The Hello Girls: The Women Who Helped Win WWI...and Were Forgotten

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Also, just go on whatever platform you listen to it and please rate and review it. It really helps us in getting discovered. And if you have a suggestion for anything, just reach out to us at our website, True Weird Stuff dot com. And thank you so much for listening. In the digital age, it is hard to comprehend that we once communicated by a system of sockets on a switchboard.

Telephone operators, typically women, would connect people by connecting the correct plug into the corresponding socket. The technology began quite crudely with the first switchboard crafted from carriage bolts, teapot handles, and bustle wire in 1878. Early telephone service was initially available only to subscribers, but as it grew in popularity, private companies would provide the service while local and state governments oversaw regulations.

Also growing in popularity was the job of managing the switchboard. Initially, teenage boys were used as operators, but they failed to prove that they were up to the task. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell hired Emma Nutt, the first female switchboard operator. Her warm cadence and efficient switching convinced Bell that women, not men, should be at the helm of the new technology.

The telephone operator. Once upon a time, it was a job that employed over a million people, mostly women. By 1950, about one in every 13 working women was a professional switchboard operator. Our early telephone system was built for them. Telephones in your town were connected by wire to one central exchange. A person who wanted to speak to you would dial that exchange and tell the operator your name.

The operator would then plug into the corresponding socket and you were connected. If you lived in a rural area, the local telephone exchange might be located at the post office. If you lived in a big city, the telephone switchboards were big too, requiring teams of operators, some of whom wore roller skates so that they could move quickly from socket to socket.

When World War I broke out across Europe, the Allied powers struggled with signal communication between gigantic, modern armies from multiple nations. The answer was a newer technology still being perfected back home and in Europe, the telephone. Telephones and switchboards for use on the battlefield were created and thousands of miles of telephone lines were erected or buried across Europe.

America entered the war in April of 1917, shifting the momentum of the conflict to the Allied powers. Later that year, the American Expeditionary Forces were created, led by General John Pershing. A key decision by General Pershing upon his arrival in France was a staffing change. But this was no ordinary personnel move.

To improve communication, Pershing ordered the men in charge of the switchboards to be replaced by women, specifically well-trained American switchboard operators. This was a time before women even had the right to vote, before women were allowed to serve in the army. Yet thousands of women volunteered for duty in World War I and 100 were chosen and shipped off to Paris.

Eventually, they'd be joined by 113 more women, all serving in the Army Signal Corps Telephone Unit, where they earned the nickname, the Hello Girls. True. Stuff. When President Jimmy Carter signed the 1977 GI Bill Improvement Act into law, it was a huge win for veterans, a real increase in benefits and education, particularly for veterans of the Vietnam War.

The bill did a few other things, too, things that represented landmark recognition for women in the armed forces, beginning with the Women's Air Force Service Pilots, aka the WASPs, a cohort of more than 1,000 female pilots who, during World War I, ferried over 50 percent of the combat aircraft within the United States during the war years.

WASPs flew at 126 bases across the U.S., where they also towed targets for gunnery training and served as instrument instructors for the Eastern Flying Training Command. Thirty-eight of these women died in their service, 11 in training and 27 during missions. Yet it took until 1977 for these flyers to be granted veteran status with limited benefits.

It's super gross that so many veterans groups and the American Legion battled Carter tooth and nail over this recognition for the WASPs. Gross, but not surprising. The WASPs had fought for nearly 30 years to win those limited benefits, which is honestly an outrage. But there was one group that had waited even longer, 60 years.

That's how long it took for the U.S. government to acknowledge the Army Signal Corps female operators, 60 years to recognize the military service these women have performed on behalf of their country. Then it took another two years, 1979, for the Hello Girls to finally receive their honorable discharges from the Army.

Fewer than 20 were still alive to claim their benefits. Fewer than 20 to accept their World War One victory medals. America, in the midst of a world sharpening its swords, names Woodrow Wilson president and indulges in the luxury of a few mild reforms. Great names in American history, William Howard Taft, Viscount Bryce, the British ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador, Uncle Joe Cannon, Charles Evans Hughes and William Jennings Bryan said, Wilson, this is not a day of triumph.

It is a day of dedication. Here must not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Imperialism, militarism, nationalism, all the standard ingredients needed for a solid geopolitical conflict came to an explosive head at 11. 15 a.m. on June 28th, 1914. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand Karl Ludwig Josef Maria of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, along with his wife, Sophie.

In addition to sporting a plump pair of chipmunk cheeks, graced by what can only be described as an absolutely lush and heroic mustache, Archduke Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His murderer was a 19-year-old Bosnian, and that act of violence led to Austria-Hungary declaring war against Serbia.

Russia jumped right in, followed by an aggrieved and irritated Germany. France rolled up next, followed by Great Britain, who promised to defend Belgium, Montenegro and Japan. Italy broke its secret agreement with Germany and Austria-Hungary and jumped in. Oh, man, said the Ottoman Empire, guess it's go time, followed swiftly by Bulgaria.

Now, the United States was in an isolationist sort of mood at the time until a secret telegram written in code happened to come to President Woodrow Wilson's attention. It was called the Zimmermann Telegraph in honor of its author, the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, and the intended recipient was the German minister in Mexico.

We intend to begin on the 1st of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal or alliance on the following basis. Make war together, make peace together, general financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the president of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should on his own initiative invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.

Please call the president's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. Signed Zimmermann. Woodrow Wilson was like, is that a fact? Yeah, I don't think so, Germany. Then Wilson hauled himself off to Congress on April 2nd, 1917, and declared that the world must be made safe for democracy.

Congress agreed and the United States entered World War One. Perhaps you were among the crowds that stormed the Capitol on that fateful day in 1917. Some shouting for war, some crying for peace. Inside the White House, President Woodrow Wilson conferred with advisers and signed the proclamation of war against Germany.

The men present here are gone, but preserved on film, this moment of history remains. In 1917, electricity was a pretty newfangled thing for the world, so you can imagine how low tech battlefield communications were that made planning troop movements and attacks difficult, which was a huge factor in the horrors of prolonged trench warfare.

