WORLD WAR II DIARY
and being taken prisoner throughout the Pacific.
And there was even more bad news. Four days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, Germany and Italy, allies of Japan, declared war on the U.S. Almost overnight, America found herself under attack globally, from the far-flung islands of the Pacific to the continent of Europe, even to her own coastal waters. Less than three weeks after Christmas, German submarines, the infamous U-boats, would begin prowling close to the U.S. shoreline, sometimes sinking merchant ships in full view of shocked onlookers along American beaches. On top of all of this, the government was warning everyone to conserve basically everything, a legitimate wartime expectation which would, in a short time, necessitate mandatory rationing. Soon, gasoline, coffee, rubber, sugar, nylon, and a host of other everyday commodities would be carefully rationed out to Americans, with the military receiving the top priority. Good citizens were told to make do with less, sometimes far less or nothing, so that our soldiers and sailors would have enough. For the most part, Americans stayed home during the Christmas of 1941, saving gasoline and doing their patriotic duty. Holiday military leave, a cherished institution of peacetime armies, had essentially all been cancelled this year. Families across the nation felt strongly the absence of sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, and an increasing number of daughters. Americans were wondering, quite soberly, how long this war would last and how many lives it would cost. It was Christmas, but the mood was by no means a festive one.
Early on the morning of December 17, 1941, a small crowd had gathered at the Union Pacific railroad station in North Platte, Nebraska. Rumor was that a troop train would pass through the town at about 11 a.m. The word was that it would be transporting the men of Nebraska’s 134th Infantry from Camp Robinson to an unknown destination. Just after noon a train arrived, but it was not transporting the Nebraska boys, or any soldiers for that matter. All the while, the crowd, comprised of relatives and friends hoping to get just one more look at their loved ones, continued to increase in number. They came bearing fruit, gifts, fruit cakes, and lots of other things, all designed with a dual purpose in mind – to make the soldiers more pleasant on their journey and, most importantly, to let them know they were not forgotten. Rumored arrival times of 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. came and went. No Nebraska 134th. By this time a crowd of some 500 had assembled, from all throughout the town, to see “their boys.” And then it happened. A train, revealing soldiers through open windows, pulled into the station. A joyous chorus of whoops and hollers greeted the smiling young men. But, to the great disappointment of the gathered townspeople, the soldiers were not from Nebraska at all, but from the neighboring state of Kansas. The happiness of the young men in uniform at the sight of all these well-wishers melted the hearts of the North Platte faithful. The fruit cakes and other gifts, so carefully and lovingly prepared, were gladly passed on to the Kansas boys. Tears clouded the eyes of many on the platform, some wept openly, as they waved goodbye to the departing soldiers, who were by this time grinning from ear to ear and hanging out of train windows to say their own good-byes and express appreciation for such a wonderful send-off. They may not have been the boys from Nebraska, but each of them represented some mother’s son, somebody’s brother, or some young lady’s husband or boyfriend. They all deserved to know that they were loved, supported, and prayed for, as they headed out to far-away places of conflict. The people at the station knew, and the boys on the train also knew, that many of them would never see their own loved ones again. That very day a vast, compassionate, and seemingly impossible plan was born, a plan that would ultimately touch the lives of over 6 million American servicemen and women.
Rae Wilson, a pretty and perky 26 year old drugstore sales clerk from North Platte, had been in the crowd at the railroad depot. She had hoped to get a glimpse of her brother, Captain Denver Wilson, among the anticipated Nebraska soldiers. As she left the depot that day, she conceived an idea to begin a canteen for servicemen in North Platte. Since their town was a railway hub in the center of the United States, most of the troop trains ferrying soldiers across the nation would stop there. She, along with others, rallied the town and neighboring communities to support, supply, and staff the canteen outreach. The basic idea was simple, but staggering in scope. Mostly women, although some men and young people also pitched in, would operate a canteen, basically a combined snack bar and hospitality house, to support travelling soldiers and sailors on their way to the battlefronts of World War II. They would meet every troop train around the clock, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, for the duration of the war. They would serve up sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cookies, cakes, candy bars, fruit, popcorn balls, coffee, and more, almost all of it homemade. They would offer magazines and religious materials, provide piano music and even dancing, sew on buttons and mend tears in uniforms, administer motherly first- aid for headaches, fever, toothaches, and scrapes, and assist in writing and mailing correspondence back home. Many pen pal relationships ensued, mostly single girls writing lonely soldiers fighting overseas. Several strong marriages actually resulted from these longdistance friendships. All of this took place during a typically hectic 10 to 15 minute stop by the trains. Designated servers would carry food onto hospital trains, for those physically unable to visit the canteen. If it was your birthday, you were given a whole cake, baked with love by these amazing women from America’s heartland.
