The Forgotten Battalion of Black Women Who Conquered WWII’s 2-Year Mail Backlog

 

February 12th, 1945. A frozen ditch near the  Roar River, Germany. You’re looking at private   first class Miller, or rather the mudcaked shape  of him. His knuckles are white where he clutches   the stock of his M1 Garand, the cold seeping  through his gloves, through his skin, all the   way to the bone.

 Every so often, the sky rips open  with the scream of artillery, and Miller flinches,   pressing his helmeted head deeper into the icy  mud. But it’s not the shells he’s thinking about.   He’s thinking about a letter. A letter that hasn’t  come. It’s been 8 months since he heard from his   wife Sarah. 8 months of silence from a world that  feels a million miles away.

 He pictures her face,   but it’s starting to fade. The edges blurring like  an old photograph. Did she get his last letter?   Does she know he’s still alive? In the crushing  loneliness of the front line, a letter is not just   paper and ink. It’s proof. Proof that you are  still connected to a life worth fighting for.   proof that you are still remembered. And Private  Miller feels forgotten. He’s not alone.

 All across   the European theater of operations, 7 million  American soldiers are slowly losing a different   kind of war. A war against silence. Morale.  The invisible armor of an army is cracking.   Generals are noticing. Fights are breaking out.  Soldiers are becoming despondent, convinced their   families have moved on, or worse. The army’s own  chaplain and psychiatrists are sounding the alarm.  

The lack of mail is a strategic threat. It’s  a cancer eating the army from the inside out.   The problem isn’t that people aren’t writing. They  are. Billions of letters and packages have crossed   the Atlantic. Vmail and parcels full of socks and  cookies and photographs from home. The problem   is where they end up. Picture this. Massive  unheated aircraft hangers in Birmingham, England.  

Inside there are no airplanes. There are only  mountains. Mountains of canvas mailbags stacked   to the ceiling, collapsing under their own weight.  Letters and packages spill out onto the concrete   floor. A chaotic flood of forgotten promises. The  air is thick with the smell of mildew and rotting   paper. Rats grown fat and fearless scurry through  the piles.

 The windows are blacked out for fear of   German bombers, leaving the cavernous space lit  by a few dim dangling bulbs. It’s a graveyard of   hope, a backlog 2 years in the making. The US  Army has tried to fix it. They’ve thrown units   of able-bodied men at the problem. But these  soldiers are either quickly reassigned to the   front or prove completely overwhelmed by the sheer  scale of the chaos.

 The system, or lack thereof,   is impossible. There are over 7 million soldiers  in Europe, but only a fraction of their names are   on file. There are thousands of men named Robert  Smith or James Williams. Soldiers are wounded,   transferred, or killed in action. their units  constantly in motion. A letter addressed to a   soldier in one company might arrive months after  he’s been moved to another a 100 miles away.

 The   mail is simply lost. High-ranking generals tour  the facility and leave shaking their heads. The   task they conclude is physically impossible.  They give it a six-month timeline for any unit   crazy enough to even try. It’s a poison chalice,  a mission designed for failure. But the crisis is   growing and a solution must be found.

 A desperate,  unconventional idea begins to form in the halls of   the war department. They don’t need more men. They  need a miracle. They need a unit with discipline,   focus, and a reason to prove everyone wrong.  The call goes out. And on the other side of   the Atlantic, 855 women are about to answer.  The woman tasked with leading this miracle unit   is Major Charity Adams.

 At just 27 years old, she  is the highest ranking African-Amean woman in the   entire US Army. She is brilliant, disciplined, and  carries the weight of expectation like a second   uniform. When a white general tells her he’s  going to send a white first lieutenant to show   her how to do her job, she replies with ice in her  voice, “Sir, over my dead body, sir.” That is the   kind of leader she is. She understands that for  her unit, failure is not an option.

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February 12th, 1945. A frozen ditch near the  Roar River, Germany. You’re looking at private   first class Miller, or rather the mudcaked shape  of him. His knuckles are white where he clutches   the stock of his M1 Garand, the cold seeping  through his gloves, through his skin, all the   way to the bone.

 Every so often, the sky rips open  with the scream of artillery, and Miller flinches,   pressing his helmeted head deeper into the icy  mud. But it’s not the shells he’s thinking about.   He’s thinking about a letter. A letter that hasn’t  come. It’s been 8 months since he heard from his   wife Sarah. 8 months of silence from a world that  feels a million miles away.

 He pictures her face,   but it’s starting to fade. The edges blurring like  an old photograph. Did she get his last letter?   Does she know he’s still alive? In the crushing  loneliness of the front line, a letter is not just   paper and ink. It’s proof. Proof that you are  still connected to a life worth fighting for.   proof that you are still remembered. And Private  Miller feels forgotten. He’s not alone.

