EPILOGUE
F or many of the six million World War II servicemen and women aboard troop trains that criss-crossed the nation, the 10 or 15 minutes they spent at North Platte’s Canteen would be re- membered, sometimes revered, in their hearts and minds for a lifetime beyond that span of minutes. As the years passed, thank-you letters from those boys long since grown to manhood, contin- ued to come to North Platte. They were variably addressed to “the Newspaper,” “the Mayor,” “the Chamber of Commerce” and even to “The ladies of the Canteen.” The letters were in turn passed along to The Telegraph, and many of them were passed along to me. It became my job, or more accurately my privilege, to track down those writers and interview them for stories. At 20, 30 and 40 years after the end of World War II, their voices were still strong as they elaborated on their 10-minute stop at the Canteen. By the 1990s, thank-you letters still sporadically arrived with those generalized designations. The voices, though thinner and more frail, were more imperative. They expressed a dual gratitude not
only for the Canteen but for finally having extend- ed what they considered a long overdue thank you. Sometimes they wept. I was born in the midst of World War II. When my mother, whose two sons were Navy pilots, worked at the Canteen, she brought me along in a basket that she set on a shelf in the Canteen room. Fifty years later, I was talking with a veteran whose letter of thanks had found its way to North Platte. As he recalled his Canteen experience, he shared that he had held a baby there, had carried her about as he thought about his own infant child. He mused what might have become of that baby. It was my turn to weep. Just being from North Platte could sometimes elicit thanks and recollections from someone who had once been a recipient of the Canteen’s hospitality. As I chit-chatted with a street vendor outside Grand Central Station in New York City (my mother always warned that kind of chatting might get me in trouble), the question rolled around to where I lived. What happened when I said “North Platte, Nebraska,” led me to momentarily believe
my mother’s warnings had come to pass. The pretzel vendor, a big man by any standards, rushed around his cart, grabbed me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground. “You thank those people in North Platte. I was on a troop train and they gave me a birthday cake.” He set me back on the sidewalk and confided it re- ally wasn’t his birthday. I assured him that many of those cakes went to servicemen who fibbed about the dates. Time is steadily wiping away personal recollec- tions of North Platte's Canteen. There are genera- tions for whom World War II is but a chapter in a history book. But the spirit of the Canteen will live on for so long as there are men, women and children willing to respond with love and caring to the needs of others. Sharron Hollen “Reporter at Large” (retired) May 2019
148 CANTEEN: AS IT HAPPENED
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