WOUNDED AMAZONS

Evening Star, Issue 16777, 4 July 1918, Page 1

WOUNDED AMAZONS

THE PLUCKY W.A.A.C.'S. The first British women who, wearing i their country's military uniform, ever have ! been wounded in battle returned from the fighting zone in France, and are now bjmig nursed at a Rod Cross hospital in London. They are all " Waacs, 1 ' otherwise members of tho now-famous " Women's Army Auxiliary Corps," and the whole corps 'is proud of having members on the casualty list. The " Waacs " have occupied an ©specially prominent place in the limelight of late, not only by reason of the hue account of themselves which they have given in the course of the great battle, but because of n persistent campaign of calumny directed against these plucky girls—a campaign, however, to which it appears likely that the final quietus has now been given. Not long after the March great offensive of the Hun began all sorts of wildcat rumors of disaster to the " Waacs " began to circulate at home. Hundreds of them were said to have been brought home wounded. It will be Borne time, no doubt, before the full story of the intrepidity of these girls and women, all of them recruited from civilian life, with red wax raging on every side of them, can be told, but one story will give an inkling of what a fine chapter in British history the "Waacs'" part in the present fighting will make. One big British depot at tho front, where a lot of "Waacs ' were performing military tasks that until they came had always been done by men, began to get much too warm to suit the military chiefs who are responsible for the safety of thus • feminine wing of the British Army. A fleet of motor-lorries was promptly dispatched to bring the " Waacs ' away. But when these vehicles arrived the plucky and devoted " Waacs " declined to avail themselves of the proffered " lift." " Those lorries may be wanted for the wounded," they said. "We'll march back to the base." And march they did—ls miles or more, along roads that were under shellfiro all the time, arriving dog-tired and foot-weary, but one and all avowing themselves " m the pink," as the army phrase goes. The " pink," of course, is the pink of condition. The "Waacs" wear khaki, and their officers, including many notable women, are all of their own sex. The corps was formed to release men from the lighter forms of army work both at the front and at home.