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Women's Army Auxiliary Corps - Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps
The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps was formed in July 1917, allowing women to contribute to the war effort, taking over some roles from their male counterparts, freeing up more men for active service. The WAAC was renamed the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps in April 1918 and was disbanded in September 1921.
1st Jul 1917 Inspection
2nd Jul 1917 New Quarters
3rd Jul 1917 Draft Arrives
4th Jul 1917 Inspection
5th Jul 1917 Posting
6th Jul 1917 Hospital Admissions
7th Jul 1917 Draft
8th Jul 1917 Move
9th Jul 1917 New Quarters
10th Jul 1917 Inspections
11th Jul 1917 Posting
12th Jul 1917 Arrivals
13th Jul 1917 Instruction
14th Jul 1917 Accomodation
15th Jul 1917 Accomodation
16th Jul 1917 Arrivals
17th Jul 1917 Draft Arrives
18th Jul 1917 Arrivals
19th Jul 1917 Hospital Admission
20th Jul 1917 Hospital
21st Jul 1917 Administrators
23rd Jul 1917 Arrivals
24th Jul 1917 Draft
25th Jul 1917 Clerks
26th Jul 1917 Report
27th Jul 1917 Report
28th Jul 1917 Duty
29th Jul 1917 Duty
25th Aug 1917 Extract from The Times
"Women in the Army
A Statement will be issued shortly by the Ministry of Labour of the position as regards the recruiting of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, telling women where to apply and when and what numbers will be wanted immediately for different sections.
Widespread interest is being taken in the drastic substitutions which are to take place in certain units, formations and offices administered by the army Council at home, at the bases and on the lines of communications overseas, in addition to those that have already been made. The approximate basis of substitution is four women for three men. For instance, four women with technical knowledge are regarded as equivalent to three technical soldiers in the Royal Flying Corps and the Army Service Corps. The women cooks, who have introduced many reforms in cooking since they took over the base kitchens, consider that in their case he basis should be reversed.
The women march to their work in the morning and march back again in their dinner hour. They are subject to strict discipline, but they understand this before going to France. The women who are already out in France have lived up to their uniform so well that only three of them have had to be sent back from France for disciplinary reasons, and these not very serious offences. One of the first batches sent out committed a technical offence against discipline out of the fervour of their sense of justice. They found that beds had been provided for them in a hut which had previously been occupied by men who only had mattresses. They took the beds out, folded them up and used only the mattresses. It happened that a number of wounded soldiers had just been brought to a hospital nearby where the beds proved very useful.
Only one fortnight in a year furlough is given, the terms of service are for a year or the duration of the war, which ever is longer. The women have to go through a medical examination as severe as that of the men, as in the hut where six women would be accommodated at close quarters it is advisable to have all fear of contagion removed. No promise is given to be able to send friends out together, but where ever it is possible this is done and it humanizes the not very interesting life lead by the average woman in the Army Auxiliary Corps in France. So far the most difficult kind of worker to get is the charwoman, who is needed for scrubbing and washing up. The women who do this kind of work are usually old and with many home ties, and not likely to be able to leave home.
The pay of the administrative appointments is not munificent, though offering a living wage.... Of the NCO's and rank and file the forewoman telegraphist is the best paid receiving 50s per week. A qualified forewoman motor-driver mechanic received 40s and a shorthand-typist 39s 6d."
27th Aug 1917 From - The Times
"Recruiting for the Women's Army
How to Join the Corps
The transfer of recruiting on behalf of the War Office for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps from the National Service Department to the Employment Department of the Ministry of Labour has now been completed.... The preliminary enrolment of candidates for the Corps will in future be effected exclusively through the local machinery of the Employment Department, and all applications should be made, either personally or by letter, to the nearest Employment Exchange.
The business of recruiting throughout the country is now in operation. An opportunity of assisting the Army is thus open to women, who are needed both at home and abroad for service with the troops to take the place of men who will be released for other purposes. It is intended that members of the corps shall be employed in various capacities, such as clerical work, motor driving, domestic work, printing and other more technical employment in the engineering and electrical sections. The women's Corps will be an auxiliary service to the British Army, with it's own uniform and serving under a special code of discipline.... The age limit for home service will be 18 years, but no candidates under the age of 20 will be accepted for service abroad. At the moment the urgent demand is for domestic workers, both to replace men and to prepare the arrangements for the other women who are to follow.