Dispatch riders were used. Carrier pigeons took to the skies. The British Army ran telegraph and telephone cables on the Western Front. The problem with that was how easily those cables were severed by heavy artillery bombardment. Plus, the German army had zero difficulty intercepting messages delivered via those lines.

Pity the Royal Navy with their semaphore flags and easily hacked wireless telegraphy and the Royal Air Force with pilots rocking flaps and wings as a sort of aerial morse code. But humans are incredibly resourceful and never more so than when we're engaged in the business of slaughtering each other. War inspired the invention of wireless communication, wireless telegraphy, wireless radio and wireless telephony.

The U.S. Army Signal Corps has been around since the 1860s. Its earliest tools were flags and torches. Then came wired telegraphy, then a massive leveling up with the invention of the wired telephone in 1876. By 1901, the army had its first field telephones. Those models operated by hand crank and batteries. Now, jump in time to 1914 on the Western Front.

Picture nearly 500 miles stretching from the English Channel all the way to the Swiss border. Beginning that summer, armies along that line dug themselves deep trenches to dodge machine gun and artillery fire. Those trenches were sometimes nothing but muddy holes gouged in the earth. If you were lucky, you might have sandbags or wooden planks, maybe even some barbed wire.

Soldiers huddled in these sodden pits with nothing visible but a narrow stripe of sky. It was a scene out of Dante's Inferno. The trenches filled with exhausted soldiers unable to ever get dry, busted ammo boxes and spent shells, ragged uniforms, broken helmets, filthy bandages and bits of human bone. The trenches were meant to protect the men inside, which worked so well that the war devolved into a four year stalemate, each side attacking the other as the casualties and the horror mounted and mounted until the land itself was a nightmare of blood and bullets, broken bodies ground into the dirt, every exploding mortar sending men frantically burrowing into the soil to survive.

Primitive as it sounds, the trenches formed a fairly sophisticated network. There could be as many as four trenches running in parallel for as long as a mile. They were dug in a meandering sort of zigzag pattern. Even if an armed enemy combatant managed to get in, any damage he could do, even with a machine gun, was minimized.

Inside the trenches were everything from command posts and first aid stations to latrines and kitchens. There were communication trenches, too, running perpendicular to the main system, which was handy and all as food and mail and orders moved through those tunnels. But there was no getting around the fact that battlefield communications were spotty at best. The technology of the day was limited.

Wireless was unreliable. Wired systems were ever at risk of having cables cut or blown to bits. They had listening posts set up about 60 feet in front of the front trench line. But the soldiers stationed there had only stethoscopes to try to hear enemy movements. Runners had to be deployed to carry messages. If you're thinking, well, that must have been one of the most terrible and dangerous jobs on the Western Front. Yeah, it was.

These soldiers were scrambling through mud, dodging enemy fire, trying not to get swallowed by the countless craters that pocked the ground. It was as close to hell as you could get on this earth. Enter the United States Army Signal Corps. This unit's entire reason for being was to establish and manage communication systems for the armed forces. It was the brainchild of an army doctor named Albert James Meyer, who in 1856 developed a visual communication system that he called Wigwag, flags in the daytime, torches at night.

Congress made the Signal Corps official in 1866 and gave it responsibility for the nation's telegraph system. By 1879, more than 4000 miles of telegraph lines were running along America's western frontier. Lines built, maintained and operated by the Army Signal Corps. By 1907, the Signal Corps had an aeronautical division.

And here's a super fun fact. Wilbur and Orville Wright were given the task of testing the Army's first airplane built to Signal Corps specifications. Then came World War One. In spite of the advances made, the Signal Corps was working with very cumbersome technology on the battlefield. The two main radio field units in use were the pack set, which required 10 mounted men and four mules just to operate, and the wagon set, which was even bulkier.

Eighteen mounted men were needed, along with a wagon driver, an engineer who rode in the And a wireless set, all pulled along by another four mules. Not compact, definitely not stealthy. Advances were slow in coming, as in, in 1916, they figured out how to haul the pack set with three mules instead of four. Meanwhile, November of 1917 found the Allied forces struggling with a snarl of telephone lines. American Expeditionary Forces Commander John J. Pershing had set up the U.S. Signal Corps to wire telephone lines from the front lines back to the Allied headquarters.

The Signal Corps men laid down the lines but began to struggle with the influx of calls in their operating room. At the same time, American, British and French soldiers at the front lines desperately needed the telephone operators support as they were frequently calling in artillery and updating changes on the battlefield.

Not just any telephone operators would do, the Army, like the phone company, wanted women for the job. The first telephone operators had been teenage boys, and that didn't work out so well. The boys were immature and rude, and they liked to play pranks. Took the phone company about a minute to realize they needed to do something different.

By the early 1900s, telephone operator was one of the most common occupations for a young woman. Ninety percent of the employees at both Bell Telephone and AT&T were women. From the military's perspective, the men, nicknamed doughboys, simply weren't as efficient as switchboard operators. Where it took a male soldier a full minute to connect calls, the hello girls managed the same task in only 10 seconds.

The Army ran recruitment ads for operators with a message from General John J. Pershing himself. I need you because I can't fight the Germans and France's appalling telephone system. Grace Banker, who'd been recruited from AT&T as chief operator for the U.S. Signal Corps unit in World War One, laid out the requirements.

The girls had to speak both French and English, and they also had to understand American doughboy French. Plus, the operators would also have to decipher hundreds of code names that were changed every day. They would be thousands of miles from home, moving through and stationed in active combat zones. Their training included daily military drills.

They were housed in wooden barracks, ever vulnerable to enemy bombs, and were stationed along the front lines of the war well within artillery range. They were treated like soldiers, except when they weren't. For example, the Signal Corps had not been authorized to pay for their uniforms. So the women were required to cough up three hundred dollars of their own money.

That's more than sixty five hundred bucks to you and me. Blue uniforms, black shoes and boots, woolen underwear and black sateen bloomers in case the ankle length skirts were blown up by the wind. The Hello Girls would also require the same trench helmets and gas masks as other soldiers deployed to the front. Many a community fundraiser was held to help the women purchase their Army kits.

