“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo Buscaglia
December 10, 1941 – North Platte, Nebraska: Three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Rae Wilson, a 26-year-old store clerk, got an idea. She wondered if local volunteers could meet the soldiers passing through North Platte on Union Pacific trains and offer refreshments to show support for their service.
Rae wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Bulletin newspaper and asked if the Union Pacific train depot lunchroom could be converted into a canteen. She volunteered to coordinate the project. To her delight, Union Pacific and North Platte leaders supported her idea.
North Platte, a small town of 12,000 people, had been located on the Union Pacific Railroad mainline since the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. By the 1940s, passenger trains traveling coast-to-coast stopped at the depot for 15 minutes so that steam-driven locomotives could take on coal for their furnaces and water for their boilers.
The canteen began in earnest, on Christmas night 1941, when five volunteers met the 11 p.m. train. Soon, a regular schedule of volunteers was standing outside train windows with baskets of food, cigarettes, candy, with big smiles on their faces. Soldiers were surprised by the reception they received and amazed to discover that refreshments were free.
Military protocol required soldiers to remain on the train at stops, but as word spread about the North Platte canteen, regulations were relaxed. When the trains stopped, many soldiers ran to the depot. There, they discovered friendly volunteers and a smorgasbord of good food.
A typical spread consisted of fried chicken, egg salad or tuna salad sandwiches, fresh fruit, cookies, cakes, milk, and hot coffee. Volunteers brought their newspapers and magazines to share with the troops. During a time of national rationing of food, especially flour, sugar, meat, and coffee, the people of North Platte routinely did without food so that refreshments could be provided to the soldiers.
Although the train arrival times were confidential, Rae worked out a notification system with Union Pacific. The message, “The coffee pot is on,” informed the canteen that a train was headed their way. The troop trains rolled through North Platte between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily. During the peak times, 20 to 25 trains a day stopped at the depot. The bigger troop trains sometimes carried as many as 3,000 soldiers.
The number of soldiers was more than the local volunteers could handle, but word quickly spread to surrounding communities. Church groups and civic organizations began showing up to volunteer. A lady’s group from Shelton, Nebraska, a small town 120 miles away, rode the train to North Platte one day each week, bringing angel food cakes and cookies.
In all, 125 communities in Nebraska and eastern Colorado participated in the project. With many of the men on military duty, the volunteers were primarily women, many of whom had sons fighting in Europe and the South Pacific. Although the ladies could not help their sons, they could treat the soldiers as their sons. To the women, the boys weren’t just soldiers; they were “Our boys, the hope of America.”
Many young soldiers were lonesome and scared, wondering if they would ever see home again. The quick stop in North Platte was like being back home. It reminded them that what they were doing mattered and was appreciated.
The volunteers had no idea how long World War II would last or how long the project would go on. The war ended on Wednesday, August 15, 1945, but the canteen stayed open another eight months until most military personnel were home. It finally closed on April 1, 1946, 54 months after it began.
The North Platte Union Pacific canteen was one of the largest volunteer efforts of World War II. From December 1941 until April 1946, volunteers never missed greeting a train, day or night. Rae Wilson’s idea and the support of an estimated 50,000 volunteers touched the lives of more than six million soldiers who stopped at the North Platte canteen. Sixty years after World War II ended, the mayor of North Platte was still receiving thank you notes from old soldiers who never forgot their experience in North Platte, Nebraska, in World War II.