On February 14, 1945, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean and surviving a run-in with a Nazi U-Boat, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion disembarked the Île-de-France in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The task awaiting the only all-Black, all-female battalion overseas during World War II was daunting. There were airplane hangars filled with a backlog of millions of pieces of mail sitting in Birmingham, England, addressed from friends and family to service members stationed across Europe. 

Despite segregation and poor working and living conditions, the Six Triple Eight made quick work of the postal backlog, doing their part to lift morale among the American military personnel stationed in Europe.

To learn more about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, I’m joined now by writer Kaia Alderson, author of Sisters in Arms: A Novel of the Daring Black Women Who Served During World War II.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Inspection of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion,” Courtesy of the U.S. Army.

 

Additional Sources:

• “6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (Women's Army Corps),” Prepared by Kathleen Fargey, AAMH-FPO, U.S. Army, February 14, 2014.
• “The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service,” by Judith A. Bellafaire, U.S. Army Center for Military History Publication 72-15.
• “The 6888 Postal Directory Battalion- Heroes of World War II [video],” Marking History Channel, July 21, 2021.
• “The Black Female Battalion That Stood Up to a White Male Army,” by Christina Brown Fisher, The New York Times, June 17, 2020.
• “The SixTripleEight: No Mail, Low Morale,” National World War II Museum, February 10, 2021.
• “Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Military’s Only All-Black Female Band Battled the War Department and Won,” by Carrie Hagen, Smithsonian Magazine, March 28, 2019.

 

Related Episodes of Unsung History:

• “The Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II,” with Dr Katherine Sharp Landdeck
• “Alaska Territorial Guard in World War II,” with Dr. Holly Guise
• “Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War,” with Dr. Tanya Roth

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