Category Archives: WWI Women

The Hello Girls

Women at the Front During WWI

Let’s talk technology, shall we? I’m not talking about ‘recent’ technology, like the ability to use WhatsApp, TikTok, or even Facebook. I’m not thinking about satellite radio, television, or even CD players. I’m talking about the telephone – not the cell phones that are ubiquitous these days. No, I’m talking about the plain old landline. 

Honestly, does anyone even have one of those anymore? 

During World War I, a telephone was cutting edge technology – especially when it came to communicating between officers and troops that were spread out over the European front. At the time, radio existed, but it could only be used to transmit Morse code. Furthermore, the radios were so heavy that transportation was a major issue. The solution? Bringing in linemen to run telephone wires throughout the front, extending for hundreds of miles. 

There is a backstory here about how small the Army Signal Corps was on the day the United States entered World War I. It takes an awful lot of manpower to lay the telephone cables necessary to wage a war. But that’s a story for another day. This story – THIS STORY – is the story of The Hello Girls, the women who were recruited “into” the Army Signal Corps to help serve their country. 

Notice that I put “into” in quotes. That’s going to become relevant here in a minute. 

At the time, the majority of telephone operators in the United States were women. In her history of The Hello Girls, Elizabeth Cobbs (2017: Harvard University Press) noted that these operators back at home were “diligent and quick, the best of them efficiently manipulat[ing] cords and plugs while fielding requests for the time and other information.” 

Hello Girl Enid Pooley.
Hello Girl Enid Pooley. National Museum of the United States Army, For Belvoir, VA.
Photo by Mary Hallock Morris (July 24, 2021)

According to the U.S. Army Signal Museum: 

During WWI, General “Black Jack” Pershing advertised in all the major newspapers in America the need for female telephone operators. These telephone operators must meet certain criteria. They needed to speak French, have a college degree and be single. Over 7,000 women applied and 450 were selected. The women were recruited from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). The women received military and Signal Corps training. They trained in basic military radio procedures at Camp Franklin Maryland (now Fort Meade). After training, the women purchased their Army regulation uniform complete with “U.S.” crests, Signal Corps crests, and “dog tags.” Arm patches designating positions were issued. In the spring of 1918, the first thirty-three operators were on their way to Europe. They were issued gas masks and steel helmets. The operators voices were a welcome sound to the men who used the Signal Corps telephone system.

The Women in the Army website adds that “The Army Signal Corps women traveled and lived under Army orders from the date of their acceptance until their termination from service. Their travel orders and per diem allowance orders read ‘same as Army nurses in Army regulations’.” 

The first 100 Hello Girls arrived before most of the American troops landed in Europe. And, they were there during the thick of the battle. A story from Cobbs’ book illustrates how tough and persistent these Hello Girls were:

Choking smoke poured into the switchboard room, where Berthe Hunt and the others were working. Shouts rang out above the quiet voices coming over the wires. “Of course we sat at the board & operated— there was nothing else we could do,” Hunt wrote. “We knew our things were going.” But they also knew they could not break contact with embattled frontline troops. A bucket brigade tried to save the switchboards. Colonel Behn climbed onto the roof over Berthe Hunt’s head and emptied pails of water that others handed up.

Here’s the sad part: Even though these women served their county, connecting more than 26 million calls during the war, when they came home from the war they were not considered to have been “in” the military after all. [See those quotation marks above were important!] Because of an Army ruling after the Civil War – when women had enlisted disguised as men – all Army members were required to be male. 

Thus, the Hello Girls, who had worked through some serious battle conditions did not receive any of the benefits extended to veterans after the war. Writes Cobbs: “The U.S. government denied them bonuses, Victory Medals, honorable discharges, and a flag on their coffins.” 

Speaking of persistence: These women continued to petition the various U.S. presidents for decades to gain recognition as veterans. After all, that wasn’t really outlandish, seeing how the Navy used female yeomen during the same war. In 1977, during the Carter administration, these “girls” were finally recognized as military members.

Next Time: The Radium Girls

Source

Cobbs, E. (2017). The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers [Kindle Android version]. Harvard University Press. 

Other Useful Websites

June 11, 2021: Over 200 Years of Service: The History of Women in the U.S. Military

November 9, 2018: 100 Years On, The ‘Hello Girls’ Are Recognized for World War I Heroics

September 29, 1918: Brave Girl Soldiers of the Switchboard, The Sun

PBS Documentary: The Hello Girls

Library of Congress: Topics in Chronicling America (Hello Girls)

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The Forerunners

A Quick Introduction to Women Warriors

This week, I’m going to talk a bit about women’s war efforts prior to World War II. Consider this a bit of an introduction – I have way more material in ye ol’ research files about women in the Civil War and in World War I. So, let’s get started!

