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They were the second largest women's service branch. The Coast Guard's SPARs numbered 9,745; the women marines 19,000. There were 82,000 WAVES in uniform. Considering the difference in size between the Army & Navy, women were carrying a proportionately far greater load in the Navy. The WACs, still struggling to fill their quota, numbered only 92,500.
Just as important as these statistics to Miss Mac was the fact that her blue-clad girls had been models of correct, seamanlike behavior before the U.S. public. WAVES might not like their grim hours, the discipline, the hard work, but almost to a woman they were resolved to stick it out without audible griping.
Well Done. Miss Mac attributed this good record in part to the indoctrination her girls got at the U.S. Naval Training School at Hunter College in The Bronx. The WAVES had filled their quota, but they were still recruiting for replacements.
Every month 850 new boots excitedly arrived in The Bronx to have the symbol of their new responsibility—a Mainbocher-designed hat—clapped on their heads and to buckle down to learning their duty. After six weeks' schooling under the piercing blue eyes of Lieut. Commander Elizabeth Reynard, who once taught English literature at Barnard, they were ready for duty.
In those six weeks they became trim and sharp—factory-made old salts who referred to walls as "bulkheads," windows as "ports," floors as "decks," "reported aboard" and saw visitors "over the side." They had absorbed Navy tradition, had had a quick but thorough briefing on naval operations, naval weapons, history and current affairs. They were also imbued with the idea that if a WAVE quit, it was the same as a battlefront casualty.
The station in The Bronx had done something else. It had taken in Negro recruits, put them side by side with whites without ruffling any tempers. Miss Reynard had colored officers on her staff. Navy officials had held their breaths but, as one Southern-born white WAVE officer said: "We took it as a challenge and just made up our minds we would meet it."
Miss Mac, definitely not given to self-praise, nevertheless could feel very pleased with all that had been accomplished. The Navy, which had once thought of the WAVES as a dubious experiment, could give her a clear "Well done."
The Atmospheric Conditions. The Navy, for that matter, had been an experiment with Miss Mac. As she once declared, possibly with tongue in cheek, "Life in the Navy has taken me out of the cloister in which a woman was unaware of limitations on her freedom or individuality, and has thrust me into the big world where women are women and men are men." She had emerged into what she called "this bifurcated society" like a discoverer and without even the seafaring background of Miss Reynard, whose grandfather had been the captain of a whaling ship.
Miss Mac had been born into the late Cleland Boyd McAfee's staunchly Presbyterian Scotch-Irish household in Parkville, Mo. in 1900—last of the Rev. Dr. McAfee's three daughters. She had grown up in an atmosphere of visiting missionaries, company for Sunday dinner, the Bible, St. Nicholas and the Youth's Companion. She remembers herself and two sisters as "perfect little snobs."