Romay Davis, US Army veteran who made sure soldiers got their post during the Second World War – obituary

Romay Davis, who has died aged 104, was a member of the only US Army Corps unit composed entirely of black women to be sent overseas during the Second World War; the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, known as “Six Triple Eight”, ensured that post from back home was delivered to troops in Europe, their work fuelled by their motto of “no mail, low morale”.

She was born Romay Johnson in Virginia on October 29 1919, the only girl among six children. She was working for the US Mint in Washington when the Second World War broke out.

Her five brothers all enlisted and, wanting to play her part in the war effort, she became one of 855 black women to join the Six Triple Eight, which was part of the Women’s Army Corps created by President Roosevelt – though it was only at the insistence of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, that African American units were added.

But black personnel found that Jim Crow was not restricted to civilian life: living quarters, mess halls, recreational facilities and even water fountains were segregated.

The Six Triple Eight was sent to Britain and given six months to clear a two-year backlog of 18 million pieces of mail, most of it festering in rat-infested hangars; working in shifts around the clock, they managed it in three months, handling 195,000 pieces of mail a day.

Romay Johnson worked in the motor pool, driving and maintaining lorries and delivering the post. She found England to be rather damp, she recalled, but enjoyed France, where the Six Triple Eight were sent a month after the end of the war in Europe to begin working on the additional mountains of mail there.

They were feted with a victory parade in Rouen and invited into people’s homes for dinner, Romay recalled: “They were glad to have us.”

At war’s end she received an honourable discharge from the Army, and wanted to enter medical school but was told that at 26 she was too old

Instead, she moved to New York and attended Traphagen School of Fashion, going on to spend three decades designing children’s clothes. She married an airline executive and they moved to Ecuador in South America but the marriage was shortlived; her husband had been in the armed forces and hankered for the military life.

In 1955 she married Jerry Davis, a carpenter working for the New York subway system. When she retired from the fashion world they moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where she continued making clothes and dabbling in property.

When Jerry died from Alzheimer’s disease in 1999 Romay Davis was determined to remain active. At 73 she took up karate and went on to gain a black belt in taekwondo. In her 80s she took a job at a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Montgomery, where she organised the shelves and dealt with customers – though she was not a success at the tills, she recalled: “Because I talked to too many people, I held up the line.”

She was still working five days a week at 101, usually driving herself to work, and in 2020 the company founded the Romay Davis Belonging, Inclusion and Diversity Grant Program in her honour. Montgomery celebrated her 101st birthday with a parade and proclaimed it as Romay Davis Day.

In 2022 she received the Congressional Gold Medal, and was also presented with a Second World War women’s Army Corps uniform, as her own had been stolen shortly after demob. A motorcycle motorcade of 30 Buffalo Soldier Riders escorted her to the ceremony.

In January this year she accepted a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal on behalf of her brother Purcell, who had also served in the war but had died in 2002. Another brother, Stan, also received the CGM.

Romay Davis’s story was one of 12 featured in the 2023 documentary Black Uniform, and the same year the National WWII Museum in New Orleans celebrated Veterans Day with an interactive holographic exhibit of Romay Davis, who had spent three days with filmmakers creating it.

Romay Davis, born October 29 1919, died June 21 2024