The WAVES

While the WAACs drilled and paraded in Fort DesMoines, President Roosevelt signed into existence their sisters under the uniform: the Women's Naval Reserve, to be conveniently known as WAVES.*

When Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was hard pressed for clerical workers just before the U.S. entered World War I, he gave his legal advisers a knowing look: forthwith they decided that a yeoman need not be male. This led to 11,275 yeomanettes in the U.S., France,

Panama Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawaii by the time of the Armistice. There were also 300 marinettes or Marine Corps girls. But none were officers.

The initial 1942 request is for 1,000 officers and 10,000 enlisted members to serve in the continental U.S. to relieve men for active sea duty. Their base pay will be the same as that for regular officers and enlisted men (from $50 to $3,000).

Of the officers, there will be one lieutenant commander, 35 lieutenants. Rest of the women over 31 will be lieutenants junior grade; those under 31 ensigns.

Inducted this week as the WAVES' lieutenant commander was Wellesley College's President, brisk, able, curly-haired Mildred McAfee, 42, who has served on the Navy advisory council for the training of women reservists.

The Midshipwomen. To qualify as officers, women must be U.S. citizens of good repute, 20 to 50 years old. Educational requirements are high: a college degree, or two years of college work, plus at least two years' professional or business experience applicable to naval jobs. The Navy cannily insists an applicant have at least two years of high-school or college mathematics (TIME, June 22).

Especially wanted: women who majored in engineering, astronomy, meteorology, electronics, physics, mathematics, metallurgy, business statistics and modern foreign languages. Applicants for commissions will not breeze into recruiting offices. They will write to the naval-officer-procurement director in their city or naval district giving their age and educational background, ask for application blanks.

Smith College in Northampton, Mass., official training center for officers, will receive about 900 WAVES during the first week in October. A Midwestern school for enlisted personnel will open in November.

*Weary of uneuphonious initials, the Navy first thought of the nickname, then rationalized it into "Women Appointed for Volunteer Emergency Service."

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