Hortense Mae Boutell was born on 12 February 1913 in Minneapolis, MN, the daughter of Robert and Julie LeBrun Boutell. She attended the University of Minnesota. Her grandfather had come to Minnesota from Quebec, and she grew up speaking French, which later proved useful in her Army service in North Africa and France.

In the late 1930s, she was a founding member of the Minneapolis Repertory Theater, for which she designed sets and costumes. She worked briefly as a designer at RKO Studios in Hollywood before returning to Minnesota, where she supervised a staff of women working in an arms plant.

Military Career

In July 1942, she joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), a precursor of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). In doing so, she took a cut in salary from $55 a week to $50 a month. Contemporary news accounts said she was the first officer candidate to be sworn into the WAAC.

Boutell, who was known by her nickname "Bo," quickly rose in the ranks of officers in WAAC. When the Women's Army Corps was officially formed in July 1943, she was placed in charge of the 2629th WAC Battalion, which sailed for Casablanca, in French Morocco.

From there, her 1,000-woman unit was sent to Algiers and then to Italy, where it operated a 24-hour-a-day military communications outpost as Allied forces pushed deeper into the country in the Italian campaign. From a makeshift base near Naples, Boutell arranged for the women under her command to have such amenities as beauty and tailor shops, a lounge, and three-day passes to the island of Capri. At the end of World War II, Boutell transferred to the staff of Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and stayed on in Europe to help plan the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the redeployment of forces across the continent. Her job was to help plan and execute the demobilization, but she quickly learned that the Army would soon need to be reestablished as an occupation force; an immense job. However, Boutell felt that her early theatrical experience was valuable training for work in military logistics.

In 1948, when the WAC was formally absorbed into the regular Army, Boutell was among the first women to receive an officer's commission. Two years later, she was one of 19 women promoted to lieutenant colonel - a rank at which she would be stalled for the next 16 years.

At the time, the only woman in the Army allowed to have the rank of full Colonel was the officer who commanded the entire Women's Army Corps. The rule was written into federal law, and it was not changed until a year after LTC Boutell retired. As she told friends, without apparent bitterness, "It wasn't a glass ceiling. It was a concrete ceiling."

In the meantime, she built a career as one of the Army's most capable logistics officers, male or female. She was, in fact, the first woman to be a logistics officer in the U.S. Army. In 1955, when she completed a Logistics Course at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, she also became the first woman to graduate from a senior service school for advanced training.

Explaining her specialty in 1993, she said: "A logistician arranges everything it takes to conduct any mission assigned to the military. Logistics is getting the right stuff there at the right time, including medical services, personnel, communications, transportation. It's a vast part of any military operation."

She worked on Army communications networks, evacuation routes and health facilities across Europe and planned how to mobilize the Army "in case, as they always used to say, 'the bomb goes off.' "

For many years, Bo worked at the Pentagon, with long stints in Germany and France, and managed a budget of $1.5 billion. Later in her career, almost all the officers under her command were men. One of her favorite compliments came from a superior officer, who wrote in an official review that he "would follow her into battle." "I knew how to bring out the things people can do in extremely difficult circumstances," she said. "It sounds like a weird contrast, but it was not."

Lieutenant Colonel Boutell retired in 1966, one year before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a law easing restrictions on military assignments and promotions for women.

Medals and Awards

Legion of Merit with Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster
Joint Services Commendation Medal
Army Commendation Medal
American Campaign Medal
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
World War II Victory Medal
Army of Occupation Medal

In Retirement

After her retirement, Bo completed her education at George Washington University, receiving a Bachelor's degree in 1968 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1971. Her interests included design, printmaking and stained glass windows.

After helping to restore the stained glass at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill, she embarked on a two-year project in 1988 to make a six-foot-high, three-panel window for the Episcopal Church of Our Redeemer in Aldie, incorporating more than 400 pieces of colored glass.

Beginning in 1987, when she was 74, Bo became a producer for Ariadne Films, a small German film production company. She visited Europe several times a year, attended international film festivals and continued to work well into her eighties.

Bo was also a published photographer and traveled throughout Africa for a project documenting Third World women. Besides her artistic endeavors, she was a program planner and analyst with Women in Community Service Inc. in Alexandria, VA, and a consultant to an automotive company in Nevada that developed a prototype of the military's high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, or Humvee.

Death

Lieutenant Colonel Hortense Mae Boutell, 93, died on 15 July 2006 at her home in Washington, DC. She had cancer and a heart ailment.