‘Powder-Puff Barracks'

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30563, 5 October 1964, Page 2

‘Powder-Puff Barracks'

More like a club than a barracks is the £1,000,. 000 Queen Elizabeth Barracks, just opened at Guildford, Surrey, for the Women’s Royal Army Corps. It is iuxiously furnished, with bright, airy rooms. The dormitories, which have lime-green and yellow curtains and bed covers, are fitted with a separate wardrobe and dressing-table for each girl, and a cupboard over the bed to keep more personal possessions in. On every floor there

are special washbasins and showers for those girls who like to shampoo their own hair. Those who prefer, to have it done for them, ean do so in the camp salon for 4s 6d.

In the Junior Ranks Club there is a shop and also a public house, where drinks ean be bought during the normal licensed hours. This has a juke-box, on which the records are changed every month.

There are also lounges where the girls can sunbathe, watch television,

act plays, play table-ten-nis .. . or meet their boyfriends. (There are no men on the camp—apart from the Army dentist, butcher and director of music—but boyfriends are allowed to visit the barracks club until 10.30 every night).

Says the camp, commandant, Colonel Lucy Davies: “The men in the Army already call this the ‘powder puff barracks’. We don’t mind the ‘powder pufF part; but a new word must be invented in place of that ‘barracks’.”