 All across   the European theater of operations, 7 million  American soldiers are slowly losing a different   kind of war. A war against silence. Morale.  The invisible armor of an army is cracking.   Generals are noticing. Fights are breaking out.  Soldiers are becoming despondent, convinced their   families have moved on, or worse. The army’s own  chaplain and psychiatrists are sounding the alarm.  

The lack of mail is a strategic threat. It’s  a cancer eating the army from the inside out.   The problem isn’t that people aren’t writing. They  are. Billions of letters and packages have crossed   the Atlantic. Vmail and parcels full of socks and  cookies and photographs from home. The problem   is where they end up. Picture this. Massive  unheated aircraft hangers in Birmingham, England.  

Inside there are no airplanes. There are only  mountains. Mountains of canvas mailbags stacked   to the ceiling, collapsing under their own weight.  Letters and packages spill out onto the concrete   floor. A chaotic flood of forgotten promises. The  air is thick with the smell of mildew and rotting   paper. Rats grown fat and fearless scurry through  the piles.

 The windows are blacked out for fear of   German bombers, leaving the cavernous space lit  by a few dim dangling bulbs. It’s a graveyard of   hope, a backlog 2 years in the making. The US  Army has tried to fix it. They’ve thrown units   of able-bodied men at the problem. But these  soldiers are either quickly reassigned to the   front or prove completely overwhelmed by the sheer  scale of the chaos.

 The system, or lack thereof,   is impossible. There are over 7 million soldiers  in Europe, but only a fraction of their names are   on file. There are thousands of men named Robert  Smith or James Williams. Soldiers are wounded,   transferred, or killed in action. their units  constantly in motion. A letter addressed to a   soldier in one company might arrive months after  he’s been moved to another a 100 miles away.

 The   mail is simply lost. High-ranking generals tour  the facility and leave shaking their heads. The   task they conclude is physically impossible.  They give it a six-month timeline for any unit   crazy enough to even try. It’s a poison chalice,  a mission designed for failure. But the crisis is   growing and a solution must be found.

 A desperate,  unconventional idea begins to form in the halls of   the war department. They don’t need more men. They  need a miracle. They need a unit with discipline,   focus, and a reason to prove everyone wrong.  The call goes out. And on the other side of   the Atlantic, 855 women are about to answer.  The woman tasked with leading this miracle unit   is Major Charity Adams.

 At just 27 years old, she  is the highest ranking African-Amean woman in the   entire US Army. She is brilliant, disciplined, and  carries the weight of expectation like a second   uniform. When a white general tells her he’s  going to send a white first lieutenant to show   her how to do her job, she replies with ice in her  voice, “Sir, over my dead body, sir.” That is the   kind of leader she is. She understands that for  her unit, failure is not an option.

 It would not   be seen as the failure of one battalion. It would  be used as proof that black women had no place in   the war effort. The women who rally to the call  are not career soldiers. They are postal clerks,   teachers, administrators, and factory workers  from New York, Mississippi, Ohio. They are women   like private first class Indiana Hunt Martin and  Sergeant Dolores Ruddock.

 They joined the Women’s   Army Corps for a thousand different reasons.  Patriotism, a steady paycheck, the promise of   seeing the world, and the fierce, burning desire  to prove that they are just as capable as any man   and any white soldier. Their training at Fort  Ogulthorp, Georgia is brutal. This is not a   clerical course. The army is sending them into a  war zone and they are trained as such.

 They learn   to identify enemy aircraft and ships. They crawl  under barbed wire during live fire exercises.   They run obstacle courses, scale cargo nets, and  learn to march for miles in perfect formation.   They endure tear gas drills, memorizing the steps  to secure their masks in seconds as the acrid   smoke stings their eyes and burns their lungs. All  of this happens in a segregated army.

 They sleep   in separate, often inferior barracks. They march  on separate drill fields. They are constantly   under the watch of white officers who expect them  to fail, but they don’t. They forge themselves   into a single cohesive unit, the 6,888th Central  Postal Directory Battalion. They adopt a motto,   one that cuts to the very heart of their mission.  No mail, low morale.

 They understand what the   generals grappling with strategy do not. That the  connection to home is the fuel that keeps the war   machine running. In early February 1945, the 855  women of the 68 board a repurposed luxury liner,   the SSL de France, for the perilous journey  across the Atlantic. The ship is crowded, the   air is tense, and they zigzag across the ocean to  evade the everpresent threat of German Ubot.

 This   is no drill. Several days into their voyage, the  ship’s alarms blare. A German submarine is hunting   them. The women are ordered below deck into  the darkness, listening as the engines strain,   and the ship makes a violent turn. Then, a new  sound, the terrifying buzz of AV1 flying bomb,   a buzz bomb screaming towards them.

