March 14, 2022 – President Biden Signs Legislation Awarding Congressional Gold Medal to Members of the WWII 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

In 1941, U.S. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts introduced a bill that would give women a larger role in the armed forces. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a version of that bill into law, establishing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). In 1943, the WAAC dropped the word “Auxiliary” and allowed women to become members of the regular Army.

Altogether, about 6,500 Black women enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.

The 6888th Postal Directory Battalion was the largest all-female, all-Black battalion to deploy overseas for World War II. It was sent overseas in 1945 as a result of growing pressure from African-American organizations to include Black women in what was called the Women’s Army Corps.

Members of the Women’s Army Corps 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion sort packages taken from mail sacks by French civilian employees at the 17th Base Post Office in Paris on November 7, 1945. National Archives

The establishment and deployment of the pioneering unit was credited with breaking through serious shipping, sorting and delivery holdups that blocked Army postal operations. The women kept mail flowing to nearly seven million soldiers in the European Theater of Operations (ETO).

Smithsonian Magazine reports:

The women of the 6888th were discouraged when they discovered warehouses crammed from floor to ceiling with mail and packages that had not been delivered for at least two years.  Rats the size of cats had broken into some of the Christmas care packages for front line soldiers and eaten their contents.  The women went to work, organizing a system that would break the bottleneck of undelivered mail.

They worked in shifts around the clock processing an average of more than 65,000 pieces of mail. Some packages had been damaged beyond repair, so a special unit was formed to reassemble their scattered contents by matching up dates and packing materials. The Six Triple Eight—as they were called—also had the task of censoring letters, making sure no sensitive information would compromise the war effort.

By May 1945, the women had achieved in three months what no one before them had managed to do in two years: They’d cleared the mail backlog in England. From there, they were transferred to Rouen, France, to tackle more mail issues.”

Members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion take part in a parade and ceremony on May 27, 1945, which was held in honor of Joan of Arc at the marketplace where she was burned at the stake in Rouen, France. National Archives

The women received no recognition for their work until recently, when on this date in 2022, President Biden signed legislation passed unanimously in both the Senate and the House of Representatives (another miracle) to award the Congressional Gold Medal to these women. In the words of Public Law 117-97, the medal recognizes, inter alia, “the contributions made by those women to increase the morale of all United States personnel stationed in the European Theater of Operations during World War II.”

For a history of Congressional Gold Medals including information about the legislative process, the Congressional Research Service has this report.