America’s Forgotten Veterans: The Hello Girls of World War I Are Still Being Left Behind

Imagine that the United States is at war, and you have an essential skill needed to support the military. You volunteer for service, swear an oath, don a uniform, and travel on a military ship overseas or head to a stateside base. Yet, you learn much later that due to your gender, you served as a civilian, ineligible for the veterans benefits and compensation available to those officially in the armed forces.

Such was the case for many American women who made vital military contributions during World War I. This community of “unrecognized female veterans,” as I call them in my book, Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945, included the U.S. Army Signal Corps telephone operators known as the Hello Girls, reconstruction aides who served as physical and occupational therapists, dieticians, and numerous others.

A 1918 United War Work Campaign poster by Clarence F. Underwood that depicts the Hello Girls. Library of Congress. Source: Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/93510431/?loclr=blogadm

For the past several years, a dedicated group of scholars, descendants, and supporters led by the United States World War I Centennial Commission and the Doughboy Foundation has been trying raise awareness of the Hello Girls’ wartime contributions by campaigning for them to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. While none of these brave women are alive today, the repercussions of this award would be transformative for the legacy of the women of the World War I generation and would send a critical message to young Americans about the value of women’s military service.

Although the Congressional Gold Medal would only recognize the Hello Girls, bestowing this honor on them would also recognize all women who experienced a similar situation during World War I. As I explain in my book, this conflict drew women into the war effort in new ways that integrated them more deeply into the armed forces. However, only some of these women served in the military in an official capacity that granted them veterans benefits after their service concluded. They included the women who served as Navy Yeoman (F), the female Marines, and two women in the Coast Guard. Together, this group formed the first cohort of women ever allowed to fully enlist in the U.S. military due to a loophole in the law. Also included as official veterans were Army and Navy nurses, although they were not technically enlisted in the military and served without official rank or full authority. Many other women, like the Hello Girls, remained civilians. Often, their status remained unclear to them until after the war.

In Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials, I dug into the postwar lives of the women who served and sacrificed during the First World War. I discovered that in the face of rejection from the military, these women—whether official veterans or not—banded together to form a supportive community of self-defined female veterans who helped their comrades abandoned by the government. Through organizations like the Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL), composed of women who served overseas, they advocated on behalf of both recognized and unrecognized veterans and developed their own forms of social welfare. When the government did not provide them with medical care, they fundraised to help their sisters in need. When the government did not honor their sacrifices, they commemorated their colleagues themselves, often through charitable projects, rather than expensive memorials that did little to help those still suffering from the war.

Signal Corps Hello Girls working at a telephone exchange within range of German shell fire during the St. Mihiel Offensive in the fall of 1918. Note the gas masks and helmets hung at the ready on the back of their chairs. National Archives. Source: National Archives https://catalog.archives.gov/id/55203658

Today, the story of these women’s wartime contributions and postwar struggles remains little known. Though the Hello Girls are gaining more attention, especially through the rousing and beautifully written musical The Hello Girls, too few Americans know about what these women did overseas and how it took until 1977 for Congress to officially acknowledge that their wartime work constituted military service. Even fewer people know about the many other unrecognized veterans who faced similar struggles, women like the reconstruction aides who helped heal the bodies of men wounded in battle and pioneered the developing professions of occupational and physical therapy.

The story of the Hello Girls is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this tragically overlooked community, able to stand in for many other women who also lacked veteran status. By honoring the Hello Girls with the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress would be honoring all of these women. Until each group can hopefully be recognized individually one day, such an award would be a major step towards providing the national honor and respect that these women lacked during the lifetimes.

Of course, nothing can make up for the struggles these women faced in the war’s aftermath without veterans’ benefits. But honoring them today can still achieve several important purposes. It would tell America’s women that the nation values their contributions and will work to right the wrongs of the past, no matter how long that may take. In a time when military recruiting remains a challenge for the all-volunteer force, such a message is essential for all Americans to hear, especially young people.

A group of Signal Corps Telephone Operators (Hello Girls) and nurses on board the Cedric on their way back from France, circa February 9, 1919. National Archives. Source: National Archives https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45567985

The Congressional Gold Medal could also serve as a type of memorial to the women of World War I without building an expensive monument that would go against their commemorative ideology that prioritized service projects over statues. The medal, small yet dignified, could function as their national memorial, enshrining them in the nation’s commemorative narrative alongside the many male military heroes we have honored so visibly on the National Mall and in communities across the country.

Bestowing this honor upon the Hello Girls fits squarely in line with how the Congressional Gold Medal has been utilized recently to recognize Americans whose contributions to the nation have been overlooked, often due to discrimination. Recent honorees have included Chinese-American Veterans of World War II, the Rosie the Riveters of World War II, the segregated African American 369^th Infantry “Harlem Hellfighters” of World War I, and the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion (an African American Women’s Army Corps unit in World War II,) among others. But the legislation to bestow this award on the Hello Girls of World War I still remains unsuccessful after several years of campaigning. Why? There is nothing controversial about the Hello Girls.

It is long past overdue to recognize the Hello Girls for what they did—serve their nation in a military capacity during war. They were pioneers who advanced the new technology of telephones on the battlefield, directly impacted combat, and often put their lives at risk. Due to their gender alone, the government denied them, and many other women, proper recognition or veterans’ benefits. Honoring them with the Congressional Gold Medal would be one small way our nation can make amends. By honoring the Hello Girls with a Congressional Gold medal, we can commemorate, in a larger sense, all of the women who served in World War I yet remained unrecognized veterans.

Allison S. Finkelstein earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also studied historic preservation. As a public historian, her projects have included the creation of museum exhibits, publications, interpretive programs, education programs, documentary films, webinars, tours, and narration for military processions. A specialist on World War I, her first book, Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945, was published by the University of Alabama Press in August 2021 and released in paperback in September 2023. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) awarded this book the 2022 Arline Custer Memorial Award for the best book written in the Mid-Atlantic region.

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