10 | North Platte Travel Guide 2023
EVENTS Historic NORTH PLATTE’S WWII CANTEEN: A Wartime Miracle on the High Plains BY TODD VON KAMPEN todd.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com
During the tumultuous years of World War II, the name of North Platte was spo- ken gratefully and wistfully among U.S. and Allied service members from the Philippines to the heart of Germany. It was all because of the North Platte Canteen, the “finest hour” on the war’s home front for western and central Nebraska and northeast Colorado. The story of this 1941-46 all-volunteer effort is told at the Lincoln County Historical Museum, 2403 N. Buffalo Bill Ave., which preserves Canteen memorabil- ia and the operation’s surviving records and photos. The Canteen, successor to a Red Cross- operated canteen for World War I soldiers in 1918-19, served some 6 million service members or their loved ones from Christmas Day 1941 to April 1, 1946. It formally began eight days after some 500 North Platte residents gathered at the former 1918 Union Pacific Depot on Dec. 17, 1941, expecting to give Christmas gifts and treats to National Guardsmen of the 134th Infantry Regiment’s North Platte- based Company D. They encountered Kansas Guardsmen of the 137th Infantry’s Company D instead. But the crowd gave their gifts to the Kansas soldiers, inspiring 25-year-old Rae Wilson to rally her community to once again serve soldiers whose Union Pacific troop trains paused at North Platte. Wilson led the Canteen in its first months, giving way to her next-door neigh- bor Helen Christ when her health broke. Christ led a core group of mostly female North Platte volunteers for the rest of the effort’s 51 months of life. They soon were joined by an ever-in- creasing flow of volunteers from other towns, beginning with women from nearby Stapleton and Logan County on Jan. 15, 1942.
LINCOLN COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM PHOTO U.S. service members from another Union Pacific Railroad troop train get coffee from North Platte Canteen volunteers in 1943 in the dining room of North Platte’s former 1918 U.P. Depot. The Canteen served women and minorities without discrimination, as can be seen by the presence of a woman service member (behind shoulder of sailor in black in middle) and African- American soldiers (behind or to the right of the sailor).
By the time the Canteen closed, some 55,000 people from 125 “Canteen Honor Roll” communities had donated money, goods or personal time to help serve every troop train making 10- to 20-minute water stops. In the 1918 depot’s dining room — redubbed the “Canteen Room” until the depot’s 1973 demolition — male and female service members of all colors and many nationalities received home-cooked food, treats, cigarettes, reading matter, birthday cakes, smiles and encouragement. “Platform girls” took food and other items to the trains to those not allowed to get off. North Platte has received an estimated 16,000 thank-you letters since 1941 from World War II service members in all 50
states and several nations. The best 300 are preserved in “Canteen: The Letters,” the North Platte Telegraph’s 2022 sequel to its 2019 book “Canteen: As It Happened” that re-presents its ancestor papers’ wartime coverage. Other key Canteen resources include newspaper columnist Bob Greene’s 2002 book “Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen”; a January 1977 “On the Road” television story by the late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt; and U.S. Signal Corps footage of the Canteen taken in July and August 1945. The Kuralt and Signal Corps images can be found on YouTube. The Canteen’s wartime volunteers received a Meritorious Service Award from
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