KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- On Monday, President Biden signed the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for 2025, which included legislation to award Congressional Gold Medals to the women of the WWI U.S. Army Signal Corps. The group, nicknamed the "Hello Girls", of 223 telephone operators were the first female soldiers to be deployed to a combat zone in United States history. A Mother’s Mission: Honoring her fallen son by helping heroes Missouri Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver and Sam Graves, as well as Kansas Congresswoman Sharice Davids, introduced the bill that posthumously awards the women with the highest civilian honor that Congress can award. “As someone whose uncle was a Tuskegee Airman,” Congressman Cleaver said. “I know firsthand how important these recognitions are to the families of those who defended our freedom, and I’m thankful that the descendants of the Hello Girls will receive formal appreciation from a grateful nation for their loved one’s service to the United States when we needed them most.” The National WWI Museum and Memorial has two Hello Girls uniforms on display, as well as a headset that they used while operating the phone lines. Lora Vogt, VP of Education and Interpretation at The World War I Museum and Memorial explained that men used to do that work before the Hello Girls arrived. “The United States recruited women who were bilingual they needed to speak both English and French and be capable of operating these very complex at the time, telephone operating systems,” she said. “Many of them had actually served as telephone operators already and so they were used to that job.” According to Vogt, there were more than 7,000 women who applied to be Hello Girls, but only 223 were selected. “These are women who are incredibly well educated, they are bilingual, this is just an elite group of females who went to serve on the front line and really break a lot of barriers.” “Inattention” a leading factor in deadly Missouri crashes: MSHP She said they worked in the office of John J. Pershing and would hear artillery shells explode from their switchboards, and were even issued gas masks. While the Hello Girls deployed to a combat zone, Vogt said that “it wasn’t until the 1970s that they were officially given veteran status.” And even though public recognition for their service wouldn’t come until more than 100 years later, Vogt says it provides us the opportunity to tell their story and remember their service, when we may not have gotten the chance to.   “It’s so important because it shines again this light so that present day, we pay closer attention to these lesser-known stories.”