SYMHC Classics: 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. Just a couple of weeks ago, on March fourteenth, President Joe Biden signed the six Triple eight Congressional Gold Medal Act of into law. This act provides for the Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded to the six Triple eight Central Postal Directory Battalion. We covered the six Triple eight on the show on March, so we are bringing that out as today's Saturday Classic. Also, similar acts were signed into law for the Ghost Army in February of this year and for the Harlem Hell Fighters in August of last year. We have episodes on both of those as well, although they have each already had a turn as a Saturday Classic, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we have a listener request. It is from Aaron who asked on Twitter about the six thousand, eight hundred eighty eight Central Postal Directory Battalion, also known as the six Triple eight that was part of the Women's Army Corps during World War Two and at first I thought we've told some stories that feel similar to this one. We have talked about the Women's Air Force Service pilots and the women accepted for volunteer service from the United States, and we've talked about the first Russian women's battalion of death in the Soviet Night Witches, and these have had some really common themes. They've been really focused on the twentieth century during wartime and needing to recruit some women so that more men could go into combat, and militaries really reluctantly or begrudgingly allowing these women as new recruits. Usually the women in question have faced a lot of discrimination and just outright hostility from their male years and their commanding officers, along with lots of questions about their character, both from the military and civilians alike. But even though it shares a lot of those same themes, the six Triple Eight story is also really different. It has a lot of elements that we haven't really covered before. Although there were black American nurses in Europe as well during World War Two, the six Triple Eight was the only battalion of black women from the US to serve in Europe during the war, and their work really illustrates how huge parts of wartime military service aren't directly connected to combat at all. In this case, it was making sure American personnel in Europe could get their mail. So today we're really going to focus on the parts of the story that we haven't talked as much about before. We're going to talk about why the U. S. Army needed an entire battalion to deal with a mail backlog, and we're going to talk about how the six Triple eight did it. So delivering mail from the United States to a soldier deployed in Europe during World War Two is a long, multi step process that involved both the US Postal Service and the Army postal system. So let's say Mary wanted to send a care package to her brother Henry. She would box it up and address it using his name, serial number, and unit, along with the Army Post Office or APO assigned to it, and she would send it care of a US postmaster. Mail bound for Europe was usually sent care of the postmaster in New York, New York, since that was its embarkation point. Then mail has continued to work basically that way for a really long time. Yeah, I have I have sent packages to family. Um as people know, I grew up in a military family and friends as an adult, and similarly there is a very very parallel situation going on. Still, yeah, yeah, it's there's usually still the military tends to know basically where people are their families, a lot of times don't, so it's usually still this process of an A p O sending it in care of a particular olor place in New York. Mary's package would be sorted at a USPS concentration center and then that would be handed off to the Army and it would travel to Europe by sea, because carrying civilian packages by air was just way too expensive and that cargo space was a lot more needed for the war effort. Letters, on the other hand, could go by air thanks to a thing called v mail that was introduced. In v mail let people write letters on special paper and then those would be transferred onto microfilm for transport overseas by air, and then the letters would be printed out again on the other side of the journey. So once in Europe, Mary's theoretical package would move through the Army postal system until reaching the a p O on the address label, and then a mail clerk was responsible for getting the mail from the APO to the soldier. The APO was usually at the unit's headquarters, so if Henry was on duty somewhere miles away from headquarters, Mary's package should he'll get to him. And within the Army's postal system, each person had an address card that was kept on file at the Directory Service, so if a person moved, they were responsible for filling out and submitting a change of address. Often, if a unit was moving repeatedly, somebody within that unit was responsible for submitting everyone's changes. When mail arrived in Europe from the US, the postal division would try to deliver it as addressed, but if the address was wrong for whatever reason, the parcel went to the Directory Service, and the directory Service had an address card on file for each person, which was supposed to be updated any time that person moved. The Directory Service would use these cards to try to track down the recipient. During the search, each person who handled the piece of mail initialed it and dated it, and if no one had been able to deliver it after thirty days, it