Valor Friday

Here’s something you might not have heard of, because I hadn’t, and I like to think myself well-versed on the topic of American military history. The above photo is a World War I propaganda poster from the YWCA (which was never made famous like the YMCA, thanks for nothing The Village People). Bet you didn’t know we had a troop of females serving at the front during the Great War that weren’t nurses.

As you can glean from the picture, these women were telephone switchboard operators. Known as “Hello Girls”, they numbered in the few hundred, and were recruited to serve just behind the front to relay orders by telephone. They were required to be fluently bi-lingual in both English and French, as the Allied forces were joined into a (mostly) cohesive joint command structure.

Female US Signal Corps Telephone Operators in Chaumont, France during WWI. G.H.Q. Chaumont, Hte Marne, France.

The Commissar sends in the tip for this story. Thanks to him! He noticed this CBS News story about the Hello Girls being honored at a San Francisco-area cemetery. From CBS;

A service honoring the “Hello Girls,” women who served as bilingual telephone operators in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I, is set for this weekend at a cemetery in Colma.

The women did not receive recognition for their service until the late 1970s and were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2024.

The Hello Girls performed critical communications work near combat zones, but at the time, their service was dismissed as clerical. They were not granted veteran status until decades later, after sustained advocacy.

Carolyn Timbie, whose grandmother Grace Banker served as chief operator in the Signal Corps, has been among those advocating for recognition.

“My mother told me about her – what an amazing woman, friend, mother. And for me to be robbed of knowing her service, that really hits home,” Timbie said.

Timbie and the Hello Girls Military Honors and Remembrance Project work to ensure the women’s gravesites include inscriptions recognizing their military service.

“It really was upsetting to see these women with no recognition, and we are experiencing this all the time as we visit the different headstones,” she said.

Timbie said 280 women served as telephone operators during World War I, wearing uniforms and facing life-threatening risks in combat zones.

“I have such immense pride in these women. It speaks to my heart that here we are finally seeing recognition for women that should have been honored decades ago,” she said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs and volunteer groups have worked to locate and honor the women, identifying eight interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, including Irma Armanet, whose gravesite had never been marked. Part of Saturday’s ceremony will include a dedication of her new military headstone.

The Hello Girls have also been the subject of books, a documentary, and a musical. The Ross Valley Players will perform the musical this weekend, with some cast members attending the ceremony.

The memorial [was] held Saturday, Feb. 7, at 1 p.m. at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.

While these ladies were undeniably patriotic and gave valuable service near the front lines, they were not enlisted members of the US military. Up to WWI, women could only ever have served as nurses. During WWI the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard allowed women to serve, but only for the duration of the war. It wasn’t until WWII that the Army joined the other branches in accepting women, and ladies have been a part of the American military since.

For the Hello Girls, they spent decades searching for status as American veterans, and eventually received it. This was despite the Army chief of the First Army signal corps saying, just two days after Armistice Day, “a large part of the success of the communications of this Army is due to… a competent staff of women operators.” While recruited by the Army and taking the Army oath, they were continually deemed by the Army to be civilian employees.

Grace Banker

Thirty of the Hello Girls were decorated by the Army. Among those was Grace Banker (pictured), who you can see earned the Distinguished Service Medal. She’s wearing a uniform of sorts, and you’ll note she’s wearing three overseas service chevrons (lower left sleeve), the rank insignia of a master signal electrician (the top rank for enlisted signal corps members, equivalent to a master sergeant in later years), and the shoulder sleeve insignia of the Third Army. Interestingly, her service during the war was with the First Army. She’s wearing the flag of the signal corps branch on her cap.

Banker had led 33 Hello Girls to France. As they crossed from England through the Channel, bad weather forced them to remain on deck, fully exposed to the harsh March weather, for a full 48 hours. They had to remain topside in order to quickly abandon ship. Apparently there was a very real concern that the ship was going to founder at any moment. Banker said the girls were undeterred, “What good sports girls were in that First Unit! They took everything in their stride. They were the pioneers.”

To demonstrate how haphazard the Hello Girls were integrated into the US Army, the American government had no provisions to even house or feed these women when they got overseas. That’s why the YWCA was fundraising for them. The YWCA agreed to take on the cost of billeting for the ladies. During WWI, civic organizations like this (YWCA, YMCA, the Red Cross, et. al.) operated hand-in-hand with the military, and even saw service right at the front. For some examples, I’ll again post this link.

Banker was initially assigned to the headquarters of General Pershing in Chaumont sur Haute Marne, but moved closer to the front five months later to Saint-Mihiel in time to help with the famous Allied victory there in September. She also participated in the Meuse–Argonne Offensive.

After the Armistice, she was assigned to Paris. Specifically, she served at the temporary resident of President Wilson, but found that dull compared to life at the front. She got a transfer to the Occupation Army in Germany. She led her Hello Girls there until September 1919 when they were returned to the United States. They weren’t even given any paperwork of discharge or anything to note their service. Because of this, they were excluded from the bonuses given to “all persons serving in the military or naval forces.”

Banker married in 1922 and died in 1960. It wasn’t until 1977 that her service, and that of the other Hello Girls, was formally recognized as having served with the Army, giving them honorable discharges, and conferring veteran status. Oddly, the Congressional action to give them this was opposed by the Army, the VA, and even the American Legion. Being that 60 years had passed, only 18 Hello Girls were still alive when President Carter signed the law.

Category: Army, Historical, Valor, We Remember, WWI