WASHINGTON -- The war department was ready today to take in its stride organization of a "petticoat army.
Organizational plans for the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps, which will enlist women for non-combatant service with the army have been completed. They will be put into effect as soon as President Roosevelt signs the bill authorizing the WAAC. He may do that today.
War department officials said plans would not be revealed until Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson names a director for the WAAC. Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, Houston newspaper executive now attached to the war departments public relations bureau, was believed to be the leading candidate for the job.
Some of the organizational details as outlined to members of congress by war department officials were learned.
To Train Officers
The director, or highest ranking members of the WAAC, will have the equivalent rank of a major in the army.
All members of the corps will wear uniforms to be provided by the war department. Several designs are now under consideration.
Officers originally will be drawn from selected personnel meeting specific qualifications. Later, enrolled privates will be given an opportunity to go to an officers candidate school.
At the outset, the corps will be organized into companies composed of four officers and 250 enlisted women.
They will be given in the words of the army officer only a sufficient amount of purely military training in order to move these units to and from places and conduct them from one point to another in an orderly and systematic manner. They are going to be taught discipline and a certain amount of close order drill.
Initially, the war department plans to organize 50 companies with an over-all strength of approximately 12,200. Eventually, the WAAC may be expanded to a force of 150,000.
It is planned to use 40 companies totaling approximately 9700 women in the armys aircraft warning service.
Faculty All Men
The other 10 companies would be distributed among army camps and other military stations to work as clerks, machine operators, telephone and telegraph operators, pharmacists, dieticians, hostesses, librarians, theater employees, welfare workers, post exchange employees, cooks, stewardesses and laundry workers. They would re- place enlisted men now engaged in some of these duties.
Only one officers training school will be set up at the start and the faculty will be men all men.
