1942–43
HONORS
N orth Platte’s canteen was by no means the only “stateside” canteen in World War II. Telegraph and Daily Bulletin subscribers read regularly about the star-studded entertainers who frequented the Hollywood Canteen and New York’s Stage Door Canteen. William Jeffers set up a canteen at Omaha’s Union Station (today’s Durham Museum). Others sprang up along the nation’s railroad lines, including at Norfolk, on the Chicago & North Western in northeast Nebraska, and Alliance and McCook on Chicago, Burlington & Quincy lines in the west. But most every serviceman — and servicewoman — had special feelings about North Platte. At war’s end, 12.2 million men and women were serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the National World War II Museum. Though it served many repeat customers — and, no doubt, a significant portion of the 407,316 service members who lost their lives — it’s generally estimated that the North Platte Canteen received 6 million service visits during its 51-month life. That equals nearly one-half of America’s entire armed forces on V-J Day. For two centuries, the forks of the Platte have been a key
landmark on the “Great Platte River Road.”The great westward migrant trails — Oregon, California, Mormon — followed the river. So did the Pony Express. The Union Pacific. The Lincoln Highway, America’s first designated coast-to-coast motor route. Today’s Interstate 80. Even America’s first coast-to-coast air- mail flights stopped in North Platte. America has long ridden and driven through Nebraska and North Platte, usually headed somewhere else. So it was in World War II. But the Union Pacific collected passenger traffic from all over the East at Omaha and Council Bluffs. Past the Rockies, U.P. lines branched off to most Pacific ports. William Jeffers’ railroad was ideally suited to feed two worldwide the- aters of war. “Flyover country,” urban America’s modern pejorative for the heartland, didn’t exist then. “Middle of nowhere” did. The Canteen’s first wartime visitors, over and over, testified that they expected nothing special when their trains paused at North Platte. By August 1945, millions of service members knew better. But by Christmas 1943, they already had spread the name of North Platte and its Canteen around the world. Not to men- tion their country.
OPPOSITE: This busy Canteen scene from about 1943 offers photographic evidence that African-American service members (center) were equally welcome at the Canteen from its first days. (See also story excerpts, pp. 35, 54–55, and subsequent photos, pp. 98–99.)
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