II 

116TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION S. 206 

To award a Congressional Gold Medal to the female telephone operators 

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

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

JANUARY 24, 2019 

Mr. TESTER (for himself and Mrs. BLACKBURN) introduced the following bill; 

which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs 

A BILL 

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, 

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Hello Girls Congres5 sional Gold Medal Act of 2019’’. 

6 SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 

7 Congress finds the following: 

8 (1) On April 6, 1917, the United States de9 clared war against Germany. As a historically neuVerDate Sep 11 2014 04:16 Jan 31, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\S206.IS S206

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1 tral nation, the United States was unprepared to 

2 fight a technologically modern conflict overseas. The 

3 United States called upon American Telephone and 

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

5 to provide equipment and trained personnel for the 

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

7 Army uniform served at home under the provisions 

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

9 more effectual provision for the national defense, 

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

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

12 Act of 1916’’), which allowed for the induction of in13 dividuals with specialized skills into a reserve force. 

14 (2) When General John Pershing sailed for Eu15 rope in May of 1917 as head of the American Expe16 ditionary Forces (referred to in this section as the 

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

18 with him in recognition of the inadequacy of Euro19 pean circuitry and with the understanding that tele20 phones would play a key role in battlefield commu21 nications for the first time in the history of war. 

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

23 struggled to develop the telephone service necessary 

24 for the Army to function under battlefield condi25 tions. Monolingual infantrymen from the United 


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1 States were unable to connect calls rapidly or com2 municate effectively with their French counterparts 

3 to put calls through over toll lines that linked one 

4 region of the country with another. The Army found 

5 that the average male operator required 60 seconds 

6 to make a connection. That rate was unacceptably 

7 slow, especially for operational calls between com8 mand outposts and the front lines. 

9 (4) During this time, in the United States, tele10 phone operating was largely sex-segregated. Hired 

11 for their speed in connecting calls, women filled 85 

12 percent of the telephone operating positions in the 

13 United States. It took the average female operator 

14 10 seconds to make a connection. 

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

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

17 of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified 

18 men, request organization and dispatch to France a 

19 force of women telephone operators all speaking 

20 French and English equally well.’’. To begin, Gen21 eral Pershing requested 100 women under the com22 mand of a commissioned captain, writing that ‘‘All 

23 should have allowances of Army nurses and should 

24 be uniformed.’’. 


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1 (6) The War Department sent press releases to 

2 newspapers across the United States to recruit 

3 women willing to serve for the duration of the war 

4 and face the hazards of submarine warfare and aer5 ial bombardment. These articles emphasized that pa6 triotic women would be ‘‘full-fledged soldier[s] under 

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

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

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

10 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 tra17 ditional ranks and were ranked as Operator, Super18 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 pop24 ular parlance, they were known as the ‘‘Hello Girls’’. 


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1 (10) Signal Corps Operators wore Army uni2 forms and Army insignia always, as well as stand3 ard-issue identity disks in case of death, and were 

4 subject to court martial for infractions of the mili5 tary code. 

6 (11) Unbeknownst to the women operators and 

7 their immediate officers, the legal counsel of the 

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

9 women were not actually soldiers but contract em10 ployees, even though the women had not seen or 

11 signed any contracts. Military code allowed only for 

12 the induction of men and the code remained un13 changed despite the orders of General Pershing. 

14 Nevertheless, legal counsel also recognized that the 

15 National Defense Act of 1916, which allowed for the 

16 induction of members of the telephone industry of 

17 the United States into the Armed Forces, imposed 

18 no gender restrictions. 

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

20 first contingent of operators began their official du21 ties in France. The operators arrived before most in22 fantrymen of the Armed Forces in order to facilitate 

23 logistics and deployment and spent their first night 

24 in Paris under German bombardment. 


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1 (13) After the arrival of the operators, tele2 phone service in France improved immediately, as 

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

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

5 deployed 5 additional contingents of female Signal 

6 Corps operators. With these personnel, calls in7 creased to 150,000 per day. 

8 (15) In addition to standard telephone oper9 ating, bilingual Signal Corps members provided si10 multaneous translation between officers from France 

11 and officers from the United States, who were com12 municating by telephone. 

