Though they will carry no guns, take no part in combat, U.S. women will soon be in the war as professional soldiers. They will wear Army uniforms, get Army pay, be subject to Army discipline. Their jobs: cooks, waitresses, mechanics, gardeners, chauffeurs, clerks, secretaries—all the behind-scenes tasks which now occupy soldiers more needed in the field.
A bill introduced in Congress by Massachusetts' Edith Nourse Rogers, with the approval of the War Department, will permit women to join the Army, provided only that they are 21 to 45 years old, in good health and of "excellent character." Like male soldiers, they will enlist for the duration plus six months.
To women who want to help—but who are baffled by the civilian crazy quilt of air-raid wardens, spotters, first-aid workers, American Women's Voluntary Services, Red Cross, and local organizations bent on everything from driving ambu lances to shooting down parachutists—this bill looked like the answer. Day after Mrs. Rogers introduced it, her mailbag bulged enthusiastically. The only kicks came from women over 45, who wanted the age limit raised.
Heretofore the Army and Navy have accepted women only as nurses.* When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Army Nurse Corps included 7,000 women, the Navy Nurse Corps 700. Now 'both Army and Navy need thousands more. But only young women who have completed regular nurses' training courses are eligible.
In charge of the Army nurses is Major Julia Flikke, who was born in Wisconsin, took up nursing after being left a widow before the war. Onetime assistant superintendent at Chicago's Augustana Hospital, she joined the Army in World War I, served in France, China and the Philip pines. For twelve years before she succeeded Major Julia C. Stimson as super intendent of the Corps in 1937, she was with the Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington. Gracious, grey-haired, she wears her major's oak leaves like a veteran.
Also a veteran, but undecorated, is her opposite number in the Navy—Sue Dauser. Miss Dauser has officer's privileges, but no rank. Brown-eyed, softspoken, California-born, she joined the Navy in 1917, took command of the Navy Nurse Corps in 1939. She has spent the last three years of her Navy life aboard the hospital ship Relief, which moved with the Fleet on all its maneuvers. She takes orders only from the Navy's Surgeon-General Ross T. Mclntire, who is also personal physician to the President.
* Except during the last war, when the Navy and Marine Corps enlisted women as "yeomanettes" and "marinettes" for clerical duty.