I 116TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION H. R. 1953 To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the female telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps, known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MARCH 28, 2019 Mr. CLEAVER (for himself, Ms. STEFANIK, Mr. COMER, Ms. DAVIDS of Kan- sas, and Ms. BROWNLEY of California) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services, and in addi- tion to the Committee on House Administration, for a period to be subse- quently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned A BILL To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the female tele- phone operators of the Army Signal Corps, known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 1 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 2 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 3 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘ ‘Hello Girls’ Congres- 4 sional Gold Medal Act of 2019’’. 5 SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 6 Congress finds the following: 7 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 2 •HR 1953 IH (1) On April 6, 1917, the United States de- 1 clared war against Germany. As a historically neu- 2 tral nation, the United States was unprepared to 3 fight a technologically modern conflict overseas. The 4 United States called upon American Telephone and 5 Telegraph (referred to in this section as ‘‘AT&T’’) 6 to provide equipment and trained personnel for the 7 Army Signal Corps in France. AT&T executives in 8 Army uniform served at home under the provisions 9 of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act for making further and 10 more effectual provision for the national defense, 11 and for other purposes.’’, approved June 3, 1916 12 (referred to in this section as the ‘‘National Defense 13 Act of 1916’’), which allowed for the induction of in- 14 dividuals with specialized skills into a reserve force. 15 (2) When General John Pershing sailed for Eu- 16 rope in May of 1917 as head of the American Expe- 17 ditionary Forces (referred to in this section as the 18 ‘‘AEF’’), he took telephone operating equipment 19 with him in recognition of the inadequacy of Euro- 20 pean circuitry and with the understanding that tele- 21 phones would play a key role in battlefield commu- 22 nications for the first time in the history of war. 23 (3) From May to November of 1917, the AEF 24 struggled to develop the telephone service necessary 25 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 3 •HR 1953 IH for the Army to function under battlefield condi- 1 tions. Monolingual infantrymen from the United 2 States were unable to connect calls rapidly or com- 3 municate effectively with their French counterparts 4 to put calls through over toll lines that linked one 5 region of the country with another. The Army found 6 that the average male operator required 60 seconds 7 to make a connection. That rate was unacceptably 8 slow, especially for operational calls between com- 9 mand outposts and the front lines. 10 (4) During this time, in the United States, tele- 11 phone operating was largely sex-segregated. Hired 12 for their speed in connecting calls, women filled 85 13 percent of the telephone operating positions in the 14 United States. It took the average female operator 15 10 seconds to make a connection. 16 (5) On November 8, 1917, General Pershing 17 cabled the War Department and wrote, ‘‘On account 18 of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified 19 men, request organization and dispatch to France a 20 force of Woman telephone operators all speaking 21 French and English equally well.’’. To begin, Gen- 22 eral Pershing requested 100 women under the com- 23 mand of a commissioned captain, writing that ‘‘All 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 4 •HR 1953 IH should have allowances of Army nurses and should 1 be uniformed.’’. 2 (6) The War Department sent press releases to 3 newspapers across the United States to recruit 4 women willing to serve for the duration of the war 5 and face the hazards of submarine warfare and aer- 6 ial bombardment. These articles emphasized that pa- 7 triotic women would be ‘‘full-fledged soldier[s] under 8 the articles of war’’ and would ‘‘do as much to help 9 win the war as the men in khaki who go ‘over the 10 top.’ ’’. All women would take the Army oath. 11 (7) More than 7,600 women volunteered for the 12 100 positions described in paragraph (5) and the 13 first recruits took the Army oath on January 15, 14 1918. 