Navy personnel of the 6888th Central Postal Listing Battalion participate in a parade in honor of Joan d’Arc in Rouen, France, 1945. The predominantly-Black Six Triple Eight was the one all-female unit to serve abroad in WWII.
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The one feminine unit to serve abroad in World Battle II is receiving a Congressional Gold Medal on Tuesday, precisely 80 years after pulling off an unbelievable organizational feat.
The 6888th Central Postal Listing Battalion — nicknamed the Six Triple Eight — was a predominantly Black, all-female unit that was deployed to Europe in the direction of the tip of the struggle to sort out a burgeoning disaster: a backlog of some 17 million items of undelivered mail.
When the ladies arrived in Birmingham, England, in February 1945, they have been greeted by a number of warehouses stuffed with mail addressed to the roughly 7 million American troopers and authorities personnel stationed throughout Europe, lots of whom have been pissed off as a result of they hadn’t obtained any letters for months and even years.
There was a lot mail that one normal estimated it might take the unit six months to kind and ship all of it, in response to the National Museum of the United States Army. However the Six Triple Eight — whose motto was “no mail, low morale” — managed to do it in half the time, even in harsh circumstances.
After their success in Birmingham — and the tip of the struggle in Europe — the unit achieved comparable missions in Rouen and Paris, France. And whereas the unit’s members obtained a number of medals upon its return to the U.S. in 1946, there was no welcoming ceremony or public recognition of their service.
The story of the Six Triple Eight has gotten more attention over the a long time, together with a 2019 Meritorious Unit Commendation from the U.S. Armed Forces, a 2024 film and a yearslong marketing campaign to acknowledge its members with a Congressional Gold Medal, the best civilian award given by Congress.
The Senate voted on laws to bestow the award in 2021, and the Home unanimously adopted swimsuit a yr later. Then-President Joe Biden signed the act into regulation in 2022.
“It by no means occurred to me that it might occur,” retired Main Fannie McClendon, one of many two surviving veterans of the 855-person unit, said at the time.
Nevertheless, due to the time required to design and produce the actual medal, the ceremony within the U.S. Capitol wasn’t on the books till lately. Earlier this yr, over a dozen senators wrote Home Speaker Mike Johnson a letter urging him to “swiftly” schedule the medal ceremony and warning of a “vital juncture.”
“As we speak, solely two members of the Six Triple Eight are identified to be alive,” they wrote. “These nonetheless surviving should not wait any longer to obtain this long-awaited recognition they rightfully deserve.”
Within the weeks main as much as Tuesday’s ceremony, supporters had much more purpose to develop antsy concerning the lack of recognition.
A webpage concerning the Six Triple Eight seemed to be among those purged within the Division of Protection’s push to undo diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. NPR reported in mid-March that the unit’s story was not outstanding on the Arlington Nationwide Cemetery web site, however nonetheless findable utilizing the search perform.
The Division of Veterans Affairs says that 14 of the unit’s members are interred at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, whereas 32 are interred in VA nationwide or state veteran’s cemeteries throughout the nation.
The Division of Protection has since restored a few of the entries it eliminated. Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., wrote a letter to Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth in early April demanding all webpages be restored, together with that of the Six Triple Eight.
“Erasing this extraordinary legacy is an egregious betrayal of their service,” Ross wrote, calling it disrespectful to all veterans. “This timing is particularly egregious when the nation is simply beginning to recognize the story of the 6888th.”
The Division of Protection has not responded to NPR’s request for remark. The Division of the Military, which runs Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, instructed NPR over e mail on Tuesday that no profiles of people laid to relaxation there have been completely deleted from its web site, solely recategorized. The web page for the Six Triple Eight is now listed under “Outstanding Navy Figures.”
A barrier-breaking battalion
American Girls’s Military Corps (WAC) Captain Mary Kearney and American WAC Commanding Officer Main Charity Adams examine the primary arrivals to the 6888th Central Postal Listing Battalion at a brief submit in Birmingham, West Midlands, England, in February 1945.
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Black girls have been nearly excluded from navy service till the beginning of World Battle II, which prompted the creation of what got here to be often known as the Girls’s Military Corps (WAC).
Whereas the WAC opened up alternatives for girls in non-combat roles, segregation insurance policies of the time meant that Black WACs may solely make up a most of 10% of the general power, the Nationwide Museum of america Military explains. The U.S. Military was not totally built-in till 1948.
Solely about 6,500 of the 140,000 girls who served within the WAC throughout World Battle II have been Black, in response to the Department of Defense.
Black organizations and civil rights figures, like Mary McLeod Bethune, pushed for Black girls within the WAC to get the identical alternative to serve abroad. Underneath mounting stress — and a rising backlog of mail — the Battle Division created the 6888th in 1944.
