The 6888th Battalion Monument
“No mail, low morale.” It was a simple motto, but for soldiers on the battlefronts of World War II and their families, all anxiously awaiting news from home or abroad, a simple letter could mean quite a lot. By February of 1945, millions of pieces of mail meant for Allied fighters had piled up in warehouses in Birmingham, England, due to poorly marked addresses and names too common to identify individual recipients. For instance, more than 7,500 letters and packages alone were marked simply for “Robert Smith.”
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, or “Six Triple Eight,” was a predominantly black division of the Women’s Army Corps tasked with sorting out the mail mess. They arrived in the UK on Feb. 12, 1945, after a journey by ship that encountered several German U-boats. They slept in segregated housing and sorted mail in unheated, rat-infested buildings, working three shifts per day, seven days a week, and handling an estimated 65,000 pieces of mail each shift. By the end of their initial task, the battalion sorted mail for more than 4 million civilians and soldiers, and though they were given a six-month deadline to clear the warehouses, they completed the job in three months.
This monument was dedicated to the 855 women who served in the 6888 in November of 2018. Five surviving members of the battalion were able to attend the ceremony. The Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum is an excellent resource for more information on the design of the monument and the Center’s integral role in establishing it among Fort Leavenworth’s Circle of Firsts.
Near Wayside Point of Interest #7, the Buffalo Soldier Monument
