118TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION S. 815 

AN ACT 

To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the female telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps, known as 

the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. 

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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1 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

2 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Hello Girls Congres3 sional Gold Medal Act of 2024’’. 

4 SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 

5 Congress finds the following: 

6 (1) On April 6, 1917, the United States de7 clared war against Germany. As a historically neu8 tral nation, the United States was unprepared to 

9 fight a technologically modern conflict overseas. The 

10 United States called upon American Telephone and 

11 Telegraph (referred to in this section as ‘‘AT&T’’) 

12 to provide equipment and trained personnel for the 

13 Army Signal Corps in France. AT&T executives in 

14 Army uniform served at home under the provisions 

15 of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act for making further and 

16 more effectual provision for the national defense, 

17 and for other purposes.’’, approved June 3, 1916 

18 (referred to in this section as the ‘‘National Defense 

19 Act of 1916’’), which allowed for the induction of in20 dividuals with specialized skills into a reserve force. 

21 (2) When General John Pershing sailed for Eu22 rope in May of 1917 as head of the American Expe23 ditionary Forces (referred to in this section as the 

24 ‘‘AEF’’), he took telephone operating equipment 

25 with him in recognition of the inadequacy of Euro26 pean circuitry and with the understanding that tele-
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1 phones would play a key role in battlefield commu2 nications for the first time in the history of war. 

3 (3) From May to November of 1917, the AEF 

4 struggled to develop the telephone service necessary 

5 for the Army to function under battlefield condi6 tions. Monolingual infantrymen from the United 

7 States were unable to connect calls rapidly or com8 municate effectively with their French counterparts 

9 to put calls through over toll lines that linked one 

10 region of the country with another. The Army found 

11 that the average male operator required 60 seconds 

12 to make a connection. That rate was unacceptably 

13 slow, especially for operational calls between com14 mand outposts and the front lines. 

15 (4) During this time, in the United States, tele16 phone operating was largely sex-segregated. Hired 

17 for their speed in connecting calls, women filled 85 

18 percent of the telephone operating positions in the 

19 United States. It took the average female operator 

20 10 seconds to make a connection. 

21 (5) On November 8, 1917, General Pershing 

22 cabled the War Department and wrote, ‘‘On account 

23 of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified 

24 men, request organization and dispatch to France a 

25 force of women telephone operators all speaking 
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1 French and English equally well.’’. To begin, Gen2 eral Pershing requested 100 women under the com3 mand of a commissioned captain, writing that ‘‘All 

4 should have allowances of Army nurses and should 

5 be uniformed.’’. 

6 (6) The War Department sent press releases to 

7 newspapers across the United States to recruit 

8 women willing to serve for the duration of the war 

9 and face the hazards of submarine warfare and aer10 ial bombardment. These articles emphasized that pa11 triotic women would be ‘‘full-fledged soldier[s] under 

12 the articles of war’’ and would ‘‘do as much to help 

13 win the war as the men in khaki who go ‘over the 

14 top.’ ’’. All women selected would take the Army 

15 oath. 

16 (7) More than 7,600 women volunteered for the 

17 100 positions described in paragraph (5), and the 

18 first recruits took the Army oath on January 15, 

19 1918. 

20 (8) Like nurses and doctors at the time, female 

21 Signal Corps members had relative rather than tra22 ditional ranks and were ranked as Operator, Super23 visor, or Chief Operator. When promoted, the 

24 women were required to swear the Army oath again. 
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1 (9) Telephone operators were the first women 

2 to serve as soldiers in non-medical classifications, 

3 and the job of the operators was to help win the 

4 war, not to mitigate the harms of the war. In pop5 ular parlance, they were known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. 

6 (10) Signal Corps Operators wore Army uni7 forms and Army insignia always, as well as stand8 ard-issue identity disks in case of death, and were 

9 subject to court martial for infractions of the mili10 tary code. 

11 (11) Unbeknownst to the women operators and 

12 their immediate officers, the legal counsel of the 

13 Army ruled internally on March 20, 1918, that the 

14 women were not actually soldiers but contract em15 ployees, even though the women had not seen or 

16 signed any contracts. Military code allowed only for 

17 the induction of men, and the code remained un18 changed despite the orders of General Pershing. 

19 Nevertheless, legal counsel also recognized that the 

20 National Defense Act of 1916, which allowed for the 

21 induction of members of the telephone industry of 

22 the United States into the Armed Forces, imposed 

23 no gender restrictions. 

24 (12) Four days later, on March 24, 1918, the 

25 first contingent of operators began their official du-
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1 ties in France. The operators arrived before most in2 fantrymen of the Armed Forces in order to facilitate 

3 logistics and deployment and spent their first night 

4 in Paris under German bombardment. 