In March 1918, Grace Banker and her platoon of Army telephone operators left New York by ship for Europe. Their first assignment would be the installation of telephone switchboards at seventy five locations in France, including Paris, along with another handful of sites in the UK, including London, Southampton and Winchester.

They made it to England and set out for France via ferry boat on the English Channel. The weather was lousy, rough seas and heavy fog. Their boat was unable to dock and had to drop anchor several miles off the coast of France to wait out the storm. This may have been the moment the reality of war actually hit them. That ferry boat was a sitting target for the German military and the odds weren't in their favor. One out of four boats in the area had been bombed.

For 48 hours, the ferry sat waiting for the wind and the water to calm. Banker and her telephone operators remained on deck the entire time, prepared to aid and evacuate in the event of an attack. The switchboards they worked on were set up in wooden shacks that became a frequent target for German bombers. Fires were an ongoing hazard, and at least one instance, the operators refused an order to evacuate. Their mission, they said, was to serve the men on the front lines and the fire would just have to be dealt with while they did their duty.

Shifts were 12 hours long. Rest was nearly impossible anyway, with the constant bombardment, the noise, the stress, the adrenaline. Most operators worked with a gas mask slung over the back of their chair. The German army had deployed chlorine gas in April 1915, a sickly yellowish cloud that struck down Canadian and French colonial troops.

The panic that resulted almost handed a victory to Germany, but Canadian soldiers beat them back. The whole idea of poisonous gas was so terrifying that it was as much a psychological weapon for Germany as a practical one. No soldier, including the Signal Corps operators, wanted to risk a single breath of it. Chlorine gas, when inhaled, breaks down the alveoli in the lungs.

The person exposed essentially drowns to death in their own fluids. The Hello Girls were divided into six units. Some were already familiar with the AT&T equipment that had been shipped overseas for the war effort. Others had to quickly learn to use outdated French switchboards. Though the natures of the calls they were patching through to the battlefield were very different from the ones they handled at home, they couldn't help but fall back on the basic AT&T operator script.

And that was the whole point. A reassuring, cheerful, professional sounding voice cutting through the clamor and chaos of the battlefield. These women proved to be far more dexterous than the male soldiers they replaced. A Hello Girl could connect a call in 10 seconds or less. The doughboys the army first tried in the job took a minute or more to do the same cast, which might not sound all that consequential, but the extra 50 seconds it took to patch those in could mean life and death on the front.

In the fall of 1918, during the final, brutal and largest allied campaign of the war, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, it wasn't only bombs, bullets and poison gas the soldiers feared. There was an invisible enemy stalking the trenches, one loyal to no flag, to no country. It was the Spanish flu with an old battlefield scourge for company, typhoid.

Two of the Hello Girls died in action. The flu claimed Inez Crittenden and typhoid bagged Cora Bartlett. In fact, the flu and typhoid killed more American soldiers than any military weapon. The flu adored that whole trench war set up. Crowding, poor sanitation, poor nutrition. So many wounded already vulnerable to infection.

Soldiers who'd never been exposed to the strain of flu and therefore had zero natural immunity. That wretched autumn of 1918, the flu slaughtered what we might call the youngest and the strongest soldiers and sailors, ages 20 to 40. The Hello Girls were right in the thick of it. Dog tags around their necks, artillery fuses in their pockets, serving their country with honor and distinction, each connecting on average 2,500 calls per day, typically working 12 hours a day without a break, even as shells rained down, even as fire, the result of a successful German espionage operation.

Even that wasn't enough to make them flee. They had to be dragged from the burning building and in less than an hour were right back to work on switchboard equipment that had literally been hauled out of the flames. Though all enlisted were discouraged from keeping diaries or journals, one of the operators did keep a few notes.

Her name was Bertha Hunt. Bombing was bad up Santiago Way. Bombs burst in next room to operator and finally took the roof right off and knock things about a bit. It was terribly busy for us and hard, too, as the lives were bad on account of bombing. Report on one line was out of order from hand grenade. Another out of order.

A cow scratched her back on the pole. A lighthearted moment for sure. But Bertha Hunt was one of the handful of operators sent to the front during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. We were terribly busy during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which began September 26th and lasted 47 days. One lone German plane returning from a raid had evidently one bomb left.

And on October 15th, seeing our barracks on a hilltop, thought that it would be a good place to drop it. It landed on the field very close to the barracks and one corner of the building was torn off. Another operator on the Meuse-Argonne front, Marie Harris, described round the clock shifts, sleeping in the stables when she could.

The bedbugs in the barracks were a torment, living off of raw onions and salt and whatever food an officer or two might be able to smuggle to the operators. Courageous and committed soldiers, every last one of them. And that's what they believed anyway. That's how they were treated right up until the war ended. World War One ends.

Germany signs terms of a truce, draft calls canceled. The momentous news of the ending of the war was given to newspaper correspondents verbally and by an official of the State Department. President Woodrow Wilson has issued a formal proclamation to the world with the return of all German submarines to the bases. Allied and American shipping once more may sail the seven seas without fear of devastation and disregard of the regulations made necessary by Germany's unrestricted warfare. Armistice had the whole world cheering the end of the Great War, but there was a catch for the Army Signal Corps telephone operators.

They learned that they were ineligible for discharge until formal release, which meant thanks to their role in logistics, the last Signal Corps operators returned from France in January of 1920. They were among the last soldiers allowed to come home. And when the Signal Corps operators did return home, they were proud of the 26 million calls they connected during their time in the trenches.

They'd held the rank of officer in the United States Army, the first women in non-nursing roles to achieve that. Because they were fluent in French, they'd been a critical interface between the French military and the U.S. forces. They'd worked long shifts under dangerous conditions, had been on round-the-clock call. Some had died in service to their country, and instead of the official discharge papers they'd been promised, the official discharge they'd earned.

Each woman received a little certificate, a participation trophy, if you want to call it that, for especially meritorious and excellent service rendered in the American Expeditionary Forces, which is nice and all, don't get me wrong, but an expression of appreciation. Even one printed on the finest and fanciest piece of paper is literally still just a piece of paper. And the sentiment expressed was worth even less than that.

