The Women’s Royal Army Corps

When the history of the Twentieth Century is written let us hope that the few nobel ideals of our era are not entirely submerged by the scientific miracles and horrors which increasingly dominate our lives. High among such ideas must rank the recognition of women in more and more walks of life as equal partners with men, and in no area was the battle for recognition fought with greater determination then or more evident ultimate justification in the righteousness of their course then in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, later to become the WRAC. As Brigadier Bidwell puts it: “At the heart of the question was not so much doubt about the ability or reliability of women, but an unformulated but powerful fear of the consequences of their intrusion in strength into an entity so exclusively and aggressively male as an army in the field'. He goes on to demonstrate how they managed not only to dispel that fear but but to replace it with admiration and respect which few could have dared to envisage at the outset. The Corps must be warmly congratulated upon their decision to ask Brigadier Bidwell to write their history. As an experienced military historian but nevertheless a detached observer, he brings to his task an objectivity and balance of judgement which exonerates his book from any taints of hagiography but nevertheless constitutes a record of which even the oldest regiments would be proud.