15 (8) Like nurses and doctors at the time, female 16 Signal Corps members had relative rather than tra- 17 ditional ranks and were ranked as Operator, Super- 18 visor, or Chief Operator. When promoted, the 19 women were required to swear the Army oath again. 20 (9) Telephone operators were the first women 21 to serve as soldiers in non-medical classifications 22 and the job of the operators was to help win the 23 war, not to mitigate the harms of the war. In pop- 24 ular parlance, they were known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. 25 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 5 •HR 1953 IH (10) Signal Corps Operators wore Army uni- 1 forms and Army insignia always, as well as stand- 2 ard-issue identity disks in case of death, and were 3 subject to court martial for infractions of the mili- 4 tary code. 5 (11) Unbeknownst to the women operators and 6 their immediate officers, the legal counsel of the 7 Army ruled internally on March 20, 1918, that the 8 women were not actually soldiers but contract em- 9 ployees, even though the women had not seen or 10 signed any contracts. Military code allowed only for 11 the induction of men and the code remained un- 12 changed despite the orders of General Pershing. 13 Nevertheless, legal counsel also recognized that the 14 National Defense Act of 1916, which allowed for the 15 induction of members of the telephone industry of 16 the United States into the Armed Forces, imposed 17 no gender restrictions. 18 (12) Four days later, on March 24, 1918, the 19 first contingent of operators began their official du- 20 ties in France. The operators arrived before most in- 21 fantrymen of the Armed Forces in order to facilitate 22 logistics and deployment and spent their first night 23 in Paris under German bombardment. 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 6 •HR 1953 IH (13) After the arrival of the operators, tele- 1 phone service in France improved immediately, as 2 calls tripled from 13,000 to 36,000 per day. 3 (14) The Army quickly recruited, trained, and 4 deployed 5 additional contingents of female Signal 5 Corps operators. With these personnel, calls in- 6 creased to 150,000 per day. 7 (15) In addition to standard telephone oper- 8 ating, bilingual Signal Corps members provided si- 9 multaneous translation between officers from France 10 and officers from the United States, who were com- 11 municating by telephone. 12 (16) The AEF fought their first major battles 13 in the last 2 months of the war. By that point, the 14 Signal Corps considered the contributions of women 15 to be so essential that, in telephone exchanges clos- 16 est to the front line, the Army exclusively used 17 women, in rotating 12-hour shifts. In the rear, the 18 Army established rotating 8-hour shifts and gave 19 male soldiers the overnight shift when telephone 20 traffic was slower. 21 (17) Seven bilingual operators— 22 (A) served at the Battles of St. Mihiel and 23 Meuse-Argonne under the immediate command 24 of General Pershing; 25 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 7 •HR 1953 IH (B) staffed the Operations Boards through 1 which orders to advance, fire, and retreat were 2 delivered to soldiers in the trenches, to artillery 3 units on alert, and to pilots awaiting orders at 4 French airfields; and 5 (C) were awarded a ‘‘Defensive Sector 6 Clasp’’ for the Meuse-Argonne operation. 7 (18) The Chief Operator supervising the Hello 8 Girls, Grace Banker of Passaic, New Jersey, was 9 awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Out of 10 16,000 eligible Signal Corps officers, Banker was 1 11 of only 18 individuals so honored. 12 (19) Thirty additional operators received special 13 commendations, many signed by General Pershing 14 himself, for ‘‘exceptionally meritorious and con- 15 spicuous services’’ in ‘‘Advance Sections’’ of the con- 16 flict. 17 (20) The war ended on November 11, 1918. As 18 of that date, 223 female operators served in France 19 and had connected 26,000,000 calls for the AEF. 20 (21) The Chief Signal Officer of the Army Sig- 21 nal Corps wrote in his official report 2 days after 22 the date on which the war ended that ‘‘a large part 23 of the success of the communications of this Army 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 8 •HR 1953 IH is due to . . . a competent staff of women opera- 1 tors.’’. 2 (22) After the war ended, some women were or- 3 dered to Coblenz in Germany for the occupation of 4 that country and to Paris for the Paris Peace Trea- 5 ty of 1919 to continue telephone operations, some- 6 times in direct support of President Woodrow Wil- 7 son. 8 (23) Two operators, Corah Bartlett and Inez 9 Crittenden, died in France in the service of the 10 United States and were buried there in military 11 cemeteries with military ceremonies. Those operators 12 died of the same influenza pandemic that killed more 13 soldiers of the Armed Forces than combat oper- 14 ations. 