The centennial of World War I has prompted historians to revisit the experiences of many of its largely forgotten participants. In her captivating book The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers, Elizabeth Cobbs draws our attention to a group of women whose historical importance far outstripped their numbers. Known colloquially as the Hello Girls, the Signal Corps operators who connected telephone calls for the American military played a crucial role in the war, pushed open the doors to women's military service, and ultimately helped to transform the place of women in the United States.

As the US military prepared to enter the Great War in 1917, it needed to build and then operate an extensive telephone network that would ensure instant communications across the Western Front. In part because women had been proven more efficient than men at connecting calls, and in part to free men for other military work, the army's Signal Corps recruited women, then sent 223 to Europe with the American Expeditionary Force. Although few Americans believed that women had any business in war, the spirited group felt an obligation to serve, willingly endured the same hazards and discomforts as the men they served alongside, and aspired to work as close to the front lines as possible.

Cobbs follows the women as they navigated their uncertain and conspicuous place in the overwhelmingly male military. Although they swore military oaths, were subject to army discipline, wore army uniforms, and even received the praise of General John Pershing, who hailed the women for their dedication and proficiency while under great duress, they served without military rank. The armistice ended their service but began their much longer war to secure recognition as veterans.

Cobbs personalizes the women's struggles and points to the larger meanings of the hurdles they faced. The Hello Girls were not, strictly, “America's first women soldiers,” as the subtitle suggests, but the distinction of “first” is in many ways less significant than that of “soldiers.” As the United States conscripted and mobilized a force to fight an industrialized war on another continent, it depended on far greater numbers of service members to perform a dizzying array of support roles than it did to fight. Integrating women into these support roles further problematized the transformation of the US military and the meaning of soldiering. Men's, and particularly male veterans’, efforts to exclude women from being considered and recognized as soldiers highlights the centrality of martial service to notions of full citizenship.

Cobbs also places the Hello Girls in the context of the fight for woman suffrage and broader twentieth-century feminist movements. These connections are one of Cobbs's most significant insights about the Hello Girls, yet they also raise important questions. She effectively demonstrates, for example, that some politicians, most notably President Woodrow Wilson, ultimately supported the suffrage movement because of the wartime contributions of women like the Hello Girls. It is less clear how women in these two groups thought of each other, or whether the Hello Girls connected their wartime service to the vote. Did the linking of wartime service and suffrage more firmly entrench the ideal of martial citizenship in ways that would continue to exclude women from full citizenship in the years to come? Likewise, Cobbs argues that the Hello Girls suggest new ways of thinking about the meanings and impact of feminism. Military and wartime service, even within a hierarchical and patriarchal institution, offered women unparalleled opportunities, whether they claimed the mantle of feminism or not, and those women later relied on the support of people far outside mainstream feminist organizations to secure equal benefits as veterans.

Cobbs recounts the Hello Girls’ wartime and postwar experiences with great skill and makes a clear case that they are central to understanding women's integration of the military and twentieth-century feminism. The Hello Girls is an accessible and engaging read that raises important questions about the place of women in the United States. The US military continues to grapple with the place of female soldiers, even as today's servicewomen have integrated all ranks and positions within the forces. And women continue to debate the feminist merits of military service. One hundred years later, the lessons of the Hello Girls continue to resonate.