NEAT UNIFORMS

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 14

NEAT UNIFORMS

WOMEN TERRITORIALS rpHE recent war scare has produced A the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, whose object it is to relieve men of non-combatant duties during a national, emergency, says a London correspondent. It was in the Great War that women were first recruited officially in England as members of the Naval Military and Air Services. They belonged respectively to the Women’s Royal Naval Service, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and the Women’s Royal Air Force Service. These bodies were disbanded with the peace, and such women’s organisations of a patriotic service character as have existed during the past twenty years have been purely voluntary and unofficial. The W.A.T.S. is intended to replace the W.A.A.C.’s (Army) and the W.R.A.F.’s (Air Force). There is as yet no indication that the women’s naval service, usually and prettily known as the W.R.E.N.’s, is going to be revived. The members of the W.A.T.S. are intended to do every kind of ancillary work with the Army and the Air Force. They will do clerical duties, thus relieving men in the orderly rooms; they will be employed in cooking and in waiting in messes and canteens, and they will help in the innumerable jobs connected with the upkeep and issuing of clothing. That is as far as indoor work is concerned. Out of doors, they will be vised for driving cars of all sorts. It is within the recollection of many people that, during the Great War, an anxious London did not forget to smile when seeing car after car of khaki-clad, scarlet-tabbed staff officers being driven about, no douV on the most important duties, by young W.A.A.C.’s, who were not only extremely efficient, but invariably good to look at. Those were the days when cosmetics were not as freely vised as they are today. Now the W.A.T.S. vUI be actually allowed a “judicious use of make-up.” The first parade of the newly-formed body was held at London recently, and consisted mainly of the members of the motor transport section of the corps, which will number some 1500 in wartime. The girls marched past very steadily and looked trim and neat in their new uniforms, which consist of a khaki jacket with a turn-down collar, and a skirt of the same material which must be 14in. from the ground, and must, as the regulations say, be wide enougi for free movement. What that freedom of movement implies has no dcubt been already discovered by most of the girls, who, for the last few weeks, have been drilling under sergeants of the foot guards. As I have said, the Navy is not r - presented in all this, so Lie unifo—*v and badges of resurrected W.R.E.N.’s do not yet come into the picture, but this writer, who has certain very humble contacts with the Navy, has not forgotten going to the Admiralty one day during the Great War and seeing a woman go past wearing o*i her sleeve the , stripes of a Rear-Admiral. There is one matter which should be placed on record. Silk stockings are barred for the W.A.T.S. The War Office announces that officers’ stockings must be of “drab material,” and are not to ’.*e transparent. The member:/ stockings are to be of heavy lisle (cotton) to match the skirt.

Uniforms will be issued *to the rank and file, who will ja ' receive one cap, one jacket, one skirt, two shirts, one tie and two pairs of stockings. Officers will be expected to buy their own uniforms. One final touch: Companies raised in Scotland may be allowed to wear tartan skirts. That is indeed bringing home the horrors of war to a distracted country.