The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers believed the War Department, like the Bureau of the Budget, would soon approve the WAAC bill (HR 4906), originally introduced on May 28, 1941. Rogers was quoted as saying “This bill gives women a chance to volunteer to serve their country in a patriotic way. It gives opportunity to many fine women to enroll who cannot give their time for nothing, because it provides pay at $1 a day [ed. note: approximately $19 today], subsistence, quarters, and uniforms. It confers rank as high as colonel to the directors and assistant directors. I believe the Army will welcome the assistance of women. Today men are performing duties they should not be performing because they are needed for other services. There are many things I think women can perhaps perform more easily than men.”[1]
Also on December 21st, 1941 Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy contacted Lt. Colonel John H. Hilldring (then part of the Planning Branch, Personnel Division, G-1, War Department General Staff) to let him know that the US Navy had finally withdrawn its objections to the WAAC bill. This is one of the last hurdles faced by the WAAC bill before it was resubmitted as HR 6293.[2]
[1] Marshal C. McNeil, “Auxiliary Army Is Asked in New Bill,” The Knoxville News-Sentinel, December 21, 1941, p. 46.
[2] Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps (Off. of the Chief of Military History, Dep. of the Army, 1954).
Lipstick & War 
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