 It crashes  into the sea nearby, sending a shock wave through   the hull. They are officially in the war. When  they finally dock in Glasgow, Scotland, the cold,   damp air is a shock. They are exhausted, but  resolute. As they step onto foreign soil,   they know the skepticism hasn’t been left behind  in America. It’s waiting for them 150 mi south in   a city called Birmingham.

 It’s waiting for them  in three massive dark hangers, in a mountain of   rotting paper and forgotten hope. The doors of the  first aircraft hanger grown open and the women of   the 6,888th get their first look at the enemy.  It is a silent sprawling beast. Major Charity   Adam stands at the front, her posture unyielding,  but for a split second, the sheer scale of the   task is breathtaking.

 The air that rushes out to  meet them is heavy and cold, thick with the smell   of decay. It’s the scent of damp paper, mold,  and something else. The faint foul odor of the   rats that call this place home. Inside, it’s a  landscape of chaos. The promised mountains of   mail are real. Canvas bags are piled so high they  lean against the steel girders of the ceiling,   some having burst open to spill their contents in  a sorrowful avalanche across the floor.

 Individual   letters, Vmails, and small parcels form a literal  carpet of crushed hopes. There are no shelves,   no tables, no system of any kind. Blackout paint  on the windows plunges the cavernous space into a   perpetual twilight pierced only by a few bare low  wattage bulbs that cast long distorted shadows.   Water drips from a leak in the roof, a steady,  maddening metronome counting out the seconds   of their impossible deadline.

 The British and  American officers who greet them are polite,   but their expressions are a mixture of pity and  doubt. One male officer gestures vaguely at the   mess and says, “Good luck with that, ladies.”  He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, that this   is a public relations stunt, a fool’s errand.  Major Adams ignores him. Her eyes are scanning,   assessing, breaking the problem down into tactical  objectives.

 She sees not an impossible mountain,   but a disorganized supply line that needs to  be conquered. She turns to her own officers,   captains Mary Kernney and Abby Campbell among  them. There is no grand speech. Her voice is calm,   precise, and radiates an authority that silences  any doubt. The plan she lays out is audacious   in its simplicity and logic. First, they will  impose order on the chaos.

 The women fan out,   not to sort, but to organize. They clear pathways,  stacking the bags into manageable sections. They   separate letters from the mountains of packages.  They bring in tables and makeshift lighting,   transforming the hanger from a tomb into  a workspace. Then, Adams establishes the   rhythm of their assault. They will not stop.

  The 6,888th will operate 24 hours a day,   7 days a week in three rotating 8-hour shifts. The  hanger will never be silent again. But the true   genius of their operation is the creation of the  locator file. Adams understands the core problem,   finding a single soldier among 7 million moving  targets. Her solution is to build a master   database from scratch.

 For every single soldier in  the European theater, all seven million of them,   the women of the six triple 8 create an index  card. On each card, they type the soldier’s   name and serial number. This becomes their bible.  When a letter arrives for a private Robert Smith,   they don’t guess. They pull the cards for every  Robert Smith using unit numbers, hometowns,   and any other clue on the envelope to cross  reference and find the correct one.

 If a soldier   has been transferred, they update his card. If  he is deceased, they mark it and the letter is   rerouted with grim efficiency. In the freezing  cold, wearing their coats and gloves indoors, the   work begins. The sound of over 800 women replaces  the dripping water and the scuttling of rats. It’s   the sound of purpose, the rhythmic thump thump  of thousands of letters being handstamped, the   clatter of typewriters creating the locator cards,  and the constant murmur of names being called out   as they bring order to the chaos. The generals  gave them 6 months. The women of the 6,888th plan  

to prove them wrong, one letter at a time. The  rhythm of the shifts becomes the rhythm of their   lives. A woman finishes her 8 hours at the sorting  tables, her fingers numb with cold and stained   with ink, and passes her station to another who  is just arriving. There is no break in the chain.   They sleep in nearby former school buildings,  the rooms unheated, trying to get a few hours   of rest before their next shift begins. They eat  in shifts, march to the hangers and shifts.

 Their   world shrinks to this single monumental task. The  work is mind-numbing and physically exhausting.   Each shift, a woman might handle thousands of  pieces of mail. They track down soldiers with   common names like James Jackson. Sometimes having  to sift through dozens of index cards to find the   right one.

 A letter might simply be addressed to  junior US Army and the women become detectives   using the return address and postmark to deduce  the soldiers home state and narrow the search.   They develop a grim familiarity with the realities  of war. They handle letters addressed to men they   know from their locator file are dead.

 Each one  is carefully marked deceased and sent back a final   heartbreaking message. They also see the other  side. They sort packages containing wedding rings   and tear stained letters from mothers begging for  a sign that their sons are alive. These are not   just names on a list. They are lives. The motto no  male low morale is no longer an abstract concept.  

