The Women’s Army Corps Service Medal was a decoration of the United States Army which was created on July 29, 1943 by Executive Order 9365 issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. The decoration was intended to recognize the contribution of women to the Army during the Second World War. The profile featured on the medal is that of the goddess Pallas Athena.
The Women’s Army Corps Service Medal was awarded to any service member who was a member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps between July 10, 1942 and August 31, 1943 or the Women's Army Corps between September 1, 1943 and September 2, 1945. The medal was issued as a once-awarded decoration, and there are no devices authorized for additional presentations. The medal ranked in precedence under the American Defense Service Medal and ahead of the American Campaign Medal.
The Women’s Army Corps Service Medal is considered obsolete as the United States Army is a combined service and no longer maintains any separate service corps for women, although it may still be worn by those who served.
Famous quotes containing the words women, army, corps and/or service:
“In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person.... Yes, it is women who keep the church going.”
—Don Marquis (1878–1937)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)