Reach Your Boy Overseas by V-Mail (1942), Schlaikjer's letters on film

Reach your boy overseas by V-mail is a 1942 U.S. government poster signed Schlaikjer. A helmeted soldier's face sits beside the word "mail" drawn as a strip of microfilm, and the copy calls V-mail letter forms easy to use, surest, fastest, and most patriotic (NAID 515278).

Selling a letter form

This poster sells a service rather than asking for a sacrifice. The archive describes a soldier's face under a helmet next to the word "mail," which is drawn as a strip of microfilm. The copy explains the idea in one line: the letters travel on film.

Reach Your Boy

OVERSEAS

by

mail

the letters

that travel on film

EASY TO USE

SUREST—

FASTEST—

and MOST

PATRIOTIC

Your Stationer and Post Office have

V...—MAIL LETTER FORMS

[signature: SCHLAIKJER]

[imprint: U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942—O—486595]

Who issued it

The record's maker line is "U.S. Government (V-Mail service)," with the artist's signature Schlaikjer and a Government Printing Office job number from 1942. No agency name is transcribed from the sheet itself. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 44. The record gives the audience as "Domestic public" and the purpose as "Mobilize or secure compliance." Stationers and post offices, the poster says, carried the forms.

Four claims in a column

The archive points to the stacked superlatives and to the link between a postal product and patriotism, and tags glittering generalities and transfer. Read the column again: easy to use, surest, fastest, most patriotic. The first three are claims about performance, and the record offers nothing to check them against. The fourth cannot be checked at all. It makes the choice of envelope a measure of loyalty, which a letter form does not need.

The poster's audience is the people at home with a son in uniform, addressed as "your boy." The appeal works on worry for him: the fastest and surest route is what a parent would want. The Roosevelt administration essay places the year's posters beside the government that issued them.

A Navy recruiting poster of the same year, The U.S.S. Marblehead comes home!, speaks to the men a recruiter wanted rather than to their families.