What This Bill Does
This bill authorizes Congress to award a single gold medal to the female telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps, commonly known as the "Hello Girls." The medal honors their military service during World War I, their dedication to duty, and their 60-year fight to be recognized as soldiers and receive veterans' benefits.
Who It Affects
The female telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps who served during World War I. The bill also involves the Secretary of the Treasury, the Smithsonian Institution, and various museums that may display the medal.
Key Provisions
* The Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate must arrange for a gold medal to be awarded to honor the "Hello Girls" and their pioneering military service (Sec. 3(a))
* The Secretary of the Treasury will design the medal with suitable emblems, devices and inscriptions (Sec. 3(b))
* After the award, the medal goes to the Smithsonian Institution for display and research (Sec. 3(c))
* The Secretary of the Treasury may create and sell bronze duplicate copies of the gold medal at a price that covers the cost of production (Sec. 4)
* Costs for striking the medals come from the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund, and money from selling bronze copies goes back into that fund (Sec. 6)
What Changes
A gold medal will be created and awarded to recognize the "Hello Girls" service. The medal will be displayed at the Smithsonian Institution and possibly at other locations including the Army Signal Corps facilities, the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, the U.S. Army Women's Museum, and the National World War I Museum and Memorial. Bronze duplicate medals may be sold to the public.
Important Definitions
The bill defines "Hello Girls" as the female telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps who served during World War I.
Effective Date
Not specified in bill text
I
118TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. R. 1572
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 14, 2023
Mr. CLEAVER (for himself, Mr. GRAVES of Missouri, Ms. DAVIDS of Kansas,
and Ms. MACE) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Financial Services, and in addition to the Committee on
House Administration, for a period to be subsequently 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 2023’’.
5
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
6
Congress finds the following:
7
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(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
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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 women 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
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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 selected would take the Army
11
oath.
12
(7) More than 7,600 women volunteered for the
13
100 positions described in paragraph (5) and the
14
first recruits took the Army oath on January 15,
15
1918.
16
(8) Like nurses and doctors at the time, female
17
Signal Corps members had relative rather than tra-
18
ditional ranks and were ranked as Operator, Super-
19
visor, or Chief Operator. When promoted, the
20
women were required to swear the Army oath again.
21
(9) Telephone operators were the first women
22
to serve as soldiers in non-medical classifications
23
and the job of the operators was to help win the
24
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war, not to mitigate the harms of the war. In pop-
1
ular parlance, they were known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’.
2
(10) Signal Corps Operators wore Army uni-
3
forms and Army insignia always, as well as stand-
4
ard-issue identity disks in case of death, and were
5
subject to court martial for infractions of the mili-
6
tary code.
7
(11) Unbeknownst to the women operators and
8
their immediate officers, the legal counsel of the
9
Army ruled internally on March 20, 1918, that the
10
women were not actually soldiers but contract em-
11
ployees, even though the women had not seen or
12
signed any contracts. Military code allowed only for
13
the induction of men and the code remained un-
14
changed despite the orders of General Pershing.
15
Nevertheless, legal counsel also recognized that the
16
National Defense Act of 1916, which allowed for the
17
induction of members of the telephone industry of
18
the United States into the Armed Forces, imposed
19
no gender restrictions.
20
(12) Four days later, on March 24, 1918, the
21
first contingent of operators began their official du-
22
ties in France. The operators arrived before most in-
23
fantrymen of the Armed Forces in order to facilitate
24
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logistics and deployment and spent their first night
1
in Paris under German bombardment.
2
(13) After the arrival of the operators, tele-
3
phone service in France improved immediately, as
4
calls tripled from 13,000 to 36,000 per day.
5
(14) The Army quickly recruited, trained, and
6
deployed 5 additional contingents of female Signal
7
Corps operators. With these personnel, calls in-
8
creased to 150,000 per day.
9
(15) In addition to standard telephone oper-
10
ating, bilingual Signal Corps members provided si-
11
multaneous translation between officers from France
12
and officers from the United States, who were com-
13
municating by telephone.
14
(16) The AEF fought their first major battles
15
in the last 2 months of the war. By that point, the
16
Signal Corps considered the contributions of women
17
to be so essential that, in telephone exchanges clos-
18
est to the front line, the Army exclusively used
19
women, in rotating 12-hour shifts. In the rear, the
20
Army established rotating 8-hour shifts and gave
21
male soldiers the overnight shift when telephone
22
traffic was slower.
23
(17) Seven bilingual operators—
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•HR 1572 IH
(A) served at the Battles of St. Mihiel and
1
Meuse-Argonne under the immediate command
2
of General Pershing;
3
(B) staffed the Operations Boards through
4
which orders to advance, fire, and retreat were
5
delivered to soldiers in the trenches, to artillery
6
units on alert, and to pilots awaiting orders at
7
French airfields; and
8
(C) were awarded a ‘‘Defensive Sector
9
Clasp’’ for the Meuse-Argonne operation.
10
(18) The Chief Operator supervising the Hello
11
Girls, Grace Banker of Passaic, New Jersey, was
12
awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Out of
13
16,000 eligible Signal Corps officers, Banker was
14
one of only 18 individuals so honored.
