Romay Johnson Davis

Romay Johnson Davis

Courtesy of the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Quick Facts

Significance:

Member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and World War Two Veteran

Place of Birth:

King George County, Virginia

Date of Birth:

October 29, 1919

Romay Catherine Johnson was born on October 29, 1919, in King George County, Virginia. She was the middle child of six, the only girl. Her father was a rigger for the Navy. He worked at the Naval Proving Ground helping to test armor plating for ships. Her mother worked as a nanny for local families. There was no African American high school in King George County, so she attended numerous high schools in New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C., staying with various family members. She graduated from Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C.

After graduating high school, Johnson took a job operating a hospital elevator. Later, she worked for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. Her job entailed placing paper on an inked mat that had been engraved for currency. She would visually scan the prints for defects or fingerprints and pull those aside so they would not continue further into the currency-making process.

After entering World War II, the United States moved to expand its military capacity. In the spring of 1942, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), later known as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was formed. On May 18, 1943, Johnson volunteered for the Army. Her five brothers were already serving in the military. She stated, “I quit to go with my boys.” She attended basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

After completing basic training, she was assigned to the motor pool at Camp Breckinridge in Morganfield, Kentucky. While there she learned to be a mechanic and a driver. Johnson was put in charge of a jeep, two staff cars, a weapons carrier, and a truck. One part of her job was to drive officers to various meetings on post and in the local area. While at Cape Breckinridge, Johnson volunteered for overseas duty and was selected to join the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for training before shipping out.

On February 3, 1945, the first group of women from the 6888th sailed to Great Britain. The voyage took 11 days, during which they survived close encounters with Nazi U-boats. They arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 14, 1945. The 6888th was then stationed in Birmingham, England, where they discovered warehouses full of undelivered mail. The unit worked in three shifts around the clock seven days a week to clear the backlog. They adopted the motto, “No Mail, Low Morale”—mail was the only connection the men fighting on the front lines had with friends and family back home. Before the 6888th, mail delivery was intermittent at best. The morale of the soldiers was waning because they had no connections outside the military.

The women developed a new system of organizing and tracking mail. The system required tracking individual servicemembers by maintaining about seven million information cards. The cards included serial numbers to distinguish different people with the same name. They also tried to deliver mail with insufficient information through this system. The hardest part for the unit was returning mail when it was addressed to a servicemember who died. Yet, thanks to their system, they were able to process approximately 195,000 pieces of mail per day. The U.S. Army thought it would take the 6888th six months to clear the mail backlog in Birmingham. The 6888th accomplished the work in three months.

On June 9, 1945, Johnson and the rest of the 6888th were transferred to Rouen, France. They were there to clear another mail backlog. In France, the Six Triple Eight worked alongside French civilians and German prisoners of war. In December 1945, Johnson was honorably discharged at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

After being discharged Johnson took advantage of the G.I. Bill and attended the New York Fashion Institute and later the Traphagen School of Fashion. In 1953, she designed and made patterns for children’s clothing at Glen of Michigan in New York City. This position allowed her to travel the country buying fabrics and tracking fashion trends. 

In 1957, she met Jerry Davis, a carpenter, at a party and they fell in love. She said her husband ‘taught me how to laugh.” They were married for 42 years until Davis died in 1999.

In the 1970s she returned to school and earned a master’s degree in education from New York University. That was not the end of her thirst for knowledge. She taught herself taxidermy, worked as a real estate agent, built furniture, and learned to paint. At age 78, she earned a second-degree black belt in taekwondo.

As of this writing, Romay Johnson Davis is the oldest living veteran of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. She was presented with a Congressional Gold Medal in honor of her work with the 6888th in the summer of 2022.