WAC (Women's Army Corps), U.S. army organization created (1942) during World War II to enlist women as auxiliaries for noncombatant duty in the U.S. army. Before 1943 it was known as the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). Its first director was Oveta Culp Hobby. During World War II, WACs served as medical technicians, cartography clerks, secretaries, and the like in the United States and in all the theaters of war. Almost 100,000 had joined the WAC by 1945. Enlistment ended with the war's end, and rapid demobilization followed. But by 1946 the War Dept. asked for reenlistments to meet shortages in army hospitals and personnel centers. In 1948 a bill was passed by Congress formally establishing the WAC within the regular army. The WAC was dissolved in 1978.
See M. E. Treadwell, The Women's Army Corps (1954).
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