Hello Girls, formally the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, were American female switchboard operators in World War I. During the war, these switchboard operators were sworn into the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Until 1977 they were officially categorized as civilian "contract employees" of the US Army. This corps was formed in 1917 from a call by General John J. Pershing to improve the worsening state of communications on the Western front. Early applicants had to be bilingual in English and French to ensure that orders would be understood by anyone. Over 7,000 women applied, but only 450 were accepted. Many of these women were former switchboard operators or employees at telecommunications companies. They completed their Signal Corps training at various sites, including Camp Franklin, now a part of Fort George G. Meade in Maryland.
History of the term The term "Hello Girls" was coined for female telephone switchboard operators in the US, who greeted callers with "hello" when they signaled to place a call. An early published reference to "hello girls" is in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court written in 1889: "The humblest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land".
Service
In September 1917, as male recruits were being shipped to France, the commanders of various Army camps in the continental United States began asking for permission to build facilities to house women telephone operators to maintain their communications. Although the War Department declared that no women should be employed, except nurses attached to hospitals, the Signal Corps and AT&T convinced Secretary of War Newton Baker that the highly trained, experienced women operators were essential. Barracks for women began to be built in October. To assuage public concern, Baker permitted women to be hired only when men were unavailable. He then ordered that the women be under constant supervision, and that they must be "of mature age and high moral character". The communication difficulties in France, due to a shortage of switchboard operators and the language differences, frustrated Pershing. Several officers in the Signal Corps proposed that they recruit bilingual American women. Agreeing, Pershing sent a November 8, 1917, cable:
On account of the great difficulty of obtaining properly qualified men, request organization and dispatch to France a force of Woman telephone operators all speaking French and English equally well. The initial staffing requirements, specified by Pershing, were three chief operators, nine supervising operators, 78 local and long-distance operators, 10 substitutes, and one man (a commissioned captain) to generally supervise traffic. Pershing was aware of the contributions women had made to the war front and had even called on female clerical workers to serve so that more men could be moved to the Front. Recruiting focused on fluency in French, as that was presumed to be the more difficult qualification to meet. AT&T offered to provide telephone operating training to bilingual recruits who lacked switchboard experience. Most of the women who served ended up being from urban areas of the United States and Canada where there was more access to this technology. These women were mostly single, well educated, and independent. The average age of employment was 26, which was young for the time, but most had worked previous jobs and many had at least one foreign-born parent. Finally, they had all proclaimed the spirit of patriotism for the Allied cause before heading on their way. In keeping with Army policies at that time, all women were white although one African American woman, Renee Messelin aka Ellarane Caldwell, did join the unit by claiming that she was white. After training, the first operators, under the lead of Chief Operator Grace Banker, left for Europe in March 1918. Members of this unit were soon operating telephones in many exchanges of the American Expeditionary Forces in Paris, Chaumont, and seventy-five other French locations as well as British locations in London, Southampton, and Winchester. The Chief Operator of the Second American Unit of Telephone Operators was Inez Crittenden of California. By July 1918, the Army telephone service in France tripled the number of calls per day due to the addition of the women operators. Soon, more American-built circuits had been added to locations in France, reducing reliance on French switchboards. The Signal Corps relaxed the bilingual requirement for new women recruits. In September 1918, Pershing informed the War Department of the immediate need for 130 additional operators and for 40 more every six weeks through 1919. The War Department was not equipped to provide housing for the women operators overseas and reached an agreement with the YWCA to take over billeting, supplies, and chaperonage for the telephone operator units. During the Meuse–Argonne offensive, a team of telephone operators accompanied Pershing to Souilly, where they maintained communications around the clock. A YWCA secretary accompanied the team and arranged billeting for the women in an old shed that had been used to house French troops during the Battle of Verdun. Each of these operators near the front line managed 50 phone lines connected to the Army's Operations Section. As described by one of the operators:
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