Meanwhile, some 1,800 Black women were certified as nurses by the American Red Cross, but only 18 of them were allowed to actually serve, and even then, only at training camps in the U.S. There were exceptions: The 369th Infantry Regiment, a Black unit known as the Harlem Hellfighters, started out unloading cargo on the docks, but when the French needed reinforcements in the trenches, the Hellfighters battled alongside them with a valor that earned them the prestigious Croix de Guerre. By World War I, Black men were mostly limited to menial labor. During the Civil War, about 10 percent of Union soldiers were Black. “I guess I was the brave one.”Īfrican American men have been serving in the U.S. “I asked the girls, I said, ‘Now what’s the point of being afraid right now? You can’t do one earthly thing but pray,’” she says with a chuckle. But when she looks back at the U-boat incident, her voice brims with amusement and pride. She can tell stories of working long shifts in rat-infested warehouses in England and France, of chauffeuring military personnel around Europe during the deadliest conflict in human history. donated replacement items, including a WAC patch.Īt 103 years old, Davis is the oldest surviving member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion-the first battalion of African American women ever to serve in the U.S. After learning that Davis’ World War II uniform had been stolen, admirers across the U.S. This article is a selection from the March 2023 issue of Smithsonian magazine Subscribeĭavis is honored in a ceremony at Montgomery City Hall. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $19.99 “You have to train yourself not to be so frightened that you can’t enjoy.” But at the height of the pandemonium, with heavy furniture sliding across the floor, all Davis knew was that there was no use panicking. Later, the group would learn that their captain had swerved to dodge an attack by a German U-boat. Barrels rolled, and young women screamed. Morale was flagging, and no one had been able to process the millions of individual pieces of mail piled up in European warehouses from floor to ceiling.ĭuring their ocean crossing, the ship suddenly lurched. For two years or longer, soldiers had been waiting for letters and packages that still hadn’t arrived.

They would be doing something crucial to the war effort: clearing a massive backlog of undelivered mail. Among the passengers on board were more than 800 recruits from her unit-women mostly in their late teens and 20s, and, in the segregated Army of the era, all of them Black. That’s how Davis found herself on the Île de France in February 1945, en route to Glasgow, Scotland. “But a lot of good is awakened in you when you are challenged.”

But Mama said, ‘Child, see the world while you can.’”ĭavis says her service overseas helped define her. “My father was skeptical sometimes about my going off.

But Davis’ parents supported their only daughter’s decision. Even the iconic Rosie the Riveter was urging women to work in factories, not ship out overseas. Most young women were staying in the United States and helping out on the home front. “They were being pulled away one by one, and I had no playmates,” Davis recalls. All five of her brothers had already joined up. When Romay Johnson Davis was in her 20s, she decided to do something millions of young men across the country were doing: enlist in World War II.

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