15
(19) Thirty additional operators received special
16
commendations, many signed by General Pershing
17
himself, for ‘‘exceptionally meritorious and con-
18
spicuous services’’ in ‘‘Advance Sections’’ of the con-
19
flict.
20
(20) The war ended on November 11, 1918. As
21
of that date, 223 female operators served in France
22
and had connected 26,000,000 calls for the AEF.
23
(21) The Chief Signal Officer of the Army Sig-
24
nal Corps wrote in his official report 2 days after
25
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the date on which the war ended that ‘‘a large part
1
of the success of the communications of this Army
2
is due to . . . a competent staff of women opera-
3
tors.’’.
4
(22) After the war ended, some women were or-
5
dered to Coblenz in Germany for the occupation of
6
that country and to Paris for the Paris Peace Trea-
7
ty of 1919 to continue telephone operations, some-
8
times in direct support of President Woodrow Wil-
9
son.
10
(23) Two operators, Corah Bartlett and Inez
11
Crittenden, died in France in the service of the
12
United States and were buried there in military
13
cemeteries with military ceremonies. Those operators
14
died of the same influenza pandemic that killed more
15
soldiers of the Armed Forces than combat oper-
16
ations.
17
(24) Women of the Army Signal Corps were in-
18
eligible for discharge until formal release. Because of
19
their role in logistics, those women were among the
20
last soldiers to come home to the United States. The
21
last Signal Corps operators returned from France in
22
January of 1920.
23
(25) Upon arrival in the United States, the
24
Army informed female veterans that they had per-
25
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•HR 1572 IH
formed as civilians, not soldiers, even though opera-
1
tors had served in Army uniform in a theater of war
2
surrounded by men who were similarly engaged.
3
(26) Despite the objections of General George
4
Squier, the top-ranking officer in the Signal Corps,
5
the Army denied Signal Corps women the veterans’
6
benefits granted to male soldiers and female nurses,
7
such as—
8
(A) hospitalization for disabilities incurred
9
in the line of duty;
10
(B) cash bonuses;
11
(C) soldiers’ pensions;
12
(D) flags on their coffins; and
13
(E) the Victory Medals promised them in
14
France.
15
(27) For the next 60 years, female veterans, led
16
by Merle Egan from Montana, petitioned Congress
17
more than 50 times for their recognition. In 1977,
18
under the sponsorship of Senator Barry Goldwater,
19
Congress passed legislation to retroactively acknowl-
20
edge the military service of the Women’s Airforce
21
Service Pilots (referred to in this section as
22
‘‘WASPs’’) of World War II and ‘‘the service of any
23
person in any other similarly situated group the
24
members of which rendered service to the Armed
25
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•HR 1572 IH
Forces of the United States in a capacity considered
1
civilian employment or contractual service at the
2
time such service was rendered’’.
3
(28) On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy
4
Carter signed the legislation described in paragraph
5
(27) into law as the GI Bill Improvement Act of
6
1977 (Public Law 95–202; 91 Stat. 1433).
7
(29) The Signal Corps telephone operators ap-
8
plied for, and were granted, status as veterans in
9
1979.
10
(30) Only 33 of the operators who had returned
11
home after the war were still alive to receive their
12
Victory Medals and official discharge papers, which
13
were finally awarded in 1979.
14
(31) One of the women, Olive Shaw from Mas-
15
sachusetts, returned to the United States after the
16
war, where she worked on the professional staff of
17
Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers. Shaw lived to
18
receive her honorable discharge and was the first
19
burial when the Massachusetts National Cemetery
20
opened on October 11, 1980. Shaw’s uniform is on
21
display at the National World War I Museum and
22
Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.
23
(32) Upon receipt of her honorable discharge at
24
a ceremony in her home in Marine City, Michigan,
25
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‘‘Hello Girl’’ Oleda Joure Christides raised the paper
1
to her lips and kissed it. The only thing Christides
2
ever wanted from the Federal Government was a
3
flag on her coffin.
4
(33) On July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama
5
signed into law Public Law 111–40 (123 Stat.
6
1958), which awarded the WASPs the Congressional
7
Gold Medal for their service to the United States.
8
(34) For their role as pioneers who paved the
9
way for all women in uniform, and for service that
10
was essential to victory in World War I, the ‘‘Hello
11
Girls’’ merit similar recognition.
12
SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL.
13
(a) AWARD
AUTHORIZED.—The Speaker of the
14
House of Representatives and the President pro tempore
15
of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements for the
16
award, on behalf of Congress, of a single gold medal of
17
appropriate design in honor of the female telephone opera-
18
tors of the Army Signal Corps (commonly known as the
19
‘‘Hello Girls’’), in recognition of those operators’—
20
(1) pioneering military service;
21
(2) devotion to duty; and
22
(3) 60-year struggle for—
23
(A) recognition as soldiers; and
24
(B) veterans’ benefits.
25
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•HR 1572 IH
(b) DESIGN AND STRIKING.—For the purposes of the
1
award described in subsection (a), the
[Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]