Yesterday, Katie let me know she was on the way to our place but it would take some time to get here. The delay wasn’t because she was coming from Tennessee — she was leaving for here from just across the highway — but the transportation was a golf cart.
I always love to see her and miss her the second she leaves. Like me, Bri and baby can’t wait until she moves back to good ole’ Indiana.
Crazy how times have changed…
Spending time in the car with my Momma headed to the dentist last week, we were talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and about how the video of him being shot circulated on social media. And then, Mom shared a story about my family from the early 40s.
My grandma, Bessie McKain, had 5 boys overseas fighting in WWII all at the same time. G’ma knew the boys weren’t stationed together because that was no longer allowed after the death of the Sullivan brothers. (Five brothers serving together were killed in action during the Battle of Guadalcanal.) But… she had no idea where any of them were.
No Facetime. No text messages. Occasional letters.
Mom said G’ma would get letters from the boys, but they were infrequent and they never included anything you might expect. Even simple problems like “the food is awful out here, mom,” and weather conditions which might indicate a location were blacked out. All mail was censored by the US government to protect sensitive information. No “loose lips” in WWII.
Can you imagine if it was your loved one(s) fighting in a war outside of the US and not knowing where they were or what they were doing?
To put things into perspective…
So in WWII, as a matter of national security, mail was censored so nothing would be revealed if it fell into enemy hands. Today, it feels like pretty much everything is blabbed for all to read online… and as citizens… we feel like we deserve to know it all. 🙄
Now you know: At one time there were 10,000 censors employed between the United States and United Kingdom just to review WWII mail.