was returned to sender. So the fact that any of this worked at all seems almost miraculous to me. Even during peacetime, there was just a lot that could go wrong in a system like this, and during a war there was even more potential for packages to become undeliverable or for the address cards at the directory service to be out of date. Plus the scale of this entire operation was huge. In nineteen forty one, there were just a few thousand American service members in Europe, but by nineteen forty five there were an estimated seven million Americans in the European theater of operations has included members of the military along with civilian specialists, nurses, Red Cross volunteers, elected officials, conducting tours and inspections. It just went on and on. The Army was handling most of this male. To make things more complicated, when you have that many people, a lot of them are going to have the same name. Just as one example, more than seven thousand Americans in the European theater were named Robert Smiths, having nothing to do with the cure. And of those Robert Smiths, some might be known to loved ones as Bob or Bobby or Robbie or Bert or some other nick name, and their mail might be addressed with that nickname instead of to Robert. It also occurs to me that I am related to a person whose name is actually Bobby, and if someone tried to backwards engineer it to Robert, he would never get his mail. That would be wrong. So loved ones back home also weren't always meticulous about addressing their packages are hypothetical. Mary was, but it really wasn't unheard of for mail to be addressed along the lines of Junior U S. Army. So it wasn't always just about figuring out where this Robert Smith was stationed now after his package came back to the Directory Services undeliverable, it was also about figuring out which Robert Smith we were even talking about, or figuring out who in the world this Junior might be and where Junior's mail should go. The Directory Services records included service members serial numbers to help keep them all straight, but there could still be a lot of duplicate names to have to go through. In spite of all of these challenges, in the early years the United States involvement in the war, the mail had continued to get through in Europe most of the time. It might take a while, but people were still getting their letters and packages from home eventually, but soon this system was becoming overloaded. To try to reduce the volume of mail, the Postmaster General ordered in nineteen forty three that packages could only be sent to a p O S in response to a soldiers specific request. Yeah, it's not clear how much this was really enforced or even enforceable, but sometimes people would send their package like with the letter they had gotten saying please send me some new underwear in there as sort of assurance that this really was requested. Regardless though I mean that it didn't do enough to cut down on the volume of mail that needed to be handled. And then, in preparation for the D Day invasion of June six, the number of US troops in Europe started growing dramatically, and these troops and their mail were just moving around a lot more in a region that was increasingly chaotic and dangerous. By late nine, the situation was critical. The Battle of the Bulge started on December sixteenth of that year and lasted for more than a month, and just during that battle, six airplane hangars full of mail were returned from the European continent to England as undeliverable. These packages were sent all the way back to North America, they just waited in a warehouse, and because of the timing, a lot of those returned packages were Christmas presents. All those packages became part of a huge backlog of undelivered mail just sitting in warehouses in England. Eventually there were packages in this backlog that had been lingering for more than two years. On top of the overall shortage in labor for mail delivery, the military had been putting a lot more focus on moving things like food and more material, which did seem more critical than personal mail. But as this backlog of undelivered mail grew and grew, it became clear that personal mail was also critical. Naturally, people wanted to hear from their loved ones, people eagerly or anxiously awaited news about the births of children, or a loved one surgery, or all kinds of other events in the lives of the people that they missed back home. On top of that, most of the troops serving in Europe had been drafted, and many of them were as young as eighteen or nineteen years old. Some of them had never left their home state or been separated from their families for such a length of time, so a lot of them had even more reason to be homesick and just in need of contact with people from whom. In other words, these people genuinely needed their mail. When the mail slowed down or stopped, the troops morale suffered, and that drop had the potential to reduce their overall effectiveness. In late ninety four, the U. S. Army decided to handle this backlog of mail by creating a special battalion devoted specifically to addressing it. And we will get to them after a sponsor break. As we said at the top of the show. The six Triple eight was part of the Women's Army Corps, and the Women's Army Corps was initially created in ninety two as the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. It was established quote for the purpose of making available to the national defense the knowledge, skill and special training of women of the nation. Its first