air mail letter
A set of letters. Not just any old set, but a huge set from a gentleman in New York serving in a field artillery battalion in France and Germany to his wife back home. There are over 200 pieces of mail, mostly V-mail*, but still many air mail letters and plenty of Western Union telegrams. The letters span from December 1944 to October 1945 and this man wrote his wife almost every day, except during heavy fighting.
V-mail letter
I did a little background looking into the couple: They were in their 30's when he enlisted, she was kind of sickly and they never did have children. He was an only child, his father served in World War I; she had only one sister and it sounds like all of them were very close. She hunted with him, fished with him...did everything with him before the war and they seemed to depend so much on each other.
Western Union telegram
I am only to February 1945, but these letters are so sweet and romantic! I hate romantic media (books, movies, etc) because it is not real. This is so real, it actually means something other than work for actors and royalties!
souvenir from France
He has included pictures, souvenirs and even a lock of his hair in these letters. There were more included as described in the letters, but his wife must have taken some of them out.
*Back to the V-Mail, it was a sort of primitive email during the war. The boys would be given forms of only one page where they could jot down quick letters. These letters were then scanned and put on microfiche to be sent back to the states in rolls. When the rolls got to the states, they were then printed and mailed to the respective recipients. The idea was that it saves on postage and paper overseas. Well, this gentleman saw some heavy combat a lot of the time, so he really didn't have many opportunities to write his wife long air mail letters between the fighting and the guard patrol. One letter would include about a week of writing! He would apologize profusely for it!
Imagine how difficult it must have been for her to receive just small V-mails frequently and air mail a couple times a month.
His wife kept every letter, although I believe that there were more before December 1944. Sad that they weren't included to keep the set complete. I also believe they were stored in an attic as some of the papers show signs of heat damage and are super-brittle. Now to find a way to humidify them so I can preserve them without ruining them :)
So, now tell me that isn't the coolest present! A real live love story, not some fictitious garbage that is so far from reality it makes you want to puke! It is taking me a long time to get through them as the V-mails are super small the way they printed them and I have to use a magnifying glass to read them. In addition, reproduction technology back then was not very good, so the writing is kinda hard to read.
So, what was the coolest present you got this year?
