H. R. 5009—689 
including JusticeConnect of the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion, which facilitate real-time exchanges of intelligence among 
such law enforcement partners. 
(3) An assessment of the cost, effectiveness, and efficacy 
of the Homeland Security Information Network. 
(4) An assessment of the current policies of the Homeland 
Security Information Network, and the efficacy of such policies 
in protecting the civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy of 
individuals. 
(5) An analysis of any other information the Comptroller 
General determines appropriate. 
TITLE LVII—MISCELLANEOUS 
Sec. 5701. Treatment of payments from the railroad unemployment insurance ac-
count. 
Sec. 5702. Extension of learning period for certain safety regulations relating to 
space flight participants. 
Sec. 5703. Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal. 
Sec. 5704. Extension of competitive service status authority for employees of a 
Lead Inspector General for Overseas Contingency Operation. 
Sec. 5705. Readmission requirements for servicemembers. 
SEC. 
5701. 
TREATMENT 
OF 
PAYMENTS 
FROM 
THE 
RAILROAD 
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACCOUNT. 
(a) AMENDMENTS.—Section 235 of the Continued Assistance 
to Rail Workers Act of 2020 (subchapter III of title II of division 
N of Public Law 116–260; 2 U.S.C. 906 note) is amended— 
(1) in subsection (b)— 
(A) by striking paragraphs (1) and (2); and 
(B) by striking ‘‘subsection (a)—’’ and inserting ‘‘sub-
section (a) shall take effect 7 days after the date of enact-
ment of the Continued Assistance to Rail Workers Act 
of 2020.’’; and 
(2) by striking subsection (c). 
(b) APPLICABILITY.—The amendments made by subsection (a) 
shall apply as if enacted on the day before the date on which 
the national emergency concerning the novel coronavirus disease 
(COVID–19) outbreak declared by the President on March 13, 2020, 
under the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) termi-
nates. 
(c) OFFSET FROM TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION FUND.—Of the 
unobligated balances of the amount made available under section 
4011 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (135 Stat. 80), 
$13,000,000 are rescinded. 
SEC. 5702. EXTENSION OF LEARNING PERIOD FOR CERTAIN SAFETY 
REGULATIONS RELATING TO SPACE FLIGHT PARTICI-
PANTS. 
Title 51, United States Code, is amended— 
(1) in section 50905(c)(9), by striking ‘‘January 1, 2025’’ 
and inserting ‘‘January 1, 2028’’; 
(2) in section 50914— 
(A) in subsection (a)(5), by striking ‘‘September 30, 
2025’’ and inserting ‘‘September 30, 2028’’; and 
(B) in subsection (b)(1)(C), by striking ‘‘September 30, 
2025’’ and inserting ‘‘September 30, 2028’’; and 
(3) in section 50915—
H. R. 5009—690 
(A) in subsection (a)(3)(B), by striking ‘‘September 30, 
2025’’ and inserting ‘‘September 30, 2028’’; and 
(B) in subsection (f), in the first sentence, by striking 
‘‘September 30, 2025’’ and inserting ‘‘September 30, 2028’’. 
SEC. 5703. HELLO GIRLS CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
(1) On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war against 
Germany. As a historically neutral nation, the United States 
was unprepared to fight a technologically modern conflict over-
seas. The United States called upon American Telephone and 
Telegraph (referred to in this section as ‘‘AT&T’’) to provide 
equipment and trained personnel for the Army Signal Corps 
in France. AT&T executives in Army uniform served at home 
under the provisions of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act for making 
further and more effectual provision for the national defense, 
and for other purposes.’’, approved June 3, 1916 (referred to 
in this section as the ‘‘National Defense Act of 1916’’), which 
allowed for the induction of individuals with specialized skills 
into a reserve force. 
(2) When General John Pershing sailed for Europe in May 
of 1917, as head of the American Expeditionary Forces (referred 
to in this section as the ‘‘AEF’’), he took telephone operating 
equipment with him in recognition of the inadequacy of Euro-
pean circuitry and with the understanding that telephones 
would play a key role in battlefield communications for the 
first time in the history of war. 
(3) From May to November of 1917, the AEF struggled 
to develop the telephone service necessary for the Army to 
function under battlefield conditions. Monolingual infantrymen 
from the United States were unable to connect calls rapidly 
or communicate effectively with their French counterparts to 
put calls through over toll lines that linked one region of 
the country with another. The Army found that the average 
male operator required 60 seconds to make a connection. That 
rate was unacceptably slow, especially for operational calls 
between command outposts and the front lines. 
(4) During this time, in the United States, telephone oper-
ating was largely sex-segregated. Hired for their speed in con-
necting calls, women filled 85 percent of the telephone operating 
positions in the United States. It took the average female 
operator 10 seconds to make a connection. 
(5) On November 8, 1917, General Pershing cabled the 
War Department and wrote, ‘‘On account of the great difficulty 
of obtaining properly qualified men, request organization and 
dispatch to France a force of women telephone operators all 
speaking French and English equally well.’’. To begin, General 
Pershing requested 100 women under the command of a 
commissioned captain, writing that ‘‘All should have allowances 
of Army nurses and should be uniformed.’’. 
(6) The War Department sent press releases to newspapers 
across the United States to recruit women willing to serve 
for the duration of the war and face the hazards of submarine 
warfare and aerial bombardment. These articles emphasized 
that patriotic women would be ‘‘full-fledged soldier[s] under 
the articles of war’’ and would ‘‘do as much to help win the
H. R. 5009—691 
war as the men in khaki who go ‘over the top.’ ’’. All women 
selected would take the Army oath. 
