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Victory Mail
Letter sent by US V-mail service from 'Camp Dutch Army Manilla' on the Philippines to Zwiep bij Lochem in Holland on September 29, 1945. The sender was a Dutch serviceman on board a US vessel returning home after his imprisonment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
The service inaugurated mid-1942 in Great Britain and the USA is known as 'Airgraph' respectively 'V-mail' system.
The original letters were written on special sheets of paper of a standard type and sent to V-mail centers where they were photographed on rolls of 16-millimeter microfilm. The negatives were flown out to the home countries. There the negatives were processed and printed at postcard size, put into official penalty envelopes and mailed to the families.
It came as a wonderful solution to the problem of speeding up the mail between troops and civilians when ships were taking months and airplane space was limited.
The British Airgraph service ended on July 31, 1945. The item on show learns that the US V-mail service was still in function in October 1945.
The picture on left shows the envelope in which the message was forwarded to the addressee, on the right the photostat of the microfilm.
V-mail service to Holland and sent by a Dutch serviceman can be seen as a very unusual combination. I have never seen another one.
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