Saturday, December 7, 2019

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

In February of 1945 warehouses in Birmingham, England were filled with millions of letters and packages for members of the US military, US government personnel, and red cross workers serving in the European Theater. The undelivered mail caused problems as it lowered the morale service members.

The task of sorting and delivering this mail fell to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (nicknamed the “six triple eight”). The battalion was composed of 824 enlisted personnel and 31 officers all of whom were African-American women and was the largest contingent of black women to ever serve overseas. Major Charity Edna Adams was given command of the battalion. The women trained for the overseas mission at Fort Oglethorpe. They were taught how to identify enemy ships, aircraft, and weapons as well as climb ropes and board and evacuate ships. The battalion traveled to Camp Shanks, New York in January of 1945 where they would later leave for the United Kingdom. On February 3, 1945, the first contingent of the battalion sailed for Britain and traveled to Birmingham. 
When the battalion arrived in Birmingham, the warehouses were full of undelivered letters and packages. The buildings were unheated and dimly lit. The windows were blacked out to prevent light from shining in during night time air raids. 
The women were split into three groups. Each group worked eight-hour shifts that way they could work around the clock seven days a week. Some of the jobs that the battalion would do include the following: tracking service members by maintaining around 7 million information cards all with serial numbers to help distinguish different individuals with the same name (for example there were 7,500 Robert smiths that they had to distinguish). They investigated insufficiently addressed mail (mail that was simply labeled Junior, U.S. Army or Buster, U.S army for example) to determine the intended recipient. Other tasks included returning mail addressed to service members who had died and redirected “undeliverable” mail that was sent to the location. 
Enlisted personnel quartered in the Old King Edward School and officers quarters in two houses. Most quarters, mess halls, and recreational facilities were segregated by race and gender, although there was a local club for enlisted Americans run by the American Red Cross that allowed male African-American soldiers and white servicemen and women. However, African-American women were not welcomed here nor were they in American Red Cross hotels. This caused the Battalion to boycott other facilities the red cross offered and instead ran their own mess hall, hair salon, refreshment bar, and recreation facilities. 
Despite the discrimination, they faced the battalion was made great accomplishments in their work. They developed a new tracking system that allowed the women to process an average of 65,000 pieces of mail per shift and clear the six-month backlog of mail in only three months. Their motto was “no mail, low morale” and they worked hard to link servicemembers to loved ones back home. The battalion sailed to France and continued their work clearing backlogs of undelivered mail.
The battalion returned to the US in February of 1946 and disbanded shortly after at Fort Dix, New Jersey without ceremony and no official recognition of their accomplishment. However, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion would later be celebrated in documentaries, museums, written accounts, and public ceremonies.

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1 comment:

  1. I think your post did a really good job at showing an important role that African American women played in the war! I wanted to look into their other contributions, and found that many African American women were able to overcome discrimination and serve as army nurses. One woman was Phyllis Daley, who became the first commissioned navy nurse after the navy dropped its color ban in 1945.
    https://www.womensmemorial.org/history-of-black-women#4

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