World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- France; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
In 1917, as our car wound through the narrow streets of Montreuil, I
remember noticing a yellow car in front of us, unlike the usual Army
car, and was told that it contained the new head of the Women's Army
Auxiliary Corps, and that 10,000 women were now to be drafted into
France, to take the place of men wanted for the fighting line. And a
little later at Abbeville I found General Asser, then Inspector-General
of the Lines of Communication, deep in the problems connected with the
housing and distribution of the new Women's Contingent. "Two women
want the accommodation of three men; but three women can only do the
work of two men." That seemed to be the root fact of the moment, and
accommodation and work were being calculated accordingly. Then the
women came, and took their place in the clerical staffs of the various
military departments, of Army or other Headquarters, in the Army
canteens, in the warehouses and depôts of the ports. It is clear that,
during the concluding year of the war, they rendered services of which
British women may reasonably be proud; and in the retreat of last
March, by universal testimony, they bore themselves with special
coolness and pluck. Many of them were suddenly involved in the rush
and confusion of battle, which was never meant to come near them. They
took the risks and bore the strain of it with admirable composure. The
men beside whom they marched or rode when depôts canteens, and
headquarters disappeared in the general over-running of our fighting
lines, took note! It was yet another page in that history of a new
Womanhood we are all collaborating in to-day. And I will add a last
touch, within my personal knowledge, when in January, at Montreuil, in
a room at G.H.Q., an officer of A. described to me how he had recently
interviewed a gathering of women belonging to Queen Mary's Auxiliary
Army Corps, and had asked them whether they wished to be immediately
demobilised. Almost without exception the answer came: "Not while we
can be useful to the Army." They had enlisted for the war; the war was
not over, in spite of the Armistice; and, though it would be pleasant
to go home, they still stuck to their job.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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