Spitball Army

In the early ’70s, my father’s company got the call to demolish a house in Carlsbad, California, and grade the property for new construction.  The day before the job, we drove to the site and rummaged through the contents of the house, which appeared to have been abandoned as if the former occupants might be returning for them one day.  They weren’t, of course, and what happened to them remains a mystery to me.

That mystery fueled my vivid young imagination as I pored over my rescued treasures during the following months.  I had sequestered them in a wooden rain barrel in the back of my Dad’s secondary tool shed, which sat on the edge of the property behind our house in Oceanside, next to the pet burial ground.  Among the objects were two boxes of Duz laundry detergent flakes, a Polynesian grass skirt, a few necklaces made of cowry shells, a bowling shirt, a book of Hoyle’s Rules for card games, and a shoebox containing a jumble of letters and old photographs.  I envisioned a gregarious family of card-playing bowlers in hula gear, returning after a night of carousing to a quiet California cottage appointed with a noisy hand-cranked washing machine and cribbage boards.

With time, my attention migrated in other directions, and most of the treasures and the rain barrel disappeared.  But I maintained a grip on the collection of letters and photos.  I sorted the letters by date.  I matched the pictures with the negatives.  Occasionally, I would read through a string of three or four of the letters from these people about whom I knew nothing.

The letters were all written to one Hubert L. Anderson, while he was serving in the United States Navy during World War Two.  The great majority of the letters were written by his wife, Beverly, who was living in Minneapolis at the time.  Occasionally, there was a letter from one of a handful of other family members, about whom I also knew very little.

The letters from Beverly are emotional and, at times, can be extremely intimate.  The couple had been married nearly two years when he left for this stretch of service in the War.  Over the course of the correspondence, which spans the dates March 23rd to June 14, 1943, there is a palpable sense of longing, loss, devotion, playfulness, ingenuity, and a growing sense of independence in this young woman.  Beverly is a wonderful letter-writer, and through her words we learn many things about her personally, and about what life was like on the home front during that war.

The bundle of letters and photos travelled with me when I left California for college, and when I moved to Alabama nine years later.  In the back of my mind, I thought that one day I might pull them all together in a more presentable way and share them, and that sense of historical discovery I’d had, with others.  Recently, with a little more time on my hands (and about 35 years after I originally found them), I pulled them out of the plastic file box which had become their home after the demise of the old cardboard shoebox.

Glancing through the letters, most of them V-Mail letters, I began noticing that the dates on which they were written corresponded to the current dates of 2008, exactly 65 years later.  I started transcribing the letters and decided to include them as daily posts on this weblog.  It felt like I was reading these letters with new eyes.  With vast amounts of information at my disposal via the internet, I began researching references within the letters.  For instance, Beverly describes attending a recital by Paul Robeson in her first April 4th letter, and I was able to find an online resource about Robeson and approximate that period in his career.  Beverly writes about buying a new portable electric sewing machine – now a representative model from that era can be viewed by linking through those words in her letter.

There are other things I could tell you about these people: that two of Hubert’s nicknames were Ande and Babe; that he was a medical doctor; that the couple spent time in 1942 at a seaside cottage in Mission Beach, California; that Ande wrote poetry.  But to tell you too much about the Andersons here would ruin the slow reveal of discovery that you can experience first-hand by reading the letters as they arrive on this site.

Bev & Ande outside their Mission Beach apartment in 1942.

So, I hope you will join me in reading them as I revisit these letters, 65 years to the day after each one was written.  Please feel free to leave commentary on this page or after a letter that has particular interest for you.

Here is a list of the letters, in order by date, with embedded links to the page on this site where the text and annotations are displayed (this list is updated as letters are added):

• 21 March 1942 (Beverly)
• 23 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 25 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 25 March 1943, part 2 (Beverly)
• 26 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 27 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 27 March 1943, part 2 (Beverly)
• 28 March 1943 (Judith)
• 29 March 1943 (Ted)
• 30 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 31 March 1943 (Beverly)
• 2 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 3 April 1943 (Judith)
• 4 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 4 April 1943, part 2 (Beverly)
• 8 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 11 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 11 April 1943 (Uncle Oliph)
• 12 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 12 April 1943 (Ted)
• 17 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 17 April 1943 (Judith)
• 19 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 20 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 21 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 22 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 24 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 25 April 1943 (Lester)
• 25 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 26 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 27 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 28 April 1943 (Tex)
• 28 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 29 April 1943 (Beverly)
• 30 April 1943 (Judith)
• 2 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 4 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 5 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 7 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 11 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 12 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 14 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 17 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 19 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 21 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 24 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 26 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 27 May 1943 (Beverly)
• 27 May 1943, part 2 (Beverly)
• 2 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 3 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 4 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 5 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 6 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 10 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 10 June 1943, part 2 (Beverly)
• 11 June 1943 (Beverly)
• 13 June 1943 (Judith)
• 14 June 1943 (Beverly)

The letter-writers:

• Beverly “Bev” (Mrs. Hubert L.) Anderson, Minneapolis, Minnesota


Beverly in front of the home at So. Xerxes where she wrote her first V-Mail letter.

• Judith E. Anderson (sister of Hubert L. Anderson), Staples, Minnesota
• Ted E. Anderson (brother of Hubert L. Anderson), Lake Benton, Minnesota
• Oliph M. Anderson (uncle of Hubert L. Anderson), St. Paul, Minnesota
• Lester T. “Les” Anderson (possibly brother of Hubert L. Anderson), West Fargo, North Dakota
• J.W. “Tex” Tidwell (friend), Brawley, California

The recipient:

• Lt. (MC) Hubert L. Anderson, M.D., 4th Battalion, 12th Marines, H & S Battery


The Dayton picture

Here are some other posts on this site that are related to these letters:

• The art and heart in letter-writing
• What is V-Mail?
• Cheer up, Solveig.
• The Thin Red Line:  My dear wife