26 DEAR JOHN
WARTIME LETTERS
N o. ONE
WARTIME LETTERS ISSUE
IMAGE OF PENNY BLACK COURTESY OF GENERAL POST OFFICE UK
editor’s letter
T
he art of letter writing is a lost form of communication. Ever since writing tools were invented, it became commonplace to write a letter. Historians depend on written records. Long distance relationships relied on letter writing. We learned how our relatives ate, dressed, and what they dreamed about love and what they thought about warfare, all from their letters. Perhaps we miss letter writing because we miss a world—an uncomplicated world where letters provided information out of necessity. When we read a letter we develop an image of the letter writer unavailable to us in any other way. Letter writing allows us to put our essential self on paper whether you mean to or not. No other form of communciation yet invented encourages that level of intimacy. Letters can be comforting especially during times of war—they’re indepensible forms of communication. It motivates soldiers on the battlefield and reassures families at home.
Some of most prolific letters written are during wartime. The first issue of our magazine is dedicated to servicemen, their loved ones, and for all those readers who appreciate the art of letter writing.
the number of “dear john” letters received by soliders whose place in a girl’s affections had been taken by the guy who stayed at home is heartbreaking.
victory mail a private view
WORDS KATHRYN BURKE PHOTOS NATHAN DUMLOA
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WARTIME LETTERS ISSUE
D
uring the First World War, letters quickly became the most important means of communication between families at home and their loved ones serving overseas. So many letters were written, in fact, that the military post began to have a problem. As important as regular mail was to the morale of American troops, military supply ships were often swamped with bags and bags of letters needing to be delivered. Cargo space taken up by the mail was desperately needed for war materials. To combat this difficulty, the American military post popularized an imaging technique that originated in England. Called “V-mail” by the Americans, the process consisted of microfilming letters sent to and from military personnel, transporting them by ship in microfilm form, and blowing them up again at specified locations before delivering them to their addressees. Sending the letters as thumb-sized images on microfilm allowed the military to conserve precious space in their cargo ships while still arranging for the delivery of morale-boosting letters. Though specially designed sheets of writing paper were needed to send V-mail, soldiers in all branches of the armed forces were provided with these sheets free of charge. It was also free for soldiers to send V-mail, though Americans at home had to pay to use the service. Soldiers writing letters home not only had to confine their words to a single sheet if planning to send them by V-mail, but they also had
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to be careful about the sensitivity of the information they included in their letters. There were censors that carefully removed any sections of stateside-bound letters that might give away the position or plans of the troops. Despite the enforced restrictions, however, letters from soldiers far from home became cherished objects once they reached their recipients. Soldiers were often gone from home so long that the correspondence they exchanged with their families and friends became the only way of maintaining those relationships. Many young couples, married or about to be, found it impossible to maintain the intimacy they had once shared. The number of “Dear John” letters received by soldiers whose place in a girl’s affections had been taken by the guy who stayed at home is heartbreaking. Sometimes, however, letters exchanged during the war served to bring couples even closer together. The letters that served as a bridge between them can provide endless insight into their individual characters as well as their relationship, and today many Americans are able to learn the unspoken thoughts of their young parents or grandparents by reading romantic correspondence written during the war. 2nd Lt. Sidney Diamond and his fiancée, Estelle Spero, wrote extensively to each other over the course of Sidney’s three years in the South Pacific. Their letters range from funny to sad, from sweet to lonely and back again, but the love they shared was the correspondence’s overarching
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ISSUE N o. ONE
credits
26 Magazine is designed by Yvonne Eder for Magazine Design, a course in the Publications Design masters program at the University of Baltimore, spring 2018. This protype and its contents are intended for academic use only.
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FRONT Fountain Pen Sharp Point by Unknown. 2018. Creative Commons CC0 1.0—Free License, No attribution required by www.pixabay.com.
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BACK David Stockman Portait by Frank Stockman, 1967, Personal Collection.
INSIDE THE COVER FRONT WWI Letter: Lieutenant Walter Boadway to his wife Betty, 2018, Center for American War Letters Archives, Leatheby Libraries, Chapman University, CA. EDITOR’S LETTER Black Penny Stamp by General Post Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penny_black. jpg (accessed April 28, 2018). FEATURE WELL OPENER Pen & Ink by Nicolas Thomas, 2018, Creative Commons CC0 1.0—Free License, No attribution required by unsplash.com. FEATURE STORY Isolation Photo Series by Nathan Dumloa, 2018, Creative Commons CC0 1.0—Free License, No attribution required by unsplash.com. Burke, Kathryn. “Letter Writing in America.” Smithsonian Postal Museum website April 2016. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/letterwriting/lw06. html (accessed April 28, 2018). BACK INSIDE COVER Vintage Type Card. Public Domain. http://viintage. com/album/vintage-typography-fonts-andflourishes (accessed April 28, 2018).
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