Opinion: These women were denied veteran status for decades. Congress can’t overlook them again.
Women of the U.S. Signal Corps who served overseas as telephone operators during World War I. By Elizabeth Cobbs March 4 at 3:31 PM Elizabeth Cobbs, a history professor at Texas A&M and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is the author of “The Hello Girls.”
Radios did not yet carry voices, only Morse code, and their wireless signals were notoriously vulnerable to enemy interception. It took three mules to haul a heavy radio field station to the front. By contrast, officers could deliver orders over telephones simply by talking, and the lines were difficult to tap without detection. A single soldier carrying a lightweight spindle could run communication lines into trenches, across battlefields and to captured enemy positions.
In that era, telephone operating was a sex-segregated occupation: Employers preferred females for their dexterity, efficiency, politeness and demonstrated ability to function under intense pressure. By Nov. 11, 1918, at the signing of the Armistice, the 223 women of the Signal Corps had connected 26 million calls. Some had served within shelling distance of the front, including Banker, whom the Army awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in occupied Germany. Thirty other operators received special commendations, including decorations for the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, the biggest American battles.
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