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account for "permanent party" personnel at a base, but was still using formally activated headquarters squadrons at all air bases. Services of Supply (or, under their new name, Army Service Forces), on the other hand, had already inaugurated the system of supplying overhead personnel to its commands in this country as a "bulk allotment" of people, with a percentage in each grade, and of allowing each command to


tionate share" of grades if they had "their own table of organization", and that soldiers "resented the Waacs' occupying part of their grades, but didn't mind if Waacs had their own grades". Able personnel officers, of course, immediately showed enlisted men that, whether Waacs were on a small T/O of their own or were counted against a base's total allotment of grades, Waacs were always part of the total military strength allowed a base and always occupied a part of the grade strength, no matter how the bookkeeping was done. Able personnel officers also realized that women were not entitled to "their proportionate share" of grades merely because they were women and were administered as a WAAC unit, but that the entire 150 women might well be all staff sergeants, or all privates, according to the jobs they held. Most base commanders realized very early in the WAAC program that, although setting aside a certain number of grades for the Waacs might result in early promotions for many Waacs, the system in the long run resulted in poor personnel management and limited utilization of WAAC personnel: A man who ran a personnel office with 100 people in it would find, for instance, that, if he had 20 Waacs, some of that 20 would have to be sergeants, some corporals, and some privates, because Waacs had "separate grades", although all 20 might have deserved sergeancies, or all 20 should have been privates, so far as the jobs they held in that personnel office were concerned. The office manager's natural tendency was to become discouraged both at the extra bookkeeping involved in using Waacs and at the thought that he was not free to reward Waacs suitably if he gave them responsible assignments.

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