5 (13) After the arrival of the operators, tele6 phone service in France improved immediately, as 

7 calls tripled from 13,000 to 36,000 per day. 

8 (14) The Army quickly recruited, trained, and 

9 deployed 5 additional contingents of female Signal 

10 Corps operators. With these personnel, the number 

11 of calls increased to 150,000 per day. 

12 (15) In addition to standard telephone oper13 ating, bilingual Signal Corps members provided si14 multaneous translation between officers from France 

15 and officers from the United States, who were com16 municating by telephone. 

17 (16) The AEF fought their first major battles 

18 in the last 2 months of the war. By that point, the 

19 Signal Corps considered the contributions of women 

20 to be so essential that, in telephone exchanges clos21 est to the front line, the Army exclusively used 

22 women, in rotating 12-hour shifts. In the rear, the 

23 Army established rotating 8-hour shifts and gave 

24 male soldiers the overnight shift when telephone 

25 traffic was slower. 
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1 (17) Seven bilingual operators— 

2 (A) served at the Battles of St. Mihiel and 

3 Meuse-Argonne under the immediate command 

4 of General Pershing; 

5 (B) staffed the Operations Boards through 

6 which orders to advance, fire, and retreat were 

7 delivered to soldiers in the trenches, to artillery 

8 units on alert, and to pilots awaiting orders at 

9 French airfields; and 

10 (C) were awarded a ‘‘Defensive Sector 

11 Clasp’’ for the Meuse-Argonne operation. 

12 (18) The Chief Operator supervising the Hello 

13 Girls, Grace Banker of Passaic, New Jersey, was 

14 awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Out of 

15 16,000 eligible Signal Corps officers, Banker was 

16 one of only 18 individuals so honored. 

17 (19) Thirty additional operators received special 

18 commendations, many signed by General Pershing 

19 himself, for ‘‘exceptionally meritorious and con20 spicuous services’’ in ‘‘Advance Sections’’ of the con21 flict. 

22 (20) The war ended on November 11, 1918. As 

23 of that date, 223 female operators served in France 

24 and had connected 26,000,000 calls for the AEF. 
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1 (21) The Chief Signal Officer of the Army Sig2 nal Corps wrote in his official report 2 days after 

3 the date on which the war ended that ‘‘a large part 

4 of the success of the communications of this Army 

5 is due to . . . a competent staff of women opera6 tors.’’. 

7 (22) After the war ended, some women were or8 dered to Coblenz in Germany for the occupation of 

9 that country and to Paris for the Paris Peace Trea10 ty of 1919 to continue telephone operations, some11 times in direct support of President Woodrow Wil12 son. 

13 (23) Two operators, Corah Bartlett and Inez 

14 Crittenden, died in France in the service of the 

15 United States and were buried there in military 

16 cemeteries with military ceremonies. Those operators 

17 died of the same influenza pandemic that killed more 

18 soldiers of the Armed Forces than combat oper19 ations. 

20 (24) Women of the Army Signal Corps were in21 eligible for discharge until formal release. Because of 

22 their role in logistics, those women were among the 

23 last soldiers to come home to the United States. The 

24 last Signal Corps operators returned from France in 

25 January of 1920. 
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1 (25) Upon arrival in the United States, the 

2 Army informed female veterans that they had per3 formed as civilians, not soldiers, even though opera4 tors had served in Army uniform in a theater of war 

5 surrounded by men who were similarly engaged. 

6 (26) Despite the objections of General George 

7 Squier, the top-ranking officer in the Signal Corps, 

8 the Army denied Signal Corps women the veterans’ 

9 benefits granted to male soldiers and female nurses, 

10 such as— 

11 (A) hospitalization for disabilities incurred 

12 in the line of duty; 

13 (B) cash bonuses; 

14 (C) soldiers’ pensions; 

15 (D) flags on their coffins; and 

16 (E) the Victory Medals promised them in 

17 France. 

18 (27) For the next 60 years, female veterans, led 

19 by Merle Egan from Montana, petitioned Congress 

20 more than 50 times for their recognition. In 1977, 

21 under the sponsorship of Senator Barry Goldwater, 

22 Congress passed legislation to retroactively acknowl23 edge the military service of the Women’s Airforce 

24 Service Pilots (referred to in this section as 

25 ‘‘WASPs’’) of World War II and ‘‘the service of any 
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1 person in any other similarly situated group the 

2 members of which rendered service to the Armed 

3 Forces of the United States in a capacity considered 

4 civilian employment or contractual service at the 

5 time such service was rendered’’. 

