 | George Anderson of Milton, Mass., with his mother Margaret Gordon Anderson. A dutiful son, George would send postcards to his mother from wherever the US Army sent him. |
The front of this card is not as interesting as the back. George went to a camp like this one for basic training before being sent to Europe.
Like any young man away from home, George sometimes wrote, “Send money.”
Some of the cards George sent home showed the places he stayed as a soldier, in this case, sleeping quarters in a stateside army barracks.
Since much of the war was fought in trenches, digging ditches was an unavoidable part of a soldier’s life.
A postcard from Fort Dix, N.J., showing another unavoidable fact of life for the American soldier – marching.
The colored tinting on the postcards at the time was still an inexact science, as these purple and mustard colored horses show.
George’s first overseas assignment was at the American Red Cross Hospital in Paignton, England where he served as a records clerk.
Military hospitals were sometimes set up on private estates, making the accommodations for the wounded a bit more luxurious than a typical army barracks.
US soldiers could write to home without having to worry about postage – they simply wrote “Soldiers Mail” where the stamp would have gone. This card also bears a censor’s mark, verifying that it contained no classified information that might be dangerous if the card were to fall into enemy hands.
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