![]() ![]() Along the way, their commanding officer, also a Black woman, told off a general and then three of their members were killed in a jeep accident. Uncovering the history of the unit was the easy part: they set sail to Europe, their troop ship was chased by a German U-Boat, they cleared the mail backlog in England, they went to France and did the same. ![]() My biggest surprise was how many books that had already been written about The Six Triple Eight. I didn’t expect to find many resources when I set out to do my research. I immediately knew that I had to write a story about them. They had enlisted and put themselves in harm’s way too to help win the war. Black women were not just sitting at home while their men had gone off to fight the war. It was a “whoa!” moment when I first saw that image of 6888th, or informally known as The Six Triple Eight. ![]() Intellectually, I had been aware of the Women’s Army Corps and that Black women had served in the Corps. I have always been a bit of a geek for the histories of World War II and of African-American women. It was only a few years ago that I became aware of this battalion, when I stumbled upon a picture of Black women in uniform marching in what had to have been Europe during the war. My debut novel Sisters In Arms follows the lives of two fictional African-American women who join the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) during World War II and ultimately become members of the 6888th Postal Battalion Directory, the only all-Black and all-female American unit to be deployed to Europe during the war. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |