In Ralph Treidler's 1943 poster for the Army Ordnance Department, a smiling soldier in a steel helmet holds up a portrait of a young woman wearing a plant badge numbered 14002. A red band reads "My girl's a WOW," and the sheet spells out the acronym: Woman Ordnance Worker (NAID 515037).
A soldier holding up a photograph
The archive describes the soldier first: smiling, in a steel helmet, holding up a grey portrait. The woman in it wears a polka-dot head scarf and a white blouse, with a numbered plant badge. The transcription reads the number as 14002. A red band carries the headline.
"My girl's a WOW"
WOMAN ORDNANCE WORKER
ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT * U. S. ARMY KEEP 'EM SHOOTING!
[badge number:] 14002
[signature:] RALPH TREIDLER
[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1943 [remainder illegible]
An Army department recruiting for the plants
The issuer line is the Ordnance Department of the U.S. Army, with the slogan "KEEP 'EM SHOOTING!" Ralph Treidler signed the art, and the Government Printing Office imprint dates it to 1943. FRAME files the purpose as "Recruit" and the themes as gender and suffrage, labor, and war and the military. The archive calls the job on offer factory work, and the woman wears a plant badge, not a uniform.
Pride, spoken by someone else
The archive tags testimonial and transfer. The testimonial is the soldier's: he vouches for her, and the quotation marks around the headline make it his line. The transfer is his helmet and uniform, which lend military standing to a factory job.
The woman never speaks. Her worth is told through a man's boast, and the one fact the sheet gives about her is a badge number. The poster does not tell women what the work pays, where it is, or what it involves. It tells them a soldier will be proud. "WOW" is a pun as well as an acronym, and the pun carries most of the appeal.
Nothing on the sheet tells a woman she must sign on. The appeal is to pride and to a sweetheart's approval.
The Ordnance Department's 1942 They're Closer Than You Think! ran under a "Keep 'em shootin'" campaign. For women's war work from other offices, see the Women's Bureau's More and More Women Work on Aircraft, which says women should get the same rates as men for the same jobs, and The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win!
Sources
- FRAME object record, My girl's a WOW (Woman Ordnance Worker), 1943. Ordnance Department, U.S. Army (artist Ralph Treidler). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1378, NAID 515037, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
