Sepia Saturday 757. From the Molly’s Canopy Archive: A tribute to the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all African American WAC unit to serve abroad during WWII — and the new film that tells their story.
During 2024, in honor of Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March), Molly’s Canopy paused the series about my dad’s brother Frederic Mason Charboneau to remember a special WWII military battalion.
Specifically, the African American service women of the Women’s Army Corp 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion who made it possible for military personnel like my Uncle Fred to receive a backlog of treasured mail from home during WWII.
New film honors the WAC 6888
A newly-released Tyler Perry film titled “Six Triple Eight” now pays honor to these heroic service women. So I decided to rerun this blog post and encourage readers to see the film. The IMDB website says this about the new movie (released in theaters in December 2024 and now streaming on Netflix):
“During World War II, 855 women joined the fight to fix the three-year backlog of undelivered mail. Faced with discrimination and a country devastated by war, they managed to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail ahead of time.”
“Six Triple Eight” personalizes the battalion’s experience by telling the moving story of one WAC and her journey in the military. However, the scene where battalion members first see the mountains of mail they must sort captures the true magnitude of their collective assignment.
As an added bonus, original newsreel footage at the end shows WAC 6888 members on the march. Several survivors, who were interviewed for the film, also appear.
Mail from home: a lifeline at the front
In his WWII letters, my Uncle Fred frequently wrote about his frustration with the military mail service. Letters and packages would go to Fred’s US base long after he shipped abroad — or weeks would go by when he received no mail from home, then a bunch of letters would come all at once.
Problems with the military mail service were compounded as WWII wore on and US troops moved around. By 1944, there were warehouses in England and France piled high with mailbags of undelivered US mail from home. These are shown in the film.
Something had to be done — and the African American service women of the 6888 Battalion (aka the Six Triple Eight) made history doing it.
Backlog cleared in half the time
The Army Women’s Foundation describes what the Six Triple Eight was up against:
“When the 6888th arrived in Birmingham, England, in February 1945, they found floor-to-ceiling stacks of undelivered letters and parcels stored in cold warehouses with poor lighting. Some of the packages had only partial addresses, and some were intended for different individuals who had the same name.”
Nevertheless, says the AWF, the battalion developed a unique sorting system and resolved the seemingly insurmountable problem in half the time predicted:
“The unit created and maintained a system of roughly seven million cards to track service members and used serial numbers to distinguish the soldiers who had the same name. When a piece of mail was only partially addressed, they researched to try to find the soldier it was meant for. The WACs worked round the clock, organized in three 8-hour shifts. Before the 6888th arrived in theater, one general officer estimated it would take six months to clear the backlog in Birmingham; the Six Triple Eight accomplished it in three months.”
And when they were done in Birmingham, England, the 6888 Battalion shipped off to Rouen and Paris, France, to do it all over again — emboldened by their slogan “No Mail, Low Morale.”
Molly’s Canopy again salutes the invaluable service of the Women’s Army Corp 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion — WWII heroes who facilitated delivery of precious mail to the troops and helped pave the way for women and African Americans in the military. To learn more, please watch the above video and make time to see “Six Triple Eight.” You won’t regret it!
Up next: Continuing the series on Uncle Fred’s letters home from WWII. Meanwhile, please visit the other intrepid bloggers over at Sepia Saturday.
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