American History Hit - American Operators on WW1's Front Line

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

When the First World War ended at 11am on 11 November, 1918, how did army command relay the ceasefire to their troops? In fact, before radios and computer systems, in the early years of the telephone, how were messages passed along trenches at all?In this episode, Don is joined once again by Elizabeth Cobbs, award-winning historian and novelist. Elizabeth's book on this subject is 'The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers'.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AMERICANHISTORYYou can take part in our listener survey here.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Suey, France, October 30th, 1918. A half-dozen telephone operators work their switchboards in the autumn cold.

The sounds of battle are well with an earshot. The operators all wear helmets in case of stray shelling. Hardened by the proximity of war, they are well accustomed to the risks. They hear the constant sound of ambulances racing casualties to the field hospital nearby. Suddenly, an officer bursts into the room. A fire, sparked by an oil stove kicked over by a German POW, is spreading through the building. The operators glance at him distractedly, then refocus on the job at hand. Smoke builds as the fire moves through other rooms.

More officers urge the operators to leave, but they remain at their stations. These young women, known as the Hello Girls, have a vital and urgent duty, coordinating Allied infantry advances, artillery placements, and troop movements. They won't budge until it's absolutely necessary. Hi, everyone, I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Over there was the George M. Coen tune popularized in 1917, encouraging Yanke Youths to head over there to Europe and take care of the business the Allies had started but couldn't quite finish. But as much as the song urged Johnny to get his gun, there was going to be a lot more to the effort

than just sending people on ships. It was going to require embracing new battlefield strategy. and new technologies. And none of it would work without a new level of communication, the realm of the U.S. Signal Corps. But within the Signal Corps for this war to end all wars was a new group of recruits who would wear the uniform all the while, but sort of not. American women who answered the call in more ways than one. They were called the Hello Girls. And today we had the author of the history of this communication corps, Elizabeth Cobbs. Welcome back to American History Hit. Thank you, Don. Great to be back with you.

You were last with us a few episodes ago talking about Hamilton. It's great to have you again. Let's take folks back to put today's subject into context. World War I, a very large subject, has been raging since 1914. The U.S. is neutral until the Lusitanian, all that, and the Zimmerman telegram about Mexico joining the war on the German side. America joins the Allies in 1917, headed up with General John Persing. And suddenly we're in and we have a whole American effort underway. where does this story fit into that whole big, broad canvas? Well, Don, you know, I think we've all grown up in an era where the United States is a big military power, if not the biggest.

In fact, definitely the biggest. And so we just forget that actually the United States had virtually no army at all. Like you mentioned the Signal Corps, which is a branch of the U.S. Army. And there was like, I think, you know, a couple hundred people in it. because there was no what people then called a standing army. In other words, the idea of an army was only that you raise it when you need it, and it goes away when you don't with just a few people left turning the lights on and off. And that's it.

So what happened is they got over there, as you said, John Pershing got over there, and then they found out that, like, my gosh, they had almost nothing that they needed. And by that, you mean, there had been, obviously, for years, these trenches had been dug, and this whole infrastructure was in place. The kind of communications that were necessary were not at the scale that the Americans needed or just weren't what we had. How were they approaching this? Well, the thing that makes World War I so interesting, and people will say, well, why was this? What's such a big deal about it?

The big deal is that this is the first war of the Industrial Revolution. So there are all kinds of things that have been invented since the Civil War and since most wars have ever been fought. And one of that is mass communications. So the telephone or the origins of radio or telegraph, these are things that have been kind of coming online super slowly and suddenly you've got them happening in wartime. And they're so important in war because how war turns out depends on what kind of commands the generals give. Well, how are the generals going to give those commands in war at this time?

And they give them over the telephone. And that's it. I mean, that's the way that radio doesn't carry voices yet. You can't hear a voice like people are hearing us today. And so it's all Morse code. And so the telephone is the first time that people can really communicate. So in a huge war that's now, it turns out, stretched over hundreds and hundreds, thousands of miles, how do you get through on a little teeny tiny single wire?

And you know where that wire goes? it goes to an operator. And the operator is the person who determines whether or not the call gets picked up or dropped or misconnected because they're literally physically hand-connected. Every call is connected by hand. Right. Tell me about Pershing. He's a name familiar to some, but he's kind of, people are losing their familiarity with who this guy was.

