The job of getting the mail to its rightful recipients was compli- cated on many fronts. First, there was the sheer number of letters and packages waiting to be sorted. Making matters worse, many of the letters were addressed in an indecipherable scrawl or were addressed only to “Junior” or “Bobby” or an extremely common name such as Robert Smith. (An estimated 7,500 servicemen in Eu- rope had that name.) If the women were lucky, the address included the intended recipient’s unit infor- mation. But the biggest problem was American forces in Europe were constantly on the move, which made locating a specifi c individual in a specifi c unit challenging. The women worked in eight- hour shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Individual service- members were tracked using nearly 7 million information cards that included serial numbers so sorters could distinguish between soldiers with the same name. The women played detective, searching for clues in improperly or insuffi ciently addressed letters and packages. They also had the solemn duty of returning mail addressed to ser- vicemembers who had died. Thanks to their detective work and a new tracking system they cre- ated, the 6888th was able to process up to 65,000 pieces of mail per shift, which allowed them to complete their mission in three months in- stead of the estimated six. Shortly after V-E Day, the unit was trans- ferred to Rouen, France, where yet more mail problems awaited. There, they worked with French civilians and German POWs to clear a backlog of letters, some of which had been


68 MILITARY OFFICER FEBRUARY 2016


The 6888th’s mission to sort a backlog of mail was estimated to take at least six months to complete. They finished in three.


left undelivered for two or three years. From there, the women were transferred to Paris, where their work continued. One uncomfort- able aspect of the job was having to search the war-ravaged French civilians with whom they worked to make sure they weren’t pilfering packages meant for American troops.


Returning from war By February 1946, the entirety of the 6888th had returned to the U.S., and the unit was disbanded at Fort Dix, N.J., with little fanfare. There were no parades or other ceremo- nies, and most of the women simply returned home so they could get on with their lives. Veasey went to college on the GI bill and worked as an administrative secretary at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh. She also was a prominent fi gure in the civil rights movement. One of her proudest moments, she says, was sitting next to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1963 March on Washington. According to Koelsch, the great- est legacy of the 6888th was the


advancement of women of color within the U.S. military. “They re- ally did shatter the stereotypes of African-American women and how they were portrayed in popular cul- ture, which was they weren’t useful for anything other than laundry and menial labor,” she says. “They were under an incredible spotlight and had to struggle against a lot of prejudice, but by all accounts I have read, these women talk with great pride about their service.” Their time in England and France


was an eye-opening experience for the women of the 6888th, many of whom had never before been outside their hometowns. They saw fi rst- hand the physical devastation of war — buildings reduced to rubble — as well as the human toll. It was some- thing they would remember for the rest of their lives. “The attack on 9/11 brought back memories of the devas- tation,” Veasey says. “You never saw anything like it in your life.”


MO


— Don Vaughan is a freelance writer from North Carolina. His last article for Military Offi cer was “Valiente en Viet- nam,” October 2015.


PHOTOS: DOD; STAMP, KLETR/SHUTTERSTOCK


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