Honoring the World War II U.S. ‘Six Triple Eight’ postal battalion

By Linn’s Staff

The National Postal Museum is offering a postmark honoring the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, otherwise known as the “Six Triple Eight,” a predominantly black unit of the United States Women’s Army Corps stationed in the United Kingdom, then later in France, that managed postal services during World War II during 1945-46.

Upon their arrival to Birmingham, England, in February 1945, the battalion inherited a mail system in severe disarray. More than 2 million backlogged letters, boxes and parcels were stacked in makeshift warehouses, far from their intended U.S. military recipients on the front lines.

Army officials believed that undelivered mail was hurting morale. Many letters and packages had only the first name of the intended recipient, a commonly used name, or a nickname.

Under the command of Maj. Charity Adams, the battalion devised their own system to handle the backlog of mail. This included creating and maintaining a card index containing 7 million cards of people with the same or similar names and using military serial numbers to distinguish between them.

Working seven days a week, in three daily shifts, they processed and delivered mail to troops fighting in Europe, with each shift handling an estimated 65,000 pieces of mail each day. In May 1945, the battalion finished what was supposed to be a six-month task in three months before doing the same for U.S. postal operations in Rouen, France.

With their motto of “no mail, low morale,” the battalion, during its active service, handled mail for more than 4 million military and civilian personnel and cleared backlogs in both the United Kingdom and France, before returning to the United States in February 1946 where the unit was disbanded at Fort Dix, N.J.

To obtain the postmark, address your request to:

POSTAL SQUARE Station, LaDonna Cooke, 2 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002, April 29-June 27.

Share information by writing to Postmark Pursuit, Box 4129, Sidney, OH 45365.

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