"Postcards from World War II"

http://www.sunspot.net/features/bal-to.memory05jul05,0,2969815.column?coll=bal-features-headlines

Postcards deliver World War II memories

Way Back When: Frederick N. Rasmussen
Originally published Jul 5, 2003

Mail call for U.S. troops serving in Iraq has lost none of its power in being able to connect them to family, lovers and friends back home.

While satellite phones and e-mail have helped narrow the communications gap between troops serving abroad and their loved ones, mail call with its prospect of letters and packages remains an emotionally charged break from the routine.

"This is the closest thing to going home," a soldier serving with the 7th Infantry Regiment recently told the Associated Press regarding mail call.

Robynn Clairday, an author and screenwriter, and her husband, Matt, who collects vintage military and political postcards, collaborated on Postcards from World War II, recently published by Square One Publishers.

"The book was actually Matt's idea," Robynn said in a telephone interview from the couple's home in Novi, Mich. They scoured the nation looking for World War II-era postcards.

"We found cards at postcard collectors' shows, on the Internet, and from World War II vets who had cards. There is a timelessness about them and what they represent could come from the mouths of people serving today," she said.

"That was the really cool thing. Each card was a story about a real person. We wondered whatever happened to them," she said. "We really had a great time doing this book."

They decided to print in color both the cards and their corresponding messages -often hastily scrawled in fountain pen or pencil. They have included 162 cards spanning the war years of 1941 to 1945. Grammar and spelling were left uncorrected.

While the subject matter of the cards is pretty much military-oriented with color scenes of military bases, marching soldiers, tanks, cannons and airplanes, others are cartoon illustrations of service humor, to which correspondents often related their own particular dilemma.

"They created important links, connecting tens of thousands of servicemen to their friends and family back home. It was the soldier's quickest and most convenient means of communicating thoughts and feelings to distant loved ones," wrote the Clairdays in the book's introduction. "No matter what the message may have said, every postcard was a way of saying, 'I'm OK' and 'I'm thinking of you.' In a world of doubt and devastation, it was an affirmation of life."

Some cards are also wonderfully rich examples of 1940s suggestive humor, tame to be sure by modern standards.

One card shows two women in grass skirts leaning against a palm tree on a tropical island as three gobs approach with eyes agog in a boat from a destroyer anchored off shore. The caption reads: "Where Things Are Hot We Like To Be - So We Put Out To See!

On the reverse side in green ink, the correspondent has written: "Hi Gwen, Do you look like this in your grass skirt dear? So far I haven't seen anyone that does. Don't forget that picture. Love, Bob."

Another card shows two soldiers sitting at a bar watching a barmaid draw several draft beers. A puff of wind from a nearby open window lifts her dress, exposing a pair of frilly red panties. The printed message in large type says: "Here We Enjoy 'Taps.'" "As visuals, they really reflect the culture of the time with some of the cards even being slightly risqué," Robynn Clairday said, with a mischievous chuckle.

Not only did World War II mean that women entered the work force en masse, they also entered the services.

To illustrate this point, another card shows a Navy officer visiting his ship's laundry while two tattooed sailors are busy folding clean laundry. One of them holds up a pair of ladies pink lingerie.

He attempts an explanation to the officer: "Now that we have the lady 'Waves' in the Navy ... Don't be surprised - Anything can happen."

The cards also reflect such common themes as complaints about food, barracks life, insects and the weather. The drudgery of daily military life also was fodder for the correspondents.

There are the inevitable sentences about combating loneliness, accompanied by pleas for mail, money, stamps and fresh snapshots of loved ones.

The names are also wonderfully of another time, names like Jigs, Red, Jerk, Palsy and Slim.

"Hello Speed. ... Tell Clyde, Ed and Squeak to write besides yourself. /Your old room pal, Al."

Hoping to shame his girlfriend into being a more frequent correspondent, Army Pvt. John Merljur wrote to Diana Chamberlin in Marine City, Mich.

"Whats the matter are your hands cut off & haven't learned to write with your feet yet? I've been waiting for a letter from you. I've answered your letter as near as I can remember," he wrote.

Staff Sgt. Will Daviduk expressed the same complaint in a 1942 card to his friend Edgar Perry in New York: "Hi Pal: Are you dead? Then why don't you drop a line to me? If things pan out, I might see you during the holidays. Best regards to all - Will."

Another soldier was happily looking forward to being discharged in December 1941. It is doubtful that it ever happened because six days after writing this postcard, Pearl Harbor was bombed.

He wrote: "Filled out a bunch of discharge papers, seen my Service Records. Discharge date stamped on them is Dec-14-21. I'll be seeing you about Christmas."

On Christmas Day 1942, Allen Clark wrote to his son and daughter back home in Howell, Mich.

"I hope you are having a Merry Christmas today without your Daddy at home. Write and let me know what Santa brought to you. Love, Daddy."

"If the eyes are the windows to the soul, letters reflect the workings of the heart," the book's authors wrote. "These cards reveal the humor, the raw loneliness, the simple honesty, and the hearts of the men and women who sent them. Each postcard is truly a part of our collective American history, a tangible memory of the heroism of the 'greatest' generation."