AG and MM Board

Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda Hefner on January 26, 2009, 12:35 am

I have several relatives and friends who are in the armed forces now serving in Germany, Afghanistan, and parts unknown. They have e-mail, web-cams, etc. to communicate with their family and friends. While I'm so thankful that our military personnel can communicate so readily now, I think that it's important for generations to come to remember that it was not always so convenient and accessible.

Can you tell us a little about communication during WWII as an AG? How long in between mail calls? What was the longest you went without talking to your family?

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Acy J Lee on February 14, 2009, 2:42 pm, in reply to "Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Hi Melinda
In the first years of WW 11, communications in the Armed Guard while overseas was terrible. Our ship sailed from Brooklyn on July 18, 1942 and our crew did not receive any mail until we arrived in Panama in May 1943 at which I received 105 letters and four packages.
There was no provisions for writing letters. Our gunnery officer even did not have a censors stamp.
While in Iran in Oct 1942 our officer contacted local representive of the US State Dept and explained our predicament not sending or receiving any mail. They indicated there was not much they could do. However, permission was given that each each member could write two leters, They would censor the letters and mail them back to states in their diplomatic pouch. My two letters did arrive sucessfully.
Later, the kinks were worked out and the sending and receiving mail of mail improved considerable.=
Needless to say my fiancee and parents were very concerned to the fact my Father wrote to the Naval Dept. Their response thatI was in the middle east and that no news was good news.
What else could one say.
When the mail started flowing, our mail was censored by our gunnery officer. Some times he would cut out part of the message, which they thought might be a code or information that would be of value to the enemy. So sometimes my fiancee and parents could not correctly decifer everything I was trying to convey.
i hope that I did not bore you with more info. than you requested.
Acy

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:25 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

You absolutely did not bore me! Thank you so much for the details. Selfishly, I'm starved for details like those you provided. They give me insight into the life my father lived as an Armed Guard. Plesae feel free to share more. I'd love to hear anything about your service.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Roy Brown on February 2, 2009, 9:36 pm, in reply to "Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Melinda, the mail service at times was extremely poor because of various reasons. Sometimes the mail was destroyed or lost.
Once when we were in the Mediterranean sailing from port to port, carrying a great variety of cargo, I did not recieve a letter for more than 100 days. Then I received about 26 I believe.
The morale of men is often low when such as this happens. The men become "surly" and are "on edge" a lot.
I felt as if I had been abandoned by the entire world!. Add to this some attacks by the enemy, the nerves being rather shaky when carrying 5,000 tons of 155mm shells , etc., etc., show you how unlike today's military compares regarding such communications!
Some of us old guys sort of chuckle when we hear about military personnel being away for 6 or 9 months, etc. Also, I've heard mothers and girl friends say they haven't had a PHONE CALL for several days!
It's a different world!
I will say that the people in our military forces today are very brave and are not appreciated by many here at home. The combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has been very vicious and our people are winning if only they are given a chance. Unlike the Vietnam War where they were NOT ALLOWED TO WIN!
I have spoken too long. God Bless all of you.
Roy Brown

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:28 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Mr. Brown, thank you so much for your response. And, no, you did not speak too long. I love reading your memories of your time in the service. Every piece of information you share helps me complete the picture of my sweet Daddy's time in the service.

God bless you, too, Mr. Brown.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Rick Pitz on January 28, 2009, 11:08 pm, in reply to "Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Hi Melinda.

Good question, judging by the responses :-)

From my research on my fathers AG service, his ship (the USAT Gen. George W. Goethals) left New York in early April 1944 for the UK. They spent nearly 2 months shuttling army troops from Belfast to various ports in England in preparation for D-Day, then another six weeks delivering troops to Omaha Beach and other areas in France. They returned back in Boston in late July 1944, and still had received no mail since leaving New York 3 months earlier.

Even though they were in "friendly" waters (to the extent that anything in the North Atlantic was friendly at that time) most of that time, no mail got through. This apparently had morale pretty low, so much so that the Armed Guard commander in his voyage report for that trip recommended to the Chief of Naval Operations that the CNO "secure closer cooperation between the U.S. Army which directs our movements and the Fleet Post Office."

I am sure that with the added stress and anxiety that came with the preparations for D-Day, these guys would have loved to have had a letter from home before going into harms way.

Happy to see some dialog from everyone. Be nice to hear from some new voices as well.

Rick

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:29 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Thank you, Rick, for your response.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Bob Higgins on January 26, 2009, 11:18 am, in reply to "Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Hi Melinda
The longest time I waited for mail was over a month. Mail was sent to a port that your ship was going to, but some times the ships destination was changed and that mail had to be picked up and resent to your next destination. and of course a lot of mail went down in torpedoed ships and didn't arrive at all

PS We also had V-mail Bob Higgins

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:30 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

What is V-mail?