director was Ovita cult Hobby. The Auxiliary Corps was a non combat voluntary core. It had its own training center with its own officer candidate school, where officer candidates of different races all trained together once they were through training. Though the individual units were racheally segregated, there were also individual recruiters who refused to take applications from black women, either because of their own racism or be as they mistakenly believed that black women weren't allowed. As its name suggests, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps wasn't considered to be fully part of the U. S. Army. At first, women only worked state side. They were mainly doing clerical and food service work, along with driving and operating radios and switchboards. They also did some medical work, although the Army Nurse Corps was a whole separate entity. Being an auxiliary unit also meant that the women weren't eligible for overseas pay or government issued life insurance, so when some of them were sent to North Africa in late nineteen two, it was without the corresponding increase in their pay and without that insurance. That changed when the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps became the Women's Army Corps or WHACK, which was formerly part of the U. S. Army. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the legislation to make this change. On July one, the WHACK gained official military status, including being eligible for insurance and overseas pay. The Women's Army Corps went on to recruit women from every US state and from American territories, including Puerto Rico. Later on, several NISSA women joined the Whack as well. And you can learn more about the complicated history of niss A service in the U. S. Armed Forces during World War Two in our episodes on Executive Order nineties sixty six and in the one specifically on NISSA in World War Two. Starting with that first deployment to North Africa in ninety two, the women sent overseas through the Auxiliary Corps or the WAX had all been white, but the War Department had also briefly issued a request to send black women overseas in nineteen forty two as well. However, that request was really contentious because part of it was that these women would quote provide companionship for thousands of Negro troops. The Auxiliary Corps leadership was appalled and angry at this suggestion, which was on its own offensive. On top of that, they'd had to continually push back against perceptions that there was something morally questionable about these women and their service. Suggesting that the military wanted to send black women overseas as companions just reinforce those perceptions. Ovida, called Pobby, refused to allow it, and the War Department walked back its request and stated that black women would be sent overseas only if their presence was deemed a necessity. That led to an ongoing campaign by civil rights activists, black journalists, and advocates like Mary McLoud Bothoon who argued that the black women should have the same opportunity as the white women to serve in the roles that they had been trained for. Yeah, when we say that they had been having to push back against perceptions that there was something morally questionable. These included things like false news reports about widespread pregnancies and STD outbreaks among the whack which were just so heavily stigmatized and made it seem like there was something nefarious going on and like the was something that they had actively been fighting against. And this, this whole request reinforced that whole idea in though the War Department finally decided that it was a necessity to send a battalion of black women to Europe and that battalion was going to address that whole backlog of mail. This battalion was, of course, the six Triple eight it was to be a self contained battalion rather than being connected to a male unit, so it would be responsible for everything that was needed to do the job, including things like their own food service, their own administration, and their own recreation. Even though the higher ups knew what this unit's job would be, the women being recruited for it didn't At first. All they knew was that there was a chance to go overseas to serve, and a lot of women were eager to have that chance. At the same time, the overall number of black women in the WHACK was still relatively small, and not all of them met the criteria to go to Europe, which included passing strict physical and psychological examinations as well as undergoing additional training at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, so it took a dedicated recruiting effort to fill out the six Triple Eate. It ultimately had eight hundred twenty four enlisted personnel and thirty one officers. In command was Major Charity Edna Adams, who had been part of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps first class of officers and was the first black woman to be commissioned by the U. S Army. Adams was a huge part of the six Triple Eight, and she's a good example of the kinds of skills and education that were needed for black women to be considered as black officers. Adams was from Columbia, South Carolina. She'd been valedictorian of her high school class and had gone on to graduate from Wilberforce University with majors in mathematics, physics, and Latin, along with a history miner and teacher certification. She had gone back home to Columbia after graduation to work as a teacher, and during the summer she took graduate courses at Ohio State University. Adams joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in ninety two after the Dean of a Minute Wilberforce recommended her and she got a letter that invited her to join. When she was chosen to command the six Triple Eight, she already had years of experience as an officer working at the Whack Training Center in Fort du Boine, Iowa. She joined the rest of the battalion for training at Fort Oglethorpe, which included classroom training, drilling, obstacle courses, evacuation drills, gas mask drills and the like, but even as they were training, they still didn't know what they were being sent to Europe to do. Adams and her executive officer finally learned what their role would be after going to England ahead of the rest of the battalion in early nineteen The two of them flew over the Atlantic and the first group of enlisted women and officers followed by sea aboard the Le de France. The Le de France departed from New York on February third, nineteen forty five, and route to Glasgow, Scotland, evading German U boats along the way, and then from there the women traveled by train to Birmingham, England, where they arrived on February. The day after their arrival, they held a parade for Lieutenant General John C. H Lee, who was the Deputy Commander of the European Theater of Operations. The rest of the six Triple Eate arrived about fifty days after this first group did. In Birmingham, the Six Triple Eates, enlisted personnel were housed at King Edward's School, and officers were in a couple of houses. They managed their own mess hall and recreational facilities and their own beauty salon, but setting up a beauty shop with something of a challenge, especially when it came to getting gas and electrical connections in proximity to the salon chairs that Adams requisitions. In her memoir, Adams wrote quote, it is perhaps wiser not to detail the extent of our ingenuity. That beauty salon might seem like a luxury, but was. It was really a necessity, and not just because the women had to meet military grooming standards. It was also to keep up their own morale because, as it turned out, working through this backlog of mail it was was a really difficult job. And we will get to why after a sponsor break. The six Triplate got to work in a warehouse in Birmingham, England, in February, and the temperatures there tended to be in the thirties to forties fahrenheit, which is in the single digits celsius. The warehouses they were working in we're not well heated. So the women went to work every day and as many layers as they could manage, but they were still cold. This sounds utterly miserable to me. Yeah, the warehouse also was not well lit. Under normal conditions, it's lighting would have been supplemented during the day by natural light from the windows, but those had to be covered over because of air raids. Plus, the six trip l eight worked three eight hour shifts a day, seven days a week, so some of the women were in the warehouse sorting mail in the middle of the night when there is no daylight to help anyway. We mentioned early year that the backlogged mail included a lot of Christmas parcels and some items that had been lingering in the mail system for years. Some of these packages contained perishable foods which had spoiled, and even when what was inside was not spoiled, mice and rats and other vermin had really invested a lot of these packages as well, and even in the best circumstances, overseas shipping can be hard on packages. The six Triple eight was often piecing to other packages that had physically disintegrated after getting wet or otherwise being damaged, or just simply being sent from North America and then around Europe without a sturdy enough container. These women got really good at figuring out which random items came out of the same broken package, using clues like fuzz from a sweater that had rubbed off on multiple items, or comparing just how damp each item was. They would reconstruct these packages as well as they could before figuring out where the recipients were and then ending them on. This backlog was expected to take the six Triple eight six months to deal with, but they cleared about sixty five thousand pieces of mail per shift, and they finished what they were doing in half the expected time. This included resolving all of those discrepancies that we talked about at the top of the show and getting the mail to the right people, as well as the much sadder task of returning packages to the sender when the person who was supposed to receive them had been killed. Beyond just the task of sorting the mail, life in Birmingham had some challenges for the six Triple eight. Locals probably would have been curious about any U S. Army activity at the warehouse, but when it came to the sudden presence of more than eight hundred black women, first, there was a lot of gawking. The six Triple eight was also the largest unit in the area, so when there was some kind of function that required an army officer's presence, Major Adams was usually the one to go. People were often shocked when the officer who arrived at an official function was a black woman. The Six Triple Eate also faced discrimination and some of the amenities that were available to other members of the service. The American Red Cross was running a club for enlisted personnel that had allowed white women and men of any race, but then decided, without really offering an explanation, that the Six Triple Eates enlisted members would not be admitted there. The Red Cross offered to establish a separate club just for the