General John Pershing. Yeah, I only knew about him as a kid from a road. That's right. There's a road in town where I grew up and it's like, Persian Drive. You're like, I don't know who that clown is. He's everywhere. Pershing Square in Los Angeles, you know, but as history starts to fade, so does he. Absolutely. He really had a huge impact on everything in the early 20th century for sure. He did, and he's kind of a funny guy. I mean, nowadays we look back, we don't even know who he is. And a lot of people don't know that his nickname was Blackjack. He didn't call himself that, but, you know, that's in the military. He was called Blackjack. His name was John Persian. John J. Pershing. They call him Black Jack. Why did they call him Blackjack? Why'd they call him Blackjack? Because he had led black troops. And for John, Jack is a nickname like John Kennedy was called Jack Kennedy by friends. So Jack Pershing was called Blackjack because he had commanded Buffalo soldiers as African American troops were known on the frontier. But he also admired those men and he spoke well of them and he promoted them and he worked with them. He thought they were quite good soldiers.

said so publicly. But in the era of that time, it was a negative. You know, people looked down on him for actually commanding black soldiers. And in fact, they wouldn't use the word black. They'd use a word that begins with the word N sometimes when they spoke about Jack Pershing. So he's kind of this interesting guy. He grows up in the South, born in Missouri, but his dad was a unionist. So there are all these kind of like little teeny tiny hints of people.

unusual. Yeah, and forward thinking, I guess. And forward thinking, or at least practical thinking. And I think that's a really big difference between military people in the field who are being shot at and people back in Washington segregated Washington who are going, oh, we can't let black people do this or that, or women do this or that. Women don't vote. Women can't vote. Woodrow Wilson opposed the vote for women before World War I. But what happens when people start shooting at you is that you suddenly start to think pretty differently. Speaking of women, this is that age. I mean, the suffrage movement really had begun in the mid-1800s,

but decade after decade, this is a pressure that's being employed as to how roles of women in all avenues of American society are changing, but certainly within the military. Where does that stand now? Are there military women? Are women serving in the forces at all? No, it's actually against the law in the United States Army, which says, explicitly in its codes that men will serve. Not because they were trying to keep women out.

I think they just stuck that word in because it seemed natural to them. But oddly, oddly enough, at that time in 1917, when the U.S. enters the war in April of 1917, even before that, there's thoughts about what we're going to do because it looks like we're going to probably get in the war. And so the Navy's secretary, a guy whose name is Josephus Daniels. Josephus Daniels starts looking around. And he actually asks his attorneys, he says, you know, if I decide to allow some women in here, is that okay?

And his attorneys, the Navy's attorney, said, well, gosh, you know, we look and it doesn't use the word male in here anywhere. So, man. So, yeah, I guess you could. And so Giusefus Daniels, even before the U.S. gets in the war, starts opening the idea that women can enroll as what they called yeoman, which was the lowest rank in the Navy. And his idea, which happens during the war, is that they keep women at home so that men can get on ships. Because women are definitely not allowed on ships, that's for sure.

I mean, certainly not as sailors. And so they start using women. The Navy does. But the Army is more traditional. And they're just like, no. Are you kidding me? So it's only Persian who says, lay or no, we've got to use women. So not even an office in clerical positions or anything?

I mean, it was really off limits for women completely. That's really important to understand in this story, isn't it? I mean, this is how extraordinary this group of women is going to be. Yes, well, even think about this. I mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was opposed to the vote for women. He wrote once to his brother or friend or somebody. He wrote that he had seen Susan B. Anthony get up on stage and speak about the vote for women. And he said, it just gave him, especially when he saw any woman speak in public, that it gave him a, quote, chilled, scandalized feeling.

Wow. Like it was just creepy, gross. Now, by the way, he wasn't unusual at all. He just, we look at what he said because he became president. But that idea that women should not open their mouths in public because it was embarrassing was very prominent. And so for these young women to volunteer when the Army finally says we need women over there, these are really unusual, but also just very patriotic people. The other contextual note that's important in this big broad story is,

that we're entering the war so late. You know, we're coming in after it's been going on for three years. And so 1917, I've always wondered, and I don't understand, if the Americans knew how short the war would be and that everything we were going to do is in this sort of compressed time frame. Was Pershing aware of that? And does that contribute to this decision? They absolutely did not think the war was going to end when it did.

They thought, okay, we see that the tide is turning. We're going to eventually win this war. but they're thinking much later in 1919, actually ends on, of course, November 11th, 1918. But they think it's going to go at least another six or seven months. So they recruit women. Initially, Pershing says, I want 100 women, you know, over here in uniform, officered by a man, and, you know, we want them now.

And that's in 1917. When he first gets over there, he suddenly realizes he can't make a doggone phone call and this whole war is conducted by phone, my friend. Yeah. So that means, by the way, that they literally run those little wires, those tiny wires, into the trenches. So I have some wonderful photographs of all these, what look like just normal telephone wires coming off a big pole going right into this muddy World War I trench. Because that's how anybody communicated. The French and the English must have been using telephones too, right?

