Switchboard Soldiers Quotes

“Appalled by these injustices, officials at AT&T petitioned the War Department on the telephone operators’ behalf. For years, many of the Signal Corps officers who had served with the women, including General George Squier, Major Robert B. Owens, Major Roy Coles, Captain Ernest Wessen, and Major Stephen Walmsley, lobbied the U.S. Army, the American Legion, the War Department, and Congress in a determined effort to get the telephone operators the status, recognition, and benefits they deserved. Their efforts were in vain. As one congressman confided to Captain Wessen, “There is no doubt in the world but that your telephone operators were combatants, and should have been bona-fide members of the military establishment, but if we provide for this tiny group at this time we shall be forced to reopen the cases of thousands of other applicants.” In the years that followed, some of the members of the Women’s Telephone Unit, led by the indomitable Merle Egan Anderson, undertook a new mission to acquire from Congress recognition of their status as veterans. Finally, in 1977, more than sixty years after the end of World War I, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill awarding the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps honorable discharges and World War I Victory Medals, officially recognizing them as military veterans. By that time, only fifty of the Signal Corps telephone operators remained alive to celebrate this last victory, including Cordelia Dupuis, Merle Egan, Esther Fresnel, and Louise LeBreton.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“Sadly, Distinguished Service Medal recipient Grace Banker was not among them. She had continued to serve with the Signal Corps until the last group of telephone operators departed from Brest aboard the USS Mobile on August 24, 1919. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census indicates that Grace lived at home with her parents and two sisters, and that she was employed as a secretary with the YWCA, but telephone directories for Passaic, New Jersey, from 1919 through 1923 all list her occupation as telephone operator. On March 4, 1922, Grace married Eugene Hiram Paddock, a civil engineer from New York City, with whom she would have four children. She died on December 17, 1960, after a long battle with cancer.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“After Armistice Day, the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps were among the last to depart Europe, for they were needed to handle calls and translations throughout the peace conference. Months after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, they managed telephone communications for the Army of Occupation and the repatriation of nearly two million officers, soldiers, and civilian employees. In the two years that the women served, they connected more than twenty-six million calls and contributed immeasurably to the Allied victory in the Great War. Upon their return to the United States, the switchboard soldiers, proud of their service and eager to resume their peacetime lives, applied for veterans’ benefits and sought to join veterans’ groups. When asked to produce their discharge papers, the women contacted the War Department, only to be informed that they were not veterans. Although they had worn uniforms and military insignia, had saluted superior officers, had served in combat settings, and had not been free to resign their jobs at will as civilians could, the government insisted that they had never been more than paid civilian employees serving under contract. All of the women had sworn military oaths to serve their country as members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, some of them multiple times as they moved through the application process or were promoted during the war. Not one of them had signed an employment contract. Shocked and heartbroken, the women realized that the nation they had served with such distinction now denied that they had ever been soldiers. They did not qualify to receive honorable discharges. They were not eligible for medical benefits, medals, or bonuses. They could not march in Memorial Day parades or join their local chapters of the VFW. They could not call themselves veterans. Before Inez Crittenden sailed for France, she had purchased war risk insurance, a transaction witnessed by a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps. In May 1919, a family member applied to collect on the policy, but a claims officer for the U.S. Treasury decreed that Crittenden had never actually been a member of the military, rendering the policy null and void.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“Like the millions of men who served in the War to End All Wars, the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps answered their country’s call to duty, served with honor, and played an essential role in achieving the Allied victory. Their perseverance, courage, and dedication helped convince a skeptical president, Congress, and public that women too deserved the right to vote. Having bravely accepted the responsibilities of citizenship, including the willingness to sacrifice their lives in defense of democracy, they had proven themselves beyond all doubt well deserving of a citizen’s fundamental rights. In serving their country, the valiant switchboard soldiers of the Women’s Telephone Unit broke down barriers and cleared the way for generations of women who would follow after, not only in the military, but in all aspects of public and professional life.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“It helps to remember that the one who loses their temper has relinquished control of a situation. The one who remains calm controls the outcome.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“She had faced hardship and loss in her life, but she had never been confronted with imminent danger, with the sudden likelihood of her own death. She wanted to believe that she would be brave in that moment, but she did not know.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“Schrecklichkeit, the policy of terror the Germans implemented in their conquered nation: the brutal suppression of Belgian resistance, the massacre of 674 civilians in Dinant, the retaliatory burning of medieval Louvain, the incarceration of hostages, executions, more massacres of civilians, the seemingly endless burning of whole towns and villages— The atrocities soon became known as the Rape of Belgium, a phrase that sent icy shivers down Valerie’s spine.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“Germany has declared war on France and Belgium,” her father repeated, pausing to listen between sentences. “This is their third war declaration this week, having already declared war on Russia and invaded Luxembourg. German troops have moved into Belgium at three points, violating their neutrality policy. It is reported that there are already one million French men near the frontier line, but France is at an even greater risk with Germany’s invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium, right on their border. France has very limited defenses along the Belgian border, making it vulnerable to attack on that front.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“Great Britain had issued an ultimatum to Berlin. The Germans must cease military activity along the Belgian border or provoke war with Britain as well. Belgium's King Albert had made a formal appeal for help to France and Britain as guarantors of its neutrality by international treaty.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“All summer long the dreadful news from Europe had troubled their family, ever since that fateful June day when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, had been assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. Long-simmering disagreements between rivals had boiled over as friendly nations strengthened their alliances and locked arms against enemies. Marie’s beloved France was an ally of Russia, which in turn had an alliance with Serbia; thus in the steadily worsening conflict, her homeland was opposed to Austria-Hungary and its longtime ally, Germany. A few weeks after the archduke’s assassination, Austria had attacked Serbia for harboring terrorists. In response, Russia had moved troops to the border it shared with Germany to discourage Kaiser Wilhelm II from strengthening his ally’s position. Diplomats from many nations had worked frantically to restore calm ever since, but it seemed to Marie that their voices were drowned out by the accusations of treachery and threats of greater military force flying back and forth above their heads.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers

“her as she gracefully seated herself. “It helps to remember that the one who loses their temper has relinquished control of a situation. The one who remains calm controls the outcome.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Switchboard Soldiers