The 223 telephone operators who served have been sworn into the Army under the Articles of War. They were subject to Army regulations. They served with honor and distinction. Their efforts and skills contributed to the Allied victory in World War One. And some, after the war ended, even volunteered to stay in France and continue to serve during Reconstruction.

Some volunteered to work in occupied Germany, and then they came home and were basically patted on the head and thanked for playing along. Their military service rebranded as a little volunteer lark. Their status as military veterans stripped. How must it have felt to watch a hero's welcome for every branch of the armed forces, knowing that the U.S. Congress had voted to deny them those same benefits.

They put up a fight bill after bill was submitted to Congress and each failed again and again, 50 bills in all. And the state of reason went something like this. Congress would ruefully shake its head and say things like, if we grant those telephone operators military status, we'd have to do that for every volunteer who goes overseas, like the Knights of Columbus, for example.

As arguments go, that one was 100 percent grade A, prime, grass fed, all American bulls**t. Because the Knights of Columbus, for example, have never been sworn into the United States Army as officers, then sent to the front. It wasn't just the misogyny that stung. It was the presumption on the part of Congress that the operators were either too stupid or too girlishly polite to push back.

But push back they did. And it was a fight that would span six decades. Over those years, the ranks dwindled until it was just a handful of very determined, very elderly women pushing back on the Army and on Congress, demanding recognition, recognition that finally came in November 1977. Congress managed to pass a bill that would recognize both the Hello Girls of World War One and the Women Airfare Service pilots of World War Two.

Those were the WASPs, more than a thousand female pilots flying military aircraft during World War Two. Thirty eight were killed in active duty. Yet the WASPs were disbanded in 1944 and treated as volunteers. The very same thing that the government had done to the Signal Corps telephone operators. It was blatant sexism, but also super irredeemably petty sexism, like tacking a No Girls Allowed sign on the big macho military industrial complex treehouse.

It'd be pathetic if it wasn't so deeply unjust to the women it served. Even President Woodrow Wilson campaigned on their behalf. And in 1918 speech to Congress, Wilson declared, We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?

In May 1921, the Women's Overseas Service League was founded to support and advocate for the women who served, only to be shoved aside and not just the Signal Corps operators. Women all over America rallied to the aid of their country and volunteered for overseas service with the U.S. Army Expeditionary Forces of World War One.

Over 11,000 Red Cross nurses served with the Army and Navy Nurse Corps. Others were assigned duties in the Ordnance, Quartermaster and Signal Corps and the Treasury Department. The women served in France, Belgium, Italy and the Balkans. When armistice was declared, 90,000 American women had served. 348 had given their lives.

And for that, they received an embossed certificate and were shown the door. The women returned home and scattered across the country, most without the assistance and benefits afforded the male soldiers. The League was formed in May of 1921 to maintain friendships, to keep alive the patriotic spirit that had prompted their overseas service and to provide aid, financial and otherwise, to these returning women.

Even in the years immediately following the end of World War One, folks were scrambling to come up with a good reason for the government to abandon the women who'd sacrificed and served. At one memorial celebration held in Omaha in 1926, in honor of the 271 women who'd been killed or died in the course of duty, a speaker gamely suggested that the reason government failed to acknowledge their service was due to their own modesty.

Splendid deeds, he thundered, but the government doesn't know about them. The most famous of all the Hello Girls, Grace Banker, was unique in that she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in 1919. Out of 16,000 Signal Corps officers eligible for the honor, Grace Banker was one of only 18 individuals recognized.

And her citation read, in part, She served with exceptional ability as chief operator in the Signal Corps Exchange at General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces, and later in similar capacity at First Army Headquarters. By untiring devotion to her exacting duties under trying conditions, she did much to assure the success of the telephone service during the operations of the First Army against the Saint-Mihiel salient and to the north of Verdun, Meuse-Argonne.

Whatever glory may go with that medal, I have always felt belongs in large measure to the very small but very loyal and devoted group of First Army girls. Suzanne Previtt, Bertha Hill, Adele Hoppeck, Esther Fresnel, Helen Hill, and Marie Lange. Recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal or not, Grace Banker was also denied her military status.

We are a prosperous people. Surely these women who served us in our hour of need should not find us ungrateful. Grace Banker died in 1960. It would take another 17 years before her country recognized her service to the United States Army in World War I. Female veterans, after 50 attempts, finally succeeded in their petitions to the U.S. Congress. The GI Bill Improvement Act of 1977, signed into law by President Carter.

Retroactively acknowledged the military service of the women's Air Force service pilots referred to in this section as WASPs of World War II and the service of any person in any other similarly situated group, the members of which rendered service to the armed forces of the United States in a capacity considered civilian employment or contractual service at the time such service was rendered.

It would be another two years before the Signal Corps telephone operators were finally granted their status as veterans. Only 33 of the women were still alive to receive their formal discharge papers and their victory medals. One, Oleda Christides of Michigan, received her honorable discharge at a ceremony held at her home in Michigan.

Christides raised the paperwork to her lips and kissed it. All she'd ever wanted from the federal government, she said, was the privilege to one day have an American flag draped over her coffin. Stories like this may seem like dusty old history, quaint little side quest, but as recently as late September 2024, the battle was still being fought.

The Senate unanimously passed the Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal Act. It was legislation intended to honor both their service to their nation and their 60 year fight to be recognized as veterans. That was signed into law by President Joe Biden in late December 2024. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed by Congress. And since the Revolutionary War, it's been granted to only 186 individuals.

Now, more than 220 American women who'd served as essential officers in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the first female soldiers ever to be deployed in a combat zone, they would join that elite cohort. President George Washington, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and John Glenn, the Wright Brothers, poet Robert Frost, the U.S. Capitol Police, the Miracle on Ice hockey team, Emmett Till, and finally, the Hello Girls.

For the sake of fairness, because this is an infuriating chapter and a shameful chapter in our national and military history, General John Pershing wasn't the only military commander fighting on behalf of the Hello Girls. General George Squier, the top ranking officer in the Army Signal Corps, also fought so hard for their rights as soldiers.

