Letters

Here you'll find an archive of some of the correspondence that Charles Coolidge sent home from the front lines. There are letters (V-mail and airmail) as well as telegrams/cablegrams and various other notes. This correspondence is from late 1944 and 1945. His earlier correspondence can be found in the scrapbooks section of this site.

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Letters and telegrams/cablegrams were usually the only means of communication between families at home and their loved ones serving overseas. While V-Mail and Airmail letters were censored for any information that may give away a unit’s position or other sensitive information, they were a way for soldiers to let their loved ones at home know that they were safe and doing well. Once the soldiers letters reached home, they became cherished items and were often kept in a keepsake box or put in a scrapbook, as was the case with Charles Coolidge’s mother’s scrapbook. As time has gone on, these letters serve as a glimpse into the daily lives of the soldiers and the historic events they were living through.