Veteran Bring Back Lot of 36 V-mails from Artist Zeny Politis-What a cool grouping. Zeny was stationed in the Pacific theater. Here are 36 of his VMails that he sent home to his wife, each has a caricature of the guys in his outfit, including a self portrait of him. This is a very cool look into the daily life of some of these soldiers day to day activity, with a small bio on each, in some cases. There are some humorous anecdotes and insights on some of these fellows. Zeny was a combat engineer, in the late 50’s he stayed in the army as an artist. He moved over to Nasa and worked at the Marshall flight center in Huntsville under Von Braun during the Apollo years.
V-mail, short for "Victory Mail," was a secure and efficient postal system used during World War II to transport correspondence between soldiers overseas and the home front by microfilming letters. Launched in June 1942, this hybrid system reduced the weight and bulk of mail by 98%, saving valuable shipping space for ammunition and supplies. These vmails appear to be copies, because they are copies, each letter was copied onto microfilm which was much cheaper to ship and they were printed and sent out. It is interesting that when they reached a processing center, the letters were filmed onto 16mm microfilm using Kodak (Recordak machines). A 90-foot roll of film containing about 1,600 letters weighed only 4 ounces, whereas the same number of paper letters weighed roughly 40 to 50 pounds. The film was sent to its destination, where it was "blown up" (printed) back to a readable size (roughly 4inches (10.16cm) x 5 inches (12.7cm) ) and delivered. These are in great shape, and a really cool collectible. We purchased these directly from Zeny’s son. They are excellent and a lot of fun to read. Enjoy!