It is not hard to guess that obscene messages were sent in letters written between soldiers and their lovers at home during the Second World War. But again, it was known that these letters were checked by the authorities before they were sent or delivered to the soldiers. Therefore, a new system of concise expressions was introduced. To keep the passion alive for privacy or a limited word count, the soldiers had to compose a message in a way that was short, sweet, and more importantly, circumventing the authorities, and they were pretty creative with these abbreviations.
Millennials may remember “ASL” as a nostalgic memory. Many people’s online chats began with this acronym to find out the other person’s age, gender, and location. While these individuals used this acronym for convenience on the Internet, soldiers in WWII had to be similarly creative in response to their military tracking and word-saving needs.
Yet, compared to the often perfunctory ASL, World War II postal abbreviations were works of art, demonstrating the impressive rhetoric of soldiers trying to pen their passions from the forefront of the war.
World War II was an enormous treasure trove of abbreviations of all kinds, from the military to the sarcastic to the romantic. You may have come across situations that are described as “snafu” in English on the internet today. However, this acronym comes from the 1941 military slang abbreviation that means “situation normal, all f***edu p”. Today, it can be used to say that something is chaotic on the internet.
V-mails and the rise of acronyms
The Victory Mail or V-mail probably also partly caused abbreviations to explode. As these mails were microfilmed for sending, they reduced the typing space of the messages. This process required letters to take up less space, so more mail could be sent along with other cargoes at once.
Between the censored WWII letters and the more romantic V-mail, abbreviations can be incredibly impressive. There are many different options, from romantic and morally objectionable acronyms (SWAK: sealed with a kiss) to downright sensual abbreviations. According to a report from History, the following English abbreviations are among some cited by author Simon Garfield in his book To The Letter: A Celebration Of The Lost Art of Letter Writing:
- ITALY: I trust you and I love you
- BURMA: Undress and get ready, my angel
- MALAY: My peppy lips await your arrival
- VENICE: I’m so excited right now, stroking everything
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