MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Tens of millions of letters and packages despatched to U.S. troops had amassed in warehouses in Europe by the point Allied troops had been pushing towards the center of Hitler’s Germany close to the top of World Struggle II. This wasn’t unsolicited mail — it was the principle hyperlink between house and the entrance in a time lengthy earlier than video chats, texting and even routine long-distance cellphone calls.
The job of clearing out the huge backlog in a navy that was nonetheless segregated by race fell upon the most important all-Black, all-female group to serve within the struggle, the 6888th Central Postal Listing Battalion. The oldest dwelling member of the unit was honored for her service almost eight many years after the struggle ended.
Romay Davis, 102, was acknowledged at an occasion at Montgomery Metropolis Corridor that adopted President Joe Biden’s determination in March to signal a invoice authorizing the Congressional Gold Medal for the unit, nicknamed the “Six Triple Eight.”
Offered with the medal quotation and a wartime uniform to exchange hers, which was stolen out of a automotive quickly after she returned stateside, Davis acquired a standing ovation; some within the crowd applauded with tears of their eyes.
“I by no means thought something like this may occur to me,” she stated.
Davis, in an interview at her house, stated the unit was due the popularity, and she or he’s glad to take part on behalf of different members who’ve already handed away.
“I feel it is an thrilling occasion, and it is one thing for households to recollect,” Davis stated. “It is not mine, simply mine. No. It is all people’s.”
The medals themselves will not be prepared for months, however leaders determined to go forward with occasions for Davis and 5 different surviving members of the 6888th given their superior age.
Following her 5 brothers, Davis enlisted within the Army in 1943. After the struggle, the Virginia native married, had a 30-year profession within the vogue trade in New York and retired to Alabama. She earned a martial arts black belt whereas in her late 70s and rejoined the workforce to work at a grocery retailer in Montgomery for greater than 20 years till she was 101.
Whereas smaller teams of African American nurses served in Africa, Australia and England, none matched the scale or would possibly of the 6888th, in response to a unit historical past compiled by the Pentagon.
Davis’ unit was a part of the Girls’s Army Corps created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. With racial separation the observe of the time, the corps added African American items the next yr on the urging of First Woman Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights chief Mary McLeod Bethune, in response to the unit historical past.
Greater than 800 Black ladies shaped the 6888th, which started crusing for England in February 1945. As soon as there, they had been confronted not solely by mountains of undelivered mail however by racism and sexism. They had been denied entry into an American Crimson Cross membership and motels, in response to the historical past, and a senior officer was threatened with being changed by a white first lieutenant when some unit members missed an inspection.
“Over my useless physique, Sir,” replied the unit commander, Maj. Charity Adams. She wasn’t changed.
Working beneath the motto of “No Mail, Low Morale,” the ladies served 24/7 in shifts and developed a brand new monitoring system that processed about 65,000 gadgets every shift, permitting them to clear a six-month backlog of mail in simply three months.
“All of us needed to be damaged in, so to talk, to do what needed to be finished,” stated Davis, who primarily labored as a motor pool driver. “The mail state of affairs was in such horrid form they did not suppose the women may do it. However they proved a degree.”
A month after the top of the struggle in Europe, in June 1945, the group sailed to France to start engaged on further piles of mail there. Receiving higher remedy from the liberated French than they might have beneath racist Jim Crow regimes at house, members had been feted throughout a victory parade in Rouen and invited into non-public houses for dinner, stated Davis.
“I did not discover any Europeans in opposition to us. They had been glad to have us,” she stated.
The 6888th beforehand was honored with a monument that was devoted in 2018 at Buffalo Soldier Army Park at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. However instantly after the struggle, members returned house to a U.S. society that was nonetheless years away from the beginning of the fashionable civil rights motion with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas helped shepherd the invoice to current the Congressional Gold Medal to the members of the unit.
“Although the chances had been set in opposition to them, the ladies of the Six Triple Eight processed hundreds of thousands of letters and packages throughout their deployment in Europe, serving to join WWII troopers with their family members again house, like my father and mom,” Moran stated in a press release earlier this yr.
