Women's Auxiliary Service

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.

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, 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.