Hospitalization for disabilities incurred in the line of duty, cash bonuses, soldiers' pensions, flags on their coffins, and the victory medals promised them in France. And it only took a century. Today, you can find a few books written about the Hello Girls, and there's even a musical about them called, appropriately, the Hello Girls, that premiered in New York in 2018.

I wonder how they coped until now with the Hello Girls. Today, the Hello Girls have been varnished in nostalgia, a cheerful, can-do, spirited sort of patriotism, the kind that's easy and cheap to fling about, low stakes. The Hello Girls finally got their due, and it didn't really cost the government more than a few bucks' worth of medals and some paperwork.

And now everyone feels good because we did the right thing, even if it took 100 years. That's where the world left the Hello Girls, beaming from black and white and sepia-toned photos, ghosts now, all of them, in their quaint, heavy skirted uniforms, a collection of obituaries in hometown newspapers, mentions of service and wartime, jockeying for position with names of children and grandchildren, their time as soldiers framed as an adventure abroad, plucky young ladies answering telephone lines in France.

When you see how the Hello Girls experienced World War I, it sure doesn't sound like a little adventure. It sounds hellish. They don't sound like bright-eyed ingenues. They sound like exactly what they were. Soldiers. The cannons are roaring, 12 midnight. Captain Scott, Miss Russell, and myself went outside for a minute to look at the sky.

There are great flashes of light all along the horizon, like northern lights. 2.50 a.m. The night railroad guns are beginning to roar. Such a noise. Worse than a heavy surf and a storm. And here, there's a beautiful moonlight. The old flimsy barracks shake and the beds rock as though in a miniature earthquake. Soldiers who served their country and then died, still fighting for the right to have a flag draped over their own coffins.

We have lived so long under war conditions that it doesn't seem that the end could come so simply. On November 11th, the armistice was signed at 11 o'clock this morning. The 11th day. The 11th hour. All fighting was ordered to cease at that time. Our core lines were in bad condition and poor Captain Beaumont of the telegraph office was having a terrible time.

Suppose the message didn't get through all right. It must get through. If not by telegraphs, then by telephone. So we put him through on our lines and he used my telephone. He yelled the message out. It had to get through. The good news is, Grace Banker, it finally, finally, finally did. Oh, and we won't come back till it's over, over there.

We won't come back till it's over, over there. Next time on True Weird Stuff. Back in the day, you know, before like TV and streaming and the Internet and those more innocent glory days. Four little girls were born, identical quadruplets, and they became a national sensation. Except nobody knew the truth of what was really happening behind those closed doors.

Dad was a Hitler sympathizer. Mom was terrorized. And those four little girls would go on to make a very strange kind of history. The Moorlach Four on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode. Erin Cox, Sam Moore, Kary "Doc" Bowser and Don Morgan. So Sherry, I am somewhat familiar with this story only because I remember hearing about it, but I don't think that the full gravity of what they were doing for these women, I don't think it really hit me.

And what all they accomplished and what all they did and the amount of danger they were in. I mean, that is the thing about this. And also the fact that they had people like Woodrow Wilson and Blackjack Pershing on their side to get. And it still wasn't enough. And that wasn't enough. That is the part about this that is shocking.

If those two guys had said, yeah, they shouldn't get anything, you'd go, well, while it's not fair, you understand how the rest of the men went that way and said, yeah, we won't do it. But they had people that thought fair is fair with this. It's so shocking when you pull it apart and you go, wait a minute. So these women, they were the call was put out for volunteers, and these were highly specialized skill sets because you need it, not just a person that was a trained professional telephone operator, but they had to be bilingual and fluent in French.

Can you imagine how that narrowed the funnel? I'm sure. Yeah. And so they volunteered, they were brought in, they were sworn in under the articles of war as officers. And yet at discharge time, they weren't treated as veterans. The fact that they paid for their own uniforms and had to have community bake sales to pay for gas masks.

It's an outrage every step of the way. And these women, they took that oath seriously. They served their country with honor and bravery and distinction. And then they got home and got the highest of high hard ones. It's repugnant. There's not there are not a lot of ways to look at this except repugnant and veterans groups in the American Legion lobbied forcefully against them to keep them.

Out, even as Woodrow Wilson and General Pershing and General Squires were like, whoa, whoa, back it up. They still did not want these women receiving veteran status and name, but one word for that. And if you're going to argue that's anything other than misogyny, I just don't know what you're basing it on. Sure. I couldn't agree with you more because I can't think that there would be any reasonable explanation for why you would fight against them getting it.

So there's kind of there's kind of two stories with this, too. There is the story about what happened in World War One. And I think as we talked about, I think in a previous episode, it's kind of the Forgotten War for a lot of us. When we were in school, there's what happened with them, but also what happened to the wasps in World War Two.

I mean, yeah, good Lord. I had the Hello Girls. I knew a little more about that story. I didn't realize that the women who served during World War Two were cut out of getting benefits. It's so again, again, 1977. And it wasn't like, you know, sometimes you can go, well, it was different back then and people didn't know.

No, 50 failed attempts in Congress, 50 failed attempts. I just can't. If you voted against this, I cannot I cannot conceive of a reasonable explanation for why you would do that. I just I can't conceive of one. I don't think there is one. I think and you know what? I mean, you know, these episodes are these stories are only but so long.

You know, I could I could have there were lawmakers on the record being opposed and and those are stories you could probably tease out and tell. But but what what real reason is there? You know, some sometimes because I you know, I live in the world of what abouts and angry chodes, you know? Yeah. Somebody will say somebody will go, well, what you're not factoring in is that things cost money.

And, you know, the U.S. Congress is trying to save the taxpayers. Oh, please, with that bullshit. These were soldiers who deserved their veterans benefits and beyond the benefits, like some of these women just wanted a military like a flag on their coffin when they died. What is your petty ass reason other than you just want to exclude them on the basis of gender?

If if you're putting your life on the line for your country, I cannot imagine that you that sort of recognition more than just some sort of certificate like when I took piano lessons, you know, and was in a recital. I mean, that's just what it felt like to me. This is why I'm no fun at parties, you know, because when people when people say stuff like, but the children, but the veterans, I'm like, but the bullshit.

