404th U.S. Army Band (cld)

The Colored WAC Band

by Billy Jack Long (U.S. Army Band veteran)

The Woman's Army Corps began in 1942 as the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps. Unlike the Navy and the Marine Corps, who treated the women who joined those services and were given respectable military sounding ranks (such as sergeant, petty officer, private, and seaman), the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) developed its own rank structure. Initially, the women were paid less than men of equal rank but this was soon changed, along with giving women the men's rank structure and a new name, the Woman's Army Corps (WAC).

Women were placed in every job open to men with the exception of combat arms and anything which deliberately placed service personnel on the frontlines. So there were mechanics, truck drivers, cooks, intelligence personnel, and there were bands. The WAC had four bands. The 401st U.S. Army Band (wac) was stationed at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, just south of the city of Des Moines. The 402nd U.S. Army Band (wac) was stationed at Daytona Beach, Florida. The 403rd U.S. Army Band (wac) was stationed at Fort Mason in San Francisco, California. And there was the 404th U.S. Army Band (cld), which began at Fort Des Moines, transferred to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia (near Chattanooga, Tennessee), moved back to Fort Des Moines. It was deactivated a few times, gave a great concert for the Seventh War Bond Rally in Chicago, Illinois, after which time the band went home and learned the sad news that the band had been deactivated once and for all.

The above picture (taken from the website of the Chicago Public Library) shows the band performing just prior to that rally on the streets of Chicago. They really attracted a huge crowd. At the rally later that evening, movie stars, politicians, and other famous people of the day were present. Actor Humphrey Bogart, a U.S. Navy veteran, remarked that this was the best military band he had ever seen. It probably was.

Most of the members of Congress did not even want to have this band. Because of its special band status, the Department of War (forerunner to the Departments of the Army and of the Air Force) gave the 404th Band an alotment of 40 positions. Plans were to recruit only the finest musicians to play with the band. But military service of Blacks, even by Black males, was discouraged during the war. The women who joined the Colored WAC Band were women who would be willing to face some of the worst humiliation faced by human beings on Stateside soil, and mostly by the Army itself. At its greatest strength, the Colored WAC Band had 19 members. Some instruments in the band were so poorly represented that, for example, a drummer might have had to play a tenor saxophone or a clarinet player had to play a trombone. (Let me say, as a tuba player, if someone told me I had to play another instrument for my livelihood because nobody else was playing it I would probably want to scream.)

There were many other indignities faced by the women which were probably so commonplace in the mid 1940s that they were not recorded. These might turn our stomachs now, especially knowing that German prisoners of war imprisoned here were treated better than our own Black soldiers.

Incidentally, band trained and worked in the same buildings many of the fathers of the women lived in during the First World War! According to the letters between fathers and daughters, nothing changed.

If you played with the Colored WAC Band, are related to a deceased member of the band (and have some paraphernalia I could copy), or you have a comment about this band, please e-mail me.

Last updated May 24, 2001