In preventing waste and in food production and conservation, our people have learned much, and a very great deal of admirable work is being done.

THE WOMEN’S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS

“Now every signaller was a fine Waac,
And a very fine Waac was she—­e.”

“Soldier and Sailor, too.”

CHAPTER XI

THE WOMEN’S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS

The Waacs is the name we all know them by and shall, it seems, continue to.  It will have to go into future dictionaries beside Anzac.

The deeds of the Anzacs in Gallipoli and France are immortalised in many records—­magnificently in John Masefield’s “Gallipoli”—­an epic in its simplicity.  The work of the Waacs is the work of support and substitution and its records only begin to be made.

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps is an official creation of this year.  At the Women’s Service Demonstration in the Albert Hall in January, 1917, Lord Derby asked for Women for clerical service in the army and official appeals were issued in February and repeatedly since that time, and now all over the country we have Recruiting Committees organizing meetings and securing recruits.  They are recruiting at the rate of 10,000 a month.

The Waacs had many forerunners in some of our voluntary organizations, in the Women’s Reserve Ambulance, of “The Green Cross Society,” attached to the National Motor Volunteers—­the Women’s Volunteer Reserve—­the Women’s Legion—­the Women’s Auxiliary Force and the Women Signallers Territorial Corps.  The Women’s Signallers Corps had as Commandant-in-Chief Mrs. E.J.  Parker—­Lord Kitchener’s sister.  They believed women should be trained in every branch of signalling and that men could be released for the firing line by women taking over signalling work at fixed stations.  Their prediction came true more than two years later, for today they are in France.  They drilled and trained the women in all the branches of signalling semaphore—­flags, mechanical arms; and in Morse—­flags, airline and cable, sounder (telegraphy), buzzer, wireless, whistle, lamp and heliograph.  They also learned map reading—­the most fascinating of accomplishments.  This Corps had the distinction of introducing “wireless” for women in England in connection with its Headquarters training school.  When one of the Corps later accepted a splendid appointment as wireless instructor at a wireless telegraph college—­the Corps was duly elated.

[Illustration:  W.A.A.C.’s.  ON THE MARCH]

[Illustration:  WOMEN OF THE RESERVE AMBULANCE]

The Women’s Reserve Ambulance had the distinction of being the first ambulance on the scene in the first serious Zeppelin Raid in London (September, 1915).  They came to where the first bombs fell, killing and wounding, and did the work of rescue, and when another ambulance arrived later, “Thanks,” said the police, “the ladies have done this job.”