By Mary Dodge Allen
Have you ever heard of the North Platte Canteen? It was the largest of the 120 community-based canteens operating throughout the United States during WWII.
The small town of North Platte, Nebraska - population 12,000 during WWII - had been a major rail hub since the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. Steam trains regularly made a brief 10-15 minute stop in North Platte, to take on water and lubricate the wheels.
On December 17, 1941, ten days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, North Platte resident Rae Wilson heard that her brother’s Company D of the Nebraska National Guard was scheduled to stop at the town’s railroad depot. Rae, a 26-year-old store clerk eagerly spread the word around town.
On the day the train arrived, hundreds of people were eagerly waiting at the depot, ready to give the troops gifts of home-baked food, chewing gum, cigarettes and other goods. To their surprise, the troops aboard turned out to be Company D of the Kansas National Guard, not Nebraska. No matter. The town’s residents swarmed the train and handed their gifts to the servicemen through the open windows.
The North Platte townspeople were deeply touched when they saw how their gifts and well-wishes boosted the morale of the servicemen on the train. The next day, Rae Wilson wrote a letter to the editor of the North Platte Daily Bulletin.
Below are excerpts from her letter:
“To see the spirits and the high morale among those soldiers should certainly put some of us on our feet and make us realize we are really at war... Why can’t we, the people of North Platte and the other towns surrounding our community, start a fund and open a Canteen now?”
Christmas Day, 1941, the official beginning of the North Platte Canteen:
On December 25, 1941, volunteers with the newly-formed North Platte Canteen officially met their first troop train. They prepared baskets of food and other goodies at the Cody Hotel across the street from the depot, and handed out food items, cigarettes and magazines to the troops through the train’s open windows. (For security reasons, military personnel were generally not allowed to leave trains during stops.)
It soon became apparent that the facilities at the Cody Hotel couldn’t keep up with the growing number of troop trains. Rae Wilson contacted William “Bill” Jeffers, a local resident who was President of the Union Pacific Railroad and asked him if the canteen could use the vacant lunchroom at the train depot. He agreed, and the canteen moved into the depot shortly before January 1, 1942. It remained there for the duration of the war.
As the North Platte Canteen served more and more troop trains, the military officials relaxed their restrictions and allowed servicemen to leave the train and enter the depot. But tight security was still maintained by Union Pacific officials. They only communicated the upcoming arrival of troop trains to the women in charge of the canteen. Word was then passed along by calling other volunteers, and saying the code phrase, “I have the coffee on.”
Each day, as many as 24 trains stopped at the North Platte depot, and its Canteen served thousands of servicemen during the war.
On a typical day at the canteen, this amount of food was used to feed the troops:
1,080 cookies
2,000 buns
1,000 bottles of milk
100 pounds of ham
80 pounds of ground beef
70 fried chickens
720 hard-boiled eggs
23 pounds of butter
16 pounds of coffee
2 crates of oranges
8 bushels of apples
36 birthday cakes (to servicemen with birthdays on or near that day)
How did the canteen feed all these servicemen, especially with food rationing?
Churches and organizations from over 125 neighboring towns contributed to the effort. Most people had sons, brothers, husbands or boyfriends fighting in the war, and they wanted to do their part. Some volunteers traveled as far as 200 miles to bring food or to work at the canteen.
People donated extra ration stamps for sugar, coffee, gasoline, and more. Extra farm produce, meat and dairy products were donated to the canteen. Children even gave up their birthday cakes so they could be given to the servicemen. As the North Platte canteen became more well-known, donors throughout the country sent money and food.
The canteen received no government funding, so fund raising efforts were ongoing. One local resident, John “Gene” Slattery, sold his family’s goats at the livestock market and donated the money to the canteen. Someone asked him if he had anything else to sell, and he replied, “All I have is the shirt off my back.” A buyer bid for it, and he took it off right away.
The Canteen also had a piano, and soldiers would gather around it while a canteen volunteer or even a serviceman played popular tunes, like “Stardust” or “String of Pearls.” Servicemen would sing along, or even dance with the young women as the tunes were played.
Popcorn Balls, Pen Pals and Marriage:
One of the most popular snacks with the servicemen were popcorn balls, made and distributed by young women carrying snack baskets. Some of the young women put scraps of paper with their names and addresses inside the popcorn balls. This often resulted in pen pal communications between them and the servicemen.
William “Woody” Butrick corresponded with local resident Vera Winters, and his friend, Virgil Butolph corresponded with Vera’s sister, Ethel. These relationships resulted in two marriages after the war! Both marriages lasted for decades, until the deaths of both husbands.
The Union Pacific Depot, where the North Platte Canteen was based, was torn down in 1973. But its memory lives on at the Lincoln County Historical Museum, which houses a North Platte Canteen exhibition.
James Griffin, the museum director and curator, stated that most of the troops served by the canteen were homesick teenagers who had just completed boot camp. They were riding on a train with poor heating and no air conditioning in the middle of nowhere, on their way to war.
But then, in Griffin’s words, “They get off the train, and they see [a maternal figure], and she’s got food.” In letters home, some of the soldiers wrote that they were fighting for the women who had offered them a brief respite from the war. Griffin added, “They were only here for ten minutes, but they knew they were loved when they left here.”
Jornalist Bob Greene wrote a book about the canteen, entitled: Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. Greene interviewed many of the servicemen who had visited the canteen. He said:
“So often, their voices would break, and some of the men would cry as they would try to put into words the gratitude they felt for the people of North Platte. They spoke of how lonely they had felt on the troop trains, heading for war and perhaps for death. And then, in that one little town, the train paused, and, like a miracle, the people of North Platte were there.”
Bob Greene summed up the legacy of the North Platte Canteen, with these words:
“What the people of North Platte did for the soldiers of this country – what they did on their own, without any help from the government – is as fine an example of what our nation can be as anything... I have ever found.
“The soldiers weren’t expecting anything and weren’t asking for anything. But the very fact that the people of North Platte were there meant the world to those soldiers.”
Mary Dodge Allen is currently finishing her sequel to Hunt for a Hometown Killer. She's won a Christian Indie Award, an Angel Book Award, and two Royal Palm Literary Awards (Florida Writer's Association). She and her husband live in Central Florida. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Faith Hope and Love Christian Writers.
Thank you for posting. What a wonderful effort for the servicemen!!
ReplyDeleteHi Connie, It was heartwarming, how the people of Nebraska worked together to help so many servicemen! I enjoyed writing this blog.
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