This essay has an air of inevitability about it. If a pitcher stands on the mound and expectorates on the baseball, the batter should know that the next pitch will inevitably be a spitball which will start out at waist level and sink to his shoe-tops by the time it crosses the plate.
There is also an inevitability about essay writing. If an event happens only once in 61 years and involves the Girl Scouts, it is inevitable that an essay must be written about it. The unwritten essay will say to the author, “If you don’t write me, I will write the essay myself.” And so there is a degree of inevitability about this essay. Let me try to tell you about it.
Soldiers of every nation will tell you that, next to going home, they look forward with great anticipation to receiving mail from there. That, of course, is why this essay is entitled “Mail Call.” In my case it ordinarily took at least two to three weeks for a letter mailed from my home in St. Louis to reach me in the African and Italian theaters of war. I am speaking of course about the Second World War.
The letters were collected at a military post office in Miami, Florida called an APO which means Army Post Office. Following the APO was a three digit number which directed the mail to the proper location. For example, When I served in Italy or in Africa, my mail was always addressed to the APO number in Miami. I assume the clerks at the APO in Miami separated the letters by the APO number into the varied designations and placed them into heavy canvas sacks. From that point on, they started a torturous journey involving several countries.
The planes that carried the mailbags were usually C-87’s which were the cargo version of the B-24 bombers. The first stop was Borinquen Field in Puerto Rico. The second stop was at Georgetown, British Guyana. The enlisted men’s barracks at Georgetown had small lizards that crawled over the supporting beams for the roof. I made three trips through Georgetown and never enjoyed a nights sleep there in any case.
The next stop was over jungle growth so heavy that if an airplane were lost there, it would be almost impossible to find it. The tall trees and the jungle growth would seem to simply absorb it. The flight from Georgetown was aimed at Natal, Brazil. If fuel was running a little low, the airplane could put in at Belem, Brazil or at a place called Fortaleza. At Natal, Brazilian salesmen were permitted to enter onto the flight lines to sell such things as perfume and their Natal boots. I bought a pair of Natal boots but never wore them on a flight. If it were necessary to use a parachute, when the chute opened, in all likelihood the boots would come off the feet. Consequently, I flew wearing Army high top shoes.
From Natal came the first ocean hop to a little known place in the South Atlantic called Ascension Island. It is a one mile square island which consists almost entirely of volcanic ash. A runway had been constructed amid the ash heaps which permitted it to a have a long runway. If the airplane missed the center line of the runway, there was a good chance that it would scrape the sides of the channel with one of its wingtips. Ascension Island, as I have said before, is one of the five loneliest places in the world. It was a British possession when the Americans took it over largely for the use of Pan American Airways. Today, that island does not even appear on most maps. I suspect that it is without inhabitants and no one seems to care about it anymore.
From Ascension Island to the next stop was Accra in British West Africa in a country called the Gold Coast. Since the early 1960’s, that country is now called Ghana.
When the mail reached Accra, it was separated into two sets. One shipment went north into North Africa and the Italian theatre of war, with several stops on the way. The second shipment headed eastward to the foot of the Himalayan Mountains to be delivered to those troops fighting the Japanese. Many stops along the way occurred at American bases at such places as El Genina and El Fasher in the Darfur region of the Sudan. It ended with delivery to the forces in the eastern-most province of India called Assam.
The arrival of mail at a post overseas occurred about once every 10 days. But if we were very lucky, there might be a weekly delivery. But on average, the mail arrived between ten days and two and one half weeks.
In those days there was no e-mail, of course. The only means of correspondence was letters and postcards. In late 1943 or 1944, the post office developed a thin sheet of paper called a V-mail. V-mail is a single thin piece of paper onto which you could write your message and fold it so that there was no envelope required. Mail in those days cost only three cents for a first-class letter. I believe that those V-mails addressed to soldiers required no postage.
Weight was very important because the mail was carried on cargo planes. The mail usually was an added starter after the rest of the cargo had been loaded. If there was no room for mail on the first flight, it had to be held for subsequent flights, which accounts for the delay in delivery. Obviously, the drawback to using V-mail was that the writer could not say much at all on one small tissue-like piece of paper.
When mail arrived at a base, the word would spread very quickly. The sack would be taken to the squadron headquarters and at lunchtime or when the work was finished for the day, the squadron clerk opened a window in the Quartermaster’s Office and then yelled “m-a-i-l c-a-l-l.” Within instants, perhaps forty or fifty men would show up right outside the window. As the squadron clerk called your name you were expected to answer out “Hyoh.” It was never a case of saying “I am here” or “That’s for me.” Everyone learned that the proper response was the single syllable “Hyoh.”
If your friends were away on a mission or at work, it was a solemn duty to claim their mail and to bring it back to the tent or barracks. On top of that, whenever the missing soldier returned to the tent or barracks, it was appropriate to tell him that he had some mail waiting for him. That would cause everybody’s face to light up.
Getting the mail from the squadron clerk was not always an easy task. It required that the mail be passed overhead from one hand to another until it reached the proper recipient. Once it was in the recipients hand, it was a sacred duty to take the mail back to your tent or barracks and to distribute it where it could be found easily. The point here is that receiving mail in the army was an extremely important operation. One did not walk around the base with a letter for another soldier carelessly tucked into his pocket. That would have been a gross error in etiquette.
Well now that I have told you about the importance of mail to soldiers, I will tell you a little about a mail delivery that I received on November 8, 2006. I knew that Veterans Day would come along in a few days but I was not paying any attention to it. On November 8, 1945, I receive my honorable discharge from the American Army. As Veterans Day, formerly called Armistice Day, came and went over these six decades, no one made a fuss about it. There were no congratulatory telephone calls or postcards. Perhaps there might have been a march now and then by the local American Legion Post or the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, that is about as far as it went.
In all those 61 years since my discharge from the American Army, no one ever said to me that they appreciated my service in our Armed Forces. But to be honest, I never expected anyone to offer good wishes on Veterans Day. When the Second World War came along, I thought it was my duty to volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces. It was as simple as that and after my discharge I had no relationship with the armed forces. I do not attend reunions nor did I ever join a VFW Post or a veterans organization of any kind. I had done my duty and it was my intention to get on with life.
This November 8th was a different story. One afternoon the doorbell rang and my wife answered. Two Girl Scouts from Troop 132 of the Glenwood School asked my wife if a veteran lived here. She replied that that was the case. At that point the Girl Scouts gave my wife a small bag with a letter and some presents. The presents were a large pencil with stars and stripes on it and a lapel pin. In addition there was a magnetic marker to hold things against the refrigerator, for example. It also had a flag on it.
When my wife read me the letter that the Girl Scouts had written and presented me with their gifts, tears came to my eyes. After all of these sixty-one years, the Girl Scout Troop 132 of Glenwood School remembered. How can any old soldier not show some emotion when he receives such a gift? It is no wonder that my eyes had some tears.
Here is the letter that the Girl Scouts wrote to me:

Here is the letter that I dictated to my wife in response to the letter from the Girl Scouts:

Girl Scouts of America
Millburn Troop 132, Glenwood School
Short Hills, New Jersey
Your gift brought tears to my eyes.
In the summer of 1942, I volunteered to join the United States Army. I was honorably discharged more than three years later, coincidentally, on November 8, 1945. Your gift was delivered on the 61st anniversary of my discharge.
I am very appreciative of your gift because in all of those years from 1942 to the present, no one has ever given me a gift for my service in the United States Army. I thank you very much. And I will treasure your gift for as long as I am around.
All best wishes to the Glenwood Girl Scouts, Troop #132.
Stay strong,

 
And finally, here is the letter that my wife attached to my letter:

To the Girl Scouts of Troop 132,
Ed Carr, my husband is an essayist. He wrote the attached essay “They Never Betrayed Me” to tell his daughters – for the first time – what had happened on the air raid that led to his imprisonment and his subsequent rescue by the Italian Partisans. Perhaps this will give you a flavor of what our fliers endured during World War II.
I am also including a VHS tape having to do with a plaque in New York that honors some of my husband’s co-workers at AT&T who were killed in World War II. This tape was made as part of a project of the Library of Congress in Washington to preserve the memories of WWII.
Perhaps the essay and the tape will give you a better idea about my husband’s service in the American Army. He is too modest to send these, but I will. My husband, who is now blind, was very touched by your gift.
Best regards,
Judith A. Chicka (Mrs. E. E. Carr)

So you see, when the Girl Scouts delivered their letter to me, it was inevitable that I should have a response. It was inevitable that I would write them a letter telling them how much I appreciated their gifts. I am certain that those two Girl Scouts will grow up to be good and thoughtful citizens. They were thoughtful in this case to have remembered me for my service in a war that, from their standpoint, must be thought of as a prehistoric conflict. If there were tears associated with these developments, I would say that they are well deserved.
Now about that spitball pitcher. The spitball was outlawed several years ago but it is alleged that a good many pitchers still throw it. If you are ever in a batter’s box and you think the pitcher is going to throw you a spitball, it is recommended that you move up in the batter’s box and try to hit it before it starts its downward flight. The chances are that you will miss the spitball but unfortunately that’s the very best advice that I can give you. There are teachers who rail against the use of the word spit, but for all of the years that I have been associated with baseball, I have never heard of a pitcher throwing an expectoration pitch. So spitballs and inevitability are the backbone of this essay.
E. E. CARR
November 14, 2006
Essay 216
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Kevin’s commentary: A favorite’s favorite. Good on the girl scouts for remembering, and on Pop for replying. I’m a little annoyed at myself in the past for not saying anything over years and years of Veteran’s days (I was pretty self-absorbed at 16) but I’ve done a little bit better recently. Reading about the war — and the linked essay in particular — definitely opened my eyes a little bit.
That said, “They Never Betrayed Me” is a very intense essay for a bunch of girl scouts. Conversely, the first part of this essay was a really nice window into some of the few brighter moments during the war. I wonder if instant communication takes anything away from the happiness of getting mail these days. I doubt it.