This country has never been about the children. This country has never been about the veterans. This country is about one thing and one thing only, and that is putting more dollars into the pockets of the powerful so they can continue to oppress the rest of us with their nasty ass boot. We are we we are always like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

The children, the soldiers and, you know, it's bullshit. You know, it is. I got 50 years, 60 years in one in some cases more than 60 years of proof of what bullshit because the wasps got their recognition and then it took still another two years for the hello girls. I mean, is there a counter argument? Is there any reasonable good faith?

And I'm going to stress on the good faith part. Is there any reasonable good faith argument you can make in defense of these soldiers when I'm going to call them women or operators, these soldiers being denied their status for sure? There's not because even even if you came up with an explanation and I said, oh, that's why you did it.

Well, I I disagree with you about that, but I can't think of anybody coming up with any plausible explanation. If you've put your life on the line for the country. I mean, I never have. I've never been in the military. I was going to go into the military. My father talked me out of it. He just said, and it's one of my regrets in life.

I wish I would have. I really wish that I would have done that. But when people are on the front lines and having to endure bombing and and I can't imagine the kind of fear that you would have with something like that. I mean, this is true bravery. It really is. And they would not leave their posts. They were they were bombed.

They were on fire. I mean, they would not leave their posts. They took their oath of service as seriously as it could be. They entered into a one sided agreement with the United States military. They agreed to serve with the kind of courage and conviction expected of a soldier. And they thought that the United States Army would would hold up their end of the bargain.

And we failed them. We failed these soldiers and these pilots. We just did. We collectively failed them as a country. And it took us a long, long time to make it right. And it's just it's it's just inexcusable. Like the fact that they paid for their own uniforms. I'm never going to get over that. They had to buy their own gas masks.

What is that all about? And there was this sort of idea that, well, you know, they weren't really on the front lines. They were, you know, patching calls through. Yes, they were patching calls through and wooden shacks on the front line. So that's where they were patching the calls through. That'd be like saying of a soldier that was a medic or a mechanic.

Well, he's in the army, but he's not really like infantry. Do you see when you start splitting those hairs, like how flawed that whole argument becomes? Yeah, it's it's kind of maddening. And what what was really interesting, I went looking for hello girls who were not, you know, famous like Grace Banker was famous because she got the Distinguished Service Medal.

And she was also recruited from the very beginning. She was recruited to kind of lead up to head up this contingent of single crop. I like that you did that, that you got some of the rank and file with this. Well, I went looking for them, you know, and we were lucky that Bertha Hunt kept a diary that survived that came home from the war and survived.

But most of the others I was able to find just by combing through the obituary sections of small town newspapers all over the country looking for a reference to military service. And and it was they jumped out because every one of these women, women in their obituary, they were proud that was like a big part of their life, their achievement in life, right, was their service during World War One.

And because during that period, there were so few women serving that it would pop, it would just pop out of the pile like a light just shining. And it was the same thing over and over again. Mrs. Edna so and so, here's her maiden name. Here's her age. Homemaker survived by as a young woman, Edna was in France during World War One with the United States Army Signal Corps.

And that would be how you would find these women in their obituaries. There'd be that one mention, maybe maybe two sentences tops, but it was there. And these were women who didn't get military funerals. They didn't get flags on their coffins. A lot of them. That was the only thing they fought for was the honor and distinction at the at their own death, an event they wouldn't be there to witness.

And they still didn't get that until the late 1970s. And did it not like blow your mind how recently our government was voting on legislation about the Hello Girls like December 2024? That was that was really astonishing. You mean what they happened, whatever happened in 1977, you would have think they would have completely rectified it then.

But it's and you would this is a no brainer, you would think to be able to give those women full military benefits and recognition and and American flags on their caskets. It just seems like a no brainer. I I'm just I'm absolutely aghast about this. It's obnoxious and it really contributes to the look on my face all the time of like, why are women so pissed off?

There's a saying that I used to like not really get it. I get it now. And it goes like this. Be glad women just want equality and not vengeance. You know, with a story like this, I'm like, oh, I am so angry on behalf of my deceased sisters who served, who just got screwed over. Little participation certificate. I am too.

I am too. I'm just yeah, I'm just I'm pissed. Now there's something in this story that I did not foreground. I'm going to point it out now at the risk of just, you know, being bombarded with idiocy. The Spanish flu, the the Spanish flu caused a global pandemic and millions and millions and millions of people died. It was a flu virus.

It was a strain of the flu that had been like locked in permafrost or some shit. And we had no natural immune as a species. We didn't have any natural immunity to it. And of course, you know, we also didn't have like vaccine flu vaccines back then. So the flu was as dangerous to a soldier as a bullet or a bomb. And in some ways more dangerous.

Like we actually lost more lives to flu than we did to enemy fire. And, you know, military officers, starting with George Washington and going all the way up until very recently, understood that, you know, a flu was as dangerous as anything to to your your army, to your infantry. Just absolutely deadly. So when you ask yourself, like, you know, what where do we see current events picking on the plucking on the strings of history to create these weird echoes?

Well, just recently, the secretary of the Secretary of Defense of War. I can't they change the titles. Hegseth declared that flu vaccinations would no longer be required for military. And, you know, people cheered that on like, yeah, you know, bodily autonomy, bodily freedom. Yeah. OK. All right. OK. But one thing we've learned from history is I don't care how strong your army is.

I don't care how much you puff up your chest. I don't care how much propaganda you spew. The virus is stronger than you. H1N1 is a derivative of the Spanish flu. Now, the Spanish the virus that was the Spanish flu no longer exists, but its descendants are now the H1N1 flu. And we do because they mutate those viruses. That's what they do is mutate.

And we asked one time, how do they how do they know ahead of time to get the flu vaccine? But they're able to see what happens with it. There are people that track it to be able to to check that. And I I know everybody's got an opinion about it, but I get a vaccine because my parents my parents did and lived for a long time.

