their stay in France.  If any man should so forget himself as to use bad language or at any time to be rude to them, it is up to any of his comrades standing by to shut him up, and see that he does not repeat this offence.

To the older men I would say:  Treat them as you would your own
daughters.  To the younger men:  Treat them as you would your
own sisters.

——­, Comdg., Base Depot.

They are doing the clerical work more and more, and in a few weeks have become so technical that they know where to send requisitions concerning 9.2 guns or trench mortars or giant howitzers.  There is a favourite story told against an early Waac that when a demand came for armoured hose, she sent it to the clothing department, but she knows better now.

French girls are also helping in the clerical department, working side by side with the Waacs.

Others, the telegraphists and telephonists are in the Signalling Corps and these are the only ones who wear Army badges.  They work under the Officers Commanding Signals and are so successful that the officers want thousands more.

Another small group are called the “Hush Waacs.”  There are only about a dozen of them and they have come from the Censor’s Office and between them have a thorough knowledge of all modern languages.  They are decoding signalled and written messages, script of every kind.

Numbers more are motor car and transport drivers working with A.S.C.

An intensely interesting piece of work at the front in which the Waacs now are, and in which French women have worked for a very long time, and are still working in large numbers, is the great “Salvage” work of the Army.  In the Salvage centre at one ordnance base 30,000 boots are repaired in a week.  They are divided into three classes—­those that can be used again by the men at the front—­those for men on the lines of communication—­those for prisoners and coloured labour, and uppers that are quite useless are cut up into laces.  They salve old helmets, old web and leather equipments, haversacks, rifles, horse shoes, spurs, and every conceivable kind of battlefield debris.

The work of repair and of renewal of clothing, which goes over to England to be dealt with, is a wonder of economy.

The women are helping in postal work and we handle about three million letters and packets a day in France for our Army there.

One other piece of work that falls to trained women gardeners in the Corps, is the care of the graves in France.  There are so many graves in little clusters, lonely by the roadside, and in great cemeteries.  They mark them clearly and they make them more beautiful with flowers.  No work they have come to do, is done more faithfully than this act of reverence to our heroic and honoured dead.

The Y.W.C.A.’s Blue Triangle is going to be the same symbol for the Waacs as the Red Triangle for the Soldiers.  They are building huts everywhere in France and in England, and the girls like them as much as the men do.