I mean, that was already going on over there. They were. And they were relying on men to do it. Now, the problem is that, well, two things. First of all, the U.S. had much better telephone service. The phone had been, you know, invented and patented here, and our equipment was much better. But the other part of this is that what happened when the U.S. got over there

is that they found not only was the equipment really poor, really crackly, you couldn't hear a thing, could hardly recognize an individual voice, but they also found that the men were very slow at this job, so much slower. than they had ever as officers experienced when they were in the United States, just as average people. They found that it took the average dough boy, as those guys were called in World War I. We call them GIs or something.

But in World War I, they were called Doe Boys. Where does that name come from, the Doe Boys, Elizabeth? Always wondered. Yeah, isn't that a funny name? Nobody quite knows, but the best guess is that it's because they loved donuts. Oh. And here again, women play a role because women who weren't in the, army who were civilian volunteers with the Salvation Army, for example, or other groups, the YMCA,

YWCA, they would set up little what they called canteens and they would hand out coffee and donuts. And so these became known as the Doe Boys. Yeah. And so what happened is they found that it took the average Doe Boy a minute to connect a call once he was trained. So in a call is a complicated thing. It was like, you know, you have to plug it in and unplug it and then you have to make notes. And you might have to translate because people, you're in France. Some of the people you're interacting with are, yes, French.

And so they found it took the average doughboy a minute. When they got the women over there, what they found is that a woman could do five calls in a minute. So one call in a minute or five calls in a minute is the difference between getting killed or not. Yeah, sure. Guns being pulled back in time to not massacre their own soldiers, you know, planes taking off or not or staying grounded. Every single command was connected by telephone. So women ended up connecting 26 million calls for the army in the short time that they were

there, something like six months, 26 million calls. So now divide that by five, my friend, and you'll see how many calls would have gotten through if the male soldiers had continued. How did he recruit these women? Where did they find them? Well, you know, so much of history turns on individual people. You know, I think there's giant forces at work, but often it just all comes down to one wire or one person. And there was a young guy in Washington who got the cable from Pershing saying, we want 100 women.

And, you know, he just went at it. He started issuing press releases. He, by the way, got called on the carpet. Like, what are you doing? We have a bureaucracy here. Everything has to go up here and down there and sideways. He's like, oh, I'm sorry. But he sent out these press releases and all over the country.

And it's very fun, you know, if you go on to archival newspapers now and you just online can look these up. And advertisements from North Dakota down to Florida, San Diego, up to Maine, for women to go over there. And it says there'll be soldiers, just like the men. They'll be soldiers. But they were already telephone operators? I mean, out there in the hinterlands of America. Oh, yeah. So America had more, again, not only the best equipment, but the most, well,

I'm going to run a big word past you because I learned it to write this book, so I want you to learn it called teledensity. Teledensity is how dense your network is. And the curious thing about that, Don, you'd think that, you know, that would be like, you know, Brooklyn or Boston. Actually, the greatest use of telephones was in the far west because distances between people are so great. So the United States had a very significant teledensity compared to other countries because we needed phones. to communicate across these vast distances. And they would even run wires across bushes and through trees because they didn't have all the poles. Yeah, so the word got out everywhere.

And women from everywhere volunteered. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter, we should be looking at, send us an email at a-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H. We'd love to hear from you. There was a priority, obviously, on bilingualism, right? had to know both English and French. Yeah, which of course was unusual at that time. But yes, they had to be bilingual because they had to do instantaneous translation. And by the way, okay,

this is not a casual translation like, how's your mom? This is like, where do we put our guns? And how many guys are you moving to this spot? Because we need to rendezvous there. And also, by the way, because of encryption, because of the problem of your calls being intercepted, it had be done in code too. So these women needed to know codes as well as be able to translate instantaneously between two languages. So when they get there, what time period are we talking about? Late 17, is that where we are right here? Well, what happens is Pershing starts to realize in the summer of 1917 when he gets there. He, you know, the U.S. doesn't even arrive, you know, until June, basically, and that's just a first handful of people. And when he gets there, he realizes

this is not going to work. So after a couple of months, and again, there are junior officers who are trying to convince Pershing, hey, Signal Corps officers who are like, I know you're upset with me that you can't get your dang telephone calls through in time, but this is why. And so Pershing then cables back, and the word starts to get out in like November, and then December it hits the papers, women are needed over there. So the first women volunteer, and more than 7,000 women volunteer. for the first 100 jobs.

