THE KHAKI GIRLS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 148, 12 March 1918, Page 8

THE KHAKI GIRLS

AT WORK IN A FRENCH PALACE. For sheer romance of environment it would be difficult to imagine a setting equal to that of the Records Offices of the B.E.F. in France (says the London "Daily Mail" of December 15). Here in the great hall of an archbishop's palace English girls of tho Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps are card-index-ing and registering every detail of every man in our armies in France and in Italy.

The old paintings on the walls are canvascd in, and the light from the high windows falls not on assemblages of cardinals and nobles, or of mediaeval English troops, but on office furniture put together by the R.E. and on fairhaired, khaki-clad English girls typing and sorting. The W.A.A.O. have well taken for their badge the rose at the top of the fleur-de-Iys. In a region at the top of the stairs girls are at work collating all the diaries and reports of every unit and corps in France. One branch of this Record Office ideals with all casualties. The system is that when a man is wounded the first casualty station at the front scuds two telegrams, one to the War Office at London and one to the Records Office in France, where it is at once checked for name and number before the relative is communicated with. Generally this can be done within a few hours, and at the longest in two days. The girls have, and will have, very long hours until more help can be got from Home. They work seven days a week, with a break of one hour and threequarter sat midday and half a day off a fortnight. The Army Council instructioii''says that four women arc to replace three men, or in some instances it allows three to replace two. In the Records Office it has been found that the whole work is a. question of physical endurance, and ivhen a woman clerk is tired she is apt to he inaccurate.

Hidden away in one of the most beautiful parts of Normanby is a great and important factory and repair shop. Here has been built one of the largest camps for the AV.A.A.C. It consists of 35 large sleeping huts, some of which will hold 90 women. The dining hut is correspondingly large, being .200 feet by 26 feet. Tho cook-house is enorr ■mous. Store-tftpms, larders, pantries, washhouse, ablution huts, playing fields all ready—and about three dozen women to occupy them! It is hoped that women who have worked in factories and munition works in England, as well as cooks and household workers, will come here, for thousands are wanted.

Most important of all the women workers from the soldiers' point of view ore the cooks and waitresses, or sen-r ers, who must come out in still greater numhers to c!o the domestic work at the camps. The officers' mess, the sergeants' mess, and the men's dining halls will all be served from cookhouses whero women prepare the food. Most of the cooks' camps have drawn their administrators and head cook from members of the Women's Legion, and many of them have experience of cooking in English camps at home. The cook-houses are large huts with concrete floors and big central stoves with flat tops for the boiling of enormous pots and grent ovens for the roasting of meat and pies. This and enamel dishes are piled on racks or tables in orderly array. The contents of the great larders.would fill the English housekeeper's soul with envy.