(7) More than 7,600 women volunteered for the 100 posi-
tions described in paragraph (5) and the first recruits took 
the Army oath on January 15, 1918. 
(8) Like nurses and doctors at the time, female Signal 
Corps members had relative rather than traditional ranks and 
were ranked as Operator, Supervisor, or Chief Operator. When 
promoted, the women were required to swear the Army oath 
again. 
(9) Telephone operators were the first women to serve 
as soldiers in non-medical classifications and the job of the 
operators was to help win the war, not to mitigate the harms 
of the war. In popular parlance, they were known as the ‘‘Hello 
Girls’’. 
(10) Signal Corps Operators wore Army uniforms and Army 
insignia always, as well as standard-issue identity disks in 
case of death, and were subject to court martial for infractions 
of the military code. 
(11) Unbeknownst to the women operators and their imme-
diate officers, the legal counsel of the Army ruled internally 
on March 20, 1918, that the women were not actually soldiers 
but contract employees, even though the women had not seen 
or signed any contracts. Military code allowed only for the 
induction of men and the code remained unchanged despite 
the orders of General Pershing. Nevertheless, legal counsel 
also recognized that the National Defense Act of 1916, which 
allowed for the induction of members of the telephone industry 
of the United States into the Armed Forces, imposed no gender 
restrictions. 
(12) Four days later, on March 24, 1918, the first contingent 
of operators began their official duties in France. The operators 
arrived before most infantrymen of the Armed Forces in order 
to facilitate logistics and deployment and spent their first night 
in Paris under German bombardment. 
(13) After the arrival of the operators, telephone service 
in France improved immediately, as calls tripled from 13,000 
to 36,000 per day. 
(14) The Army quickly recruited, trained, and deployed 
5 additional contingents of female Signal Corps operators. With 
these personnel, calls increased to 150,000 per day. 
(15) In addition to standard telephone operating, bilingual 
Signal Corps members provided simultaneous translation 
between officers from France and officers from the United 
States, who were communicating by telephone. 
(16) The AEF fought their first major battles in the last 
2 months of the war. By that point, the Signal Corps considered 
the contributions of women to be so essential that, in telephone 
exchanges closest to the front line, the Army exclusively used 
women, in rotating 12-hour shifts. In the rear, the Army estab-
lished rotating 8-hour shifts and gave male soldiers the over-
night shift when telephone traffic was slower. 
(17) Seven bilingual operators— 
(A) served at the Battles of St. Mihiel and Meuse- 
Argonne under the immediate command of General Per-
shing;
H. R. 5009—692 
(B) staffed the Operations Boards through which orders 
to advance, fire, and retreat were delivered to soldiers 
in the trenches, to artillery units on alert, and to pilots 
awaiting orders at French airfields; and 
(C) were awarded a ‘‘Defensive Sector Clasp’’ for the 
Meuse-Argonne operation. 
(18) The Chief Operator supervising the Hello Girls, Grace 
Banker of Passaic, New Jersey, was awarded the Distinguished 
Service Medal. Out of 16,000 eligible Signal Corps officers, 
Banker was one of only 18 individuals so honored. 
(19) Thirty additional operators received special commenda-
tions, many signed by General Pershing himself, for ‘‘exception-
ally meritorious and conspicuous services’’ in ‘‘Advance Sec-
tions’’ of the conflict. 
(20) The war ended on November 11, 1918. As of that 
date, 223 female operators served in France and had connected 
26,000,000 calls for the AEF. 
(21) The Chief Signal Officer of the Army Signal Corps 
wrote in his official report 2 days after the date on which 
the war ended that ‘‘a large part of the success of the commu-
nications of this Army is due to . . . a competent staff of 
women operators.’’. 
(22) After the war ended, some women were ordered to 
Coblenz in Germany for the occupation of that country and 
to Paris for the Paris Peace Treaty of 1919 to continue telephone 
operations, sometimes in direct support of President Woodrow 
Wilson. 
(23) Two operators, Corah Bartlett and Inez Crittenden, 
died in France in the service of the United States and were 
buried there in military cemeteries with military ceremonies. 
Those operators died of the same influenza pandemic that 
killed more soldiers of the Armed Forces than combat oper-
ations. 
(24) Women of the Army Signal Corps were ineligible for 
discharge until formal release. Because of their role in logistics, 
those women were among the last soldiers to come home to 
the United States. The last Signal Corps operators returned 
from France in January of 1920. 
(25) Upon arrival in the United States, the Army informed 
female veterans that they had performed as civilians, not sol-
diers, even though operators had served in Army uniform in 
a theater of war surrounded by men who were similarly 
engaged. 
(26) Despite the objections of General George Squier, the 
top-ranking officer in the Signal Corps, the Army denied Signal 
Corps women the veterans’ benefits granted to male soldiers 
and female nurses, such as— 
(A) hospitalization for disabilities incurred in the line 
of duty; 
(B) cash bonuses; 
(C) soldiers’ pensions; 
(D) flags on their coffins; and 
(E) the Victory Medals promised them in France. 
(27) For the next 60 years, female veterans, led by Merle 
Egan from Montana, petitioned Congress more than 50 times 
for their recognition. In 1977, under the sponsorship of Senator 
Barry Goldwater, Congress passed legislation to retroactively