women who have already come out to France have been absorbed into the Army in a wonderful spirit of equality and fraternity. In many offices I saw sergeants and corporals initiating the rank and file of the women into intricacies of Army documents and records; at every camp and hostel I was told of the kindly welcome of commanding officers to the administrators of the different women's camps and of the efforts to make things easy for them by giving them every facility to understand the working of a discipline to which they would have to instruct their women to conform.
Here is an interesting excerpt from the orders of the day on the arrival of some hundreds of women into a vast camp, which was the most homely and perfect of its kind I was allowed to see in France. It tells more of the spirit of the officers and men (who hardly needed its fatherly admonitions) than I could easily describe:-
"The Officer Commanding Base Depot wishes to draw the attention of all ranks to the following points in connexion 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 base they have-lost someone dear to them in this war, and they are out here to try and 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.
"The men call them "the waacs" (pronounced wack), and the women have accepted the title."
Our women in France
The Times,
21 November 1917
II.-HOW THE W.A.A.C.'S ARRIVE AND GO TO CAMP
It was a drizzling morning, wintry and wet, at a certain port in France. Crowds of men on leave came off the boat and were met by the Military Landing Officer and sent to their destinations. A distinguished civilian or two, looking the worse for wear, slipped off, and then came the little company of W.A.A.C.'s, an officer at their head, neat in their warm khaki coats over their khaki coat-frocks, their stout brown shoes, and their new serviceable pull-on felt hats, each with her soldierlike pack on her neat back.
The W.A.A.C. Area Controller and the Disembarkation Officer came forward to welcome them; the N.C.O. or forewoman of the group saw to the luggage, which was piled on an Army lorry by willing Tommies, and then in brisk military formation, four deep, they marched off to the waterside hostel, an annexe to the Soldiers Institute, where a hot meal awaited them and where they were to stay the night. Already they had been made free of the soldiers buffets at home, and at the port from which they had sailed they had had their last meal in England at a soldiers' restroom, where two "full" corporals hastened to wait on them, telling all whom it might concern that they were "the Waacs of France" - a friendly send-off to women starting off into a new and unknown life. As they passed through the wistful French town, with the hoods of their weather capes pulled over their caps, looked at them curiously, and an occasional Frenchwoman not yet used to the novelty of them glanced their way with a "comme elles sont gentilles, ces petites soldates." Otherwise France took them as a matter of course.
A night at the waterside hostel, sleeping on the floor on army "biscuits" - as they had already learned to call the military mattress - and then up betimes in the morning under orders only then revealed to them from one of the bases. Some of them were cooks, some telegraphists, and a few motor-drivers. Through pleasant France, with its hedgeless, well-cultivated fields and here and there a poilu in "civvies" spending his leave cultivating his land, or a group of women gleaners sharply silhoetted against the sky; through country that wise Napoleon had planted with the economic tree; or through the cider-apple country they went their several ways to hostels or billets in historic towns or to great camps filled with the caterpillar-like Nissen huts.
STREETS OF HUTS
A party was going to the famous Queen Mary's camp at the greatest base of all - and with them I came to spend a night in their camp. Little streets of huts stretched before us as we arrived, the pavement by them shielded from the weather - for no W.A.A.C. may carry an umbrella - so that the business of life went on through the rain. Around the camp was a high barbed-wire fence. A warm and plentiful meal was ready for the new arrivals, the food being L. of C. (Lines of Communication) rations, the same as the men. Their damp coats were taken and hung in the drying shed.
In the distance they could hear the bugle calls from the men's camp; from the Y.W.C.A. hut near by the sounds of a Waac Company going through their 20 minutes' weekly drill, and when it ceased it was followed by the tune of a well-known waltz played by one of the girls who had been writing letters at one of the Y.W.C.A. writing tables. The women who had been drilling joined in and danced until soon after there came the camp call to supper, and then in their various ways the Waacs amused themselves until it was time to go to bed, some going out in groups to concerts for which they had passes.
The new-comers unpacked their possessions, turned out their four Army blankets, made up their beds, stood their footwear "at attention" facing the door, pinned up their family photos, put away their few possessions, for they travel mobile with as little luggage as a soldier, and then sat on their beds for a good talk with their room mates or an impromptu party on parcels from home. In the mess rooms supper was still going on. Some of the women who worked at an ordnance office about a mile from the camp, and had set out like soldiers that morning with their rations of "bully" and tea and sugar in their pack, as it was too far to come home to dinner, were having a late evening meal. In the sick-bay the V.A.D. was dosing some of the Waacs who had pains due to parcels from home, or colds, or who had met with some minor accident.
THE ADMINISTRATORS
At the administrators' mess the women who hold the responsibility for the discipline and good conduct of the rank and file were relaxing after their strenuous day. They told with great pride of rations underdrawn, and money in lieu of them to be used for luxuries of fresh milk (only tinned is supplied as a ration), fruit, and vegetables for the girls. Extra money is also made by the saving of fat, which is sold for conversion into munitions. In a month 9 10s. was made in one camp on this item. The evening meal over, the administrators talk for a while on points arising out of the day's work. In the Army there are no such words as "I don't know," but the innovation of the Waac is constantly causing some such answer to problems that must be worked out by the base commandant in company with the unit administrators.
Of all the administrators the letter censor has the most varying task, for the Waac writes two letters to the soldier's one. She invited me to come with her to her Nissen hut with its cosy glowing French stove, while she went through her great basket of letters. The censoring, though the letters seemed to include two or three from every girl in the camp, was quickly done. The Censor's basket gradually grew less, an administrator or two popped in to ask about passes for a concert to which the women were invited, another to raise a point of discipline, of complaints from a group of Waacs, whose forewoman marched them along the road instead of on the pavement, which they preferred, to their work. But as no foot-passengers could shop when a company of Waacs four abreast with a forewoman at intervals bore down on the town, the point was decided in favour of the forewoman.
The assistant administrator, with a genius for dietary and making the best of Army rations, left in a week's diet sheet to be typed next day, and here it is. From the Chief Controller downwards all the women in the camp live on rations, and while in camp I grew as fond as they were of Army fare.
DIET SHEET
Breakfast:
Dinner:
Tea:
Supper:
Sunday..
Tea, bread & butter, cold ham.
Cold beef, pickles, beetroot, potatoes, and greens, stewed prunes and custard.
Tea, bread & butter, jam.
Soup, cheese & biscuits.
Monday..
Tea, bread and butter, fried bacon.
Roast pork, apple sauce, potatoes, cabbage, boiled rice & raisins.
The censor's basket was finally emptied. The tired A.A. turned in, and I too went back to my comfortable billet in a Nissen hut, and the little town fell asleep save for the watching guard.
.lcIn 1917 Britain became the first nation to establish a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Created in accordance with Katherine Furse's vision of a structured voluntary organisation, it was led by Mrs Chalmers Watson. Accused of aping the 'real' army with their uniforms and ranks, women joined up in their thousands, releasing soldiers to active service.
