On February 18, 1943, the following newspaper article was published in the Villisca Review:

"For Service To Her Country" Miss Mary Osen Joins WAAC First woman to enlist in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps from Villisca is Miss Mary Osen, Lincoln Grade School teacher, who last Saturday took oath in Omaha at the command headquarters for the seventh area of the WAAC. Miss Osen, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Osen of Anita, Ia., has been teaching in the Villisca schools for the last four years. Awaits Call Now awaiting call into active service, Recruit Osen will continue teaching here until she receives orders as to where she will be trained. Recruits are usually notified within a month of their destination and then are given a granted furlough of two weeks before reporting for embarkation to a camp. WAAC training schools are located at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, Ft. Ogelthorpe, Ga., and Daytona Beach, Fla., and Miss Osen will attend a four-week schooling period at one of them. She will then be sent into active service or to an officer candidate school. For the past three years, Miss Osen has served as chairman and director of the local Junior Red Cross activities. Brother in the Army Auxiliary Osen is a graduate of Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, and has attended the University of Colorado at Boulder. One of nine children, she has one brother, Robert, a warrant officer stationed at Ft. Knox, Ky., and another brother, James, who will enter the veterinary corps of the U.S. Army upon his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in April.