All women selected, except those chosen for employment with local units, will in the first instance be posted to receiving depot hostels. These are now being established in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Warrington, Edinburgh, Bristol, Doncaster, Newcastle and Dublin, and a special hostel has been established for women chosen for foreign service....The candidate will be interviewed and asked to fill in a form giving particulars of her age, experience, references &c., and the capacity in which she wishes to serve, if she appears on the whole suitable, her references will be taken up and if these again prove satisfactory, her name will be sent forward and she will in due course be invited to attend before a Selection and Medical Board. The Selection Board will consist of a local administrator of the Corps, a representative of the Employment Department, an Army officer called in to advise in technical cases where women with special qualifications are required, and such additional members may be necessary, meeting under the chairmanship of the Recruiting Controller, who will be a woman appointed by the Adjutant-General's Department.
Together with her notice of calling up for an interview, any candidate living more than five miles away will receive a free return railway warrant. Applicants who are chosen as suitable will be passed on forth-with for examination by the Medical Board, which in every case will meet on the same day as the Selection Board, so that there will be no uncertainty or delay on this score, and a candidate, having once been passed by the Medical Board, will be asked to fill up the final undertaking to enrol as from the date upon which she is free to take up duty, and will then be recognised and paid as a member of the WAAC.
After selection an applicant will, according to circumstances, be posted direct to her hostel, or allowed to return home until she receives her calling up notice. In the interval she will draw pay as a member of the WAAC from the date she is free to take up her duty and the calling up notice, which will direct her how and where to join, will again be accompanied by a free railway warrant. Where necessary, Women will be seen off from the station and met on their arrival.
Women who are already engaged in government or munition work or on hospital work (VAD or otherwise) as well as those working under municipal or education authorities, will not be accepted for the WAAC unless they bring with them written permission from their employer of chief to volunteer; and no woman whose husband is serving overseas will at present be accepted for employment in the same theatre of war as that in which her husband is serving."
9th Jan 1918 Reorganisation
16th Jan 1918 Objection to Service
7th Feb 1918 W.A.A.C. cooks strike
21st Mar 1918 Welsh W.A.A.C. leader
2nd Apr 1918 Enlistment Meeting
4th Apr 1918 Inspiring Conduct In Recent Battle
9th Apr 1918 Commander in Chief
1918-04-13 No Casualties
31st May 1918 Plucky WAACs
12th Jun 1918 Clerks
12th Jul 1918 Disobedience
23rd May 1919 Murder
27th May 1919 Inquest
If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.
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260096 Elizebeth Patterson This is my aunt Elizebeth Patterson's cap badge. She served in WW1. After the war she lived in Dublin. I am submitting these photos has her nephew. In old age she returned to Bailieborough Co Caven, at my mothers address.
Elizebeth Patterson is the sister of George Patterson and David Patterson, all of whom served in the war.
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247626 Forewoman Mary Jamieson 2nd Artists Rifles OTC  After the death of my aunt, in Australia in 2007, a box of her memorabilia arrived at my house. Among the items was a very faded photo of a WW1 soldier in uniform, wearing a Military Medal ribbon, on the back of which my aunt had written “This is a photograph of my father who died of wounds in 1918. He was the eldest son of an old English Catholic family”. His shoulder badge is unfortunately too faded to clearly make out the lettering/numbers displayed.
My aunt also left a photo herself and one of her elder brother, both as young children. This tied in with what my late mother told us, that her mother had had two children by this unnamed soldier. Having tracked down the birth details of the other child we ordered the birth certificates but, unfortunately, in both cases, the father’s name was missing. The fact that the father may not have been present to register the birth if serving in France may be one reason why it was left blank.
My grandmother, Mary Jamieson, was born in the small Scottish village of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, and died in London in 1949, sadly before my sister and I ever had the chance to meet her. In 1911, her two brothers and one of her sisters already having earlier emigrated to the U.S. and to Canada, she is on the census as being in service in Stirling. Perhaps because of a Suffragette rally held there, although we don’t know exactly when, she was inspired to move to London and became involved in women’s suffrage. According to my late mother, she mixed in some quite elevated circles and at times spoke at Speakers’ Corner on the subject.
