MOULTRIE, Ga. — Willie Belle Irvin wanted to be a nurse.

That was a high aspiration for a poor, African-American girl from southern Georgia in the 1940s.

But before she could pursue that dream, she had to help make history.

Irvin grew up in Moultrie, her daughter recounted in a phone interview recently. Brenda Partridge Brown has been researching and writing a book about her mother.

Brown said Irvin was the third of 10 children of Will and Maggie Lee Irvin. Her elder sister was already a student at Spelman College. For Irvin to fulfill her nursing dream, her parents would have to put two girls through college at the same time.

“The money just wasn’t there,” Brown said.

Instead, Willie Bell Irvin joined the Army.

President Franklin Roosevelt had created the Women’s Army Corps July 1, 1943, according to the Army’s historical website, www.history.army.mil. The WAC was converted from the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which was created in 1942 but did not have official military status.

Irvin joined the WAC July 19, 1944 — 43 days after D-Day. She was assigned to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, where she served primarily as a cook. Sometimes she helped the other members of the unit sort mail, Brown said.

Excluding small groups of nurses who served in Africa, Australia and England, the 6888th became the only African-American WAC unit deployed overseas during World War II. Irvin was there “for the whole tour,” Brown said: Birmingham, England; Rouen, France; and Paris.

The women sailed from the United States in February 1945 and disembarked in Scotland just in time for a V-1 rocket to explode near the dock. The Army’s website, which offered a one-sentence description of the attack, did not indicate that anyone in the unit was hurt.

The “Six Triple Eight” traveled by train to Birmingham, where a  herculean task awaited them. From www.history.army.mil:

“In February 1945, warehouses in Birmingham, England, were filled with millions of pieces of mail intended for members of the U.S. military, U.S. Government personnel, and Red Cross workers serving in the European Theater. Airplane hangars held undelivered Christmas packages, and a constant stream of incoming mail added to the already massive backlog of letters and packages. Oftentimes the mail was addressed simply to ‘Junior, U.S. Army’ or ‘Buster, U.S. Army.’ As Allied forces drove across Europe, ever-changing locations hampered mail delivery to servicemembers. With seven million Americans in the European Theater, many shared common names (7,500 were named Robert Smith). Servicemembers noticed that they weren’t getting mail from home, and Army officials reported that the lack of reliable mail delivery was hurting morale. One general predicted that the backlog in Birmingham would take six months to process. …”

In fact, the women of the 6888th created a tracking system for the mail and — working three shifts a day, seven days a week — cleared the backlog in three months.

With the success in Birmingham, the unit was moved to Rouen — where an even larger backlog awaited them — in June 1945, a month after the end of fighting in Europe. It was in Rouen that the unit suffered casualties: A jeep accident killed two women immediately and a third died of her injuries five days later.

The backlog in Rouen was cleared, and in October, the 6888th moved on to Paris, where a serious problem was theft. The war-weary French lacked for so much after the Germans were driven out, and some civilians hired to help sort the mail would sneak packages or their contents out.

By then, about 300 of the original 800-plus women had gone home, and 200 more were scheduled to rotate out in January 1946. The remainder of the unit — including Irvin — returned to the U.S. in February, and it was disbanded.

Irvin left the service March 17, 1946, her daughter said.

At first, she studied to be a nurse, as she’d hoped to do before enlisting. She went through nurse training at a veterans hospital in Atlanta — part of the precursor of the Veterans Administration hospitals we have today. While she was in training, a patient died … and with him, Irvin’s interest in being a nurse.

“She got out,” Brown said. “She decided nursing wasn’t for her.”

So, like a lot of veterans, Irvin fell back on the skills she learned in the service. She took a job in food service at the Centers for Disease Control, where she stayed a long time before going to work as head cook at Beverly Manor, a nursing home in Atlanta. Using benefits from the GI Bill, Irvin became a state-certified dietician and remained at the nursing home until her retirement.

In 1950, Irvin married John Alvin Partridge. He died in October 1959, and Willie Bell Irvin Partridge died Jan. 10, 1990, at the age of 66.

Veterans of the 6888th have been recognized in a number of events, including receptions in Birmingham and London, England, in 1981 and an official Army commendation program in 2009.

Brown said she was unaware of her mother’s connection to the unit in 2009. She discovered it by accident some time later.

“I was doing some research on these women,” she said, “and I saw some pictures on the Army website and I recognized my mother. I like to fell out.”

Since then, Brown’s been working with the Army to reconstruct her mother’s records, many of which were destroyed in a fire. She expects to soon receive replacements for awards her mother earned as part of the 6888th. She’s talked with officials of the Museum of Colquitt County History about sharing her mother’s story with them.

“They seem to be very excited about it,” Brown said, “but not more than me!”

Brown has been working on her book — tentatively titled “Little Brown Soldier Girl” — for more than a year. She expects to send it to an editor by the end of the month, and she hopes the editing will be done by the end of January and she’ll start searching for an agent to help her sell it.

Brown self-published an earlier book, “The Things Mama and Grandmama Used to Say,” a collection of African-American folklore.