Hopefully, many of you have already seen the movie “The Six Triple Eight,” which is now streaming on Netflix after a short run in selected theaters. The film is based on the true story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black and all-female battalion, in World War II. It centers on their commanding officer, Charity Adams, played by actress Kerry Washington.
The film showed some of the adversity the women faced while trying to contribute to the war effort. It’s generally a feel-good movie intended to inform and entertain. When they faced racism, it was typically centered on the actions of single individuals like fictional characters General Halt or Chaplain Clemens without acknowledging how deep systemic racism ran in the yet-to-be-integrated armed forces.
I ended watching the movie wondering how much was true and what was left out.
“Sir, over my dead body, Sir!” —Major Charity Adams
Did Charity Adams really tell General Holt, “Sir, over my dead body, Sir,” after he said he’d disband the Six Triple Eight? Damn straight, she did. While General Halt was fictional, Adams did have those words with a general she wouldn’t name, which she outlined in her memoir. It’s a wonder she wasn’t immediately sent to the brig and court-martialed. I never served in the armed forces, but my friends have assured me it’s a wonder her career didn’t end at that moment.
The real general planned to court-martial Adams. She and her team were planning to charge the general, accusing him of violating an order that prohibited racially charged language. The general ultimately dropped his charges, and the Six Triple Eight dropped theirs in a standoff.
You may have wondered which women portrayed were based on real people. Lena Derriecott was real and had known the Jewish pilot Abram David for most of her life. Their relationship is exaggerated in the film, and the letter he wrote before his death was a plot device to move along the movie. Lena didn’t immediately join the Army after high school but joined a nursing program; she entered the Women’s Army Corps a year later. Most enlisted women shown were composite of women with names similar to actual troops.
At the end of the movie, the members of the Six Triple Eight are saluted by several white soldiers when returning from the war. No such thing happened in real life. The women received no real-time honors despite clearing up a backlog of mail delivery in half the allotted six months in England and performing the same function in France. In 2009, an event at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery honored the women and their work. In 2021, legislation was passed by the U.S. Senate to award the women with a Congressional Gold Medal, and they received it in 2022, according to the Truman Library Institute. Only six of the original 855 women lived to receive the medal. The 6888th Battalion continued its mission after WWII, and its numbers dropped to around 300 members. They continued sorting through the remaining undelivered mail in Paris. By 1946, however, the Six Triple Eight Battalion was officially disbanded at Fort Dix, N.J. Major Adams stayed in the military and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
The women of the Six Triple Eight did have a beauty salon, as depicted in the film. They created their own because salons in nearby Birmingham, England, didn’t have the curling irons and hair straightening products needed for Black hair anyway. Black army nurses in the area began showing up to the salon built by the 6888 to get their hair done.
What was never shown in the movie was a hint of sexual harassment, assault, and rape which would make their experience different than any other group of women soldiers during WW2. It’s easy to find documentation of American soldiers raping civilian women in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. Over 14,000 civilians were reported raped by American soldiers but try to find a record of a female soldier getting raped, Black or white.
There were a couple of things going on. The military decided to make the rape not an American soldier issue but a Negro issue. If a Black G.I. was nearby, they might be charged with rape without regard to who committed the act. During WW2, 152 American soldiers were tried for rape; of these, 139 were “colored.” Over 70 American soldiers were executed for rape, of whom none were white. This isn’t to say Black soldiers were more inclined to commit rape but more likely to be prosecuted, including public hangings to show the Army was serious.
There is more information to be found about rapes committed by American soldiers of men and boys than on the rape of female soldiers. I found an obscure report saying 22% of the rape victims for which the defendant was executed were military. These reports don’t take into account an environment where female soldiers were discouraged from reporting sexual harassment, assault, and rape or not believed when they did report it.
Male servicemen wrote home about the immorality of WAC women and the high number of pregnancies. It was a ready-made excuse should one of them ever get accused. The following excerpt describes what women in the WAC experienced while overseas:
Many WACs also experienced sexual harassment. One WAC was almost court-martialed, but for a fellow WAC witnessing and testifying, for being pulled onto the lap of a patient who then spanked her as her commanding officer entered the room. Another had to rescue a fellow WAC who was being attacked by a male soldier.
In 1943, male American servicemembers began a slander campaign directed toward their female counterparts that affected all women’s branches of the military, but WACs suffered the most. Many soldiers wrote home to their sisters, girlfriends, and wives, telling stories of sexual immorality and rampant pregnancy among the WACs. — NationalWW2Museum.org
The suggestion that the Black women of the Six Triple Eight weren’t experiencing what all women in the vicinity of U.S. soldiers were is absurd. The closest suggestion of danger in the film is when Major Adams makes sure Lena has an escort back to base from the graveyard when she stays behind to find the grave of Abram David.
There’s one last detail where the movie differs from reality. Three soldiers, not two, died in a jeep accident while riding with male soldiers. They were Mary H. Bankston, Mary Jewel Barlow, and Dolores Mercedes Brown. The film showed two women killed in a truck explosion.
Like every war movie I’ve seen, “The Six Triple Eight” diverges from history to provide an easy-to-follow narrative. I’ve read comments from people who refuse to watch because “It’s a Tyler Perry movie!” I encourage you to read Charity Adams’s memoir, “One Woman’s Army: A Black Woman Remembers the WAC.” Don’t let any issues with Tyler Perry keep you from a history you otherwise might not know.
This article originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of William Spivey's work on Medium.