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The women were sent to Europe to clear a backlog of 17 million pieces of mail waiting to be sent to U.S. troops.
April 29, 2025, 6:29 p.m. ET
The only all-Black, all-female Army battalion to serve in Europe during World War II was awarded Congress’s highest honor on Tuesday, in a celebration of the type of diversity that has come under assault by the Trump administration.
The unit, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion — known as the Six Triple Eight — deployed to England in 1945 to clear a backlog of 17 million letters and packages. The mail was considered critical to maintaining U.S. soldiers’ morale during some of the most grueling and bloody chapters of the war.
The members of the 855-woman battalion were given six months to complete the mission, knowing that if they failed — as some military leaders believed they would — the future of Black women in the military might be doomed. They finished in three, working around the clock, processing up to 65,000 pieces of mail in each eight-hour shift, and creating a card-based index of over seven million military serial numbers to ensure that mail addressed to people with similar names would go to the correct recipient.
Today, the battalion has only two surviving members: Fanny McClendon, 101, and Anna Mae Robertson, 104. While they watched from home, about 300 descendants of members of the battalion gathered in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall — named after the enslaved people who helped construct the building — to witness a ceremony honoring the unit’s legacy.
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“We’re honored to host you and to celebrate these exceptional women,” Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who is a close ally of President Trump, said as he presented the award to the descendants of Lt. Col. Charity Adams, who as an Army major led the 6888th Battalion.
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