Women Wanted

The storied Marine Corps, topping 200,000 and approximately three times its greatest former strength (in World War I), was feeling the manpower pinch. It had also noted with approval the quietly efficient job done by women in military service in Britain. This week it opened its ranks to Marines in skirts.

To head its Women's Reserve, the Marine Corps had already picked 47-year-old Ruth Cheney Streeter of Morristown, N.J., wife of a retired banker. Her three sons are in the service (two Navy ensigns, one Army reserve private).

Major Streeter's command wants recruits from 20 to 36 (with two years of high school) for enlisted women, from 20 to 50 (with a minimum of two years of college, two years' business experience) for officer candidates. Besides important military work, she can promise them a snappy uniform--forest green blouse and skirt, a snappy cap with a scarlet chin strap, a scarlet muffler for accent on the Marines' traditional color. Wives of Marines are barred. Marriage to a Marine after induction is also forbidden, on pain of being dropped from the Corps. But marriage to Army, Navy or Coast Guard men is no bar.

There have been women Marines before. In World War I the Corps enlisted 305 (but commissioned no officers), winced when the U.S. public called them "Marinettes." This time the Marine Corps, planning to employ women as stenographers, parachute riggers, radio workers, telephone operators and other behind-the-line jobs, wanted no nickname for its new recruits--not even leatherneck.

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