Six Triple Eate, but Major Atoms refused, saying that she wouldn't have her battalion moving into the segregated facility. A similar incident followed with a Red Cross hotel in London for wax that the Six Triple Eight had been allowed to use when they were there on official or personal business. Again, without really giving much of an explanation, the Red Cross decided that the Six Triple Eight would just be quote happier somewhere else and started setting up a separate facility. Adams again refused, and when she let the Six Triple Eate know that they would need to find other accommodations and they went to London. Overall, they backed her up on it. Yeah, she uh. When she was talking to the Red Cross people about this, she was like, Okay, we've been sharing this hotel. There have been no problems. None of my people have complained. It seems like maybe some other people have complained, and if they have, they are maybe the people that should go to some separate facility. Anyway, none of it was a good situation. There were also some disagreements with higher ups. Even though the six Triple eight was well ahead of schedule and they finished processing this big backlog and half the expected time, they were still criticized for being inefficient, something that was probably more about racial bias than their actual performance. There's definitely not another explanation that's readily there for that. No, you performed high above exceeding all expectations. So lazy, I know, I can't I mention another reason for it. Major Adams in particular, also had to run in with a general who came for an inspection. According to her memoir, Adams had been ordered to maintain business as usual during that inspection, but when the general inspected her troops, he reprimanded her for not having all of them present. When she explained that some were sleeping and others were working, and that she was following orders by keeping them on their set schedule, he said that he would bring a white first lieutenant to take command. Major Adams's response, in the heat of the moment was over my dead body, sir. This was of course not an acceptable thing for any officer to say to their superior and so after the general left, Adams and some of her officers had to put their heads together to figure out how she might be able to defend herself and what seemed like an inevitable court martial. The strategy they decided on was to lean on some memos that had advised officers that were affiliated with the U. S Military not to use language that emphasized racial segregation out of the risk of alienating their allies in Europe. Adams was prepared to make the argument that what the general said had done exactly that, but then the charges against her were dropped on the grounds that it would be too expensive to replace her because she was the wax highest ranking black officer. I just want to point out, she said, sir at the end. So by my estimation that was very polite, and in some retellings of this she said, Sir at both ends super polite, better than I would have done. Once the Birmingham backlog was clear, the six Triple eight was moved to Rouen, France in the Normandy region on June to do the same job there. Of course, that was a month after v E Day, so a lot of U S troops were headed back home. A lot of supplies were as well. The Six Triple Eates beds could not be found and they had to cobble together bunk setups with boards and canvas cots. The six Triple Eate had a lot more visitors in Ruin than they had had back in England. A lot of troops headed back home were being routed through the area, so the six Plate had a steady stream of male relatives and boyfriends and fiance's passing through, plus some servicemen who didn't know anybody there but wanted to socialize. This ultimately led to several weddings, either between sweethearts from back home who were reunited after the war here or relationships that developed while both parties were in Europe. There were some downsides to all of these reunions, though so many male visitors were coming through that Adams finally banned men from the facility every Monday, so the women of the six Triple Eate had time to do things like launder and air dry their delicates in relative privacy. Occasionally things got out of hand with some of the men, and the six Triple Eight asked for its MPs to be issued firearms. When that request was refused, they just studied jiu jitsu instead. This wasn't the only way that life for the six Triple Eight was different in Ruhan than it had been in Birmingham. For a while, they had exceptionally good meals because a quartermaster assumed to the a unit that had so many women and in it had to be a hospital, so they were being sent the hospital rations, which were much nicer. Once that error was discovered and they went back to their regular rations, they started bartering damaged goods that came through, like cigarettes and soap with the locals to increase their access to fresher foods. They also increasingly worked with civilians and sometimes prisoners of war. As members of the Six Triple Eight became eligible to go home, they had more opportunities for recreation in Rouen as well, including participating in sports and athletic tournaments. They still didn't have equal access because of their race, though. Several members of the Six Triple Eight were selected for an Army All Star team, but their invitations were rescinded when the organizers realized they were black. The battalion's basketball team was also denied boarding a train for a basketball tournament, at