It’s a tangible reality they hold in their hands  every single second of their shift. This is their   way of fighting. It’s their front line. As the  weeks wear on, the external pressures don’t ease.   The Red Cross, wanting to set up a club for  enlisted men in their barracks building,   tries to seize some of their limited space. Major  Adams refuses.

 When the Red Cross representative   insists, pointing out that her soldiers are  enlisted personnel, too, Adams fixes him with a   glare. They are, she says, but they are my ladies.  The Red Cross backs down when a male general   inspects their operation and criticizes their  appearance. Some women are not in full proper   uniform while doing the grueling work. Adams  doesn’t flinch.

 She informs him that her only   concern is getting the male out, not winning a  beauty contest. Her job is to command a battalion,   not a fashion show. Slowly and possibly, the  mountains begin to shrink. The first hanger is   cleared, then the second. The women track their  progress on a chart, a visual representation of   their victory. They are no longer just sorting  mail. They are moving a mountain.

 Their shifts   process an average of 65,000 pieces of mail.  They are not just meeting expectations, they   are shattering them. And then the first reports  trickle in from the front. A soldier in a foxhole   in Germany gets a letter from his wife for the  first time in a year. Across the European theater,   a wave of relief begins to spread. The mail is  moving. Hope is being delivered.

 The generals   who had given them 6 months, the officers who  had pitted them start to visit the hangers,   not to inspect, but to watch in stunned silence.  The impossible was happening. They weren’t just   clearing a backlog. They were doing it in record  time. May 1945, Birmingham, England. The last of   the three aircraft hangers is not empty, but it is  orderly.

 The mountains are gone, replaced by neat   stacks of outgoing mailbags. The final pieces  of the Birmingham backlog have been processed.   The floor is swept clean. The women of the 6,888th  stand for a final inspection in the cavernous   space they conquered. It’s been 3 months, not six.  Three. They have processed over 17 million pieces   of mail. The job the army deemed impossible is  done.

 But just as the news of Germany’s surrender   echoes across Europe, a new set of orders  arrives for the 68. Their work isn’t finished.   The mail system is flowing again because of them  and the army can’t afford to let it collapse.   They are being redeployed. Their new mission,  Ruan, France. The journey to Ruan is a stark   reminder of the war that has just ended.

 They  cross the English Channel and land at La Hav,   a port city that has been bombed into a skeleton  of rubble. From there, they travel by train   through a landscape of devastation. It’s one  thing to handle letters from the front. It’s   another to see the scars on the land where those  battles were fought. When they arrive in Ruan,   they find another backlog waiting for them.

  It’s smaller than the one in Birmingham,   but the mail includes two to three years worth of  packages and letters for troops who are now being   redirected to the Pacific theater or sent home.  The conditions are in some ways even worse. They   are billeted in a former German barracks and their  workspace is a captured locomotive garage still   filled with the grease and grime of its former  use. But now they are a veteran unit.

 They are   not the same women who first stepped into the  cold hangers in England. They are experts. They   apply the same relentless 24/7 three shift system.  They bring their meticulously constructed locator   files. They know exactly what to do. The Ruan  backlog is cleared with astonishing speed. With   the war in Europe over, the women are finally  allowed more freedom.

 They get passes to travel   to Paris. For these women who had lived under  the heel of segregation their entire lives,   the experience is liberating. They walk into  fine restaurants and are seated. They are treated   not as black women but as American soldiers, as  liberators. They meet African soldiers from the   French colonies, sharing stories and experiences.

  It is a glimpse of a world without the color lines   they knew back home. But their service is not  without its final tragedy. In July, a jeep   accident takes the lives of three of their own.  Sergeant Dolores Brown, Private Mary H. Bankston,   and Private Mary J. Barlo. A fourth, Staff  Sergeant Lena Derkott, dies a week later from   her injuries. The entire battalion mourns.

 These  women had survived Yubot and buzz bombs only to   be taken after the fighting had stopped. They are  laid to rest in the Normandy American Cemetery,   the only women of the US military buried there  among the 9,000 men. Their headstones are a   permanent testament to the service and sacrifice  of the 6,888th. Their mission was complete, but   the cost was now etched in stone. February 1946,  Fort Dicks, New Jersey.

 The remaining women of the   6,888th Central Postal Directory Battalion step  off the ship and onto American soil. There are   no parades, no news cameras, no cheering crowds.  Their incredible achievement, clearing a 2-year,   17 million piece male backlog in a quarter of the  expected time, is met with a deafening silence.   The unit is quietly, unceremoniously disbanded.

