The only women in the United States who wore a uniform at the time United were, in addition to the nurses, the ten thousand young women who had just enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (Female Auxiliary Corps of the Army). Created in May 1942 under the slogan "Free a man for combat", it sought volunteers willing to fill positions in the Army as non-combatants. They were organized into companies distributed among the Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and Supply Services. Their range of occupations, which would expand over time, ranged from those similar to those they performed in civilian life –typists, stenographers, file clerks, telephone operators, radio operators or drivers– to others that were much more specialized, of a strictly military nature. , such as aerial photography analysts, control tower operators, parachute packers or bombsight maintenance specialists.
Marshall decided to go one step further. From reports reaching him from the UK, he knew that since 1941 the British had used mixed anti-aircraft artillery units incorporating large numbers of women – including Winston Churchill's daughter Mary – with great success to protect their homeland from deadly Luftwaffe raids. Although these were units that could suffer casualties in combat, as in fact happened, the risk to which their members were exposed was still limited, and therefore affordable for British society. Marshall wanted to see if this idea could be exported to the United States. To do this, he ordered the creation within the 36th Coast Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, established in Washington D.C., of two mixed experimental batteries in which women had to constitute at least 55% of the templates.
The incorporation of women in combat units
21 officers and 374 enlisted women belonging to two technical companies and one WAAC operations company were selected for the test among those who had obtained a higher score in the intelligence tests (Army General Classification Test , better known by its acronym AGCT) that were made to all those who joined the Army to try to assign them to those positions that best suited their abilities. Between mid-December 1942 and mid-April of the following year they were trained in almost all the tasks of an anti-aircraft artillery battery. In addition to serving on the staff, they learned to handle the radar devices and the directions of fire of the 90-millimeter cannons that allowed them to fix targets, follow them, predict their course and electrically transmit the necessary data to the artillery pieces to aim them. in the direction and at the required height. They were also instructed in the handling of the searchlights that swept the night sky with their light beams looking for possible targets. They were even able to act on rare occasions as servants of the cannons to experience firsthand how the targets they had previously located were attacked. However, there was one task that, like their British counterparts, was absolutely forbidden to them:firing the cannons. Killing was an exclusively male affair and women were not even to be trained to do so. In fact, they also did not receive the training with portable weapons that their male colleagues did. It was considered essential to maintain this fiction even though it was clear that shooting down a plane was the product of the teamwork of the entire battery, women included.
Given the close contact between men and women, special care was taken to avoid any attack on the morals of the time:each sex had its own lodgings and coexistence was strictly limited to the training period, trying not to send women alone to isolated positions or places where they could be observed by civilian personnel who could be scandalized. All fears proved unfounded. A climate of camaraderie characterized by "mutual understanding and respect" always prevailed.
Colonel Timberlake, who was in charge of the experiment, was enthusiastic about the results obtained:«all the WAAC personnel showed an enormous devotion to duty, willingness and ability to assimilate and understand the technical information related to maintenance problems and tactical management of all kinds of equipment». He considered them "superior to men in all functions involving delicacy in employing manual dexterity" or performing "routine repetitive tasks." In fact, they learned faster than their male peers, many of them "limited duty" soldiers (a category eliminated in August 1943 that included everyone with any physical defect however slight), so he recommended shortening in the future his training period. He even considered that women with lower AGCT scores could have performed just as well without falling into the boredom shown by some of the higher-ranked selectees. The feasibility of employing women in the anti-aircraft artillery had been "conclusively demonstrated," to the point that General Lewis, Timberlake's superior, asked permission to add some 2,400 officers and enlisted men to his units.
Marshall was at a crossroads. If he agreed to Lewis's request, it would inevitably be known that women were being integrated into mixed combat units. And that was a luxury he could not afford in the spring of 1943. He had been determined for some time to expand the role of women in the Army and wanted Congress to agree to make the WAAC fully military in character and allow its members served outside the United States. If he wanted to overcome the resistance of the most conservative sector of American society, he had to get him to see the incorporation of women into military life as an extension of their work at home, in the offices or in the war industries. It was essential not to mix them with the men or assign them to combat units.
Although it had been a resounding success, Marshall decided to shelve the experiment before it was known that it had been carried out. He didn't want her to become an obstacle to his aspirations. He no doubt shared the view of General Reynolds, one of his subordinates:"I don't think national politics or public opinion is yet ready to accept the employment of women in combat units." The move came out round:in June, Congress agreed to all their demands, approving the creation of the Women's Army Corps in which more than 150,000 volunteers would end up joining during the war.
As a consequence of his decision, the female staff was transferred to other less sensitive destinations and all the documentation archived waiting for better times. It would take twenty-five years for the information related to the experiment to be declassified and seventy years, until 2013, for women to join any combat unit of the US Armed Forces.
In more difficult circumstances, other countries – led by the Soviet Union – were forced to forget their moral qualms and draw on all the human resources at their disposal, including women. However, when peace came, they returned to occupy their traditional roles in the society of the time and their contribution to the war effort of their respective countries fell into oblivion.
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