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Ron Carlson on March 10, 2009, 3:26 pm, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Melinda,

All about V-mail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail

I had no idea...

Ron

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Fran Kent on March 8, 2009, 2:13 pm, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

From the web site of the National Postal Museum:

V, or Victory mail, was a valuable tool for the military during World War II. The process, which originated in England, was the microfilming of specially designed letter sheets. Instead of using valuable cargo space to ship whole letters overseas, microfilmed copies were sent in their stead and then "blown up" at an overseas destination before being delivered to military personnel.

V-mail ensured that thousands of tons of shipping space could be reserved for war materials. The 37 mail bags required to carry 150,000 one-page letters could be replaced by a single mail sack. The weight of that same amount of mail was reduced dramatically from 2,575 pounds to a mere 45. The blue-striped cardboard containers held V-mail letter forms.

The system of microfilming letters was based on the use of special V-mail letter-sheets, which were a combination of letter and envelope. The letter-sheets were constructed and gummed so as to fold into a uniform and distinctively marked envelope. The user wrote the message in the limited space provided, added the name and address of the recipient, folded the form, affixed postage, if necessary, and mailed the letter. V-mail correspondence was then reduced to thumb-nail size on microfilm. The rolls of film were sent to prescribed destinations for developing at a receiving station near the addressee. Finally, individual facsimiles of the letter-sheets were reproduced about one-quarter the original size and the miniature mail was then delivered to the addressee.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Harvel Arnold on January 26, 2009, 9:23 am, in reply to "Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

I can'tspeak from experince but can remember that my mother would wait sometimes as much as 2 months for a letter from either one of two sons in service at this time. Then she would get 5 or 6 letters at one time . Also remember the red banner with a blue circle with 2 white stars in it that hung in the window of the front room for anyone passing to see. Of course when you live in a cow pasture about half a mile from the road not many saw it , but it stayed in the window anyway.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Mike on January 26, 2009, 8:57 pm, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

I am not sure how common this was but we had a vinyl record recording of my Fathers voice. I believe he made it while in London during the war. Just a recording saying Hi to Mom,Dad and Sis. Not to worry that he was doing fine. Don't know how he mailed it home during the war but we would play it as little kids back in the 1960's

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:31 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Oh, my....that's amazing. I've never heard of that being done. How priceless that is.

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Al Burnham on January 27, 2009, 1:54 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Sorry that I have been delinquent but have been doing the 82 yr. old problems. As I remember mail
and communications with family and friends was very far between. My mother had no phone or radio and had three of us in the service and all in war zones. Older brother in Burma and mid brother on a LST in the Pacific. Me the youngest in all three war theaters at various times of course. The mail had to catch up to me and my mother would always let me know if she had a letter from my brothers. Some times this could be
three to four months. Mail could be in a bunch or no mail at all. Sometimes we would share mail by reading certain things to each other that we felt was interesting. As lady friends we would meet in many ports and willing to be pen pals we would look forward to those letters and really enjoy them. These were a real morale booster. In the small town we came from in Maine the barber had all the service people pictures posted in his
barber shop. His daughter in law just recently sent me the pictures of me and my mid brother that he had posted during WW11. Glad to see you are back in here Melinda. Take care. Al

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:43 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

Thank you so much, Mr. Burnham, for your response. Your mother must have had it very tough with her sons in the war at the same time. I can't imagine how hard that must have been.

My mother kept scrapbooks during the war and she has pictures from the local newspaper of so many of the young men who were in her town. Posting pictures of the servicemen was such a personal way of honoring them.

You take care, too, Mr. Burnham. God bless!!!

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Fran Kent on February 2, 2009, 10:34 pm, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

This story is only remotely relevant but I'll tell it anyway. About mid-way into the war, my ship arrived in Philadelphia and I was granted a 72-hour liberty. My home was in Indiana and within that time I could get home and back by train, and have the better part of a day with my family. I didn't have the train fare, so I asked my parents to wire it to me. As I waited in the Western Union office, the manager and I fell into conversation. He asked many questions and, just as I was about to tell him to mind his own business, he said he'd let me have the money out of his pocket and that I could sign the money order over to him when I returned. That, needless to say, was the first thing I did on getting back to Philadelphia. I think about this every now and again
-- Fran

Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG

Posted by Melinda on March 8, 2009, 12:46 am, in reply to "Re: Communication with family and friends when you were in the AG"

I had to chuckle at the part when you were about to tell him to mind his own business. That's a wonderful story, Mr. Kent. Thank you so much for sharing it.

« Back to index

[ AG and MM Board ]