Among the people she is said to have had contact with were members of the Brooke family, distantly related to the Earls of Warwick, it being a time when class barriers were becoming less rigid, especially among those supporting women’s rights. Many years afterwards she would regale her second family, including my mother, with tales of her early life and was clearly ahead of her time with regard to equality for women.
She joined the WAAC – my mother said she was one of the first so we assume early in 1917 – and had the rank of Forewoman. With her catering background, we assume it was in this capacity that she was employed, and at some point she was stationed somewhere outside Lille in France. As we have no date for this it is unclear as to whether she would have been there as a WAAC or in some other auxiliary capacity. The only documentation we have is a postcard photo of her taken with several other WAACs on the back of which she wrote “WAAC 2nd Artists Rifles, Romford OTC, Essex”, the photographer being G.W. Secretan, Regimental Photographer to the Artists Rifles OTC. I have been told that the photo number, 5025, shows it was taken around October 1918. Unfortunately, her service record did not survive the Blitz and so we have no details of her time with the WAAC.
She was living and working in Marylebone, London, when she gave birth to her first child, John, in January 1916 in the hospital at Marylebone Workhouse, her occupation given as servant. Two years later, in June 1918, while working in the Euston area as a cook, she gave birth to my aunt, Mary Joan (always known as Joan), in the hospital at St Pancras Workhouse.
It is hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for her without the support of a husband or any nearby family, and understandable that she felt she had no choice but to give up John to friends to look after. We don’t know when this happened but she must have kept in touch with the family because of the photo my aunt had of him as a boy. My mother vaguely remembered that the elder child had been unofficially adopted by friends of my grandmother in Leamington Spa but with no family connections in that area we didn’t expect to find out any more about him.
However, through the internet and after many postings we managed to locate the granddaughter of the family who took him in. We exchanged photos and he was clearly the same boy, although she had been under the impression that he had been an orphan. Sadly she could offer no clues as to how the adoption came about and knew of no WAACs in her family. We subsequently managed to contact some members of John’s family, but they knew nothing about his story and sadly had no photographs either.
Perhaps the adoptive family was that of one of her WAAC friends? My mother had no memory of ever meeting her older half-brother John, just knew he had been adopted, so clearly he didn’t feature in my grandmother’s later family. Joan, however, was part of my mother’s family growing up.
We have undertaken a great deal of research in trying to identify the soldier – did she meet him while as a WAAC at Hare Hall? But as John was born in 1916 she must have known him in early 1915 at which point there was no WAAC. Was there a Warwickshire connection via the Brooke family and the fact that John was ‘adopted’ by a family there? Was his name John, given that it was quite customary for the first children to be named after their parents, as with Mary Joan?
Mary Joan was baptised at St Pancras Church in Euston Road in July 1918, and my mother’s story was that her godmother had been a “Lady Joan someone” hence her middle name. A pity it wasn’t a Catholic baptism where godparents’ names are included in the church record. My grandfather’s surname was Reid and he and my grandmother went on to have six more children, five of whom surviving childhood. Curiously, on the birth certificate of the eldest of these children, my late uncle George, the mother’s name is written “Mary Reid, nee Jamieson, formerly Cameron”. None of the younger children’s birth certificates include the name Cameron. As my grandfather would have been the person registering the birth, he must have had a reason to include it, but having checked both English and Welsh marriage records, as well as those held in Scotland, there was no marriage between a Mary Jamieson and someone by the name of Cameron during the years in question. While my grandmother’s paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Cameron it seems unlikely that this was the reason for its inclusion. Was this the soldier’s surname? If so, he sounds more Scottish than English, but if he was Catholic there might have been a reason he and my grandmother didn’t marry as she was brought up a Scots Presbyterian.
The centenary of our unknown soldier’s death seems an appropriate time to try and get to the bottom of this mystery and we hope his identity will eventually emerge after so many years of searching.
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241594 Kathleen Carroll Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (d.19th July 1918) Kathleen Carroll was the daughter of Francis Carroll of Mullavalley, Louth.
She was 27 when she died and is buried on the site of the old Monastery in the Louth Old Graveyard, Co. Louth, Ireland.
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238537 Worker B. E. Geoghegan Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (d.29th November 1918) Worker Geoghegan was the daughter of Mr P. Geoghegan, of Glencree, Enniskerry.
