97: The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton and I'm trace Kerr and it's time for a brainstorm. So in world war II, there were lots of people overseas and they all needed to get mail. Unfortunately it wasn't getting delivered. I can imagine that, you know, there's bombing going on and there's not a lot of personnel. So the women's army Corps, what was formed in 1943 to supplement the needs of the war. Okay. And women of color were encouraged to enlist and that caused the forming of the six triple eight the 6,888 postal directory battalion. The sixth triple eight was formed under major charity, Edna Adams. She was black woman and she was in command of 850 other women of color. That's a big group. It was a huge group. They train in Georgia and they sent them overseas in February of 1945 and they had one mission in world war II. Speaker 0 00:59 They had to clear a two year backlog of mail in a giant low light, no heat warehouse. Oh my goodness. That is an incredible amount of work. And they figured it would take that. They were like, look, just start working on it and we'll see what will happen. But these gals got to work three separate eight hour shifts around the clock seven days a week. Wow. They were a self contained unit and their whole motto was no mail, no morale. They had 7 million army, Navy, air force, red cross uniform specialists. Everybody's waiting to hear from home and these gals got it all organized and cleared the backlog in three months. That just is incredible. And I'm thinking of the logistics of like was this major a postal worker before who organized the, I would have no idea where to start. Well not only that, but they were talking about the fact that a lot of people had very common names and there's no really address for this to go to. Speaker 0 01:54 There were 7,500 men named Robert Smith. Okay. You had troops moving all through Europe. So while Robert Smith might have been over here in Normandy one day, he might be someplace else and all of this mail had to find a place. It was just, it's amazing how well they did and they were so impressive that when they finished with that, they were like, well, let's send them to France. And so they wound up in LA Havre shortly after VE day. And uh, they found a city in ruins, but they were cheered on. And just like in England, the six triple eight found another year's worth of backlog of mail and processed it again with the same efficiency. Wow. The thing that really caught my eye about this story, when they returned to the United States in February of 1946, the remainder of the unit was disbanded. No parades, no ceremonies, no official recognition of their accomplishment, with the exception of a smaller unit of black nurses who served in Africa, Australia and England. Speaker 0 02:52 The six triple eight was the only black women's unit to serve overseas in world war II. Wow. And they just went one day, they just came back. Yeah. Well not only that, but they went home one day and people were like, why are you in uniform? You know here they'd been doing all of these things for the military and for morale. Oh yeah. Probably one of the biggest morale boosters that you could have is to hear from home and no one was thanking them. Wow. So since 1945 the women of the six triple eight have been included in the archives for black women's history in Washington D C and then in February 25th of 2009 there was an event honoring this. It's the six triple eight at the women and military service for America at Arlington cemetery. Well, I'm glad they're catching up. Lena King now 96 is still fighting for recognition for the six triple eight and hopes to see them recognized with the congressional gold medal. Speaker 0 03:43 I feel like they deserve that. I do too. Yeah. I love that. It's so sad that that's not so readily available, but I appreciate that this generation is working on making it more available. Yeah. There's a lot of history that we don't know, and this was something that when I read about it, it was just, it's phenomenal. Yeah. It's a staggering feat that people should know about. And now you do want to hear more. We're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast, and you can find us on Twitter as at my brain junk trace, and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know. And I guarantee you will not be bored.