WWI Hello Girls Unit Tribute Plaque Dedicated at National Museum of the United States Army

On 25 May 2025, we dedicated a unit tribute to the Female Telephone Operators Unit, known as the “Hello Girls” at the Wall of Honor at the National Museum of the United States Army, Fort Belvoir, VA. A ceremony was held to commemorate the event which was attended by dignitaries from the Doughboy Foundation, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The Military Order of the World Wars, the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the Women’s Army Corps Veterans Association-Army Women United, and the Army and Navy of the Republic of France. Catherine Bourgin and Carolyn Timbie, granddaughters of Hello Girl veterans, attended and spoke of their experiences. As the originator of the unit tribute project, who designed the award, raised the money, and organized the ceremony, I have been asked to describe my motivations, experiences, and aspirations regarding the plaque.  To do so, I am revising and extending the comments I made that afternoon.

Dianne Smith pictured next to the unit tribute plaque for the Hello Girls at the National Museum of the United States Army.

When I joined the Army, the Hello Girls were not veterans….they were an annoyance….at least in the minds of the Congressmen and Senators who denied their petitions for veteran status each session.

When I joined the Army, I followed the same route as the Hello Girls. I loved my county and wanted to serve.  I saw an advertisement, applied, went before a selection board of officers who judged my qualifications and intentions, passed a rather intrusive physical exam, got accepted, raised my right hand, took an oath and gained a direct commission as a first lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps.  The difference is, I was in the Army. The Hello Girls thought they were, too, but the Army said they were not. Chief Signal Officer was a title. Lieutenant is a rank.

When I joined the Women’s Army Corps, I was told we were the first.  Yes, there was the  Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). But when it was created in 1942, House Resolution 6293 stated that the Corps was to have 25,000 women in non-combatant service “not a part of the army but it shall be the only women’s organization authorized to service with the Army, exclusive of the Army Nurse Corps.” That was the same type of wordsmithing they used against the Hello Girls: claiming they were contractors (as indeed the nurses were until 1947), not soldiers. The Navy on the other hand had taken the opposite approach. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels seized upon the use of the word “persons,” instead of “men” in the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve Act of 1916, and authorized the enlistment of women for the first time in March 1917.  Approximately 11,000 women served, filling Navy clerical positions and other support roles. They received the same benefits and responsibilities as men, including identical pay (US$28.75 per month), and were treated as veterans after the war. But, not the Army:  women were recruited, took an oath, were subject to military regulations, wore a uniform, and served overseas even under enemy fire, but when the war was over, they were told, sorry, we are denying you veteran status.

That at least changed in 1943 when the WAAC transitioned into the Women’s Army Corps (WACs). We served under our director, Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby. We trained at our home base at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  We visited the WAC Museum. We marched to the WAC Band. We worshiped in the WAC Chapel.  We wore the Pallas Athena. Even when the WACs were disbanded and we joined the regular army, we were proud to be the first.

Too bad that was not true.  Not a lie, but an omission. What a shame they did not tell us about the women who had come before us. What a shame we prided calling ourselves veterans, but did not know of their fight to gain recognition.  I honestly cannot ever remember hearing about the Hello Girls until recently.  Twenty-eight years on active duty in intelligence, and I can tell you, the very existence of the Hello Girls was the best kept secret in Army history.

The First Unit of US Army Signal Corps Telephone Operators, known as the Hello Girls, 1918 in Paris.

So, we were at the National Museum of the United States Army to dedicate a unit tribute to the Female Telephone Operator’s Unit, a project which I initiated.  People have asked me what prompted me to do this.  I had no family from their ranks.  I was not Signal Corps.  My chapter of Women’s Army Corps veterans and me personally, we had already donated money for the Women’s Army Corps plaque.  Five or six of us had even shown up one Saturday afternoon to track it down and take a selfie. So, why this plaque? Why this unit? Why this ceremony?

