Did women have any communication with soldiers during World War 2 and if there was How?

Answer 1

You wrote letters back and forth, snail mail. If the soldier was overseas the sender of mail from the US was encouraged to send "V-mail". Everything had a "V" for "victory" stuck in front of it with the start of the war. To do this you needed special stationery. There was a space for the address of the soldier at the top middle of the page. Every man overseas had either and APO or FPO address - Army Post Office or Fleet Post Office, plus a number. These identified his unit or ship, so as to not give information to spies snooping in the mail. The sender would not know where the FPO or APO was at any given time, but the military did and mail clerks would get the letters to the right place. You sent the letter in care of the Postmaster, New York (if your man was in Europe) or San Francisco (if he was in the Pacific). On reaching those cities the V-mail letters were opened and copied onto microfiche, and the originals destroyed. Hundreds of individual letters could be reduced and put onto a single microfiche sheet the size of an index card. This saved valuable space and weight on ships headed overseas. Once overseas the letters were blown back up and printed out, and folded so the address top middle showed through a little glassine window in the little envelopes the letter was put in. Then they were sent on to the recipient.

Letters back home from overseas were sometimes done as V-mail. But space on ships was not as scarce going back to the US, so often they were sent on still on the original paper they were written on. But, every letter from a serviceman overseas had to be censored. A man would write the letter, address an envelope and stick the letter in but not seal it up. Then he gave the letter to his officer. The officer had to read everybody's mail back home, to make sure they were not giving away any secret military information, such as what country they were in, or anything more vital. The letter would arrive at home with parts of it blacked out, or even cut out with scissors, if he tried to tell what the officer thought he shouldn't. The censoring officer's initials and the date would be in a corner of the letter.

Servicemen did not have to pay to mail their letters, even though first class postage was just .03 cents then. They would write "free" where the stamp went.

From bases in the states a man could sometimes try to phone home. Not everybody had a telephone at home then. There was also no direct dialing. You had to get the long-distance operator on the line and tell her what number you were trying to call. There were a limited number of phone lines for long distance, and sometimes you would have to hang up and wait, and the operator would call you back when she had the party you were trying to call on the line.

Receiving letters and packages from home was one of the biggest factors in keeping up morale of the men overseas. If a unit had moved, either changed bases or gone into an invasion, it might take two months for the accumulated mail to catch up. Some soldiers got "Dear John" letters, from wives or girlfriends back home, ending the relationship. Sweet ladies. Packages were sent with candy and goodies, and these were always a happy time, and the man would share with his friends.