The War In My Bones

Tell me our society is spoiled without telling me we’re spoiled. Tell me we demand instant gratification without telling me we demand instant gratification. Could you wait weeks to find out where your loved one was, or whether they were okay? Are they alive? Are they safe? When you finally get a tiny crumb of news about them, is it true?

Imagine your son or your brother or your husband, or your sister or your daughter or your wife, gets on a giant ship, and heads overseas to combat. Brutal combat with machine guns and tanks and grenades and all the violent weapons of war. Where are they? Are they okay?

Today, I can see my husband’s exact location and how fast he’s going on his motorcycle simply by looking at an app on my phone. I can see exactly what time his plane lands and if his luggage made the trip with him. Hell, on a trip to Italy, I watched my luggage go to countries that I didn’t go to. (I also found out when it arrived back in the U.S. – the week after I did.)

During WWII, patience was key. Patience and faith. Communication was on paper. No phone. No text. No email. Handwritten notes from one person to another.

Because the U.S. labels everything patriotically, it was called V-Mail, short for Victory Mail. It was censored, and there was nothing ‘real time’ about it. Waiting weeks for a letter was the norm. Waiting weeks for a letter with upbeat news from the war was the norm. (Can you say oxymoron?)

According to the National WWII Museum, “V-mail (Victory Mail) was a secure, microfilmed mail system used during World War II (1942-1945) to drastically reduce weight and volume of mail between soldiers overseas and their families, saving cargo space for essential war supplies.” A soldier’s letter from the European Theatre of War was written or typed on a 8 1/2″ x 11″ Army form, then copied and shrunk to 4″x5″, put in a tiny envelope, sent on a ship to New York, then headed out for its destination.

Over a billion tiny letters were passengers on giant ships crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific. I have over two dozen V-Mail letters that Pop sent to Ma & Pa Potts and to Aunt Roxie and Aunt Rubie. They tell the barest of details of my father’s whereabouts or his battle wounds.

The letters were meant to boost morale at home, never give a real-time description of battles, or wounds, or even location. Pop landed in Italy on September 9, 1943, during the Invasion of Italy in the Battle of Salerno. Although he writes home a couple of weeks after that beach bloodbath, he couldn’t say where he was until his letter of October 23, 1943.