Remembering the 6888th Postal Battalion

The Scuttlebutt: Understanding Military Culture

The Veterans Breakfast Club invites you to join us on Thursday, October 16 at 7:00pm Eastern for a special online conversation with author Brenda Partridge-Brown about her new book, Echoes of a Little Brown Soldier Girl. The program will be held on VBC Zoom and livestreamed to our Facebook and YouTube pages.

Brenda’s book tells the story of her mother, Willie Belle Irvin-Partridge, who served in the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion during World War II. Known as the “Six Triple Eight,” the 6888th was the only all-female, predominantly Black U.S. Army unit sent overseas. Their task was both monumental and essential: to clear a massive backlog of more than 17 million pieces of undelivered mail and restore the flow of letters that sustained morale for American troops in Europe. With the motto “No Mail, Low Morale,” the women of the 6888th completed in just three months what had been expected to take six, all while facing racism, sexism, and the daily challenges of wartime service.

Through family memories, archival research, and military records, Brenda Partridge-Brown reconstructs her mother’s remarkable story and places it in the broader context of a unit whose achievements remained largely overlooked for decades. She also describes the long struggle to secure public recognition for the 6888th, which culminated in the award of the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022.

This program is an opportunity to hear about an extraordinary group of women who made history, and about one daughter’s journey to bring her mother’s service out of the shadows and into the light. Join us on October 16 as we honor the legacy of the 6888th and listen to the echoes of a “little brown soldier girl” whose courage and devotion deserve to be remembered.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life for sponsoring this event!