Now, keep a mind that half of the men in World War I volunteer, half are drafted, all of the women volunteer. These are all volunteers. And so they then get recruited in January, and they have to get trained, they have to be brought from all across the United States. They have to be vetted. They have to be investigated by Army Intelligence.

That's one of the things I found that was so interesting in all of these women's files that I examined in the National Archives. Army intelligence reports are in there. So-and-so's neighbors says that she reads German literature. Oh, is she a spy? Yeah. Another woman who was Jewish. And her family had come from Germany.

And they're like, could she be a German spy? And so there's a lot of careful work that went into that. And then the first contingent of women sails over in March of 1918. Now, this is long before most American soldiers get there. The American soldiers are being sent over in hundreds of thousands in coming months each month. But the women are 33 women. 33 women arrive first because people in logistics always get there first, right?

They have to turn on the lights. I had to refresh myself on the numbers of this. I mean, 4.7 million Americans serve in World War I. It's an incredible amount of people. It's a huge army. And that's all within a couple of years' time. And so within this enormous amount of humanity is this, group of 7,000 women you're saying?

Yes, but remember, 7,000 volunteer, it's only 233 women who actually go to France. Oh, gosh. And so this tiny handful, you know, just a little bit more than a couple hundred women are connecting all of the calls that get all of those men over there. And then, by the way, get them home safely because the women are not allowed. The war is over. The guys are being shipped home. And the women are like, can we go now too?

And the Army officers say, no, you're in the Army now. We'll let you know when you can go. And so some of the women don't come home until 1920. The war ends in 1918. Some of the women are not discharged from the Army until 1920. Yeah. Because they're in logistics, this critical, pivotal spot. Right.

How close to the front lines do they serve? Close enough that they have to, they get trained in gas masks and they have to wear trench helmets. And they're close enough to be threatened by shrapnel. Their barracks is burned down by a German prisoner of war. They're under bombardment at different times, both in Paris when they first get there because Paris is being bombed. Whether or not the Allies will win the war is very much in question when the women arrive. German guns are 20 miles outside Paris. They themselves are in air raids.

There's bombings. And then they're shipped closer because the Germans. pull back and the women are shipped closer. So they serve as closely as any of the generals serve. So Pershing, they're alongside Pershing. Pershing is really close to the front line. He's right behind it. But he's not walking the perimeter. So they're in what's called the war zone. They're combatants without being infantry. They're not carrying guns. And can you describe the sort of infrastructure of their world? Are they staying there in a barracks that has like the offices of what they're doing on that same camp,

or are they transported to other places? No, they, again, you have to remember this, a tiny number of women surrounded by thousands, millions of men, which is brave in itself. In fact, when they first get on the ship, there are 33 women in the first group, led by a young woman who's 24 years old named Grace Banker. So they're on a ship of like 6,000 men, these 33 women.

And they are, They have to go up on deck. They have to perform their drills. Can you imagine doing that under the eye gaze of all of these men? So these are, you know, it's hard for them. They write in their diaries. This is hard. And some of them, you know, cry themselves to sleep, but they go.

I can only imagine, and the bond between these women must have been amazing. It lasts the rest of their lifetimes. It's just the most beautiful thing to see. Sure, yeah. Some of their granddaughters are now in touch, you know, as a result of the book. at actually it's been very rewarding process for me as a writer. So let me take this moment just to sort of review what we're talking about. In a time when women have no political power, because they don't yet have the vote in America, right? That's

coming later. This is an ongoing struggle socially for women at home. Suddenly, in a world where no women in American forces are ever part of the deal, these women are in a critically important point. They are made aware of the pressure of the job, right? They know what they're getting themselves into and how urgent. they're needed. They do. Again, their brothers, some of them volunteer or drafted. You know, everybody is powerfully aware of the incredible devastation of Western Europe. I mean, Western Europe is, oh, my God, you know, horses end up in trees. They're bombed, and the horses' bodies are hanging from trees. Men are hanging from barbed wire as they're shot trying to cross it. So, you know,

they know what they're getting themselves into, and it's scary, and it also feels, how could they sit this out? How could they not? And in fact, Woodrow Wilson himself decides that women need the vote in the middle of the war. And he comes to the U.S. Congress and he makes this powerful speech. I think it's his best speech ever where he says to the Congress, we are asking women to give everything. And how can we say that we no longer see that this entitles them to full citizenship? How will we take this gift and not acknowledge it? But Elizabeth, I'm a guy who's raised. I have four sisters and a powerful mother. The ERA was a big part of my youth when growing up. I never heard about the Hello Girls until recently. And it's embarrassing, let alone telling that's the story. And yet you're telling me that these ladies quite possibly had a huge impact on the shift, you know, towards suffrage.

but also in general women's rights. It's a really extraordinary fact that this is not so famously known. By the way, I was the only person in the room who hadn't heard of it when I heard of it. Totally embarrassing to me. Well, you know, it is an interesting problem. When I first started writing the book,

I wanted to write it for the Centennial of World War I. And I've written a lot of books on U.S. foreign policy, you know, war and peace. And I thought, well, you know, I could write about Versailles, I could write about Wilson, you know, everybody's going to be writing about something. I thought, well, I'll try and find something that maybe nobody's written about. And I'm just literally as clueless as you felt in the room when you found out that nobody had heard of it.

