The Six Triple Eight: The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in World War II

Maj. Charity E. Adams and Capt. Mary Kearney inspect members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in England, February 15, 1945. National Archives.

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was a battalion of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) made up mostly of African American women, along with members of Caribbean and Mexican descent. Known as the "Six Triple Eight," it was sent overseas in 1945 to solve a problem that was hurting morale across the European theater: the mail was not getting through.

The Women's Army Corps

Congress created the WAC on July 1, 1943, from the earlier Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). Recruits went through four to six weeks of basic training, followed by four to twelve weeks of specialist training. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune successfully pressed for Black women to be admitted.

A mountain of mail

Mail for the troops was shipped to Europe and sorted by postal battalions. By 1945, several warehouses in Birmingham, England, were full of letters and packages that had never been delivered, a backlog expected to take six months to work through. About 7 million American soldiers and government workers were in Europe at the time, and service members were frustrated at hearing nothing from home. The postal staff already in Birmingham were not enough to fix it.

Meanwhile, African American organizations were demanding that Black women in the WAC be given the same chance to serve overseas as others. In 1944 the War Department agreed, and the 6888th was formed. Maj. Charity Adams, whom the Park Service describes as the highest-ranking African American woman officer, was chosen to command it, and on February 3, 1945, the battalion sailed for Britain.

Clearing the backlog

The women found warehouses packed with parcels and letters, poorly lit and poorly heated, with windows blacked out so the buildings would not be targets in night raids. They worked in three eight-hour shifts, seven days a week. To sort the mail they made information cards with serial numbers to identify each soldier, and they tracked down the intended recipients of badly addressed mail by following whatever clues it carried.

The work drew attention. Local people came to watch them, and the women made friends and were welcomed into public places. They lived in Old King Edward School, with the officers in two houses. Housing and dining were segregated by race and sex, and although Black male soldiers were admitted to a local enlisted men's club, the Black women were not. Major Adams led a boycott of the separate facilities offered instead, and the women ran their own dining hall, hair salon and snack bar. They also faced slander from male soldiers who resented Black women being in the Army.

None of it slowed them down. Once their system was running, they processed about 65,000 pieces of mail each shift and cleared the Birmingham backlog in three months. Their motto was "No mail, low morale."

France and home

After V-E Day the battalion sailed to France. In Rouen, where it marched in a victory parade and was quartered in old French barracks, its arrival drew so much attention from other service members that security around the compound had to be tightened. After clearing the mail backlog there, the 6888th moved to Paris in October 1945, where living conditions were better. In February 1946 the unit returned to the United States, to no welcoming ceremony. The Park Service describes it as the only all-Black women's unit to serve overseas.

Recognition

• 1981: a few veterans of the battalion returned to England to be honored by the mayor of Birmingham.
• 1989: Major Adams published her memoir, One Woman's Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC.
• 1996: the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum honored her as the battalion's commander, and its veterans received certificates and letters of appreciation signed by the Army Chief of Staff.
• 2021: the Senate passed a measure to award the women of the 6888th the Congressional Gold Medal.
• February 28, 2022: the House of Representatives voted 422–0 to award it.

Sources

• National Park Service, Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, "6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/6888th.htm
• The source quotes the battalion as finding "a better taste" of living in Paris; that phrase is paraphrased here.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.