THE BELLES OF SAN ANTONIO
week, were several thousand soldiers of the American Third Army waiting around for the furloughs due them after mandeuvres, reports Time. Delay had its compensations. No need had they to pose the questions: Madam, have you a daughter fair? Ready to see that the boys had a fine time were 1,000 Texas maidens. The girls who turned out to entertain the boys: were San Antonio’s Liberty Belles, who have volunteered to bolster morale by acting as "dates" for lonesome draftees. The Liberty Belles are organised along semi-military lines; four girls take orders from a corporal, three corporals from a sergeant, five sergeants from a lieutenant. On the ground that few enlisted men, however lonely, would ig San Antonio, Texas, *the other
enjoy stepping out with a lieutenant, that rank is limited to older Belles who mobilise the girls at San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium, whence they are despatched by bus to the scene of operations: the Army Y.M.C.A., Fort Sam Houston, Brooks and Randolph Fields, etc. If a Belle is absent on duty nights she is likely to lose her red-white-and-blue merit badge, and be drummed out of the ranks. The Liberty Belle brigade got under way last June, when the reluctance of San Antonio’s young ladies to meet the Army so scandalised an energetic matron named Mrs. Norma M. Hancock, that she soon had San Antonio by the ears. Business houses, clubs, churches and politicians earnestly persuaded girls to join up. To get’a name for the corps, a
city-wide contest was held. Pretty Agnes MacTaggert, who won it, was denied membership in the Liberty Belles because she was only 16 (age limits: 17-25). The Liberty Belles are very serious about their work. Besides dancing with soldiers, the Belles listen sympathetically to their troubles, play cards, ping-pong, or just sit, if that’s wanted. The girls are warned against allowing one "date" to monopolise their evening, against giving out telephone numbers carelessly.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 17
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325THE BELLES OF SAN ANTONIO New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 17
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