As incredible as it may seem, this entire operation continued every single day for 4 years and 3 months straight. Peak days included as many as 23 trains and 8000 servicemen. From Christmas Day 1941 until April 1, 1946, extending a full seven months after war’s end to welcome back millions of returning GIs, the North Platte Canteen valiantly and sacrificially carried on its labor of love. In addition to North Platte, which had a population of only around 12,000 at the time, 125 neighboring towns and villages from Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, some as far as 200 miles away, joined forces to support Americans in uniform.
With members of our armed forces continuing to ship out to horrific fighting on the continent of Europe and the islands of the Pacific, consider a typical day in the life of the Canteen in 1944. Volunteers from the two small Nebraska villages of Merna and Anselmo are travelling 70 miles one-way in a caravan of 22 cars and 3 small trucks to North Platte. They arrive with 53 birthday cakes, 127 fried chickens, 58 dozen cookies, 32 dozen cupcakes, 73 pounds of coffee, 163 dozen eggs, 68 dozen doughnuts, 41 quarts of pickles, three crates of oranges, 9 pounds of ham, 160 loaves of bread, 40 popcorn balls, and 50 pounds of sandwich meat. As incredible as it sounds, this scene was played out day after day for over four years. What they accomplished was all the more amazing, considering the severity of rationing during the war. Sugar, coffee, butter, meat, and gasoline were in tight supply. These generous Midwesterners simply made-do with what they had. Sacrificing from their own personal supplies of rationed items and utilizing the produce of their fertile farms and fields, they regularly provided a “taste of home” for America’s travel-weary, and often scared and homesick, soldiers.
In the end, over 55,000 volunteers would participate in the epic story of the North Platte Canteen. Even more staggering, over 6 million servicemen and women would pass through the Canteen before it closed its doors in the Spring of 1946, its mission complete. It had accomplished all of this with no government funding whatsoever. Americans were simply taking care of Americans. Part of the enduring legacy of the North Platte Canteen is that people were treated with dignity and respect there— black and white, men and women, majors and privates.
In distant military outposts, onboard steaming Navy ships, and on far-flung fields of battle, from North Africa to Europe to the Pacific, men talked about the North Platte Canteen. They would speak of it fondly and dream of one of those homemade pheasant sandwiches and a piece of angel food cake. Once the war ended and Americans in uniform returned home, to try to resume normal lives, letters of gratitude began to arrive in North Platte. Hundreds of World War II veterans have written over the years, many near the end of their lives. These letters all share a common message, one of profuse and heartfelt gratitude for the sacrificial kindness shown a lonely soldier far from home in uncertain times. For them, North Platte, for a magic moment in time, had been like home.
There was never any official U.S. government recognition or expression of gratitude for the Canteen or the town of North Platte. In 1973, the Union Pacific Railroad, despite howls of protest from local residents, put the wrecking ball to the building that housed the Canteen, a hasty decision which it later regretted. The building is gone now, along with most of the volunteers and soldiers, and the very story itself, like so much in our history that should never be forgotten, has essentially vanished from our collective memory as Americans. It ought not be like this. That’s why we must always remember North Platte and tell our children about what happened there 75 years ago. As Ronald Reagan so aptly, even prophetically, put it in his Presidential farewell address to the nation, “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.”