WOOPS! The Forgotten Female Force of World War II

“Now come the WOOPS.”

That is how the Associated Press introduced the newest opportunity for women to serve the country in May 1943.

WOOPS (Women Officers of Public Safety) are not as well known as the WACs (Women’s Army Corps) and WAVES (the Naval Women’s Reserve), perhaps because they were far fewer in number.

Unlike WACS and WAVES, the WOOPS carried
 guns when on duty. This photo of firing range
practice was published in the May 31, 1943
Austin, Texas, Statesman.

These women served during World War II to replace or supplement men serving in the military. Unlike the others, however, WOOPS carried guns.

WOOPS was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to supplement the male Public Safety Service (PSS) protecting dams and power facilities from espionage and sabotage.

TVA was formed in 1933 to control flooding, provide navigation, and generate power in the Tennessee Valley region of the southeast. By the time the United States entered World War II, TVA was providing power to industries vital to the war effort, including production of aluminum and the top-secret Oak Ridge laboratory, which produced uranium for the Manhattan Project.

So TVA facilities, including dams under construction as well as the Muscle Shoals Reservation where explosive materials were produced for munitions, were considered possible targets by enemies.

When the federal government created TVA, they authorized the agency to designate law enforcement officers to assist in carrying out its mission. The PSS initially assisted with police, fire, and emergency services. The force grew to 250 officers by January 1941. But when the U.S. entered the war, the need for increased security of TVA facilities became evident. In 1942, German operatives were apprehended on Long Island, N.Y.; among their targets were American aluminum factories.

PSS employment reached its peak of about 900 in July 1942. However, Public the men most qualified to serve as security guards were also the ones most likely to enlist in the military services.

TVA officials found that when a PSS officer joined the war effort, he would be replaced by another man, who would also enlist after a few months.

The training period was shortened from six months to six weeks, and the officers were sworn in as Civilian Auxiliary to the Military Police, a status that remained until 1945. In addition to fire and sabotage prevention, the officers assisted TVA Personnel with fingerprinting prospective employees to secure the workforce.

To counter the shrinkage of the force, TVA established the Women Officers of Public Safety, shortened to WOOPS in line with WAVES and WACS. Initially, about 70 women applied, and 22 were accepted and trained in the first class, along with 63 men.

The first class of WOOPS at the gun range

The women, mostly single, included former stenographers, clerks, teachers, and nurses. A few were wives of PSS officers who left to join the military. Most had never fired a gun before joining the corps.

They received training intensive combat training in judo and riflery, as well as instruction in firefighting and guard dog handling. Classroom work included lectures on arrests, searches and seizures, basic state and federal laws, and the TVA badge, pass and identification system.

This photo in the Knoxville News-Sentinel
was apparently taken before the WOOPS
 received their official uniforms.

The women’s olive-green uniforms consisted of skirt, blouse, “Sam Browne” belt, and overseas-type cap. (The Sam Browne belt is a leather belt with a supporting strap over the right shoulder and a flap-holster on the hip.) They carried a .38 caliber pistol when on duty.

According to societal norms at the time, women were not suited for this type of potentially dangerous duty, and they were given the nickname of “pistol-packin’ mamas.”

But the women’s effectiveness was recognized when, at war’s end, there had been no reports of sabotage at any TVA facility. In 1944, a little over a year after the program began, the corps received the Army-Navy E for Excellence Award.

After the war, as soldiers returned home, so did the women of WOOPS. But over time, TVA again began hiring women for their security force, and today women are part of the TVA Police & Emergency Management, designated in 1994 as a federal law enforcement agency.

Sources:

Drumright, William Wade, "A River for War, a Watershed to Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War II. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2005.

Home-Front Defenders

World War II | Tennessee Encyclopedia

Powering World War II

TVA History: The 1940s

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, placed second in the inspirational category of the nationally recognized Maggie Awards. Learn more at www.MarieWellsCoutu.com.

In the misty Scottish Highlands, Kenna MacLaren defies English law by playing bagpipes to keep alive the music and memories. When she finds a duke’s nephew wounded, she faces an impossible choice. Helping him could cost her everything, but abandoning him goes against her faith. As English soldiers hunt for rebels, Kenna must decide if she can trust this man with her family's safety--and her heart. Get your free copy of this new novelette, The Piper's Secret, here, when you sign up for Marie’s newsletter, or you can buy it on Kindle.

