Youngest & Prettiest

When the Marine Corps began recruiting women back in 1943, there was doubt in a great many minds as to just how the ideal young lady leatherneck ought to look and act. But hundreds of officers and men, as well as hundreds of admiring sister marines, gave no more thought to the problem after one look at a tall (5 ft. 10 in.), attractive brunette lady lieutenant named Julia E. Hamblet. "Judy," a Vassar graduate (economics and field hockey) from Winchester, Mass., looked like a girl who was born to pose for a recruiting poster.

Also, she was smart, knew Washington and the intricacies of bureaucracy from a hitch in the U.S. Information Service, and had a flair for leadership. She helped set up the Marine Corps' first boot camp for women, at Hunter College, New York. After that she commanded a battalion, and served on the staff of the general in command at Quantico. When the war ended, she was 29 years old, a major, and was commanding 2,600 lady marines (as many as are on active duty in the whole corps today) at the Marine Air Station at Cherry Point, N.C.

She went on the inactive list, packed up her civilian clothes (a good part bought at Peg Newton's, a New York shop which specializes in dressing tall women), and went to England for a vacation. But she had hardly landed before the Marines asked her to come back to take charge of the Women's Reserve. She did. In 1948 the Women's Reserve was integrated into the Marine Corps. Judy was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and eventually put in command of the women's officer-training detachment at Quantico.

Last week Marine Commandant Lemuel C. Shepherd took formal cognizance of the fact that grey-haired Colonel Katherine A. Towle, director of Women Marines, has resigned (as of April 1953) to become dean of women at the University of California. He announced that Judy, now 36, is to replace her--thus becoming the youngest, and, at least to a marine's eye, certainly the prettiest woman ever to command the female branch of any U.S. military service.

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