In its History of Wartime Nurses, Duquesne (Dew-Kane) University’s School of Nursing points out that women have nursed wounded warriors all the way back to the Revolutionary War. Other sources tell of women protesting tea, melting pewter dishes to mold bullets, and acting as couriers. Some women went to war with their husbands. And, as Susan Casey writes in her author’s note to Women Heroes of the American Revolution, “In many cases, women didn’t have to rush to war. The war surrounded them, engulfed their lives.”

There’s a reason why little girls learn the legend of Molly Pitcher and the story of a female Paul Revere. They may be myths, exaggerations (or not), but they are stories that inspire.

Then we come to the Civil War. In her book Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, popular historian Karen Abbott writes: 

There was work for everyone to do, even the women— especially the women. They had to adjust quickly to the sudden absence of fathers and husbands and sons, to the idea that things would never be as they had been. They had no vote, no straightforward access to political discourse, no influence in how the battles were waged. Instead they took control of homes, businesses, plantations. They managed their slaves in the fields, sometimes backing up orders with violence. They formed aid societies, gathering to darn socks and underwear for the soldiers. To raise money for supplies they hosted raffles and bazaars, despite widespread resistance from the very men they aimed to help (protested one general, “It merely looks unbecoming for a lady to stand behind a table to sell things”). They even served as informal recruiting officers, urging men to enlist and humiliating those who demurred, sending a skirt and crinoline with a note attached: “Wear these, or volunteer.”

Karen Abbott (2014)

Abbott tells the stories of four women who served both the union and the confederacy: three as spies, and one as a union private. Take for example, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, who ran a confederate spy ring in Washington, DC, who had been recruited into this position by confederate President Jefferson Davis, through his emissary Captain Thomas Jordan. Later, Union Colonel Erasmus D. Keyes called her “one of the most persuasive women that was ever known in Washington”— persuasive enough to wheedle classified information from him in between their alleged trysts. Or how about Emma Edmondson, who posed as Union private Frank Thompson, one of the 400 estimated women who served as men during this war between the States. Edmondson served at great risk to herself, knowing that if she was found out that she could be arrested for prostitution.

And then there was Mary Edwards Walker who became the first female Army surgeon during the Civil War. Walker often crossed battle lines and in April 1864 was arrested by Confederate troops as a spy – after helping a Confederate doctor with a surgery. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by President Andrew Johnson, but was stripped of the medal in 1917 because she “did not meet the requirements to qualify for the award” (i.e., she was a woman). She refused to return the medal and wore it for the rest of her life. The honor was later restored in 1977.

Liberty engines manufactured for government use. 165-WW-582-A1
from: The Women of World War I in Photographs, The Unwritten Record, National Archives

Women continued their contributions during World War I, working as homefront volunteers, overseas nurses, factory laborers, and support personnel. They formed what historian Lynn Dumenil labeled “the second line of defense.”

In an article for Time Magazine, author Pamela Toler noted that “increasing manpower demands … made it easier for women to make official contributions [during World War I] … Women signed up as ambulance drivers, telephone operators, munitions workers, members of various service auxiliaries, and even as soldiers in Bolshevik Russia’s all-female units.” In the United States, women served openly as Navy “Yeomanettes” thanks to a loophole in the law that did not state that only men could enlist in the Navy. By the end of World War I, 11,000 American women had become yeomen (F). Originally, these women were recruited to take over clerical duties, but by the end of the war, the female yeomen were also working as “radio and telegraph operators, supervisors for naval shipments, commissary stewards, draftsmen, pharmacists, torpedo assemblers, and camouflage designers.”

Next Time: The Hello Girls

Sources

Abbott, K. (2014). Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War [Kindle Android version]. Harper. 

Casey, Susan. (2015). Women Heroes of the American Revolution: 20 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Defiance, and Rescue. (Women of Action Series). Chicago Review Press. [YA Nonfiction]

Dumenil, L. (2017). The Second Line of Defense: American Women in World War I. University of North Carolina Press. 

“The History of Wartime Nurses.” (nd). Duquesne University School of Nursing. https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/history-wartime-nurses/ [Last accessed July 18, 2021]

Toler, P.D. (2019, February 26). “Not Every Woman Who Served with the U.S. Military During World War I Got the Same Treatment. Here’s Why.” Time Magazine. Last accessed October 9, 2021. https://time.com/5537784/wwi-us-military-women/

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