Park Cities Stamps - Texas Philatelic Association

A 1945 letter from home leads to a journey
By Lou David Allen
The history of a person’s life is often captured
in the letters written and received.
One such letter is the subject of the article that
you are reading. Most letters are discarded or
lost, but happily some are saved. These are
the letters that some collectors look for all
throughout the countryside.
The letter of interest here came into my
collection by way of an antique dealer in Baird,
Texas. It was written by a mother to her son
who was in the Navy during World War II.
In this case, her son Horace was serving in
the Pacific theater fighting island to island
against the Japanese. Many covers we find do
not contain the original letter. But this one
did and therein lies the story that makes this
one special.
The letter speaks of the several activities including
the weather, the garden, and a fishing
trip. On that trip, the main breakfast course
was fried fish. Two sections of the letter show
the strains of war and how they affected those
loved ones at home. Reading the letter you can
feel the attitude toward the enemy and the near
consternation of the mom due to the absence
1 The Texas PhilaTelisT July-August 2007
of her son at war. The following is an excerpt
from that letter:
“I have just listened to the news. I can’t understand
people doing like those Germans. They
must be mean people . . . Some days I feel like I
can’t stand it any longer. But I have to snap out
of it and go on. It is time to go to bed. I will stop
and say good night. And come home soon. Be
sweet. We love you lots.
Mother and Dad”
In the letter she refers to how “mean” the
Germans were. On April 11, 1945, 15 days before
this letter was postmarked, the American
public got its first real exposure to the German
plan for the Jews and other undesirables in
Europe. The Sixth Armored Division of the
Third Army had liberated the Buchenwald
concentration camp.
Now let us move our discussion from the
contents to the cover itself. Horace Elliot, the
son, was a seaman first class. The “C.B.” in the
address was the abbreviation for Construction
Battalion, also known as the Seabees. Notice
that the postmark is nicely tied to a six-cent
airmail stamp that appears to be Scott C25.
On closer examination, the stamp is Scott
A mother’s letter to her son serving in the Pacific revealed the stress of a long war on the home front and
lead to a present day journey to see if recipient survived the war.