It’s often called the first high-tech war; it sounds quaint compared to today’s technology, but the tech in question—the telephone—helped transform warfare during WWI. For the first time, telephone communications allowed the military to reliably coordinate troop movements against the enemy and receive orders from behind the frontline.
Known as “Hello Girls,” women switchboard operators from the U.S. Army Signal Corps accounted for nearly 80% of all telephone operators during the war. Most were bilingual in English and French and could generally connect five calls in the time it took a man to do one - they were the IT specialists of their era.
Additionally, roughly 22,000 female nurses joined the ranks serving in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and even Siberia, as well as on the home front.
Though the Army prohibited females to enlist, a loophole didn’t ban them from joining the Navy. More than 11,000 women joined the Naval ranks and served as radio operators, messengers, stenographers, clerks, truck drivers, mechanics and cryptographers - jobs typically performed by men.
“She served with exceptional ability as chief operator in the Signal Corps exchange at General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces, and later in a similar capacity at 1st Army Headquarters. By untiring devotion to her exacting duties under trying conditions she did much to assure the success of the telephone service during the operations of the 1st Army against the St. Mihiel salient and to the north of Verdun [Meuse Argonne].”