WASHINGTON -- It was 1944 on the troop transport ship Caleb Strong and all the Algeria-bound American GIs could do to endure the enemy fire and the bad food was to write home. Their letters never arrived -- until Wednesday.
The 235 World War II 'V-mail' letters, expressions of love and comfort to worried families and sweethearts, sat in a Raleigh, N.C., attic for 42 years before an exterminator spotted them in a worn duffel bag and took them to the Postal Service last month.
The return of some of the letters in a ceremony at Postal Service headquarters Wednesday made everyone forget they were involved in a 1980s media event and, instead, summon up the details of earlier lives and times -- particularly the 21 days aboard the Caleb Strong, which left Newport News, Va., for the Mediterranean port of Oran, Algeria,
'I made it. I came back. I'm alive. I'm still living. It's an emotional day for us,' said Walter Dropo, a Boston businessman best remembered as a 13-year veteran of professional baseball, playing for the Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles from 1949 to 1961.
He played one of the best first full seasons in baseball history in 1950, hitting .322 with 34 home runs and a league-leading 144 RBIs.
Dropo, 6-foot-5 and 63, almost had forgotten about the Caleb Strong and the letter he wrote to his mother while a 21-year-old Army corporal and soon-to-be combat engineer.
He was sheepish about reading it aloud, but only at first.
'I'll read the damn letter. I'm going to read it,' he said.
'Dear Mom,' it began, going on about the weather and the food, and noting, 'I've gotten a nice suntan.'
He never mentioned the five enemy bombardments of the convoy of 110 ships that included the Caleb Strong -- but he commented about the slow pace of the ship's mail service.
'You'll probably be getting mail a little more regularly from now on,' he wrote.
Robert Kirsch of North Huntington, Pa., a POW in Germany until 1945, wrote his parents and a girlfriend. Manford Peins of North Plainfield, N.J., aboard the Caleb Strong with his B-17 bomber crew, wrote Ruth Kidd a year before he married her.
Two letters written by Paul Bucko, who won a Purple Heart serving with the medics, already are on display at the pharmacy he once managed that is now run by his widowed second wife -- in War, W.Va.
Raul Alvarez of Livermore, Calif., on his way to war aboard the Caleb Strong, wrote to Terry Espinosa, now his wife of 36 years.
'I love you with all my heart and no one will come between us,' Alvarez wrote, adding without transition, 'Have you started to work yet?'
His wife, who read the 42-year-old love letter aloud, said, 'I've got a lump in my throat.'
Alvarez' post-military career was as a letter carrier.
The four recipients thanked Postmaster General Albert Casey, also a World War II veteran, for returning the treasured letters, whose disappearance is still somewhat of a mystery.
Dropo said apparently the serviceman charged with mailing the letters forgot about them. Overcome by shame when he discovered his mistake, he hid them in his aunt's attic where they became a 'family skeleton.'
The unidentified soldier since has died.
Casey said 16 of the letters have been returned, including the 10 to the four veterans Wednesday, and the Postal Service is working with the Veterans Administration to locate recipients for the rest.