And I just feel like there might be a message in there. I get I get vaccines because I love the shit out of some science. I'm a fan of it. And I can I can just tell you, like, there are sometimes there are things that are ancient and you go, well, that we haven't seen this behavior in 2000 years and human beings or whatever, the climate or whatever.

Right. And other things are so recent. The flu pandemic of 1918 was we could do a whole episode just on that because you wouldn't believe you wouldn't believe what happened to the world with the Spanish flu. And it's because we don't know and we don't really we don't have a visceral understanding of this kind of widespread death that we're casual about, you know, measles now.

And I think the damn things it's because my parents were not alive when the Spanish flu was a thing. They were born after that. But because but only just but only just, but only just. But because people were alive who did live through it and the horrors of it, my parents were very aware of get a vaccine because they knew so many people had died from it.

In fact, when you did the stat about more people died from that than they did from the warfare, you know, the typhoid and everything else. I mean, that's that's how it was back then. That's how it was during any war, the Civil War, World War one, any of those wars. There were more people dying from the effects of the war than than actual bullets.

Oh, the Civil War. I mean, we did an episode about a soldier and his mother who could not let him die. She remember that? Yeah, yeah. Right, right. His go. She was haunted by his ghost. Yellow fever. Like, you know, the death toll in the Civil War is staggering. And and you think, well, how many people died from musket balls or whatever?

No, it was it wasn't just combat. It was disease and poor sanitation and lack of antibiotics and no vaccines and, you know, all of the things that that we take for granted now. And, you know, we've allowed we've allowed at least two generations to be very poorly educated about the extraordinary advancements in public health and hygiene that enable us to live as long as we do.

Like the infant mortality rate used to be staggering. OK, like it's just crazy. And the the thing with this particular World War one in this particular story is you this was 100 years ago, more than 100 years ago now. And the same dynamics are back in play, you know, we've got the risk of global pandemics and, you know, now we're going to have an unvaccinated or casually vaccinated armed forces, although I give soldiers more credit than I give their leadership.

I think that the boots on the ground often have more sense than the people, you know, in air conditioned rooms plotting their fates on maps and with computers. So we'll see what happens. But no matter how you slice and dice it, this is this is not something that we can be proud of, I think, as a country. I don't think we can be proud of the way these individuals were treated, whether it was the Army Signal Corps operators or the WASPs.

It's astonishing to me that this took as long as it did. My mother was an operator, of course, not not during Hello Girls time, but my mother worked for the phone company as a phone operator for a period of time before she got into being more, you know, executive assistant work. Did she ever tell you stories about that?

Because we could have gone down such a rabbit hole with like the early days of the telephone operators on the switchboards. She she dealt with a lot of drunk guys. I know that. And she would get hit on by guys who were calling men. Good Lord. And then she told of times when people would make long distance calls. So you would do it from a pay phone.

And at one time, sure, this is madness to think about. You were on the honor system at the end of the call to put in the correct amount of money. And she talked about people who stiffed her when she was when they were doing that. Before they had it before they had it as an automated system. So what they would do then later, you would find out how much it was going to be.

I think the beginning of the call, it would tell you how much it was going to be for five minutes or three minutes or whatever. And then you would you would take all this change and stick it in there. Um, well, they in the early, early days, they had them on roller skates, which is insane to think about, not in a little tiny town, but in like a good sized town like a Chicago and a Pittsburgh, right?

Right, right. You would have your operators, the switchboard would line up like a long wall and operators on roller skates would be zipping back and forth, plugging stuff in. It's so Rube Goldberg. It's so wonderful to imagine. It is. And I've seen pictures of that for anybody that thinks we're making this up. I've seen actual pictures.

Actually, there's video of it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's on YouTube of that. When I was in high school, I used to work. I worked at a at a Holiday Inn. And they said when you answered the phone, it was indeed a switchboard with the actual cords that would go. So you would put a cord in to answer the phone. Then you had a separate cord and you would you would determine where you were going to send the call.

Can you imagine today, you know, operator, I'm trying to reach Max Sweeten. So I would go, good evening, Fairfax City Holiday Inn. May I help you? And my brother and my brother, my brother, we would try to outdo each other when we're doing that to see who could get lower and sexier with. So we we met two women that worked at another Holiday Inn.

What they would do at that time, too, is they would call around to see if they had somebody that if they were booked and they needed a room, they would want to send them to another Holiday Inn. So my brother and I met two women from a different Holiday Inn because we answered the phone. Good evening, Fairfax City Holiday Inn.

May I help you? Well, that does sound very sexy. I mean, I have to admit, I have to admit that that just made the Holiday Inn a little classier than it was a second earlier. The other thing with the the telephone operators, so you're right about flirting with them. It's not in this episode, but I've come across a handful of little stories of Mr. So-and-so and Miss Such-and-such, you know, marrying this weekend in the Blah Blah Gardens.

Turns out that she was a telephone operator and he was the owner of the local hardware store and he just fell in love with her from her voice and asked her on a date and they went and got malts and off to the movies or what have you. And that has happened, that happened a bunch of times. In fact, I can't remember if it was, we had a True Weird Stuff episode and she worked as a telephone operator and he was, I can't remember which one, and he was entranced by her voice.

So yeah, that used to be a thing. And these women, they had, AT&T had, you know, your standard operator script. And if you remember, Max, you know about this. It's a theater thing, that Midlantic accent, that Midlantic accent, that a lot of old movies, they talk like this. Constance, come to the saloon. But that's not British.

That's how they were taught in acting school. That was how you, that was how you spoke. There was a little bit of that, you know, the telephone operators, they took it. It was a serious profession and your voice was your instrument, was your tool. And so, you know, you had a lot of telephone operators that were very formal that way.

And that was what General Pershing was kind of envisioning, bringing to the battlefield some order. And also there was this idea that, because it was no secret to anyone, especially Pershing, that a lot of these GIs, a lot of these doughboys were teenagers. These were very young men. And very far from home and living in muddy pits gouged into the earth.

Like, it's so primitive. That reassuring, warm, friendly female voice, Pershing thought would have a psychological effect. And I think he was probably right. How about you? Yeah, I think that there's no doubt of that. That would be a positive effect. Can we talk for just a hot second about this trench warfare thing? It's one of those things I never imagined I'd have a hyper fixation on, but now I've added it to my list.

