Lt. Col. Charity Adams and WWII’s Finest All-Black Female Battalion

Charity Adams and the Six Triple Eight

In early 1945, 17 million pieces of mail sat rotting in warehouses across Birmingham, England. Packages had been chewed by rats.

Letters hadn’t moved in three years. Seven million American troops were fighting in Europe without word from home.

The Army sent 855 Black women to fix it, commanded by Major Charity Adams. A general told her he’d send a white officer to show her how to run the unit.

She told him it would happen over her dead body. What followed was one of the most remarkable missions of World War II.

17 Million Letters Were Rotting

By February 1945, the mail crisis had reached a breaking point. At least six warehouses were stacked to the ceilings with letters and packages.

Some had been mailed up to three years prior and remained undelivered. Care packages with spoiled holiday treats had attracted rats into the facilities.

The buildings were unheated, and windows were blacked out to avoid German air raids.

More than 7,500 soldiers were named Robert Smith, and thousands more shared common names with no way to tell them apart.

Morale was collapsing. Soldiers on the front lines had no idea if their families were alive.

The Army Sent 855 Black Women

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, nicknamed the “Six Triple Eight,” was a predominantly Black, multi-ethnic battalion formed under pressure from civil rights leaders.

Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for Black women in the Women’s Army Corps to get the same opportunity to serve overseas.

On February 3, 1945, the first group of women sailed to Great Britain aboard the SS Île de France. The voyage took 11 days, during which they survived close encounters with Nazi U-boats.

They arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, then traveled by train to Birmingham.

Freezing Warehouses and Endless Shifts

The conditions were brutal.

The women worked in poorly maintained buildings, described as cold, dark, and dirty warehouses with broken windows, infested with rats and with mold growing on the mail.

The 6888th worked seven days a week, in three shifts, to process and deliver mail. Each shift handled an estimated 65,000 pieces of mail.

Their motto became “No mail, low morale.”

They understood that letters from home were the only connection soldiers had to their families, and getting them delivered could mean the difference.

A General Threatened to Replace Her

Not everyone wanted the unit to succeed.

A general thought too few 6888 troops showed up for his surprise inspection and threatened to send a “white first lieutenant” to take over Adams’s unit.

The message was clear: he didn’t believe a Black woman could command effectively. Adams had faced discrimination her entire military career.

When the Army had tried to segregate training regiments earlier, she refused to lead a segregated unit, and the Army backed down.

This time would be no different.

Over My Dead Body Sir

When the general stated he would send a white officer to show her how to run the unit, Adams responded: “Over my dead body, sir.”

The general threatened to court-martial her for disobeying orders.

Adams didn’t flinch. She began to file charges against him for using “language stressing racial segregation” and ignoring a directive from Allied headquarters.

They both dropped the matter. According to her book, the general later told Adams that her resolve had changed his perspective on Black service members.

Seven Million Cards for Seven Million Names

The logistics problem was staggering.

The unit created and maintained a system of roughly seven million cards to track service members and used serial numbers to distinguish 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 women learned to become detectives, searching envelopes for clues to track down recipients.

They matched handwriting, cross-referenced unit transfers, and traced soldiers who had been wounded, transferred, or killed.

Six Months of Work Done in Three

The battalion finished what was supposed to be a six-month task in three months in May 1945.

The 6888th exceeded expectations by clearing the backlog of mail in only three months. They had processed roughly 17 million items.

A mostly friendly and curious local populace greeted the battalion in England. Veterans of the 6888th remember how British families frequently welcomed them into their homes.

For many of these women from the segregated American South, it was their first taste of being treated as equals.

On to France With More Mail

The backlog in Birmingham had been dealt with.

The 6888th crossed the Channel to Le Havre, France, on June 8, 1945, and was transported by train to Rouen to deal with another backlog of mail there.

In Rouen, three members of the battalion were killed in a jeep accident on July 8, 1945. Their fellow soldiers prepared the bodies and raised money for funeral services.

By October 1945, the mail in Rouen had been cleared and the 6888th was sent to Paris.

Highest-Ranking Black Woman in the Military

For her service during World War II, Adams was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the highest possible rank a woman could obtain within WAC.

She was just 27 years old. When asked about her achievements, Adams responded simply: “I just wanted to do my job.”

Upon their return home, the women of the 6888th did not receive any public recognition. There was no parade, no ceremony.

They came home and went back to their lives.

The Base Named for Her Lost Its Name

In 2023, Fort Lee became Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of the late Lt. Gen.Arthur Gregg and the late Col. Charity Adams, the first U.S. military base named for African Americans.

In June 2025, President Donald Trump announced plans to change recently renamed military bases, reversing a bipartisan 2020 Congressional statute.

The base will now be named for Army Private Fitz Lee, a Black Medal of Honor recipient from the Spanish-American War.

Adams’s son called the reversal “an even stronger negative message” for future generations.

Congressional Gold Medal 80 Years Later

On April 29, 2025, the only Black, all-female unit serving in Europe during World War II received the Congressional Gold Medal at the United States Capitol.

Speaker Mike Johnson presented the honor to the family of unit commander Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley as over 300 descendants and family members of Six Triple Eight battalion members attended the ceremony.

Eighty years after they sorted mountains of mail in freezing warehouses, the women who kept seven million soldiers connected to home finally got the recognition they earned.

Visiting U.S. Army Women’s Museum, Virginia

The U.S. Army Women’s Museum is located at 2100 Adams Avenue, Fort Lee, VA.

It is the only museum in the world dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the contributions of women to the U.S. Army.

Everything is always free: admission, tours, programs, and the research library.

Hours are Tuesday through Friday 9 AM to 4:30 PM, Saturday 11 AM to 4 PM, closed Sundays, Mondays, and federal holidays.

The museum features an interactive Six Triple Eight exhibit and a memorial garden.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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