  The women who had served as liberators in France   return home to a country that still forces them  to sit at the back of the bus. They trade their   uniforms for civilian clothes and their stories  of service for the familiar struggle of life in   a segregated America. For decades, their story is  buried, just like the male they had rescued. It   becomes a footnote in the history books, if  it’s mentioned at all.

 The women themselves   rarely speak of it. Who would believe them? The  story of 855 black women who went to a war zone   and did the impossible was too incredible for a  country that was not ready to hear it. They were   expected to return to their lives as clerks  and teachers, their extraordinary service   a secret kept among themselves. But history  has a way of finding the light.

 In the 2000s,   veterans of the unit, now in their 80s and 90s,  begin to share their stories. Historians and   documentary filmmakers start to piece together the  incredible tale. People like Indiana Hunt Martin,   who lived to be 102, finally see their service  recognized. The motto, no male, low morale,   is finally understood not just as a slogan, but  as a strategic contribution to Allied victory.  

Keeping an army of 7 million men connected to  home was not a clerical task. It was a critical   act of war. Recognition, slow and long overdue,  begins to arrive. Unit citations are awarded.   A monument is erected in their honor at Fort  Levvenworth, Kansas. Finally, in March of 2022,   President Joe Biden signs a bill awarding the  women of the 6,888th the Congressional Gold Medal,   one of the nation’s highest civilian honors.

 At  the ceremony, only a handful of the original 855   women are still alive to see it. The story of the  68 is not just about sorting mail. It’s a story of   fighting a war on two fronts. One against the axis  powers in Europe and another against racism and   sexism within their own military. They faced every  obstacle.

 The skepticism of their commanders,   the harsh conditions of a war zone, the sheer  impossibility of their task. And they did not   just succeed. They triumphed. They proved  that a battalion of forgotten women could   restore the morale of an entire army. Armed with  nothing more than discipline, determination,   and a belief in their mission, they didn’t  just clear a backlog.

 They delivered hope   when it was needed most. And in doing so, they  left a legacy that could no longer be ignored.

 

February 12th, 1945. A frozen ditch near the  Roar River, Germany. You’re looking at private   first class Miller, or rather the mudcaked shape  of him. His knuckles are white where he clutches   the stock of his M1 Garand, the cold seeping  through his gloves, through his skin, all the   way to the bone.

 Every so often, the sky rips open  with the scream of artillery, and Miller flinches,   pressing his helmeted head deeper into the icy  mud. But it’s not the shells he’s thinking about.   He’s thinking about a letter. A letter that hasn’t  come. It’s been 8 months since he heard from his   wife Sarah. 8 months of silence from a world that  feels a million miles away.

 He pictures her face,   but it’s starting to fade. The edges blurring like  an old photograph. Did she get his last letter?   Does she know he’s still alive? In the crushing  loneliness of the front line, a letter is not just   paper and ink. It’s proof. Proof that you are  still connected to a life worth fighting for.   proof that you are still remembered. And Private  Miller feels forgotten. He’s not alone.

 All across   the European theater of operations, 7 million  American soldiers are slowly losing a different   kind of war. A war against silence. Morale.  The invisible armor of an army is cracking.   Generals are noticing. Fights are breaking out.  Soldiers are becoming despondent, convinced their   families have moved on, or worse. The army’s own  chaplain and psychiatrists are sounding the alarm.  

The lack of mail is a strategic threat. It’s  a cancer eating the army from the inside out.   The problem isn’t that people aren’t writing. They  are. Billions of letters and packages have crossed   the Atlantic. Vmail and parcels full of socks and  cookies and photographs from home. The problem   is where they end up. Picture this. Massive  unheated aircraft hangers in Birmingham, England.  

Inside there are no airplanes. There are only  mountains. Mountains of canvas mailbags stacked   to the ceiling, collapsing under their own weight.  Letters and packages spill out onto the concrete   floor. A chaotic flood of forgotten promises. The  air is thick with the smell of mildew and rotting   paper. Rats grown fat and fearless scurry through  the piles.

 The windows are blacked out for fear of   German bombers, leaving the cavernous space lit  by a few dim dangling bulbs. It’s a graveyard of   hope, a backlog 2 years in the making. The US  Army has tried to fix it. They’ve thrown units   of able-bodied men at the problem. But these  soldiers are either quickly reassigned to the   front or prove completely overwhelmed by the sheer  scale of the chaos.

 The system, or lack thereof,   is impossible. There are over 7 million soldiers  in Europe, but only a fraction of their names are   on file. There are thousands of men named Robert  Smith or James Williams. Soldiers are wounded,   transferred, or killed in action. their units  constantly in motion. A letter addressed to a   soldier in one company might arrive months after  he’s been moved to another a 100 miles away.

 The   mail is simply lost. High-ranking generals tour  the facility and leave shaking their heads. The   task they conclude is physically impossible.  They give it a six-month timeline for any unit   crazy enough to even try. It’s a poison chalice,  a mission designed for failure. But the crisis is   growing and a solution must be found.

