DOD removed, then restored, page about Bea Arthur's WWII military service

A rumor that internet users circulated in March 2025 claimed the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) removed a webpage reporting the history of "Golden Girls" actor Bea Arthur enlisting in the Marine Corps Women's Reserve during World War II.

For example, on March 19, one X post (archived) that received over 900,000 views by the time of this writing read, "Bonus chapter of Women's History Month in honor of the program scrubbing DOD web articles. Meet Bea Arthur, iconic Golden girl actress and one of the first women to join the Marine Corps Women's Reserve. Her page has been removed."

The post featured two images. The first image was a before-and-after collage containing two photos, one supposedly showing a black-and-white picture of Arthur during her military service and the other showing Arthur during her acting days (as we'll explain below, the woman in the black-and-white photo was not actually Arthur). The second image in the post was a screenshot of a "404 - Page Not Found" error on the DOD website.

The black-and-white photo did not, in fact, depict Arthur (X user @swiftillery).

The DOD truly removed Arthur's biographical information from its website, and then later restored it. As a result, we've rated the claim true.

The exact length of time the page was unavailable was uncertain. Pride.com reported the DOD restored the page on or just before March 21. Due to a lack of archived captures of the DOD page for every day of the month on both archive.today and Archive.org's Wayback Machine, we could not determine the length of the page's downtime. One archived capture from March 17 displayed the same "404 - Page Not Found" message seen in the X post mentioned above, meaning the page remained inaccessible for at least several days.

In a March 24 email, a DOD spokesperson identified only as "Duty Officer" pointed us to a video about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as the reason for the removal. The clip featured Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell saying, in part, "We want to be very clear, history is not DEI." Parnell also discussed the possibility of making mistakes and mentioned the use of artificial intelligence to perform some content edits in compliance with the "priorities" of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Then, on March 25, a DOD spokesperson, possibly the same unidentified person who sent the previous email, confirmed they restored the page "as of this morning" — even though archived captures of the page showed that someone restored the page by March 21, at least several days before.

The removal and restoration of Arthur's biographical page followed other instances of officials removing — and in some cases, subsequently restoring — content on government websites flagged as relating to relate to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).

The people or systems executing those content changes performed the edits to align with a Trump-issued executive order from Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, seeking to end programs he dubbed "illegal" and activities associated with DEIA "mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear."

The end of Arthur's page featured the term "gay" and the initialism "LGBTQ+," reading, "She embraced the gay community, which had supported her professionally since the 1970s. Late in life, Arthur took up the cause of homelessness among LGBTQ+ youths." We emailed the DOD to ask if a scan of government websites located the term and/or initialism, leading to the page's temporary removal, but we have not yet received a response.

Bea Arthur's military service

The DOD first published its biography for Beatrice Arthur, whose birth name was Bernice Frankel, on Oct. 13, 2021. The article (archived) featured the headline "Before Stage and Screen, Bea Arthur Shined as a Marine," and began as follows:

Bea Arthur was best known for her acting roles in the 1966 Broadway musical "Mame;" the 1970s sitcoms "All In The Family" and "Maude;" the 1985-1992 sitcom "The Golden Girls;" and many other notable parts in film, TV and theater.

Less known is that Arthur enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II. On Feb. 18, 1943 — just five days after the Marine Corps began recruiting women — she enlisted in the Marine Corps Women's Reserve.

After basic training, Arthur served as a typist at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In June 1943, the Marine Corps accepted her transfer request to the Motor Transport School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Arthur then worked as a truck driver and dispatcher at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, between 1944 and 1945. She was honorably discharged at the rank of staff sergeant in September 1945.

In 1944, she married fellow Marine Robert Alan Aurthur. They divorced three years later, but she kept his surname, but changed the spelling to "Arthur."

The biography's author, David Vergun, also said that by the end of the war, over 20,000 women reservists earned the title "Marine," serving in noncombat positions and playing vital roles in the Allied effort.

Old photo does not show Arthur

The X user who posted about the removal of Arthur's page on March 19 later corrected (archived) part of the initial post, saying the black-and-white photo of a woman smiling and showing her teeth did not depict Arthur, although the same black-and-white image did appear on a U.S. Navy Memorial page about Arthur. A reverse-image search did not determine the real name of the woman in that picture.

A previous version of the same Navy Memorial page displayed an authentic photo of Arthur that depicted her standing in front of a height measurement chart in 1943, during her service in the Marine Corps. The DOD article featured the same authentic photo, crediting the Marine Corps.