13 (16) The AEF fought their first major battles 

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

15 Signal Corps considered the contributions of women 

16 to be so essential that, in telephone exchanges clos17 est to the front line, the Army exclusively used 

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

19 Army established rotating 8-hour shifts and gave 

20 male soldiers the overnight shift when telephone 

21 traffic was slower. 

22 (17) Seven bilingual operators— 

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

24 Meuse-Argonne under the immediate command 

25 of General Pershing; 


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1 (B) staffed the Operations Boards through 

2 which orders to advance, fire, and retreat were 

3 delivered to soldiers in the trenches, to artillery 

4 units on alert, and to pilots awaiting orders at 

5 French airfields; and 

6 (C) were awarded a ‘‘Defensive Sector 

7 Clasp’’ for the Meuse-Argonne operation. 

8 (18) The Chief Operator supervising the Hello 

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

10 awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Out of 

11 16,000 eligible Signal Corps officers, Banker was 

12 one of only 18 individuals so honored. 

13 (19) Thirty additional operators received special 

14 commendations, many signed by General Pershing 

15 himself, for ‘‘exceptionally meritorious and con16 spicuous services’’ in ‘‘Advance Sections’’ of the con17 flict. 

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

19 of that date, 223 female operators served in France 

20 and had connected 26,000,000 calls for the AEF. 

21 (21) The Chief Signal Officer of the Army Sig22 nal Corps wrote in his official report 2 days after 

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

24 of the success of the communications of this Army 


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1 is due to . . . a competent staff of women opera2 tors.’’. 

3 (22) After the war ended, some women were or4 dered to Coblenz in Germany for the occupation of 

5 that country and to Paris for the Paris Peace Trea6 ty of 1919 to continue telephone operations, some7 times in direct support of President Woodrow Wil8 son. 

9 (23) Two operators, Corah Bartlett and Inez 

10 Crittenden, died in France in the service of the 

11 United States and were buried there in military 

12 cemeteries with military ceremonies. Those operators 

13 died of the same influenza pandemic that killed more 

14 soldiers of the Armed Forces than combat oper15 ations. 

16 (24) Women of the Army Signal Corps were in17 eligible for discharge until formal release. Because of 

18 their role in logistics, those women were among the 

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

20 last Signal Corps operators returned from France in 

21 January of 1920. 

22 (25) Upon arrival in the United States, the 

23 Army informed female veterans that they had per24 formed as civilians, not soldiers, even though operaVerDate Sep 11 2014 04:16 Jan 31, 2019 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\S206.IS S206

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1 tors had served in Army uniform in a theatre 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 acknowl20 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 Forces of the United States in a capacity considered 


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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 ap8 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 Mas15 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 ‘‘Hello Girl’’ Oleda Joure Christides raised the paper 


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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 opera18 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. 


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

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

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

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

5 inscriptions, to be determined by the Secretary. 

6 (c) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.— 

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

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

9 to the Smithsonian Institution, where the medal 

10 shall be available for display, as appropriate, and 

11 made available for research. 

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

13 Congress that the Smithsonian Institution should 

14 make the gold medal received under paragraph (1) 

15 available elsewhere, particularly at— 

16 (A) appropriate locations associated with— 

17 (i) the Army Signal Corps; 

18 (ii) the Women in Military Service for 

19 America Memorial; 

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

21 and 

22 (iv) the National World War I Mu23 seum and Memorial; and 

24 (B) any other location determined appro25 priate by the Smithsonian Institution. 


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1 SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS. 

2 Under such regulations as the Secretary may pre3 scribe, the Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in 

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

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

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

7 SEC. 5. NATIONAL MEDALS. 

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

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

10 31, United States Code. 

11 (b) NUMISMATIC ITEMS.—For purposes of section 

12 5134 of title 31, United States Code, all medals struck 

13 under this Act shall be considered to be numismatic items. 

Æ 


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