I know so little about Aunt Marian—and to even begin to understand who she was, what she thought, and what her personality was like– I need to understand why she joined the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) during World War II. . . . Was it a search for adventure? . . . patriotism? . . . economic reasons? . . .

I’ve found several published diaries and oral histories of women who wanted to join the WACs during WWII.  Here are some of their reasons:

Most able-bodies men were already in the armed forces. . . . And, there was a lot of just plane datelessness. . . Armed forces recruitment aimed at women—posters and speeches—became more noticeable, and there was pressure to do something specific for the war effort. The pitch was that a woman working at certain “safe” jobs in the services could release a man for active fighting. I think it was a combination of patriotism, idealism, and the urge for adventure that got me seriously considering joining one of the services.

Anne Bosanko Green (One Woman’s War: Letters Home from the Women’s Army Corps 1944-1946, published 1989)

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I worked as a sales clerk at S.H. Kress. The hours were long and the work was hard, but a fascinating world opened to me. Everybody came to the five-and-dime store I saw boys who I had known at school who had joined the army, looking much improved because of their neat uniforms and newly-disciplined life. . . After more than three years at Kress, I felt a discontent that my life had not changed along with all these changes around me. I wanted to make sacrifices to help my country. . . I gave up my job with Kress and spent a year as a Civil Service employee, becoming more and more aware of women in the military. I realized becoming a WAC would enable me to make a contribution to the war effort while receiving some financial compensation at the same time.

Aileen Kilgore Henderson (Stateside Soldier: Life in the Women’s Army Corps, 1944-1945, published 2001)

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I think I made $10 a week and I worked every night after school. This was during the Depression and everyone was poor. . .World War II. I think that probably it gave me more opportunities to do more. It’s a terrible thing to say that a war does that, but I wonder if I would ever really have left Narragansett and done what I did, which was the best thing I ever did in my life.

Eileen Hughes (Brown University Rhode Island Women in WWII, Oral History Project)

Each woman was in a different situation, and had her own unique reasons for wanting to join the WACs, but their reasons give me clues to the things Aunt Marian may have considered when she made her decision to join.

Aunt Marian spent almost 20 years in the Women’s Army Corps—from late 1944 to early 1964.

The WAC evolved across the years–and it was disbanded in 1978, when the male and female units of the army were integrated–, but this description of the WACs in a 1944 recruiting publication called 73 Questions and Answers About the WAC provides a nice description of the organization she joined.