Everything I knew about World War I, other than the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, came from Pink Floyd's The Wall. Because if you think about it, what are they writing about but their own fathers coming back from the Great War just destroyed? Am I misremembering what that album was kind of about? But I think The Wall was about World War II.

It might have been about World War II. I thought it was World War I. I don't know, because it came out when I was a kid, middle school maybe? I don't know. But anyway, I just remember seeing it in the movie theater and the soldiers with their gas masks. I guess that's why I associate it with World War I, mustard gas and chlorine gas.

And all I knew about the Great War was anyone who went came back destroyed. Nobody was okay at the end of that. No, what you experienced was so horrific. How could you not be changed? Destroyed. Destroyed by it. As my father said, and my father said something to you. He was in World War II. And he used to officiate. There weren't enough priests at his parish when they lived in Nevada.

And so he would go to the Veterans Cemetery and he would officiate funerals. And I went with him one time. He said, they need a pallbearer. And I said, okay, fine. And after we had done the ceremony, we're walking through there. And I remember we're looking at men, the tombstones of men who were his contemporaries from World War II.

And he said, you know, he said, there was nothing to prepare us for going to this. And there was certainly nothing to prepare us to transition to come back. And I thought it was very telling from him. And he was not a person that revealed himself very often, but I think he did during that time to sort of let me know something changed inside him after he had gone through that experience.

How do you witness? Let's say that you go and you don't ever pull your trigger. You know what I mean? Maybe it's a desk job, but how do you witness that? How do you witness that and come back unchanged, much less if you're standing in the mud and blood up to your knees? I mean, that's the thing. I want to say that it was the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landing, but there was a man who was involved with it.

And he was very emotional because what happened was he got afraid and he hid under a dead soldier's body because he was afraid. And he has never gotten over the guilt of that. But certainly, you can say people are brave, but who among us would know how we would react in a situation like that? You know, I have no idea.

I would imagine not only that you'd be in shock for one thing. So what I'm saying is that here he is now as an octogenarian, and it still haunts him what happened during that situation. I don't know how you ever leave that behind. There's something so inhuman about that. You're asking people to, I think, transgress or violate inborn boundaries.

And to become a soldier, you are different. Soldiers are different. You are not the same as a soldier. This is why it drives me crazy when people are disrespectful about military service or veteran status. They're different than you. Well, they're not better than me. You know what? They might be a little bit because they put everything on the line for some higher calling.

They literally signed up for something that could cost them their life or their health, their mobility, their mind. They agreed to something for reasons that maybe don't make any sense to you or me. And the idea that that service can in some way be discounted or disregarded. There's a phrase that shouldn't exist. The phrase homeless veterans should not exist.

But if someone says to you, homeless veteran, you should be bewildered. What in the world could that mean? And as a society, we fail. We fail our children. We fail our elderly. We fail our warriors. Here's who we are succeeding at as a society. The elite, wealthy, ruling class. We're taking real good care of them. We're making sure their needs are met and that they feel safe and respected and valued.

And everybody else is just firewood. Because they've got to go to the Met Gala again next year. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, if they weren't better than us, they wouldn't be so rich, is the weird, sick, end-stage capitalist madness that we're all currently participating in. But a story like this, like the Hello Girls, is just a reminder that there are people that offer up their whole life.

Here's my life. Let me put it on the line for the greater good. And the least we can do for those people is acknowledge that. And so the story of the Hello Girls and the Wasps is an uncomfortable reminder that we not only failed to acknowledge that, we refused to acknowledge that. It's unconscionable. For 60 years. And really just finally started getting the job done December 24.

So that's, and it's like icky and everyone's like, oh, this doesn't make me feel good as an American. But living a lie doesn't make you feel good either. You just don't realize how shitty living a lie is. Living in the truth and correcting the truth and demanding accountability and giving people their respect, that's how you feel good.

Not by living in a fantasy. Maybe by doing that, by recognizing it doesn't fix what's happened, obviously, but maybe it will remind people for any events that happen in the future, not to allow that to happen again. I'll tell you what I'm really sideways about. I'm really sideways about, and why wouldn't I be? We just devoted this episode to the story of soldiers who were denied their status because of their gender.

And every time I look at my newsfeed, some high-ranking female serving in the armed forces has been fired or stripped of her title based on her gender. So do you think I'm a little pissed off about that? You think I'm not thinking all sorts of redacted thoughts about that? You think that these two things aren't related?

You think it's okay? Yeah, I don't think it's okay. I know you don't. You think it's okay to fire the top-ranking female officer in the Coast Guard? You know, to strip a female general? These kinds of things, I'm just going to tell y'all, they don't end well. No one in human history has ever succeeded for long. They succeed for a while, but they don't win the long game.

These things don't end well. And you always look back, always look back in shame and regret and sometimes horror at what your ancestors got up to in the day. And now we're getting up to some shit. And if there is a future, we're going to be judged harshly in the same way that we are judging these people harshly for how they treated these soldiers and officers who were being bombed and bombarded with their gas masks on, serving this country and the idea of democracy or what have you.

So next time on True Weird Stuff, if you listen in order, we're going to pay a visit to Lansing, Michigan and the Moorlach quadruplets. Have you ever heard of the Moorlach quads, Max? I haven't. They're not famous the way like the Dion quads are or the Octomom octuplets are. They were famous. They're not as famous anymore, but they should be because they were so incredibly rare.

One egg split four times. Four identical baby girls, blonde hair, beautiful children singing, dancing, taken to the stage because they were cash cows for mom and dad. And dad was a Hitler fan boy and he had some psychological issues. The Moorlach quadruplets ultimately ended up being studied by the National Institute of Health for a number of years and it's because of them that we know a lot of what we know about certain mental health disorders.

It's an incredible story and it only recently ended. The last of the Moorlach quads just recently passed away. So we're going to pay a visit to Lansing, Michigan and meet those four amazing miraculous one in 20 million baby girls. And that's on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner.

And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get you in the loop. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com.

And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call.

Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2026 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.