Biden honors World War II postal battalion

President Joe Biden honored Romay Davis, 102, the oldest living member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion on Tuesday with the Congressional Gold Medal. Prior to its creation, World War II military leaders said the postal service was not delivering packages and letters to the front lines and troop morale was low. So, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Women’s Army Corps and the “Six Triple Eight” battalion to connect sons to fathers and sweethearts to beaus overseas. Biden will honor the four other living members of the 6888th in the next few weeks.

What did Davis do? Davis joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1943, then she joined more than 800 other black women in the Six Triple Eight battalion and sailed to England in 1945 to clear a six-month backlog of mail. The battalion created a 24/7 system and cleared about 65,000 pieces of mail each shift—they wiped out the pile in three months. Then she went to France to clear a backlog of mail there, too. After her time in the army, she got married, worked in the fashion district in New York, and then retired to Alabama. 

Dig deeper: Listen to Mary Reichard’s report on The World and Everything in It about how a WWII nurse celebrated her 100th birthday with a freefall.