In 1916, as the Unit­ed States pre­pared to enter World War I, its mil­i­tary was under­de­vel­oped but its telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor, led by com­pa­nies like Amer­i­can Tele­phone & Tele­graph, was flour­ish­ing. The process for mak­ing a phone call was dif­fer­ent from today; users relied on oper­a­tors, who con­nect­ed calls using intri­cate sig­nal­ing sys­tems. When the U.S. decid­ed to join the war, they enlist­ed AT&T to pro­vide essen­tial tele­com equip­ment but also required trained oper­a­tors, pre­dom­i­nant­ly women, to man­age these sys­tems.

These women need­ed flu­en­cy in French since they would be work­ing in France, lead­ing to an over­whelm­ing response of 223 appli­cants for the posi­tion of tele­phone oper­a­tors, lat­er known as the “Hel­lo Girls.” Despite lack­ing gov­ern­men­tal sup­port, these women pro­vid­ed cru­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices in har­row­ing front­line con­di­tions. Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son ini­tial­ly opposed women’s suf­frage, ensur­ing that their voic­es in pub­lic dis­course remained mut­ed. How­ev­er, their brav­ery and com­pe­tence on the bat­tle­field grad­u­al­ly soft­ened his stance.

Among the oper­a­tors, Grace Banker stood out. After suc­cess­ful train­ing and uni­form fit­tings (which they had to pay for out of pocket—costing around $300), Banker led her team of oper­a­tors sent to France. Despite ful­fill­ing all mil­i­tary pro­to­cols, the Hel­lo Girls were clas­si­fied as con­tract employ­ees, deny­ing them mil­i­tary ben­e­fits that oth­er sol­diers freely received, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant injus­tice.

While the oper­a­tors worked tire­less­ly to facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion among troops, car­ri­er pigeons served as an alter­nate mode of mes­sag­ing in the war, over­com­ing lan­guage bar­ri­ers and logis­ti­cal chal­lenges. The pigeon pro­gram faced ini­tial skep­ti­cism but became invalu­able, ulti­mate­ly employ­ing 4,400 birds. One such pigeon, Cher Ami, became a sym­bol of hero­ism when it deliv­ered vital mes­sages under ene­my fire, help­ing save strand­ed U.S. troops.

Despite their sac­ri­fices, the Hel­lo Girls received lit­tle recog­ni­tion until 1977, when Con­gres­sion­al action final­ly grant­ed them offi­cial mil­i­tary sta­tus after a lengthy strug­gle. Wilson’s acknowl­edg­ment of women’s con­tri­bu­tions to the war effort led to the grad­ual evo­lu­tion of their rights, cul­mi­nat­ing in the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Nine­teenth Amend­ment after decades of strug­gle, ensur­ing that suf­frage was earned through relent­less per­se­ver­ance.