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Wartime Postmaster Details the Work of Mail Delivery in WWII
Frank C. Walker, postmaster general of the United States during World War II. If you have any doubts about how important mail delivery was during World War II, read the words of the then-postmaster...
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Looks Like Babe Just Got a Promotion
Return addresses from letters on March 7, March 23 and April 9, 1944. Inspired by a few recent comments on this blog, I’m trying to get back into the swing of posting regularly again. Turns out, I had...
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Seems Strange That We Kind of Know Where He Is Now
In the last letter, dated June 21, 1944, Babe reveals that he had pictures taken of himself taken in Rome, and in the same letter he notes that the people “in this part of the country are pretty lucky....
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Time Magazine, the ‘Soda Pop War’ and Babe’s Anger at Strikers
The Time magazine cover from June 5, 1944, which includes a labor-related article that Babe may have referenced in his July 19, 1944, letter. It’s not terribly surprising that in the course of these...
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The Postmaster’s Order Regulating How Soldiers Got Packages
Months ago, I transcribed a letter from Babe dated Nov. 11, 1943. Among its highlights was a detailed description of the stuff he wanted his family to package up and mail overseas — and a postmaster’s...
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Attempting to Identify Babe’s Location from the Clues in His Letters
Babe latest letters help indicate he had recently been in this area. The last three 1944 letters I’ve transcribed from Babe have relatively large gaps between them — July 22, Aug. 6 and Aug. 31 — and...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Hospitalizations: Babe’s Long Stay During WWII
In January 2014, a few days before the start of my daughter Sarah’s final semester at Missouri State University, she called shortly after 8 p.m. to let me know she was about to go in for surgery. She...
View ArticleChristmas 1944 Dinner at the 64th General Hospital
We’re taking another brief detour from our letters after I rediscovered some documents among my collection the other day. Now that I know Babe spent a significant portion of his overseas tour — about...
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New Information from a Visit to the Archives
Twenty years ago, on April 26, 1994, I wrote a letter to the National Personnel Records Center in suburban St. Louis. It was the first time I had requested information about Babe. At the time, I lived...
View ArticleWould Babe Have Had Enough Points to Come Home?
If Babe had lived, would he have accumulated enough points to come home after VE Day? The short answer: Probably not. Enlisted men needed 85 points to be considered for “demobilization,” according to...
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