NO MAIL, LOW MORALE
On a frosty February morning in 1945, Major Charity Adams led her troops, the first African American women to serve in Europe, to an airplane hangar in Birmingham, England. At her signal, two members of the newly formed 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion slid open the huge doors. Inside, thousands of letters and packages were strewn in disorderly piles nearly reaching the ceiling. This and five more equally crammed hangars had been used to store an estimated seventeen million pieces of undelivered mail. The smell of spoiled food, the scurrying of rats, and the shadowy chill of the unheated building made their task seem hopeless.
More than seven million American servicemen and civilians were engaged in the battle to save Europe. With soldiers constantly on the move, delivering mail to the troops had become an overwhelming challenge for the army. An address that was valid one week was worthless the next. It was up to individual soldiers to inform the military postal service each time they changed location. Few had the opportunity to do so.
The government needed a new batch of workers
