Gerald, Ihave to disagree with you that men did not do women's work in the 19th C. My great-grandmother taught the firemen from the firehouse next her father's store in Brooklyn to knit in the 1880s. Ok it's a generation after the war, it is something to think about. That having been said, I have to agree with the rest of your post. I alos think that from period evidence, when soldiers could get what supplies they need from the QM, they expected or rather hoped to get it from the home front just like today.