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1943 (1), but the two weeks which lay between the meeting of staff directors and that date gave little time in which to prepare for the change. All WAAC regulations had already been reviewed and, if considered necessary, were being placed in the body of army regulations or other War Department directives. All WAAC personnel had to be given an opportunity to learn what full military status implied, and to decide whether or not to enlist in the army as members of the WAC. Mechanics had to be established whereby those members of the WAAC who decided to join the WAC could be given physical examinations and enlisted. Under Public law 110, which created the WAC, the WAAC was to be dissolved by the end of the second month after the approval of the new law (or by September 30, as it turned out), and on that date every WAC regulation would automatically cease to be effective.

At the conference the mechanics of making the change to full army status were discussed at length, and every conceivable problem was threshed out, but the change was so sweeping that it was impossible to anticipate all the problems which did actually arise. Staff directors returned to their commands to receive, in the next two months, a flood of War Department directives, which were being constantly amended by letter and telegram, as to just how to effect the change - and to work out the problems which even these directives did not cover by whatever common-sense rules the emergency seemed to demand. It was a time of uncertainty and anxiety for all WAAC personnel,


1. Public Law 110, 78th Congress

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