FIGHTING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4559, 13 April 1942, Page 8

FIGHTING

A MAN’S JOB “It is one thing to teach women to use a rifle and another to expect them to handle this weapon under service conditions, which can be exhausting enough for the professional soldier. There are no doubt women physically capable of great endurance who are anxious to be treated equally with men, but the prabability is that their numbers are few, and women as a whoel are agreed with men that fighting is a man’s job. This is not to say that women should not be employed even more than they are on military duties which were till recently the exclusive prerogative of men. Women are manning—if that is the word—balloon barrages with perfect efficiency, and they are performing very valuable work in mixed anti-aircraft units, though not as combatants. That is to say, they are not concerned with loading and firing guns, but with the precision instruments that are an integral part of modern gunnery. In work of this kind they share with the Royal Artillery the risks of warfare and the nervous strain that noise and danger impose. In action they have proved themselves equal to the demands that are made on them.”— “Glasgow Herald.”