Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Monday 15 November 1937, page 11


"ANGELS OF WAR." I

Play Resented by Former

Service Women.

"WRONG IMPRESSION OF

W.A.A.C.s

"The whole play is so full of inaccuracies that it cannot be treated as fact," said Mrs. P. A. Peachey, president of the Ex-service Women's Club, last night, referring to the play "Angels of War," which will be produced at St. James' Hall this week, in aid of the Legacy Club.

"The characters in the play ore supposed to be a number of W.A.A.Cs behind the lines, but the person who wrote it obviously knows little about the W.A.A.Cs., as the characters are ambulance drivers. I served with the W.A.A.C.s in France, and there were no ambu-lance drivers attached to the units. In the play, the girls call their leader 'commandant'; the W.A.A.Cs had only one commandant, who was Queen Mary. Our officers were called

'controllers.'

"More than 50,000 women served as W.A.A.Cs during the war, but their work is so little known here, that the play gives a very bad impression. I suppose there are about a hundred women in and around Syd-ney who served as W.A.A.Cs.

BASED ON BOOK.

"Mrs. Brenton Gibb, who is producing the play, told me that she thinks it is based on a book called 'Not So Quiet,' which caused much resentment when it was published.

"I think the playwright has confused the W.A.A.C with the Women's Legion, in which were many ambulance drivers."

Mrs. Brunton Gibb, who is president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Legacy Club, for which the performance of "Angels of War" will be presented, said that it was unfortunate that the play, which is being produced for the third time in Sydney, had caused resent-ment among ex-service women.

"We invited the president and the secretary of the Ex-service Women's Club to watch a rehearsal," said Mrs. Gibb, "and Mrs. Peachey told me that the play created an unfavourable impression of the work of the W.A.A.Cs. Per-sonally, I think that the author probably made her characters W.A.A.Cs only because they were the best-known of the women war workers in France, and that she intended the name of the play to refer to all women war workers generally.

FEMININE "JOURNEY'S END."

" 'Angels of War' is a feminine 'Journey's End.' It shows the sacrifices that women made during the war, when they gave up all hope of wifehood and motherhood-for what? The play is a strong argument against war, and emphasises the great courage of women who did war work behind the trenches, even if a bit of bad language is used now and

then.

"I hope the performance of the play will be a success, as it is being produced for a soldiers' charity, and the players are mostly business girls who have given up their spare time to attend rehearsals."