 A desperate,  unconventional idea begins to form in the halls of   the war department. They don’t need more men. They  need a miracle. They need a unit with discipline,   focus, and a reason to prove everyone wrong.  The call goes out. And on the other side of   the Atlantic, 855 women are about to answer.  The woman tasked with leading this miracle unit   is Major Charity Adams.

 At just 27 years old, she  is the highest ranking African-Amean woman in the   entire US Army. She is brilliant, disciplined, and  carries the weight of expectation like a second   uniform. When a white general tells her he’s  going to send a white first lieutenant to show   her how to do her job, she replies with ice in her  voice, “Sir, over my dead body, sir.” That is the   kind of leader she is. She understands that for  her unit, failure is not an option.

 It would not   be seen as the failure of one battalion. It would  be used as proof that black women had no place in   the war effort. The women who rally to the call  are not career soldiers. They are postal clerks,   teachers, administrators, and factory workers  from New York, Mississippi, Ohio. They are women   like private first class Indiana Hunt Martin and  Sergeant Dolores Ruddock.

 They joined the Women’s   Army Corps for a thousand different reasons.  Patriotism, a steady paycheck, the promise of   seeing the world, and the fierce, burning desire  to prove that they are just as capable as any man   and any white soldier. Their training at Fort  Ogulthorp, Georgia is brutal. This is not a   clerical course. The army is sending them into a  war zone and they are trained as such.

 They learn   to identify enemy aircraft and ships. They crawl  under barbed wire during live fire exercises.   They run obstacle courses, scale cargo nets, and  learn to march for miles in perfect formation.   They endure tear gas drills, memorizing the steps  to secure their masks in seconds as the acrid   smoke stings their eyes and burns their lungs. All  of this happens in a segregated army.

 They sleep   in separate, often inferior barracks. They march  on separate drill fields. They are constantly   under the watch of white officers who expect them  to fail, but they don’t. They forge themselves   into a single cohesive unit, the 6,888th Central  Postal Directory Battalion. They adopt a motto,   one that cuts to the very heart of their mission.  No mail, low morale.

 They understand what the   generals grappling with strategy do not. That the  connection to home is the fuel that keeps the war   machine running. In early February 1945, the 855  women of the 68 board a repurposed luxury liner,   the SSL de France, for the perilous journey  across the Atlantic. The ship is crowded, the   air is tense, and they zigzag across the ocean to  evade the everpresent threat of German Ubot.

 This   is no drill. Several days into their voyage, the  ship’s alarms blare. A German submarine is hunting   them. The women are ordered below deck into  the darkness, listening as the engines strain,   and the ship makes a violent turn. Then, a new  sound, the terrifying buzz of AV1 flying bomb,   a buzz bomb screaming towards them.

 It crashes  into the sea nearby, sending a shock wave through   the hull. They are officially in the war. When  they finally dock in Glasgow, Scotland, the cold,   damp air is a shock. They are exhausted, but  resolute. As they step onto foreign soil,   they know the skepticism hasn’t been left behind  in America. It’s waiting for them 150 mi south in   a city called Birmingham.

 It’s waiting for them  in three massive dark hangers, in a mountain of   rotting paper and forgotten hope. The doors of the  first aircraft hanger grown open and the women of   the 6,888th get their first look at the enemy.  It is a silent sprawling beast. Major Charity   Adam stands at the front, her posture unyielding,  but for a split second, the sheer scale of the   task is breathtaking.

 The air that rushes out to  meet them is heavy and cold, thick with the smell   of decay. It’s the scent of damp paper, mold,  and something else. The faint foul odor of the   rats that call this place home. Inside, it’s a  landscape of chaos. The promised mountains of   mail are real. Canvas bags are piled so high they  lean against the steel girders of the ceiling,   some having burst open to spill their contents in  a sorrowful avalanche across the floor.

 Individual   letters, Vmails, and small parcels form a literal  carpet of crushed hopes. There are no shelves,   no tables, no system of any kind. Blackout paint  on the windows plunges the cavernous space into a   perpetual twilight pierced only by a few bare low  wattage bulbs that cast long distorted shadows.   Water drips from a leak in the roof, a steady,  maddening metronome counting out the seconds   of their impossible deadline.

 The British and  American officers who greet them are polite,   but their expressions are a mixture of pity and  doubt. One male officer gestures vaguely at the   mess and says, “Good luck with that, ladies.”  He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, that this   is a public relations stunt, a fool’s errand.  Major Adams ignores him. Her eyes are scanning,   assessing, breaking the problem down into tactical  objectives.

