efficiently taken over scores of different kinds of duties that not long ago were considered strictly masculine assignments, and in doing so, you have freed a large number of well trained, battle ready men of the corps for action." Initially, General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, had been opposed to having women serve in the Marine Corps. Before the end of 1943, however, he reversed himself, saying, "Like most Marines, when the matter first came up I didn't believe women could serve any useful purpose in the Marine Corps ... Since then I've changed my mind." Background At the outbreak of World War II, the notion of women serving in the Navy or Marine Corps (both under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy) was not widely supported by the Congress or by the branches of the military services. Nevertheless, some believed that women would eventually be needed in the military. The most notable was Edith Nourse Rogers, Representative of Massachusetts, and Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the president, who helped pave the way for its reality. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed what would become Public Law689 on 30July 1942, it established a Women's Reserve as a branch of the Naval Reserve for the Navy and Marine Corps. The idea behind the law was to free up officers and men for combat, with women standing in for them at shore stations on the home front. Women could now serve in the Reserve as an officer or at an enlisted level, with ranks or ratings consistent with those of men. Reserve volunteers could only serve for the duration of the war, plus six months. The Marine Corps delayed formation of the Reserve until 13February 1943. It was the last service branch to accept women into its ranks, and there was considerable unhappiness about making the Marine Corps anything but a club for white men. In fact, General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the Marine Corps, was a well-known opponent of women serving in the corps. By the end of 1943, however, he had reversed himself, saying, "there's hardly any work at our Marine stations that women can't do as well as men. They do some work far better than men. ... What is more, they're real Marines. They don't have a nickname, and they don't need one." Holcomb rejected all acronyms or monikers for the Reserve; he did