15 (24) Women of the Army Signal Corps were in- 16 eligible for discharge until formal release. Because of 17 their role in logistics, those women were among the 18 last soldiers to come home to the United States. The 19 last Signal Corps operators returned from France in 20 January of 1920. 21 (25) Upon arrival in the United States, the 22 Army informed female veterans that they had per- 23 formed as civilians, not soldiers, even though opera- 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 9 •HR 1953 IH tors had served in Army uniform in a theatre of war 1 surrounded by men who were similarly engaged. 2 (26) Despite the objections of General George 3 Squier, the top-ranking officer in the Signal Corps, 4 the Army denied Signal Corps women the veterans’ 5 benefits granted to male soldiers and female nurses, 6 such as— 7 (A) hospitalization for disabilities incurred 8 in the line of duty; 9 (B) cash bonuses; 10 (C) soldiers’ pensions; 11 (D) flags on their coffins; and 12 (E) the Victory Medals promised them in 13 France. 14 (27) For the next 60 years, female veterans, led 15 by Merle Egan from Montana, petitioned Congress 16 more than 50 times for their recognition. In 1977, 17 under the sponsorship of Senator Barry Goldwater, 18 Congress passed legislation to retroactively acknowl- 19 edge the military service of the Women’s Air Force 20 Service Pilots (referred to in this section as 21 ‘‘WASPs’’) of World War II and ‘‘the service of any 22 person in any other similarly situated group the 23 member of which rendered service to the Armed 24 Forces of the United States in a capacity considered 25 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 10 •HR 1953 IH civilian employment or contractual service at the 1 time such service was rendered’’. 2 (28) On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy 3 Carter signed the legislation described in paragraph 4 (27) into law as the GI Bill Improvement Act of 5 1977 (Public Law 95–202; 91 Stat. 1433). 6 (29) The Signal Corps telephone operators ap- 7 plied for, and were granted, status as veterans in 8 1979. 9 (30) Only 33 of the operators who had returned 10 home after the war were still alive to receive their 11 Victory Medals and official discharge papers, which 12 were finally awarded in 1979. 13 (31) One of the women, Olive Shaw from Mas- 14 sachusetts, returned to the United States after the 15 war, where she worked on the professional staff of 16 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers. Shaw lived to 17 receive her honorable discharge and was the first 18 burial when the Massachusetts National Cemetery 19 opened on October 11, 1980. Shaw’s uniform is on 20 display at the National World War I Museum and 21 Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. 22 (32) Upon receipt of her honorable discharge at 23 a ceremony in her home in Marine City, Michigan, 24 ‘‘Hello Girl’’ Oleda Joure Christides raised the paper 25 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 11 •HR 1953 IH to her lips and kissed it. The only thing Christides 1 ever wanted from the Federal Government was a 2 flag on her coffin. 3 (33) On July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama 4 signed into law Public Law 111–40 (123 Stat. 5 1958), which awarded the WASPs the Congressional 6 Gold Medal for their service to the United States. 7 (34) For their role as pioneers who paved the 8 way for all women in uniform, and for service that 9 was essential to victory in World War I, the ‘‘Hello 10 Girls’’ merit similar recognition. 11 SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL. 12 (a) AWARD AUTHORIZED.—The Speaker of the 13 House of Representatives and the President pro tempore 14 of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements for the 15 award, on behalf of Congress, of a single gold medal of 16 appropriate design in honor of the female telephone opera- 17 tors of the Army Signal Corps (commonly known as the 18 ‘‘Hello Girls’’), in recognition of those operators’— 19 (1) pioneering military service; 20 (2) devotion to duty; and 21 (3) 60-year struggle for— 22 (A) recognition as soldiers; and 23 (B) veterans’ benefits. 24 VerDate Sep 11 2014 00:27 Apr 11, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H1953.IH H1953 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42 with BILLS 12 •HR 1953 IH (b) DESIGN AND STRIKING.—For the purposes of the 1 award described in subsection (a), the Secretary of the 2 Treasury (refer [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]