Kristallnacht: The Start of it All

 By Sherri Boomershine

In writing my new book about the Kinder Transport, I was amazed at how many of my friends and relatives know someone who was a child on the Kinder Transport. I want to capture those stories while those children, now in their eighties and nineties, are still alive. One single event led parents in Germany, Austria, and other Nazi-occupied countries to give their children to strangers in England in order to save the children’s lives. That one event: Kristallnacht.

On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. This event is known as Kristallnacht, often referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass.” What led up to the fateful two nights when countless Jews were sent to concentration camps and thousands of Jewish schools, synagogues, and businesses were destroyed by fire? Antisemitic sentiments had been steadily growing since 1933 when Adolph Hitler rose to power, blaming the Jews for a weak economy, so it only took a single spark to set off the fire.

On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee living in Paris, walked into his city’s German embassy and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan had just learned that his Polish-Jewish parents, along with thousands of other Jews, had been herded into boxcars and deported from Germany. His actions would later be used as justification for Kristallnacht. Grynszpan had emigrated to France two years earlier when he walked into the German Embassy on Rue de Lille in search of the German ambassador. Since the ambassador was out on his daily walk, Grynszpan was brought in to meet with diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Pulling out his revolver, Grynszpan fired five times at vom Rath and shouted, “You are a filthy kraut, and here in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews is your document!” Vom Rath died two days later.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels immediately launched a vast pogrom against the Jews living within Germany’s borders. He sent a teletype message to state police stations and secret service headquarters with detailed instructions on organizing and executing a massive attack on Jewish properties. Goebbels ordered the burning of Jewish houses of worship, businesses, and homes. He ordered the storm troopers to arrest as many Jews as the prisons could hold—“especially the rich ones”—and to prepare the concentration camps for their arrivals. Firemen were told to do nothing to stop the blazes unless the fires began to threaten non-Jewish-owned properties.

Starting in the late hours of the night of November 9, 1938, and continuing well into the next day, Nazis in Germany and Austria torched approximately 1,000 synagogues and vandalized thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence, and approximately 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Following the night of terror, the shattered windows of vandalized Jewish businesses littered the sidewalks of Germany and Austria, which led to the rampage being known as Kristallnacht, German for “crystal night.”

A week following the assassination in Paris, vom Rath’s coffin draped with the Nazi swastika flag was paraded through the streets of Dusseldorf as thousands of mourners raised their arms in salute of the murdered diplomat. Grynszpan was transferred from prison to prison in France until he was extradited to Germany where he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. https://www.history.com/articles/kristallnacht-75-years-ago

Ruth Winkelmann, now in her nineties, remembers that night, "Our father took me and my little sister in his arms that night, and said, 'this is the beginning of a very difficult time, and we'll try to live through it.' On our way to school, we saw broken shop windows and shards of glass lying in the streets. And then we saw a shop where someone had painted the word 'Jew,' and smeared on a star of David. In retrospect, I became a grown-up on that day. The pogrom night took away my childhood."  https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46152567

Sherri Boomershine is a woman of faith who loves all things foreign whether it’s food, culture, or language. A former French teacher and flight attendant, her passion is traveling to the settings of her books, sampling the food, and visiting the sites. She visited a Netherlands concentration camp for A Song for Her Enemies, and Paris art museums for What Hides beyond the Walls. Sherri lives with her husband Mike, her high school sweetheart, whom she married fifty-five years later. As an author and editor, she hopes her books will entertain and challenge readers to live large and connect with their Savior. Join, chat, and share with her on social media. Newsletter Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

A Song for Her Enemies

Tamar Kaplan is a budding soprano with the Harlaam Opera company. Her future looks bright, despite the presence of the German soldiers guarding Haarlem. But when Nazi soldiers close down the opera company, families start disappearing in the middle of the night, and Jews are stripped of their freedoms, Tamar realizes her brother Seth was right about her naiveté. She joins the resistance, her blond hair and light features making it easy for her come and go under the watchful eyes of the German guards. Tamar becomes Dr. Daniel Feldman’s assistant, as they visit families hiding out in forests and hovels, tending to their health needs. But when she returns home to find her parents gone and the family store looted, she and Daniel must go into hiding. As they cling to the walls of an alley, Tamar recognizes a familiar face—that of Neelie Visser, the neighbor, who beckons to them to follow her. Can she trust this Gentile woman who talks about God as if he’s standing next to her? https://bit.ly/40Yucjv