 She sees not an impossible mountain,   but a disorganized supply line that needs to  be conquered. She turns to her own officers,   captains Mary Kernney and Abby Campbell among  them. There is no grand speech. Her voice is calm,   precise, and radiates an authority that silences  any doubt. The plan she lays out is audacious   in its simplicity and logic. First, they will  impose order on the chaos.

 The women fan out,   not to sort, but to organize. They clear pathways,  stacking the bags into manageable sections. They   separate letters from the mountains of packages.  They bring in tables and makeshift lighting,   transforming the hanger from a tomb into  a workspace. Then, Adams establishes the   rhythm of their assault. They will not stop.

  The 6,888th will operate 24 hours a day,   7 days a week in three rotating 8-hour shifts. The  hanger will never be silent again. But the true   genius of their operation is the creation of the  locator file. Adams understands the core problem,   finding a single soldier among 7 million moving  targets. Her solution is to build a master   database from scratch.

 For every single soldier in  the European theater, all seven million of them,   the women of the six triple 8 create an index  card. On each card, they type the soldier’s   name and serial number. This becomes their bible.  When a letter arrives for a private Robert Smith,   they don’t guess. They pull the cards for every  Robert Smith using unit numbers, hometowns,   and any other clue on the envelope to cross  reference and find the correct one.

 If a soldier   has been transferred, they update his card. If  he is deceased, they mark it and the letter is   rerouted with grim efficiency. In the freezing  cold, wearing their coats and gloves indoors, the   work begins. The sound of over 800 women replaces  the dripping water and the scuttling of rats. It’s   the sound of purpose, the rhythmic thump thump  of thousands of letters being handstamped, the   clatter of typewriters creating the locator cards,  and the constant murmur of names being called out   as they bring order to the chaos. The generals  gave them 6 months. The women of the 6,888th plan  

to prove them wrong, one letter at a time. The  rhythm of the shifts becomes the rhythm of their   lives. A woman finishes her 8 hours at the sorting  tables, her fingers numb with cold and stained   with ink, and passes her station to another who  is just arriving. There is no break in the chain.   They sleep in nearby former school buildings,  the rooms unheated, trying to get a few hours   of rest before their next shift begins. They eat  in shifts, march to the hangers and shifts.

 Their   world shrinks to this single monumental task. The  work is mind-numbing and physically exhausting.   Each shift, a woman might handle thousands of  pieces of mail. They track down soldiers with   common names like James Jackson. Sometimes having  to sift through dozens of index cards to find the   right one.

 A letter might simply be addressed to  junior US Army and the women become detectives   using the return address and postmark to deduce  the soldiers home state and narrow the search.   They develop a grim familiarity with the realities  of war. They handle letters addressed to men they   know from their locator file are dead.

 Each one  is carefully marked deceased and sent back a final   heartbreaking message. They also see the other  side. They sort packages containing wedding rings   and tear stained letters from mothers begging for  a sign that their sons are alive. These are not   just names on a list. They are lives. The motto no  male low morale is no longer an abstract concept.  

It’s a tangible reality they hold in their hands  every single second of their shift. This is their   way of fighting. It’s their front line. As the  weeks wear on, the external pressures don’t ease.   The Red Cross, wanting to set up a club for  enlisted men in their barracks building,   tries to seize some of their limited space. Major  Adams refuses.

 When the Red Cross representative   insists, pointing out that her soldiers are  enlisted personnel, too, Adams fixes him with a   glare. They are, she says, but they are my ladies.  The Red Cross backs down when a male general   inspects their operation and criticizes their  appearance. Some women are not in full proper   uniform while doing the grueling work. Adams  doesn’t flinch.

 She informs him that her only   concern is getting the male out, not winning a  beauty contest. Her job is to command a battalion,   not a fashion show. Slowly and possibly, the  mountains begin to shrink. The first hanger is   cleared, then the second. The women track their  progress on a chart, a visual representation of   their victory. They are no longer just sorting  mail. They are moving a mountain.

 Their shifts   process an average of 65,000 pieces of mail.  They are not just meeting expectations, they   are shattering them. And then the first reports  trickle in from the front. A soldier in a foxhole   in Germany gets a letter from his wife for the  first time in a year. Across the European theater,   a wave of relief begins to spread. The mail is  moving. Hope is being delivered.

 The generals   who had given them 6 months, the officers who  had pitted them start to visit the hangers,   not to inspect, but to watch in stunned silence.  The impossible was happening. They weren’t just   clearing a backlog. They were doing it in record  time. May 1945, Birmingham, England. The last of   the three aircraft hangers is not empty, but it is  orderly.

 The mountains are gone, replaced by neat   stacks of outgoing mailbags. The final pieces  of the Birmingham backlog have been processed.   The floor is swept clean. The women of the 6,888th  stand for a final inspection in the cavernous   space they conquered. It’s been 3 months, not six.  Three. They have processed over 17 million pieces   of mail. The job the army deemed impossible is  done.

