World War II V-mail poster (Wikipedia/Public Domain)
And so it begins, the dreaded V-mail. I am not sure why but apparently my grandfather hated V-mail. In flipping through some of the V-mail (there are over 150 pieces in the collection), I have seen a couple comments to the effect of “I know you hate V-mail…” when addressed to my grandfather. Despite this, my grandmother wrote over 160 pieces of V-mail, dated from September 1942 through February 1944. She still continued to write him regular old letters, too. Sometimes it was more convenient to send V-mail, and sometimes she ran out of the forms so she had to stick with old-fashioned pen & paper.
If you are not familiar with V-mail, please read the Wikipedia article to understand the process and the history behind this type of war correspondence.
September 12, 1942 (GRY)
Letter transcription:
Kentland, Ind-Saturday
Sept 12-1942
Dear Daddy- Hello from John & Mark
Hoping you would get this some speedier than an ordinary letter I thought I would start using V-mail. The post office furnishes this stationary. Perhaps you may use the same service. Since there isn’t much space I won’t indent paragraphs. I was able to get up and go out into the yard and see the flowers yesterday. Mark gathered a boquet [sic] and took to Arlene. Says the new baby looks like Bobby. I haven’t felt well enough to go down yet, but hope to soon. Had a letter from Ruthie. Lec and Dot’s husband are both going into service and Dot has gone back to her Mother. Ruth and Floyd hope to go home for the weekend so if Dad is better maybe your Mother will come up for a visit. I doubt if Dad is well enough yet for her to leave him. Mother had a letter from Jim and his camp is being moved to Yorktown. He says he is going to have Thelma come there to live also mentioned Mother coming for a visit. She will be ready for a vacation after I come back home,
Love Mother
WOW!!! That is amazing. I’d never heard of V-Mail before. Thanks so much Deborah
You are welcome.
I’ve know about V-mail for about a decade, since I first received the letters. The easiest part of the project was for me to extract the V-mail letters from the pile. They were the first thing I scanned and organized.
Deborah, I had never heard of V-Mail either, until about a year ago, when I was in the midst of transcribing some letters home from my father-in-law during WWII. I had to look it up, and found the same Wikipedia article you referenced. What a different world, if only in the little details, our relatives lived in those preceding generations.
It is definitely something that most people don’t know about, unless they are World War II buffs. As I was replying to Catherine, I didn’t know about V-mail either until about 10 years ago. It is pretty amazing how inventive our ancestors got. I believe the article said it was created to limit the weight load of all the thousands of letters the soldiers wrote and received.
So, the V-Mail letters you have in your collection are the items that my dad brought back with him. Mother’s originals would have been discarded after being photographed. From V-Mail to email….what a transformation in technology.
When mother wrote that she was going to send a bouquet to Mrs. Funk, I had a feeling the flowers would come from her own garden.
Counting down…only 11 days until I’m born.
I think it is amazing that he kept all the letters AND brought them home with him. The keeping of the letters would have been a piece of home to savor while he has away.
I have one example of a V-mail in its original form. I’m not exactly why it was never microfilmed. I’ll be posting that one in a few days.
I would think that V-Mail sped up mail for the troops… which had been such a problem!!! Very clever, indeed.