Switchboard Soldiers

Set during World War I, the novel follows three women who become among the first to serve in the United States Army when the U.S. Signal Corps recruits bilingual female telephone operators for overseas duty in France. Their intertwined stories trace the journey from enlistment through training, deployment, and service at exchanges from Paris to the front lines, where their work connecting critical military calls proves essential to the Allied victory.

A prologue set in August 1914 introduces Marie Miossec, a nineteen-year-old aspiring opera singer in Cincinnati, whose French-born parents, both accomplished musicians, host a weekly musicale. Their gathering is shattered by news that Germany has declared war on France and Belgium. Marie's family agonizes over the fate of loved ones abroad while President Wilson proclaims American neutrality.

The main narrative begins in April 1917, as the United States prepares to enter the war. Grace Banker, a twenty-four-year-old telephone operator and instructor at AT&T headquarters in Manhattan, watches her brother Eugene enlist and yearns to contribute more directly. In Los Angeles, Valerie DeSmedt, a twenty-year-old Belgian-American telephone operator, supports her widowed mother's boardinghouse while her younger brother Henri enlists in the American Expeditionary Forces. In Cincinnati, Marie works as a telephone operator and auditions for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra chorus, but when she discovers a Signal Corps recruitment poster seeking French-speaking women, she applies. Her military orders arrive the same day as an invitation to join the chorus, and she chooses the army. Each woman recognizes that her rare combination of telephone expertise and French fluency is exactly what the Signal Corps needs.

Their paths to enlistment reflect their distinct circumstances. Grace applies by letter and undergoes an interview with Captain Ernest Wessen, arguing it would be unpatriotic not to volunteer given her skills. Valerie secures her mother's consent. Marie's emotional outburst during her interview convinces the officers of her commitment. All three swear the military oath and begin intensive training: Grace in New York, Valerie in San Francisco, and Marie in Chicago.

The recruits converge in New York for final preparations. Grace is appointed chief operator of the First Group, the thirty-three women who will be first to deploy. Inez Crittenden, a strict divorcée from San Francisco, leads the Second Group. The operators purchase their uniforms, drill on the rooftop of AT&T headquarters, and endure freezing quarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. Aboard the train from Chicago, Marie meets Corporal Giovanni Rossini of the 307th Infantry. They share hours of conversation and an unexpected kiss before he vanishes from the platform at Grand Central Terminal.

The First Group sails in early March 1918 aboard the camouflaged RMS Celtic. Valerie's Second Group follows on the RMS Carmania, enduring a harrowing crossing marked by influenza among the soldiers, two burials at sea, and a U-boat attack that sinks a merchant steamer in their convoy. Inez orders the operators to sew face masks and wear them outside their cabins, a precaution many resent but that likely saves lives.

Upon reaching France, the operators are divided among several posts. Grace and a select group report to General Pershing's headquarters at Chaumont, where the initially hostile Lieutenant Riser quickly becomes an advocate after witnessing their skill. Grace also grows close to Captain Wilberforce "Mack" MacIntyre, a friendly Australian officer stationed at the headquarters. Marie goes to the Services of Supply base at Tours, the army's logistics hub, where she leads a children's choir of war orphans at the convent where she is quartered and receives a letter from Giovanni explaining his disappearance from the platform. Valerie is posted to Paris, where she works amid German bombardments, once leading her operators in a sprint between falling shells to reach the switchboard.

The operators' performance exceeds expectations, connecting calls far faster than their male counterparts while maintaining absolute secrecy through code names and strict protocols. Grace receives a telegram informing her that her father died a month earlier; devastated, she returns to work after one day, finding solace in the relentless pace of duty.

As the war intensifies, Marie transfers to Neufchâteau, the closest exchange to the front, and then to Ligny-en-Barrois, where General Pershing establishes First Army Headquarters for the Saint-Mihiel offensive. Six operators, later joined by a seventh, handle all calls for the assault. Working twelve-hour shifts, they connect every command and intelligence report. The September 1918 offensive succeeds, liberating territory the Germans had held since 1914.

Headquarters relocates to Souilly for the Meuse-Argonne campaign, and conditions grow harsher. The operators sleep on cots in wooden barracks with oiled-paper windows, steps from their switchboards. Grace works a twenty-one-hour shift before a YWCA hostess insists she rest. During the crisis of the "Lost Battalion," when companies of the 77th Division are surrounded by Germans for six days, Marie fears for Giovanni, whose regiment fights to break through. Grace quietly arranges for Colonel Hitt, their Signal Corps commanding officer, to confirm Giovanni is not among the casualties. In October, a fire set by a German prisoner of war destroys the operators' quarters. Marie helps rescue the piano, and the operators on duty refuse to leave the switchboards until Colonel Hitt forcibly evacuates them.

In Paris, Valerie is promoted to supervisor and teaches Signal Corps men to operate switchboards, facing down a sergeant who refuses to take orders from a woman. When Inez departs for the Committee on Public Information (CPI), the U.S. government's wartime publicity agency, Valerie throws her a farewell party. As the influenza pandemic intensifies, Valerie discovers weeks later that Inez has been hospitalized. On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, Valerie joins jubilant Parisians in the streets, then returns to learn that Inez died that morning. Valerie arranges for her burial in the U.S. military cemetery with her rank noted as "Chief Operator."

At Souilly, Grace helps a frantic telegraph captain telephone the armistice announcement to stations across the front after his lines go down, racing to reach every exchange before soldiers unknowingly continue fighting. Marie bows her head in silent prayer, then returns to the switchboard.

After the Armistice, the operators serve at the peace conference at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris and later volunteer for the Army of Occupation, the Allied force stationed in postwar Germany, in Koblenz. Grace receives the Distinguished Service Medal from General Hunter Liggett, commander of the First Army, at a full military review. Captain Mack, the Australian officer she has grown close to during the war, visits to reclaim the Distinguished Service Cross he had entrusted to her for safekeeping before a dangerous mission to the front; they part amicably, each returning to their own country. Marie applies for discharge, and at a Paris train station, she spots a limping soldier boarding a departing train. She runs after it, shouting Giovanni's name. He leaps off the moving train and calls to her as "Cherubino," the Mozart character whose aria first drew them together. They embrace, and Marie dares to imagine they have seen the last of war.

An Author's Note reveals that upon returning home, the switchboard soldiers were denied veterans' status by the War Department, which claimed they had been civilian contract workers. After decades of advocacy, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill in 1977 granting the women honorable discharges and Victory Medals. By then, only fifty of the original operators remained alive.