Letters to and from the front lines were a lifeline for service men and women fighting in World War II. Few things mattered more to those serving abroad than getting letters from home.  Everyone knew that “mail was indispensable” when it arrived.  “It motivated us” and “We couldn’t have won the war without it,” was a common refrain from soldiers during and after the war. The mail also had a similarly critical importance when it arrived stateside, reassuring the very worried families of servicemen back home.

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 to be careful about the sensitivity of the information they included in their letters. Censors 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.