CIVIL FRONT: Ladies in Green

Six young women in green trousers, green jackets, green overseas caps marched into the White House one morning last week. There they presented the original copy of their Anthem of the Green Guards* to President Roosevelt’s military aide, Brigadier General Edwin M. Watson. Unfazed “Pa” Watson accepted with thanks, received a farewell salute, pondered the inscription on the anthem: “To the Commander in Chief of the armies of the United States from the first women troops in the United States.”

The Green Guards of America is an organization designed for militant women by possibly the most militant woman in the U. S. Buxom, greying Mrs. Virginia Nowell, who also styled herself “the first woman General in the U. S.,” is “General, Cashier and everything else” of the Green Guards. General Nowell is a onetime concert manager and pageant director from Chapel Hill, N. C., who got her first training raising money for the Chapel Hill Parent-Teacher Association. Thence she went into show business, which occupied her until her son Robert joined the Army Air Corps. Then Mrs. Nowell decided that she also should do something for defense. Telephone calls to the Army, the Navy and the National Defense Advisory Commission brought discouraging hmphs. “There was no place for me,” said Mrs. Nowell.

She promptly made a place for herself by organizing Green Guards. By last week she claimed 755 recruits in & around Washington, said she had applications for charters from Los Angeles, Chicago, Chattanooga, Atlanta, 16 other cities. Applicants had to be 1) women, 2) loyal to the U. S., 3) willing to pay $9.50 for a Green Guards uniform. To contingents of 250 or more in each city, Mrs. Nowell promised a free rifle range (value: $500). She explained that she has a male friend who not only chips in part of the cost, but is also in a position to sell rifles and ammunition.

Washington’s first Green Guards were of all sizes, shapes, ages (18 to 88). All were unmistakably imbued with zeal for defense. Five nights’ training a week was charted for them: rifle practice on Monday (in a Washington school gymnasium, until they get a rifle range Sept. 1); first aid on Tuesday; automobile mechanics on Wednesday (“. . . DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH A CAR WHEN YOU HEAR FUNNY NOISES?”); get-together night on Thursday (“BRING YOUR BOY FRIEND OR YOUR GIRL FRIEND AND GET ACQUAINTED WITH THE GREEN GUARDS”); military drill on Friday.

This week Mrs. Nowell mobilized her color guard and other Green Guards who could dig up $20.50, for a trip to the New York World’s Fair. Mrs. Nowell planned to get photographed, put on a drill in the Court of Peace, present a pageant depict ing the virtues of historic heroines (“the Strength of Boadicea … the Vision of a Joan of Arc … the Marksmanship of an Annie Oakley … the Spirit of Amelia Earhart”). Said Mrs. Nowell: “Everybody is enthusiastic. . . . We’ve had some jealousies about jobs and positions, but very little. I told them. ‘We aren’t running a cat factory, we are running a military machine.’ ”

— Excerpt: We will keep the beacons burning

For our soldiers out there yearning

Just to crush the warriors turning

To our shores, America.

Guard our lands, our homes and young ones,

Blast to Hell invading wrong ones. . . .