Evening star., 1943-02-12
BY THOMAS r. HENRY,


!. LONDON tBy MaiD In six
months American soldiers in North
Africa. Ireland and Great Britain
have written home nearly 1000, 900
letters-mostly in the form of v
mail photographed on narrow eel
luloid strips and developed
Otherwise the task of dispatching
this great mass of mail with the
limited plane and ship facilities
would be close to impossible. BY
V-mail method mail, which other
wise would weigh about 1000
pounds. is reduced to little more
than 20 pounds and done up in
packages convenient for air trans
portation.
The whole job of photographing,
developing and dispatching the
films is done through an Army post
Office setup here in London which is
making heroic efforts to get as many
letters as a soldier wants to write to
the folks at home through in the
minimum time. The V-mail has
priority over all other mail except
important official dispatches.
Bugs" Remedied.
Naturally bugs have developed
from time to time. Most of these,
however, have been in trans
Atlantic transportation and they
are being remedied so that in a
few months letters from Great
Britain and Ireland may be ex-
pected to reach the mammoth "
mail center in New York in, at the
most, four or five days.
Some of the difficulties, as ex-
planned by Maj. Lorraine S. Fogarty
of Guthrie, Okla, who is in charge
OF the work here, might we'll afford
the plot for risible comedy. For
example, every sheet must be pre-
pared as a separate letter, address
and all, and when it arrives in New
York it is placed in separate en-
veiope and sent to its destination.
A soldier may write as long let
ter as he pleases-covering, for in
stance, five or six sheets. The Army
post Office has no way of keeping
these separate letters, the form IN
which they leave here, together. 1t
is conceivable that each one might
be in separate package. 1t is also
conceivable that an overloaded
plane might be able to carry only
one or two Of these packages, leaving
the others behind. And the Army
postal clerks in New York who re-
photograph and redevelop the films
might very we'll, since they Ger
tainly haven't time to read the let
ters if they wanted to. get them
confused still more.
Hence, page six Of what was orig
inally intended as a single epistle
may reach mother or sweetheart
one day, page five the next day
page four two days later and pages
one, two and three be delivered by
the postman a week later still. For
the time being, until transportation
picks up, American girls must learn
to read their love letters backward
if they expect to get any at all in
reasonable time.
Postal Experts in Charge.
All the officers and most of the
enlisted men at the V-mail center
are postal experts. They must be
to handle with as few bitches as
develop close to 10000 letters a day
on the average. During the Christ
mas season, Maj. Fogarty says, the
figure ran far higher. Fortunately
there were exceptional facilities
available when the system was
started
The letters are photographed by
soldiers attached to the Army post
Office who start their work at 2 or
o'clock in the morning ard keep
going until the days batch is
finished. They also must stamp by
hand a number on each sheet. The
developing is done at the great
Eastman Kodak plant here, covering
about so acres. Within "a hours after
a letter is received here, says Maj.
Fogarty. it has been censored,
photographed and eveloped, and will
be on its way to New York as soon
as any transportation is available.