WOMEN: The Old Nine

Nine purposeful ladies will soberly salute an anniversary next week. Two years ago, fresh out of officer school, they began their careers in the women’s army. There were some 670 other women in officer school at the same time. The nine swam to the top, became lieutenant colonels and the ranking WACs, topped only by their boss, Colonel Oveta Gulp Hobby.

One is a divorcee, one a widow, the rest spinsters. They call themselves the “Nine Old Women,” although their ages range from a mere 30 to a mere 44. Their backgrounds vary from directing physical education to counseling at law. Their uniform sizes vary from a trim 16 to a firm 40. The Nine:

Florence Theresa Newsome, 33, the only one without a college degree, holds what Colonel Hobby calls the “most responsible job” of all: secretary to General George C. Marshall. Calm, blue-eyed “Flo” Newsome is officially closer than any woman in U.S. history to the nerve center of war.

Jessie Pearl Rice, 42, Georgia schoolteacher, wanted to be a sergeant, instead serves as executive assistant to Colonel Hobby. To solid, jolly but no-nonsense Colonel Rice come male majors, colonels, generals with gripes about the WACs. Her own gripe is that she is stuck in Washington, seldom gets a chance to travel.

“I’ve seen nothing new but Iowa,” says Rice.

Westroy Battle Boyce, onetime Government worker, was staff director in the Mediterranean theater before she was brought back to the job she now fills: a director on the general staff responsible for WAC training policies. Fragile and helpless looking, 43-year-old Westray Battle Boyce is known as one of the best administrators in the Corps.

Elizabeth Strayhorn was assistant to the commandant at the Fort Oglethorpe WAC training center until the commandant got another job and she took over.

Today, dignified, 40, “Colonel Liz” is the first and only woman boss of an Army training center.

Betty Bandel, 32, a onetime Arizona newspaper woman, played a trumpet in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and was terrified that the WACs would make her a bugler. She made herself a model officer, is director of WACs in the Army Air Forces.

Emily Claire Davis is director of WACs in the Army Ground Forces. Thirty, baby of the Nine, “Em” Davis plays a hearty game of golf, rises regularly at 6 a.m., has a vague notion that some day she may run for Congress.

Katherine Ralston Goodwin, who freely admits that she is oldest of the Nine (44), is director of WACs in the Army Service Forces. Before she joined the Corps she kept house in Hartford, Conn., tended her flower garden, zipped through murder mysteries and pampered her Siamese cat, “Ink Mink.” When she leased her house she put a clause in the contract that the tenants would also have to care for Ink Mink.

Mary-Agnes Brown was a Washington lawyer and authority on veterans’ legislation before she joined. Her stern hairdo belies 42-year-old Brown’s lighter side. She can do Mexican folk dances and sing Mexican love songs in a fair soprano. Stationed in Australia, she is staff director in the Southwest Pacific area.

Anna Walker Wilson, whose hair is prematurely white, was the first WAC to arrive in the European Theater of Operations. Two G.I.s spotted her, charged up, howling “WACs ! ” — then gulped abashedly when they saw her rank. Colonel Wilson laughed them off, told them that a lot of G.I. Janes were on the way. Staff director in the ETO, 34-year-old “Tony” Wilson now has under her wing 6,500 WACs in the United Kingdom, hundreds of WACs sleeping in tents in Normandy.