The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was the only all Black US Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during World War II. The women were sent to Birmingham, England, in 1945 and asked to deal with a backlog of around 17 million pieces of mail!
The unit created their own system to handle the backlog and worked 24/7 to deal with mail for more than 4 million military and civilian personnel. The battalion finished what was expected to be six months of work in three and then were sent on to France to deal with similar backlogs there.
The story of the 6888th was not well-known until the last 20 years or so when they began to receive recognition and military honors for the amazing work they had done. On New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago, my husband and I were looking for a movie we could watch that might keep us entertained enough to stay up late and we landed on The Six Triple Eight on Netflix. It did the trick! It’s an inspiring and entertaining movie — I can definitely recommend.
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