The First Women's Army: Fort Des Moines, 1942

The same installation that had trained the first Black Army officers in nineteen seventeen was selected, twenty-five years later, for another historic first. In the summer of nineteen forty-two, Fort Des Moines became the training headquarters for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, the first American women's military organization to be established by Congress.

Oveta Culp Hobby, a Texas newspaper executive and civic leader, was appointed director of the Corps and given the rank equivalent to colonel. On July twentieth, nineteen forty-two, the first class of WAAC officer candidates, four hundred and forty women, began training at Fort Des Moines. They wore khaki, lived in barracks, marched in formation, and were taught military law, supply administration, and motor vehicle operation. They were also, in the early weeks, without a proper uniform, making do with modified Army-issue clothing while the War Department designed something appropriate for women in service.

The Corps became the Women's Army Corps in nineteen forty-three, dropping the word Auxiliary and giving its members full military status for the first time. This was not a small distinction. Full military status meant veteran's benefits, military law protections, and a formal place in the chain of command. It meant that what the women were doing was recognized, in law, as real military service.

By the end of the war, approximately one hundred fifty thousand women had served in the WAC. Their work freed male soldiers from clerical, administrative, and logistics assignments for combat deployment. They served in every theater of the war. The first class to train at Des Moines became officers who commanded those who came after them.

Fort Des Moines today carries the memory of both cohorts, the Black officers of nineteen seventeen and the women of nineteen forty-two. The site is maintained as a museum.