I hadn't heard of it. I have a very close friend, a mentor in history, knows a lot, just an amazing human being. And he said to me at the time, are you sure this is enough for a book? I mean, can you get a whole book out of this? Of course, I'm like, you know, I think so. Of course, I'm actually going, maybe not. I don't know. Yeah.

But, yeah, so now we're actually involved in an effort. to try to get them the Congressional Gold Medal. This is actually, you know, we think we're making great progress. We need 67 votes in the Senate co-sponsors. We've got 59, so we're close. We're getting closer in the House. We still need tons of help because, you know, the Hello Girls themselves, when they got back, they were told by the Army, oh, yeah, you know, those dog tanks we gave you and we told

you could never take off unless you were killed. You know, the uniforms we assigned you, you know, the regimen, we made. made you go through and you couldn't go where you wanted or leave when you wanted. Well, you know what? You weren't actually soldiers. Because it says here in our rule book that only men can be soldiers. So clearly you weren't soldiers. And so the heartbreak in a way was that these women for 60 years petitioned Congress to just call them veterans.

As one said, and she was in her 80s by this time, she says, all I want is a flag on my coffin. Yeah. Well, I want to underscore what you're saying. by kind of reviewing things you've mentioned about their enormous responsibility. I mean, let's just revisit the fact that there was 26 million phone calls made. 26 million, well, I don't know how many times you push a peg in and out of those boards, but I mean, that's a physical act connecting one of those things. So 26 million among that small group of women in that six-month period, it's incredible.

The report that I read in prepping for this, U.S. Signacour, to Congress by General George Squire, who you mentioned 1919, women made tremendous difference in the prosecution of the war. All of these facts lean heavily on the idea that they are kind of betrayed when they come back, right? I mean, that's the sadness of it, is that they were never really in the Army in the first place. They were just absolutely necessary to the Army winning the war. Yeah. Like women are involved in history, but they actually make all of the humans who are involved in history. But that's the small part, you know. God.

Yeah, but, you know, it's also a lovely story, too, Don, because it's this story of, you were pointing out, I said, who are these women? Who are they? Well, they are women who, for another 60 years, go every year to Congress. They start with FDR and then Truman and then Eisenhower. And then, you know, Kennedy and Nixon and Johnson and all the way up to Jimmy Carter. they are petitioning up to Congress. And as one of them said, and she's in her, she's 89 by the time she says, you know, she's

continuing to pursue it. And she says, my friends ask me, why are you still doing this? And she says, because I love my country. And I want my country to be worth loving. Yeah. And so they, so it's this great story of persistence and ultimately triumph, although, you know, as you said, it's a triumph that feels also kind of short-lived. their stories lost.

Nobody cares. They're not heard of. And that's why, you know, I wrote this book in 2017 on the anniversary, for the anniversary of the war. Elizabeth, is there an episode of a specific nature that stands out to you where, you know, one of those phone calls was pivotal that one of those women had to make? Well, the war ended famously at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. Well, at the 11th hour, somebody had to get the doggone phone call through so that people would stop shooting. And Grace Banker, who's this young woman I was telling about, is struggling to get this last call through.

I mean, they're borrowing each other's phones, and finally they get the phone call out to the troops. You can lay down your guns. So it's this moment in frozen in time. When a hello girl says goodbye to the war, it's an incredible. It's an incredible story. I'm really very pleased to get it out there even more so. And I'm a poster child for this tale because I've been educated in a short period of time about this amazingly important group of women who not enough people know about. The book is called The Hello Girls. It was written on the centennial, the conclusion of World War I, a hundred years later. And Elizabeth Cobbs has been a previous guest, a delightful guest on our show. I hope we see her again. She is a esteemed professor of history and author, as we've been saying, of the the Hello Girls, America's First Women's Soldiers, among many other books, including something about Hamilton we talked about before. Elizabeth, thank you so much. We will see you again on this show.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Hello, folks. Thanks for listening to American History Hit. Each week, we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content, like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great,

but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Bye for now.