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Women had turned out to be more awed than men by the military structure. Colonel Frank U. McCoskrie, who occasionally inspected a lineup, asking questions, once snapped at a WAC recruit: "Who is the commandant?" Back came the answer: "Colonel Frank U. McCoskrie." To the next WAC he said: "What's in that barracks bag?" Gulped the stiff-legged little private: "Colonel Frank U. McCoskrie." But except for a greater respect for authority and a greater capacity for bustling industry, they were not much different from G.I. Joes. In the evenings, off duty, they talked about home, their dates, their husbands and sweethearts.
Like G.I. Joes, a few got in serious jams. A few overstayed leave. A few got fed up and went on mild benders. But for the most, behavior was average young female. They put wet towels in each other's beds, tied knots in pajama legs. They griped about red tape, uniforms that did not fit, hats not "as cute as the Marine women's." They might refer to an unpopular officer privately as "that bitch." To the surprise of most males, they got along together just as well as men.
Statement of a Difference. Essential difference between Jane and Joe was pointed out by a Fort Des Moines recruit who was being loaded into an already jampacked Army truck. "Hey, sergeant," she protested, "have a heart, this bus is full." Said the tough male sergeant: "Lady, I been getting 18 men into these trucks and I sure as hell can get 18 WACs in." Wailed the squeezed WAC: "But men are broad in the shoulders."
Graduated from training, WACs now fill 239 different kinds of.jobs and in some cases have filled them better than men. Among other things, WACs are opticians, surgical technicians, chemists, surveyors, electricians, radio repairmen, control-tower operators, boiler inspectors, riveters, welders, tractor mechanics, balloon-gas handlers, dog trainers.
Chief gripe of WACs at home is now that they are stuck. Said Corporal Sara Sykes at Fort Oglethorpe: "We practically drool when we hear of someone going overseas." They complain that C.O.s do not always give them enough to do. Old soldiers fear that the busy WACs are on the way to end forever the enlisted soldiers' time-honored practice of "gold bricking."
On performance, the WACs had proved themselves. The failure was not theirs but the nation's: U.S. women still refused to join up. That was Colonel Hobby's headache—and to a lesser degree it has become the headache of Captain Mildred H. McAfee of the WAVES, Commander Dorothy C. Stratton of the SPARS and Lieut. Colonel Ruth Cheney Streeter of the Marine Women's Reserve.
Shoulder to Shoulder. Before she went to England, Colonel Hobby sat in her office in the Pentagon Building and with an air of patent-unhappiness parried questions about the failure of woman recruiting. Beside her sat the Army Bureau of Public Relations' Major Francis Frazier—"to protect her," he said.