Letters from the Front
As I was looking through items that might be of interest to the Brewster Historical Society’s exhibit for 2024-2026, Letters from the Front. I came across a group of letters, telegrams, and V-Mail sent to my mother during World War II.
Earl, me, Louise and Charlie on steps of station
My mother was twenty-one years old at the start of World War II. She was attractive and vivacious, living in a small house on Main Street in Brewster with her widowed mother. The local schoolteacher, also an attractive and vivacious young woman, boarded with them. The Coast Guard Station was located just around the corner from their home, at the intersection of Foster and Point of Rocks Roads, the building commandeered from a Dr. Curtis, who lived there at the time.
My grandmother and mother enthusiastically supported the war effort, abiding by rationing rules and blacking out windows and headlights, participating in collection drives. They joined the Civil Defense and practiced first aid; my mother got herself certified as a motor pool driver on December 7, 1941. They participated in scrap drives for tin, rubber, paper, and fats, all items no longer available and needed by the war industry.
USCG station Brewster during WWII
But they also knew these coastguardsmen were far from home and no doubt lonely. My grandmother invited them to her house for milk and brownies – an informal USO – and it wasn’t uncommon to see her front lawn covered with jeeps. They were camped in tents along the beach, on alert for submarines, and this small kindness went far; my grandmother told of one serviceman stretching out his legs in front of her fire, looking up and saying, “Ah, a roof!” (It didn’t hurt that there were these two attractive women on the premises as well!) Sometimes the young men got a little rowdy – they picked up my tiny grandmother, put her on top of the piano, and pretended to leave her there.
Nancy Abbott WWII V-Mail
As one might imagine, more than one serviceman fell hard for my mother, and quite a few of them proposed. But one by one, as the young men got sent overseas, the heartbreaking letters began to roll in. My mother received the first V Mail letter on Cape Cod (see photo above). Victory Mail, or V-Mail as it was called, was created in order to save space on planes and ships for more urgent cargo. A letter was censored and filmed, and a single film canister containing many letters was shipped off, each letter to be reprinted on arrival.
The author of this V-Mail letter, Warren Havens, did not end up marrying my mother. She married a summer Brewster boy, a Navy man who served on an LST in the Pacific. We kids heartily approved the choice, but I do hope, whoever this Warren Havens was, he survived the war and lived a long and happy life back home in North Dakota, maybe once in a while remembering a young woman who used to liven up the dreary days while he was stationed in Brewster.
Are you a Brewster resident or have ties to Brewster? Do you have any military memorabilia you would like to add to our archives?
Sally Gunning
President, The Brewster Historical Society