Woman’s Olive Drab Service Coat

Description

Over 150,000 women served in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in WWII. Although many of the women served in the Army Nurse Corps, women also worked as laboratory technicians, armorers, typists, radio operators, weather observers, cryptographers, control tower operators, parachute riggers, sheet metal workers, photograph analysts, and many other jobs as the abilities and readiness to serve of the WACs were acknowledged.

The owner of this WAC service coat was Doris M. Deering, a corporal in the Women’s Army Corps and a Link Trainer instructor at New Castle Army Airbase at New Castle, Delaware, from 1944 to 1945.

The coat, made by Harold Kolbert Inc., is olive drab wool with two pocket flaps and two lower slanted slash pockets. On the shoulders are corporal rank and the Army Air Force patch. At the bottom of the right sleeve is the U.S.Army Distinguished Unit Citation patch. Her honorable discharge patch, or “ruptured duck” is sewn above the right pocket flap.