You can blame this all on my stepfather.  After my father died when I was in college, my mother remarried….to an 83-year-old widower who had been a private first class in the 88^th Division in World War I.  I’d bet money no one else at the May 25 event could claim their parent was a Doughboy in the Great War!  When he died, we found the scrapbook he had compiled and the two boxes of priceless glass plate negatives of photos he had taken in France.  I donated it all to the Army historians at Carlisle. However, I regret to this day that (like so many other self-centered, oblivious, young people) I did not think to sit him down and grill him about his experiences. But I knew the unit.  And when I became a docent at this very museum where the May 25 event was taking place, every time I volunteered, I would turn the corner from the parking lot and pass the unit tribute to the 88^th Division, the Blue Devils, and note the phrase “Alsace 1918 campaign. WWI France 1918-1919.” I remember thinking how great it was that the unit also fought in World War II and there were still people alive from that era who remembered and could sponsor a plaque. And then it struck me:  But what about units who had no survivors to do that?  What about units whose families were spread across the country and were so distant from past military ties they did not even know the unit tributes existed?  I was literally driving down the road and the thought struck me, somebody should start a project for those type of units. Someone should sponsor the Hello Girls.   Well, who?  If not me, who? So, when I got home, I logged onto the Army Historical Foundation site and started the project. I set up the site. I designed the plaque.  I asked strangers to share my vision and donate money to make it a reality. Yes, my WAC chapter donated money to support me and I thank them. Groups donated like the Yolo County World War I Museum that I did not even know existed….even though I lived in Yolo County for four years studying at UC Davis.  Friends donated. But, so did people I did not know with donations both large and small…. Strangers who became friends.

Thank you to everyone who supported this recognition of the Hello Girls at the Army’s premiere museum.  They did not have a home base like we did.  Places like Camp Franklin are long gone. They did not have a female director; of course, the Army had a male officer to oversee them. They did not have a museum or a chapel or a band.  They fought so long and so hard to be recognized as veterans, and so few of them lived to see it happen in 1977. They died without a veteran’s tombstone or a triangled coffin flag to pass to their next of kin — even though we are now working to rectify that.  But with this marble tablet on a wall of honor at an Army base, we give them a physical symbol of their existence, proof that they were indeed a unit of the US Army, a Signal Corps unit of the American Expeditionary Force – a tribute their families can visit and where strangers can learn about them.

I ended my remarks by wanting to share with them one gift from the Women’s Army Corps that they so deserve …words that they deserve. Words that fit them so well. Our song. Because these words, our words altered slightly, also personify what they did so many years ago, the sacrifices they made, the courage they displayed, the battles they fought and won, and the Army values* they lived and we share. Duty.

Duty is calling you and me
We have a date with destiny
Ready, the Hello Girls are ready
Our pulses steady
The world to set free.
Service, we’re in it heart and soul
Victory is our only goal
We love our country’s honor
And we’ll defend it against any foe.

Unveiling of the unit tribute plaque design at the May 25 ceremony. (left to right) Dianne Smith, Carolyn Timbie, Catherine Bourgin.

I was followed at the ceremony by the Chair of the Doughboy Foundation, the Chief of Signal, and two Hello Girls descendants: Carolyn Timbie, granddaughter of Hello Girls Chief Operator Grace Banker, and Catherine Bourgin, granddaughter of Hello Girl Marie Edmee LeRoux.  We had a replica of the plaque under cover in the hall, and Ms. Bourgin, Ms. Timbie, and I unveiled the image.  The Doughboy Foundation band played the song “Making History” from the Hello Girls musical, and I got misty eyed as we stood there listening.  I progressed to teary eyed as the bugler from the Doughboy Foundation band played Taps. It was 25 May, not quite Memorial Day because I knew how busy we would all be the next day.  But Congress changed it from 31 May to a three day-weekend so people could have a long holiday, BBQ, and buy stuff on sale, so I could pick 25 May as the Memorial Day for the Hello Girls.  I had attended the ceremony on 19 March at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate their being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. At the Women ‘s Military Museum, the focus inherently was on their gender and the groundbreaking status of their service.

But the installation of the unit tribute on the Wall of Honor, alongside plaques stretching the length of the parking lot, for the Japanese-American 442d Regimental Combat Team (the most decorated unit in Army history), the 82d Airborne, the 88^th Division, and countless other units large and small from all actions in the 20^th century, I wanted to focus on the word unit. People get caught up in whether they were the first women in the Army or was it the Army nurses or was it legally the WACs.  That loses the point.  The important idea is that they were a unit of the US Army who served alongside other units in France. It matters less that they were women soldiers, than that they were soldiers:  the Army called, they answered, they served. Remember them. Honor them.

*Army values: duty, honor, personal courage, selfless service, integrity, respect, and loyalty.

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