[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 692 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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117th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                 S. 692

 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

                             March 10, 2021

  Mr. Tester (for himself, Mr. Moran, Ms. Hassan, 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''.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal 
Act of 2021''.

SEC. 2. 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 overseas. 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 European 
        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 
        operating was largely sex-segregated. Hired for their speed in 
        connecting 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 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 positions 
        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 immediate 
        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 established rotating 8-hour shifts and gave male 
        soldiers the overnight 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 
                Pershing;
                    (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 
        commendations, many signed by General Pershing himself, for 
        ``exceptionally meritorious and conspicuous services'' in 
        ``Advance Sections'' 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 
        communications 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 operations.
            (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 
        soldiers, 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 
        acknowledge the military service of the Women's Airforce 
        Service Pilots (referred to in this section as ``WASPs'') of 
        World War II and ``the service of any person in any other 
        similarly situated group the members of which rendered service 
        to the Armed Forces of the United States in a capacity 
        considered civilian employment or contractual service at the 
        time such service was rendered''.
            (28) On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed 
        the legislation described in paragraph (27) into law as the GI 
        Bill Improvement Act of 1977 (Public Law 95-202; 91 Stat. 
        1433).
            (29) The Signal Corps telephone operators applied for, and 
        were granted, status as veterans in 1979.
            (30) Only 33 of the operators who had returned home after 
        the war were still alive to receive their Victory Medals and 
        official discharge papers, which were finally awarded in 1979.
            (31) One of the women, Olive Shaw from Massachusetts, 
        returned to the United States after the war, where she worked 
        on the professional staff of Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers. 
        Shaw lived to receive her honorable discharge and was the first 
        burial when the Massachusetts National Cemetery opened on 
        October 11, 1980. Shaw's uniform is on display at the National 
        World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.
            (32) Upon receipt of her honorable discharge at a ceremony 
        in her home in Marine City, Michigan, ``Hello Girl'' Oleda 
        Joure Christides raised the paper to her lips and kissed it. 
        The only thing Christides ever wanted from the Federal 
        Government was a flag on her coffin.
            (33) On July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into 
        law Public Law 111-40 (123 Stat. 1958), which awarded the WASPs 
        the Congressional Gold Medal for their service to the United 
        States.
            (34) For their role as pioneers who paved the way for all 
        women in uniform, and for service that was essential to victory 
        in World War I, the ``Hello Girls'' merit similar recognition.

SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL.

    (a) Award Authorized.--The Speaker of the House of Representatives 
and the President pro tempore of the Senate shall make appropriate 
arrangements for the award, on behalf of Congress, of a single gold 
medal of appropriate design in honor of the female telephone operators 
of the Army Signal Corps (commonly known as the ``Hello Girls''), in 
recognition of those operators'--
            (1) pioneering military service;
            (2) devotion to duty; and
            (3) 60-year struggle for--
                    (A) recognition as soldiers; and
                    (B) veterans' benefits.
    (b) Design and Striking.--For the purposes of the award described 
in subsection (a), the Secretary of the Treasury (referred to in this 
Act as the ``Secretary'') shall strike the gold medal with suitable 
emblems, devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the Secretary.
    (c) Smithsonian Institution.--
            (1) In general.--After the award of the gold medal under 
        subsection (a), the medal shall be given to the Smithsonian 
        Institution, where the medal shall be available for display, as 
        appropriate, and made available for research.
            (2) Sense of congress.--It is the sense of Congress that 
        the Smithsonian Institution should make the gold medal received 
        under paragraph (1) available elsewhere, particularly at--
                    (A) appropriate locations associated with--
                            (i) the Army Signal Corps;
                            (ii) the Women in Military Service for 
                        America Memorial;
                            (iii) the U.S. Army Women's Museum; and
                            (iv) the National World War I Museum and 
                        Memorial; and
                    (B) any other location determined appropriate by 
                the Smithsonian Institution.

SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS.

    Under such regulations as the Secretary may prescribe, the 
Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in bronze of the gold medal 
struck under section 3 at a price sufficient to cover the costs of the 
medals, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and 
overhead expenses.

SEC. 5. NATIONAL MEDALS.

    (a) National Medals.--Medals struck under this Act are national 
medals for purposes of chapter 51 of title 31, United States Code.
    (b) Numismatic Items.--For purposes of section 5134 of title 31, 
United States Code, all medals struck under this Act shall be 
considered to be numismatic items.
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