The Sword of Deborah: First-hand impressions of the British Women's Army in FranceJesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
History
The Sword of Deborah: First-hand impressions of the British Women's Army in France
Jesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
The Women's Army differs from the F.A.N.Y. and the V.A.D. in being a
paid instead of a voluntary body, in being directly under the Army, not
the Red Cross, and in its members being ranked as privates. But it also
differs from the G.S.V.A.D., though that too is paid and its members
rank as privates. The G.S.V.A.D. is far more "mixed"; its members are of
all classes and educations, and are drafted off for work accordingly,
but the bulk of the Waacs are working girls and do manual labour, such
as gardening, cooking, baking, scrubbing, etc., though there are amongst
them girls of a more specialised education who are signallers and
clerks. The officers, of course, are women of education who have
undergone a stiff training and been carefully selected for the posts
they fill. For, as will be seen, nearly everything depends upon the Waac
officers; they have certainly a greater power for good or harm than the
officers in the Regular Army, and never were both the force and danger
of personality more acutely illustrated than in the position of the Waac
leaders.
A Unit Administrator has to know individually every girl in her camp,
though there may be several hundreds. She has to blend with her absolute
authority a maternal interest and supervision. While she has no power to
say whom a girl shall or shall not "walk out" with, she yet makes it her
business to know what choice of men friends the girl makes and to
influence, as far as she can, that choice towards discretion. She must
not nag but must inculcate by subtle methods a realisation of what is
due to the uniform, a sense of the "idea," the "symbol," of it. She
does not actually say to a girl that she is not to walk arm in arm with
a Tommy or pin her collar with her paste brooch, but she conveys to her
that these things are not done in the best uniforms.... And the girl
learns with incredible rapidity. A thing is Not Done--what a potency in
those words; in that attitude of mind! It probably influenced the
earliest savages in the manner of wearing their cowries.
After all, the whole idea of uniform, of distinguishing one caste from
another by bits of different coloured cloth, is based on the instinct
for being superior. Was it not John Selden who said something to the
effect that our rulers have always tried to make themselves as different
from us as possible? Of course they have, and it is exactly the same
thing which the wise Pope Gregory VII had in mind when he definitely
crystallised the measures for celibacy of the priesthood, and it is
exactly the same thing which puts the policeman into a dark blue uniform
and a helmet before he can so much as stop a milkcart. A policeman in
plain clothes is a dethroned monarch. Nothing in the nature of
controlling others was ever done without dressing up. The marvel is that
for so many centuries the principle should have been confined to the
masculine sex, when it has such an obvious appeal to the feminine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account