 But just as the news of Germany’s surrender   echoes across Europe, a new set of orders  arrives for the 68. Their work isn’t finished.   The mail system is flowing again because of them  and the army can’t afford to let it collapse.   They are being redeployed. Their new mission,  Ruan, France. The journey to Ruan is a stark   reminder of the war that has just ended.

 They  cross the English Channel and land at La Hav,   a port city that has been bombed into a skeleton  of rubble. From there, they travel by train   through a landscape of devastation. It’s one  thing to handle letters from the front. It’s   another to see the scars on the land where those  battles were fought. When they arrive in Ruan,   they find another backlog waiting for them.

  It’s smaller than the one in Birmingham,   but the mail includes two to three years worth of  packages and letters for troops who are now being   redirected to the Pacific theater or sent home.  The conditions are in some ways even worse. They   are billeted in a former German barracks and their  workspace is a captured locomotive garage still   filled with the grease and grime of its former  use. But now they are a veteran unit.

 They are   not the same women who first stepped into the  cold hangers in England. They are experts. They   apply the same relentless 24/7 three shift system.  They bring their meticulously constructed locator   files. They know exactly what to do. The Ruan  backlog is cleared with astonishing speed. With   the war in Europe over, the women are finally  allowed more freedom.

 They get passes to travel   to Paris. For these women who had lived under  the heel of segregation their entire lives,   the experience is liberating. They walk into  fine restaurants and are seated. They are treated   not as black women but as American soldiers, as  liberators. They meet African soldiers from the   French colonies, sharing stories and experiences.

  It is a glimpse of a world without the color lines   they knew back home. But their service is not  without its final tragedy. In July, a jeep   accident takes the lives of three of their own.  Sergeant Dolores Brown, Private Mary H. Bankston,   and Private Mary J. Barlo. A fourth, Staff  Sergeant Lena Derkott, dies a week later from   her injuries. The entire battalion mourns.

 These  women had survived Yubot and buzz bombs only to   be taken after the fighting had stopped. They are  laid to rest in the Normandy American Cemetery,   the only women of the US military buried there  among the 9,000 men. Their headstones are a   permanent testament to the service and sacrifice  of the 6,888th. Their mission was complete, but   the cost was now etched in stone. February 1946,  Fort Dicks, New Jersey.

 The remaining women of the   6,888th Central Postal Directory Battalion step  off the ship and onto American soil. There are   no parades, no news cameras, no cheering crowds.  Their incredible achievement, clearing a 2-year,   17 million piece male backlog in a quarter of the  expected time, is met with a deafening silence.   The unit is quietly, unceremoniously disbanded.

  The women who had served as liberators in France   return home to a country that still forces them  to sit at the back of the bus. They trade their   uniforms for civilian clothes and their stories  of service for the familiar struggle of life in   a segregated America. For decades, their story is  buried, just like the male they had rescued. It   becomes a footnote in the history books, if  it’s mentioned at all.

 The women themselves   rarely speak of it. Who would believe them? The  story of 855 black women who went to a war zone   and did the impossible was too incredible for a  country that was not ready to hear it. They were   expected to return to their lives as clerks  and teachers, their extraordinary service   a secret kept among themselves. But history  has a way of finding the light.

 In the 2000s,   veterans of the unit, now in their 80s and 90s,  begin to share their stories. Historians and   documentary filmmakers start to piece together the  incredible tale. People like Indiana Hunt Martin,   who lived to be 102, finally see their service  recognized. The motto, no male, low morale,   is finally understood not just as a slogan, but  as a strategic contribution to Allied victory.  

Keeping an army of 7 million men connected to  home was not a clerical task. It was a critical   act of war. Recognition, slow and long overdue,  begins to arrive. Unit citations are awarded.   A monument is erected in their honor at Fort  Levvenworth, Kansas. Finally, in March of 2022,   President Joe Biden signs a bill awarding the  women of the 6,888th the Congressional Gold Medal,   one of the nation’s highest civilian honors.

 At  the ceremony, only a handful of the original 855   women are still alive to see it. The story of the  68 is not just about sorting mail. It’s a story of   fighting a war on two fronts. One against the axis  powers in Europe and another against racism and   sexism within their own military. They faced every  obstacle.

 The skepticism of their commanders,   the harsh conditions of a war zone, the sheer  impossibility of their task. And they did not   just succeed. They triumphed. They proved  that a battalion of forgotten women could   restore the morale of an entire army. Armed with  nothing more than discipline, determination,   and a belief in their mission, they didn’t  just clear a backlog.

 They delivered hope   when it was needed most. And in doing so, they  left a legacy that could no longer be ignored.