6 (28) On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy 

7 Carter signed the legislation described in paragraph 

8 (27) into law as the GI Bill Improvement Act of 

9 1977 (Public Law 95–202; 91 Stat. 1433). 

10 (29) The Signal Corps telephone operators ap11 plied for, and were granted, status as veterans in 

12 1979. 

13 (30) Only 33 of the operators who had returned 

14 home after the war were still alive to receive their 

15 Victory Medals and official discharge papers, which 

16 were finally awarded in 1979. 

17 (31) One of the women, Olive Shaw from Mas18 sachusetts, returned to the United States after the 

19 war, where she worked on the professional staff of 

20 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers. Shaw lived to 

21 receive her honorable discharge and was the first 

22 burial when the Massachusetts National Cemetery 

23 opened on October 11, 1980. Shaw’s uniform is on 

24 display at the National World War I Museum and 

25 Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. 
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1 (32) Upon receipt of her honorable discharge at 

2 a ceremony in her home in Marine City, Michigan, 

3 ‘‘Hello Girl’’ Oleda Joure Christides raised the paper 

4 to her lips and kissed it. The only thing Christides 

5 ever wanted from the Federal Government was a 

6 flag on her coffin. 

7 (33) On July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama 

8 signed into law Public Law 111–40 (123 Stat. 

9 1958), which awarded the WASPs the Congressional 

10 Gold Medal for their service to the United States. 

11 (34) For their role as pioneers who paved the 

12 way for all women in uniform, and for service that 

13 was essential to victory in World War I, the ‘‘Hello 

14 Girls’’ merit similar recognition. 

15 SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL. 

16 (a) AWARD AUTHORIZED.—The Speaker of the 

17 House of Representatives and the President pro tempore 

18 of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements for the 

19 award, on behalf of Congress, of a single gold medal of 

20 appropriate design in honor of the female telephone opera21 tors of the Army Signal Corps (commonly known as the 

22 ‘‘Hello Girls’’), in recognition of those operators’— 

23 (1) pioneering military service; 

24 (2) devotion to duty; and 

25 (3) 60-year struggle for— 
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1 (A) recognition as soldiers; and 

2 (B) veterans’ benefits. 

3 (b) DESIGN AND STRIKING.—For the purposes of the 

4 award described in subsection (a), the Secretary of the 

5 Treasury (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Secretary’’) shall 

6 strike the gold medal with suitable emblems, devices, and 

7 inscriptions, to be determined by the Secretary. 

8 (c) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.— 

9 (1) IN GENERAL.—After the award of the gold 

10 medal under subsection (a), the medal shall be given 

11 to the Smithsonian Institution, where the medal 

12 shall be available for display, as appropriate, and 

13 made available for research. 

14 (2) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of 

15 Congress that the Smithsonian Institution should 

16 make the gold medal received under paragraph (1) 

17 available elsewhere, particularly at— 

18 (A) appropriate locations associated with— 

19 (i) the Army Signal Corps; 

20 (ii) the Women in Military Service for 

21 America Memorial; 

22 (iii) the U.S. Army Women’s Museum; 

23 and 

24 (iv) the National World War I Mu25 seum and Memorial; and 
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1 (B) any other location determined appro2 priate by the Smithsonian Institution. 

3 SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS. 

4 The Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in 

5 bronze of the gold medal struck under section 3 at a price 

6 sufficient to cover the costs of the medals, including labor, 

7 materials, dies, use of machinery, and overhead expenses. 

8 SEC. 5. NATIONAL MEDALS. 

9 (a) NATIONAL MEDALS.—Medals struck under this 

10 Act are national medals for purposes of chapter 51 of title 

11 31, United States Code. 

12 (b) NUMISMATIC ITEMS.—For purposes of sections 

13 5134 and 5136 of title 31, United States Code, all medals 

14 struck under this Act shall be considered to be numismatic 

15 items. 

16 SEC. 6. AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS; PROCEEDS OF 

17 SALE. 

18 (a) AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS.—There is 

19 authorized to be charged against the United States Mint 

20 Public Enterprise Fund such amounts as may be nec21 essary to pay for the costs of the medals struck under 

22 this Act. 

23 (b) PROCEEDS OF SALE.—Amounts received from the 

24 sale of duplicate bronze medals authorized under section 
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1 4 shall be deposited into the United States Mint Public 

2 Enterprise Fund. 

Passed the Senate September 24, 2024. 

Attest: 

Secretary. 

118TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION S. 815 

AN ACT 

To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the female 

known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. telephone operators of the Army Signal Corps,