marine.” (Holm, 1992:5). As a part of the Navy, the Marine Corps was authorized to enlist
women in the reserves in March 1917, shortly before the US entered World War I. The Marines
waited until August 1918, two months before the war ended, to enroll women, when severe
shortages of combat personnel finally led them to replace some of the male Marines performing
clerical work at headquarters with women. A survey had indicated that about 40 percent of the
clerical work could be done by women as well as by men. The male clerks predicted that it
would take three women to replace two men, but the reverse turned out to be true (ibid.:12).
Three hundred women, commonly referred to as “marinettes” served as Marines in World War I.
During World War II, the legislation that authorized the creation of the Navy Women’s
Reserve in July of 1942 also authorized the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Unlike their WAC
and WAVE sisters, the women Marines had no official acronym: “according to the
commandant, they would be marines” (ibid.:27). Despite authorization, the Marine Corps was
again reluctant to accept women and, again, only did so once they realized that shortages of
combat personnel necessitated that men be freed for combat. The Marine commandant, Lt. Gen.
Thomas Holcomb worried that admitting women would create “untold problems” but in
November of 1942, he gave in to pressure from his staff and told the Secretary of the Navy that
“as many women as possible should be used in noncombat billets thus releasing a greater number
of the limited manpower available for essential combat duty” (quoted in ibid.:33). By the
summer of 1945, there were 18,000 Women Marines and 87 percent of the enlisted jobs at Corps
headquarters were being performed by women.
In the lead-up to the passage of the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, the
Marine Corps took the position that the Marines didn’t need women in the peacetime force, since
the Navy provided much of the Corps’ non-combat support. The Marine Corp conceived of
itself, much as it does today, as a combat-ready force available for immediate deployment
anywhere in the world, and it did not envision women as a part of this structure, although the
Corp saw potential value in a well-trained Women’s Reserve that could serve in shore
establishments if the Marines were deployed for an emergency (ibid.:117).
During the Cold War, women served in the Marine Corps in small numbers and in limited
roles. When the Marine Corps expanded in 1964, the Commandant, Gen. Wallace M. Greene, Jr.
appointed a group of senior officers to study the Woman Marines program and plan for a small
increase in the use of women. The study group was highly concerned with maintaining quality
in the Women’s program, and it wrote in its report:
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Convention