The Pittsburgh Press (July 11, 1942)
I DARE SAY —
Women – This is for you!
By Florence Fisher Parry
This isn’t an appeal. This is an assault upon your common sense. I’m tired of appeals to one’s better nature, to one’s patriotism, generosity and citizenship. These are peacetime measures, they’re all right for safe times. Not now. For we know now – all but the fools – that we’re in for a long bitter war that has only just begun; that it will get every last one of us, if not sooner, later. How much later? That depends strictly, absolutely fatally, upon us.
HOW ABOUT YOU, WOMEN?
For this column is written right at you. How many hours have you given up to the war? Two? Three? Six? There are 24 of ‘em every day, six to eight reserved for sleeping (Eight hours? Whoever heard of sleeping eight hours when an enemy is pressing on to his ultimate advantage?).
Let’s take the bridge players, the “born” bridge players. Let’s take the golfers – the “born” golfers. They may be poor at other things, but they are blessed with a certain muscular and nervous and mental COORDINATION that functions just like THAT – a trigger performance, quick, sure, decisive.
Their heads and their hands work together. They’re the very type that’s needed for a special kind of war work. And if, dear reader, you happened to be one of this type, please let me tell you about this special war work, so specially suited to you.
Urgent work
It’s the new First Fighter Command Filter Center, now being established in Pittsburgh, never mind where, that’s a secret; and that brings up the first requisite of any woman applicant for it: CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? Are you able to keep from talking?
Good. You’ll qualify there, anyway.
Have you good sight? Hearing? How about your voice? Is it one of those female voices, high and small, or is it one of those womanly voices, low and quiet and clear? Are you pretty good at… let me see… shuffling cards and dealing them?.. measuring the coffee with one hand and the water with the other?.. hitting the nail, the typewriter key? How many things can you see out of the corner of your eye while focusing steadily on the person you’re supposed to be listening to? Can you carry your marketing list in your head or do you have to write it down?
How are your nerves? Your reflexes? Do you RETAIN? Have you the faintest idea what it means to obey instantly?
Now if you have these natural assets, and use them now… at bridge and shopping and golfing and SIPPING – you’re worse than a parasite. For down at the new Filter Center, they need you like nobody’s business… 500 of you, the cream of the crop! They need you NOW.
What IS this Filter Center? It’s the Aircraft Warning Center; you’ve seen the exciting romantic, dramatic, intriguing pictures of it. The great map spread on a center table, the “billiard” cues pushing the little units the signals being flashed, the “interceptor” maneuvers indicated. The place where all airplane flights are started and reported, the nerve center of our defense of this whole area… one of the most important strategic WAR centers in America, and a pet target for the enemy if the job could be pulled!
Work ahead
Fun? Of course, it is fun of a grim, suspenseful kind. But it’s hard fun, it’s deadly accurate fun, it’s not ping-pong. If you’re accepted for this work, you’re one of a large number of women who, at all times 24 hours a day (4½-hour stretches), sit about this table map wearing headsets, contacting observers from outpost stations, plotting the information, deciphering codes, recording them on their little “pip” apparatus. This “game” of sighting of planes, plotting them, classifying and identifying them and providing a miniature, instant, changing picture of every air operation in the skies, is the greatest single mechanical feat of coordination, in intercepting planes, ever devised; and its operation is infinitesimally intricate, defying adequate description.
The important thing now is to get the right women for it! Maj. Edwin I. Hotchkiss, regional signal officer of the Buffalo and Pittsburgh areas and Capt. A. K. Mills for Headquarters of the Fighter Command, told me that they had to have over 500 women (300 still needed), 18-45 years old, for four and a half hours each for two and a half days a week and every third Sunday one-half a day. They told me:
So far the need is for the daytime hours. There are plenty of volunteers from women who hold down jobs through the day and are glad to serve after work. But the gap, the lack is in the ranks of the IDLE, the LEISURE class of women, with time on their hands through the day, who could serve four and a half hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., or sleep late and serve during the night hours, from midnight to 8 a.m.
Obviously, employed women can’t give these hours so very much needed! The Filter Center has to be manned at all times; for the moment we relax may be the moment the enemy may strike. Cologne was no easier target than Detroit and Pittsburgh could well be. Do not imagine that the blow could not be struck!
Apply, women: serve your country, your city, protect your own safety and future! Office at Room 501-A, City-County Building, between 9:30 a.m. and 8:30 at night. Come prepared to be INVESTIGATED.