What comes to mind when you hear the word brave? Possibly it’s a vision of Allied soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy? Maybe the gallant pilots of The Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain? Forget it. The real heroic battle of the second world war was weeding through the backlog of undelivered mail. Yes, you have heard that correctly. This is the subject of The Six Triple Eight, a new Netflix movie based on the real-life slaughter mill/meat grinder world of administrative work performed by the predominantly black women of the 6888 United States Postal Service battalion.
The movie centres around the drama – and I use that word loosely – involved in sorting the mail. By 1944, there was a massive backlog of mail to and from hundreds of thousands of men stationed on the frontlines of Europe. As expected, this was bad for morale because soldiers like to get regular updates from family and loved ones back home. So the bigwigs assigned the 6888 battalion to rectify the situation. And they did. Working professionally and methodically to reduce the backlog. Job done.
There’s nothing else to it. So why did Netflix spend millions of dollars making a two-and-a-half-hour movie about sorting postcards and letters? In progressive circles, there’s been a lot of talk about the lack of black women in war films. It has been a lot easier to insert black men into war movies for the simple reason they were directly involved in the war effort. To comply with 21st Century identity politics, simply give them a uniform and label them brave.
War movies have the advantage of allowing you to tell stories about people who are unknown to the general public. It is a great idea to highlight individuals who were heroes in their own right but whose stories have never been told. Promoting the unsung heroes of the second world war, particularly those from a more diverse background, is not inherently bad. If you scratch the surface and do a little work, you’ll find a wealth of options.
Consider Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped 2,500 Jewish children escape the Warsaw Ghetto by procuring new identities and safe homes for them. Or Virginia Hall, a brilliant OSS agent who worked in Nazi-occupied France, establishing a spy network on her own, arming French commandos, and becoming the only woman to receive the distinguished service cross. Or the Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black fighter unit that flew dangerous missions over Europe, destroying hundreds of aircraft. How about Freddie and Truus Oversteegen, teenage Dutch sisters who seduced Nazi soldiers and lured them to their deaths? Then there’s the night witches, an all-female bomber unit that dropped bombs on German positions over the eastern front in complete darkness.
The point I’m making is that Hollywood has many stories it could tell about brave and courageous people who deserve more recognition. Are we really supposed to believe that this – a story about an all-black women postal team – is the best they could come up with? Nothing against postal workers; it’s a long and tedious job, but calling it heroic is a bit of a stretch. They were not fighting on the front lines, risking their lives, and not knowing if they would make it home. The 6888 was not delivering vital communication that could have ended the war. They were sorting mail and performing routine administrative work in Birmingham, England. They arrived in February 1945, a few months before the war’s end. Sorry girls, but neatly sealing a stamp or getting a paper cut does not equate to storming a German bunker.
The unit is believed to have received no recognition after the war, but the same could be said for any other postal worker in England at the time. English men and women were sorting the mail at that time; it was dull and repetitive, but it was a job done under the same conditions as everyone else throughout the war. In other words, it was a noble, but not a brave job.
If you want to make a war movie about a brave mail carrier, how about Cher Ami? This was a British homing pigeon used to deliver messages during the first world war, particularly during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in October 1918, which was the largest and deadliest in US military history, costing 350,000 lives. Because runners were frequently killed by the Germans, pigeons were used to send messages. On October 4, hundreds of American soldiers under the command of Major Charles Whittlesey were pinned down by gunfire. Due to miscommunication, the problem was caused by Allied shelling. Whittlesey sent Ami with a message saying, ‘Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake stop it.’ Despite being shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, and with a leg barely holding on by a tendon, Cher Ami returned to division HQ a few minutes after the shelling had stopped. Army medics saved his life. Ami was awarded the Croix de Guerre and died a year later from war injuries. He was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1931. As far as I know, Cher Ami was white and male, thus his story wouldn’t be told now.
I honestly thought we were past the worst of this racialised nonsense. To paraphrase Whittlesey, Netflix, for heaven’s sake, stop it!