She is buried near the east boundary of the Curtlestown Catholic Churchyard, Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
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234176 Marie Annie Parry My grandmother Marie Parry (pronounced Marry) served in the WAAC during the Great War from 1917 to 1918 so far as I can ascertain. She was very reticent, as were many, to speak about her service but stated that after her fiance was killed at the Somme (he was in the Liverpool Pals) she decided she needed to do something more than act as a housemaid for Lord Derby, at Knowsley Hall.
She therefore took herself off, alone and joined the WAAC when it was created and the only thing she would tell me was that she was stationed at Audricque, and that there was a German prisoner of war camp nearby. She spoke of the beautiful German voices singing Christmas carols, probably 1917, and how the sound of it really touched her.
I have photographs of her and WAAC colleagues, together with postcards of Audricque but that is as much information as I have.
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229140 Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne-Vaughan Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps Dame Gwynne-Vaughan made a huge contribution to botany, being a pioneer in the study of fungi genetics. She was named the head of the University of London's Botany Department in 1909 and was brought in to lead the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1917.
She found herself at the head of a force that reached nearly 10,000 women across France, from nurses to aircraft technicians, and in 1918, she also became the head of the Women's Air Force.
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217145 Jane Bradley (d.2nd Nov 1918) Jane Bradley was born in Dublin and enlisted in London. She died of wounds at home.
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216836 Mary Ellen "Molly" Buffell My Grandma, Mary Taplin served in the WAAC.
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215774 Catherine Hedley Rodgers Queen Marys Army Auxiliary Corps (d.9th Nov 1918) Catherine Hedley Rodgers, Worker 45131, enlisted at Newcastle and served in the Gateshead Hostel, with Queen Mary Army Auxiliary Corps. She died at home age 27 on the 9th November 1918. Her grave is in St Mary's Churchyard Heworth - South Eastern Part.
Catherine was born in Jarrow 1891, daughter of the late David and Mary Jane Rodgers nee Rutherford. In the 1911 census she is 20 years old working as a live-in Laundry maid at Wynyard Park, Stockton on Tees.
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212638 Lt. Winifred Florence "Snuffy" Brealey Transport Women's Army Auxiliary Corps My grandmother, Winifred Florence Brealey, served as a single women in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in WWI. She was originally from Bovey Tracey in Devon, born 11 November 1895, 19 Southview Bovey Tracey, to parents John Brealey and Alice Maud Brealey, nee Bratcher.
She was in the transport division of Auxiliary Service Corps and finished her service as a Lieutenant. In 1918 my grandfather, Edgar Herbert Bristen Preston-Thomas, (originally from Weybridge) who served with NZ's Wellington Infantry Battalion and was in the Gallipoli campaigns, was in London. He had been discharged upon receiving a bullet wound to the hand and from suffering subsequent sickness. It was in London they meet each other and a romance blossomed despite the 16 year age gap. They used to travel around London in a motorbike and side car. After the war they married on 16 June 1919 and immigrated to NZ. On leaving for NZ at Plymouth, Winifred was pregnant and not expecting to give birth until they arrived in NZ some 6-8 weeks later. She went into labour and gave birth almost immediately on departure and their first daughter was born just off Drake Island still within the harbour.
Upon settling in NZ Winifred kept her A.S.C uniform in her wardrobe for many years and in WWII volunteered and assisted with soup kitchens and hosting soldiers to dinner for morale and hospitality services. She continued to be patriotic and serve people and lead them in times of need.
I have searched the records section and have not been able to discover her name so maybe thinking her records are amongst those that are lost from WWII bombings of London. If anyone can guide me to further research opportunities it would be appreciated.
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211865 Gladys Powers Gladys Powers served in the British Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and later in the Women's Royal Air Force as a waitress. She met Ed Luxford, a Canadian soldier and went to Canada in 1920 as a war bride.
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205675 Edith Bennett Womans Army Auxillary Corps Edith Bennet was born 20th September 1900, She married and became Edith Back and died in 1981. She joined up so that she could do her bit, as her two older brothers, George b.1897 and Walter b.1899, were serving as regulars in the Royal Navy. She was discharged 21st of October 1918. Her unit was later changed to the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps. I understand that such members of the unit were not given service numbers.
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