“They stored hollering about wanting us to go abroad so I assume they discovered one thing for us to do abroad: Care for the mail,” McClendon instructed the Associated Press. “And there was an terrible lot of mail.”
The battalion included 5 firms, commanded by Maj. Charity Adams, who turned the highest-ranking Black Military officer in the course of the struggle. Whereas the Six Triple Eight has typically been known as an all-Black unit, it had at least two members of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent.
After a number of weeks of coaching, the ladies sailed to Scotland — the place they have been pressured to run for canopy upon arrival when a German rocket exploded close to their dock — after which took a prepare to Birmingham to start sorting mail and boosting morale.
Navigating mail, sexism and racism
The battalion was greeted by dimly lit warehouses stacked floor-to-ceiling with undelivered mail, together with six airplane hangars stuffed with returned Christmas presents, in response to the DoD.
They discovered rats consuming packages of sweets meant for troopers, mail that had bounced again as troops modified areas and a maze of recipients with comparable or similar names: The DoD cites reviews that there have been 7,500 males named Robert Smith.
The unit broke into three eight-hour shifts and labored seven days every week. They got here up with a system that concerned creating and updating thousands and thousands of locator playing cards with the serial numbers and areas of American personnel in Europe, looking for clues to suss out supposed recipients.
Adams estimated in her 1989 autobiography, One Girl’s Military: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC, that the unit averaged 65,000 items of mail per shift.
On prime of the duty at hand, the ladies of the Six Triple Eight additionally confronted sexism and racism throughout their time abroad. They weren’t allowed into a neighborhood membership for enlisted troopers, and Adams led a boycott of the choice segregated services they have been supplied, in response to the Nationwide Park Service.
“They determined to run their very own meals corridor, hair salon, and refreshment bar,” it says. “The ladies have been subjected to slander unfold about by male troopers who resented that Black girls have been allowed within the Military.”
Some Black male service members wrongly assumed the ladies of the unit had been despatched to Europe to offer companionship, the DoD says, a notion they “rapidly set straight.”
Among the Six Triple Eight’s leisure basketball gamers have been invited to play on an Military all-star crew, however uninvited when the Military realized of their race. And when three members of the unit died in a Jeep crash, the Battle Division did not present funds for his or her funerals — the remainder of the ladies collected the cash themselves.
After the struggle
Upon the unit’s arrival in France, it drew consideration from Black and white service members, who — as Adams later recalled — “immediately discovered that that they had enterprise in Rouen.” They needed to improve safety round their compound.
With the assistance of French civilians and German prisoners of struggle, the unit was in a position to clear a similar-sized backlog of mail in simply 5 months. In October, the downsized unit — about 300 members had been discharged by then — was despatched to Paris to proceed the work.
The remaining troopers have been despatched again to the U.S. in February 1946, the place they obtained the European African Center Japanese Marketing campaign Medal, the Girls’s Military Corps Service Medal, and the World Battle II Victory Medal.
“The unit was disbanded at Fort Dix, New Jersey with none additional ceremony,” reads the web site of the Nationwide Museum of america Military.
The museum notes that whereas the Six Triple Eight might not have been celebrated with parades or public recognition, their achievements prompted the Normal Board of the U.S. Forces European Theater to advocate the “continued use” of feminine troopers of colour, “together with white, feminine navy personnel … in such energy as proportionally applicable.”
A part of the primary Black WAC members pose at Camp Shanks, N.Y., earlier than heading abroad in February 1945.
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Gaining recognition
Over the a long time, members of the Six Triple Eight — and more and more, their surviving members of the family — gained extra recognition for his or her groundbreaking service.
Among the girls returned to England in 1981 to be honored by Birmingham’s mayor. Adams launched her memoir eight years later and was honored by the Smithsonian Establishment Nationwide Postal Museum the next decade. A monument within the unit’s honor was established at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 2018.
Their legacy has additionally been honored in books and films, together with a 2019 documentary and a 2024 movie, directed by Tyler Perry and starring Kerry Washington as Adams.
“These girls have been preventing for a rustic that wasn’t at all times preventing for them, however they believed within the seed of what this democracy could possibly be,” Washington instructed NPR’s Morning Edition in 2024. “They usually believed in their very own capability to create vital change.”
Washington and Perry stated they labored with a veteran of the unit, Lena King, to higher perceive the ladies’s experiences in the course of the struggle — and why some have been ashamed to debate their experiences afterward. One Florida girl who can be attending Tuesday’s ceremony solely realized final yr that her late mom was within the battalion, as Spectrum News 13 reported.
King died in January 2024 at age 100. Years earlier, she was already one of many few surviving unit members who may weigh in on its upcoming congressional honor.
“I want extra of the 6888th members have been right here, and I hope that I am nonetheless right here when President Biden indicators the invoice,” she stated in a 2022 release from the workplace of Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan. “That can be an amazing day.”
