United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve

The United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve (WR) was the World War II women's branch of the US Marine Corps Reserve. It was authorized by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 30 July 1942. Yet, the Marine Corps delayed the formation of the WR until 13 February 1943. This law allowed the Marine Corps to accept women into the reserve as commissioned officers and at the enlisted level, effective for the duration of the war plus six months. Its purpose was to release officers and men for combat and to replace them with women in shore stations. Ruth Cheney Streeter was appointed the first director of the WR. She was sworn in with the rank of major and later was promoted to a full colonel. Streeter attended Bryn Mawr College and had been involved in health and welfare work. The WR did not have an official nickname, as did the other World War II women's military services.

At the out-break of World War II, the notion of women serving in the Navy or Marine Corps (both under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy) was not widely supported by the congress or by the branches of the military services. Nevertheless, there were some who believed that women would eventually be needed in the military. The most notable was Edith Nourse Rogers, Representative of Massachusetts, and Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the president, who helped pave the way for its reality. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed what would become Public Law 689 on 30 July 1942, it established a Women’s Reserve as a branch of the Naval Reserve for the Navy and Marine Corps. The idea behind the law was to free-up officers and men for combat, with women standing-in for them at shore stations on the home front. Women could now serve in the WR as an officer or at an enlisted level, with a rank or rating consistent with that of men. WR volunteers could only serve for the duration of the war, plus six months. But the Corps saw fit to delay formation of the WR until 13 February 1943. It was the last service branch to accept women into its ranks, and “there was considerable unhappiness about making the Marine Corps anything but a club for white men”. In fact, General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the Marine Corps was a well-known opponent of women serving in the corps. But he later reversed himself, saying, “there’s hardly any work at our Marine stations that women can’t do as well as men. They do some work far better than men. … What is more, they’re real Marines. They don’t have a nickname, and they don’t need one.” Holcomb rejected all acronyms or monikers for the WR; he did not believe they were compulsorily. And there were many of them, including: Femarines, WAMS, Dainty Devil-Dogs, Glamarines, Women’s Leatherneck-Aides, MARS, and Sub-Marines. By the summer of 1943, attempts to pressure the WR into a nickname had diminished. WR was as far as Holcomb would move in that direction.

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