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SECTION II
THE WACS ARRIVE
On 3 March 1943, fifty-seven WAAC "enrolled" women and two officers arrived at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to work for the AAF's Map Chart Division; on 22 March the AAF's first two WAAC post headquarters companies arrived at Chanute and Scott fields - and the days of theorizing were over. Twenty-three WAAC units arrived at air bases in April, and by the end of the summer (30 September 1943) there were 171 air bases which had WAC personnel as part of the permanent party.
Generals, lieutenants, and sergeants who had long been privately certain that this business of utilizing women as soldiers would be perfectly simple, if the War Department would just let them handle it now had a chance to prove their point. They went into action with all shades and degrees of concepts, from that which held that all women, in or out of uniform, were ladies who should be shielded from the rough ways of the world, to that which held that all soldiers were soldiers and should be treated alike, whether or not they were women. Both extremes were undesirable. One resulted in confusion as to how to administer women who had very definitely been placed under military law, the other placed women on assignments (truck drivers, etc.) or schedules of hours which were too strenuous for women and resulted in loss of efficiency.

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