Women's Auxiliary Service

	Women's Auxiliary Service
Active	1709 AN –
Country	Benacian Union
Allegiance	Commission for War
Type	Auxiliary
Role	Paramilitary and law enforcement
Size	445,200 (equivalent to 371 regiments)
Garrison/HQ	Chryse
Commanders
Magistra	Giulia Lazzarini

The Women's Auxiliary Service, established in 1709 AN, was created for unmarried women between the ages of sixteen and thirty, to provide a pool of auxiliary non-combat personnel to support the Benacian Union Defence Force and the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels.

Background

The Women's Auxiliary Service marked a revival of the women's auxiliary services of the Elluenuueq Union Defence Force established in 1689 AN. The so-called Leng Garrison abuse scandal of 1688 saw the establishment of separate female-only formations and barracks in the following year for women undertaking national-service. These formations, the Women's Auxiliary Air Service, the Women's Auxiliary Maritime Service, the Women's Auxiliary Nursing Service, and the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, whilst subject to the same military discipline of their male counterparts, focused on the fulfilment of specialist non-combat roles. Women in the UDF continued to enjoy the legal right to join the territorial defence and combat arms of the UDF and, as of 1689, 14% of the total manpower establishment of contracted personnel (professional volunteers as opposed to conscripts), equating to 63,852 servicewomen were female.

Function

Roles for woman auxiliaries included serving as administrative clerks and couriers, drivers, welfare workers, nurses, signallers, flight controllers, operators of surveillance equipment, ordnance personnel and instructors, as employees within meteorology services, and as auxiliary civil defence and law enforcement personnel. At certain sensitive locations, such as on the island of Botha, women from the service also perform a more paramilitary defensive role.

Senior officers of the service have, on occasion, been appointed to the administration of autonomous regions outside of the normal structure of the Union-State. Instances of this include the appointment of Maria Theresia Amalia-Mai as Governess of the Cimmeria and Raikoth Special Autonomous Region, where an official from outside the Humanist controlled civil bureaucracy was held to be more convivial to the prevailing local sentiment.

Recruitment & training

Enlistment requirements included a minimum height of 1.57 m, the attainment of meritorious subject status either prior to enlistment or by purchase into apprenticeship at municipal auction. For those purchased into service as apprentices three years of education would be provided at finishing schools established at Sansabury in the Unified Governorates, Fieldburg in Elluenuueq, Avakair in the Sovereign Confederation, Teldrin in Ransenar, and at Chryse.

Promising candidates from these schools may be recruited by the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices and the Benacian Academy upon graduation. The remainder will be assigned to regimental associations in each governorate of the Benacian Union, forming a general reserve of personnel available to the defence and security establishment in the area to which they were assigned.

As of 1724 AN, apprentices purchased into service on the basis of recommendations from the Union-State wide network of finishing schools are preferred to receive a further year of officer training at the Avakair campus.

Organisation

Administratively, the Women's Auxiliary Service is a wholly subordinate entity of the Commission for War.

The Women's Auxiliary Service is headed by a Magistra (equivalent BUDF rank: Frainan Uihmanzis), directly appointed by the High Presidium of the Benacian Union, who is responsible for the administration, discipline, indoctrination, and training, of those women purchased into service as auxiliaries, and the hierarchy established over them.

Legata (equivalent BUDF rank: Salbnan) are appointed by the Magistra to head realm-level territorial inspectorates, with responsibility for regimental associations within those jurisdictions. Those appointed to the command of subordinate entities also receive legatine rank.

Regimental associations, organised at the level of the governorates, are headed by tribunes, answerable to the legatine authorities for their own conduct as well as for those placed in subordination to them.

Women auxiliaries within the regimental associations, excepting those posted to separate or subordinate entities, are divided according to the bailiwick that is either their present place of residence or their primary duty station. Within each bailiwick therefore is established an women's auxiliary commandant and her retinue, constituting the commandery of the Women's Auxiliary Service for that location.

Subject to each commandery shall be as many women's auxiliary detachments as the total number of unassigned auxiliaries present in the bailiwick shall permit to be formed. These would be organised in the same manner as a demi-regiment of the BUDF might be, which is to say a maximum of six hundred auxiliaries per detachment. These detachments would be commanded by the women's auxiliary commandant's deputy, usually abbreviated as detachment leader, a local appointment.

Matrons, unmarried women, over the age of thirty, who have been permitted to remain attached to the Women's Auxiliary Service, assist the detachment leaders in the discipline and routine operations of the women's auxiliary detachments. As the majority of members of the Women's Auxiliary Service, excepting those appointed to specialist or leadership positions, are expected to resign from the organisation once they are married, the matrons constitute the basis of what has been termed the institutional memory of the formation.

Gallery

Auxiliary nurse, Governorate of Alalehzamin, 1723 AN.
Auxiliary officer attached to the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels, Teldrin, 1723 AN.
Auxiliary officers form the garrison for the island of Botha, including for the palace and residential school established there.
A uniformed combat nurse. Woman Auxiliaries often wear face coverings whilst on duty to lessen the risk of identification and reprisal.
Female auxiliary assigned to relief work in the Elwynnese Cold Desert, Governorate of Alalehzamin, 1723 AN
Giulia Lazzarini, Magistra of the Women's Auxiliary Service, a Wellborn Florencian, appointed to the office in 1728 AN.
Proposed 1731 AN design for the uniform of Auxiliary Air Defence Helpers, who were to be assigned to the Flak Corps of the State Guard of Elluenuueq.