which point Lieutenant General Lee had the train held until his personal first class car could be connected for them to use, and they held another parade in Rulan. This one honored Joan of Arc and passed through the square where she had been burned at the stake. It was in Ruin that the Six Triple Eight had its biggest tragedy. Three women were in a GP accident on July n Private Mary Jay Barlow and Private Mary H. Bankston were killed, and Sergeant Dolores M. Brown died five days later as a result of her injuries. Major Adams notified their families and women of the Six Triple Eight, who had mortuary experience, prepared their bodies for burial. They held two services. Since two of the women had been Protestant and the other was Catholic. All three were buried at Normandy American Cemetery in Ruan. Once again, the six Triple Eight dealt with another projected six month mail backlog and half the estimated time, and then after that the remaining women were sent to Paris to deal with one last backlog. They arrived there in October of nineteen forty five. This time they were housed in hotels where they had housekeeping and meal service. By this point, about three hundred members of the Six Triplate had gone home and two hundred more were eligible to so. Even though there were far fewer Americans in Europe, for the people who were still there, their workloads were actually higher. Another issue in these last months of their assignment was theft of the mail that they were trying to sort. Many of the people living in the area where they were working had faced all kinds of shortages during the war, and they still didn't have basic necessities, so the remaining members of the Six Triple Eight had to add tracking down Pilford packages to their duties. In February of six, with the war over and the backlogs handled, the six Triple Eate was disbanded and any members who were still in Europe were sent home. Before departing for home, Adams also ran into that general who had tried to court martial her over telling him over my dead body back in Birmingham. According to Adam's memoir, that actually crossed paths a couple of times since then, and on his way to the back to the United States, he told that she had outsmarted him and that he was proud to know her, and also that he wouldn't be telling her any of this if he thought he would ever see her again. Adams was the most senior female officer on the troop transport ship that she took back to the US, which meant that she was in command of all of the women on board. A group of white nurses objected to this, saying that they had their own white major, who they argued should be in charge. Adams explained to them that she would not be leaving the ship, but that if it was so important to them to be under the command of a white officer, they were welcome to disembark and go home. Later, they elected not to do so. After the war, many of the six Triple Eight used the g I Bill to go to college or graduate school, and this included Major Adams, who was promoted to lieutenant colonel before leaving the service. That was the highest rank that it was possible for her to attain in the Women's Army Corps. She also got married on August, becoming Charity Edna Adams. Early during their time in Europe, the six Triple Eight had broken records for processing mail in spite of the early criticisms of their alleged inefficiency. In the end, they were highly praised for their work, but they returned home with no recognition or fanfare. That didn't really start to change until one when several members went back to Birmingham, England to be recognized. A memorial was held at Arlington National Cemetery in February of two thousand nine, but by then the organizers were only able to contact three surviving members to attend. In March of the U. S. Army Women's Foundation inducted the six Triple Eight into its Hall of Fame, and in the U. S. Senate passed Resolution four twelve quote expressing the Sense of the Senate regarding the six thousand eight Central Postal Directory Battalion and celebrating Black History Month. It was introduced in February and pass in October. On November of that year, the six thousand eight Central Postal Directory Battalion Monument at the Buffalo Soldier Monument Park at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas was dedicated Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams. Early died on January two thousand two at the age of eighties three. Before her death, she wrote a memoir called One Woman's Army, and it has a lot more detail about the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and the Women's Army Corps in general, and the six Triple eight specifically, and it is well worth checking out. In this memoir, she wrote quote, I was very proud of the six Triple Eight. My personal pride was because I was the commanding officer of this terrific outfit. There were many women in the Corps who could have been the CEO, but I was the fortunate one to hold the position. My feeling of personal achievement was only a minute part of my pride in the unit. The women of the six Triple Eight had ventured into a service area where they were not really wanted. They had assumed jobs that had normally been assigned to men. They had been and were performing in a valiant and praiseworthy manner. They had survived racial prejudice and discrimination with dignity. I really love them. Yeah, it's such a great story. Hey so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old how Stuff Works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.