V-MAIL FASTEST FOR SERVICE MEN IN ITALY AND FRANCE
By Frank Miles
With the Fifth Army in Italy (IDPA) -- V-mail is the fastest of the three ways uniformed men in Italy and France and their home folk may correspond. Air mail is next, in speed, regular mail is the slowest.
Fifth army has received a postal bulletin which states V-mail by averaging 12.5 days between the United States and Italy, is two days faster than between the United States and France.
A September check showed air mail letters average 15.2 days between home and Italy and 16.5 days between home and France. Regular mail averages 22.1 days between Italy and home. No figures were available on France.
Virtually all checks show soldiers of the Fifth army even when in far forward positions, write more letters than they receive. The folk at home may or may not be so much busier.
In a foul smelling cellar which a frontline squad was using as a concealment rendezvous in daytime I recently saw a 21 year old private laboriously writing v-mails letters with a stubby pencil by candle light.
"I try to write my girl every day," he said with a slow grin, "but she don't do that good by me."
Another youth had a letter from his father complaining about the "horrors" of war he had encountered in a train trip between Washington and Chicago.
"You'd think the old man was entitle to a purple heart or some other decoration, to read of his suffering," the GI grinned. "I don't like that kind of letter, but he's my dad so I'll sympathize with him."
Source: Mount Pleasant News, March 2, 1945
