By Sharon Barnes
Until Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, some local boys had never been outside the Santiam Valley. By 1945, hundreds of them were deployed around the world. From tents, foxholes, ships and submarines, their letters echoed a hunger for home and a familiar face.
“Boy…I feel lost down here all by myself. I haven’t seen anyone who ever heard of the Santiam Valley since I left the U.S.A.,” wrote Dick Duman from New Caledonia.
Al Schmitt Jr. was beside himself when he spotted Ed Zimmerman on the back of a transport truck in France. Talking to someone from home, even for only five minutes, did him more good than he could tell, Al said.
To let the boys know they weren’t alone, Stayton businessman Ed Bell spearheaded a newsletter devoted to keeping them connected.
The Servicemen’s Bulletin would garner national recognition for Ed and his staff, but for Ed it was all about the boys.
Servicemen’s Bulletin
Excerpts of The Servicemen’s Bulletin
can be viewed online at www.saintboniface.net.
Click on “St. Boniface Community
Archives and Museum” and scroll down ”
to “The Phenomenal Servicemen’s Bulletin.”
“You boys let us know how you are and what you are doing, so we can tell the other boys about you and where you are,” he told them.
And suddenly the Santiam Valley boys didn’t feel like such strangers in strange lands.
Thanks to the Bulletin, they were able to connect with each other in the remotest of places and take a few minutes out from the carnage to talk about the little things, the cherished things, like favorite fishing holes, dances at the Forester Hall, and the folks back home.
Sponsored by St. Anthony Knights of Columbus, the Bulletin began in 1942 as a few typewritten pages. The price of subscription was a letter to Ed.
As word of the Bulletin spread, “Dear Ed” letters began pouring in from around the globe. By 1945, the bi-monthly publication grew to more than 50 pages, with a mailing list of 350 names.
Gathering news, reading and editing letters and keeping track of ever-changing military addresses was a big job. But patriotic fervor and Ed’s boundless enthusiasm soon drew a small army of volunteers.
As expertly as any gunners-mate, May Neitling typed out the copy with a rapid-fire staccato. Ed’s daughter Bobbie manned the mimeograph machine, cranking out 19,000 pages for one mailing alone.
High school students and other volunteers met in Ed’s office for the final assembly – collating, straightening and stapling the pages, and then addressing 350 brown mailers to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and WAACS who eagerly awaited their arrival.
From Germany, John Welz told Ed the Bulletin was like a present from God. From “somewhere in Europe,” William Hamby said reading the Bulletin was like walking down Main Street and shooting the breeze with everybody he knew.
Out in the Marianas, Joe Frichtl thanked the Bulletin for letting him know his friend, Glen Frank, was stationed just the other side of the island.
“Keep the Bulletin coming!” wrote Wayne Phillips from France.
Our boys weren’t the only readers. The Bulletin was shared with buddies, at least one of whom wrote Ed for a subscription. Even though he’d grown up in a big city in another state, he’d come to think of Stayton as his “hometown,” he said.
Everyone on H.E. Walt’s ship read it. “Even though the fellows don’t know anyone, they like to read what they have to say,” said Walt.
Censorship made it difficult for the boys to say much but, heaven knows, Fritz Lau tried. Fritz’s letters were a favorite with the other boys, many of whom thought he should write a book after the war. The censor wouldn’t let Fritz describe his actual front line experiences, so suffice it to say “I’ve been amused, astounded, amazed and just plain ‘scairt,’” he told Ed.
The tougher the going, the more welcome was the Bulletin’s arrival.
Still, it always hurt to read the Gold Star page and see that Leonard Lulay, Harry Mason, Norval Carter, Clem Lambrecht, Fay Humphreys, 16-year-old Jimmy O’Connor and too many other swell fellows had been killed.
As the war took its toll, the Dear Ed letters also became increasingly grim.
“I never used to think much of life and death,” George Basl wrote Ed from Germany, “until I saw with my own eyes some sights I never want to see again.”
It’s hard to believe almost 70 years have passed since the last issue was published.
It’s harder to believe that the few subscribers still with us are now in their eighties and nineties. Reading the faded, dog-eared pages of the Servicemen’s Bulletin, it’s easier to believe they are still – together and forever – the boys.
