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A forgotten army of an all-black and all-female battalion of the US Women’s Army Corp helped the war effort from Birmingham.
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion were based at King Edward’s School in Edgbaston and were tasked with the impossible mission of dealing with a backlog of 17 million postal items in six months. They completed it in three.
Under the command of Major Charity Adams, they moved into King Edward’s in February 1945. The army deemed that undelivered mail was hurting the morale of the soldiers on the front and the task of sorting it was important to the war effort. The school had been requisitioned by the army in 1939 and the woman had to suffer freezing temperatures working and living in temporary wooden huts.
Working three eight hour shifts, the women managed to clear the backlog, something others had failed to do, and sort the post in half the time allocated. They became affectionately known as the ‘Six, triple eight,’ and their success was transferred to France in June 1945 to work on another backlog over the channel.
Read more: What Birmingham looked like 70 years ago
All the American mail passed through a postal depot in Sutton Coldfield near the Royal Mail Delivery Office of today off Upper Richmond Road. The building had to fight its own battle in 2012 when plans were drawn up to replace the building with a modern sorting office and new houses which border the railway line.
The women’s struggle against racism is highlighted in a new Netflix drama released in December 2024, with Kerry Washington staring in the inspiring story of World War II, it tells the tale of the quiet heroism of the woman and their own battles they had to face.
