Many years have passed since the end of World War II. Nevertheless, her echoes still reach us. These are the graves of unknown soldiers, and fragments, and shells left on the battlefield, and funnels from bombs, and the memory of surviving veterans. Soldier letters are another reminder of those terrible years. They wrote them on simple pieces of paper. Each war veteran knew how to fold a letter into a triangle. They were stored by relatives in treasured boxes, knots, scarves. They knew how to fold a letter into a triangle at home. Now, rereading these lines, we can with horror imagine how terrible people lived during the Black War ...
How to fold a letter in a triangle? Field mail of past years
So, how to fold a letter into a triangle, they knew in every family. And until now, these messages, yellowed from time to time, written in pencil, are stored as a memory of our heroes. As people were waiting for letters from the front! These triangles are one of the main symbols of that terrible, formidable era. Do not lose each other people only helped the field mail. In each front-line administrative center, sorting points were created. The signalmen worked hard and hard in terrible conditions.
The path of the "triangles"
Yes, times were just awful. Delaying correspondence or delivering it for other purposes was considered an official crime. Envelopes and postcards, of course, were not enough. Publishers, of course, began to produce them in considerable numbers. However, in the first place, ammunition, canned food, and rusks were primarily delivered. At that moment, it was thought up how to fold the letter into a triangle. The people called this message soldier.
Frontline workers threw letters into mailboxes constructed from improvised means and fortified in convenient places. Every day, the postman selected “triangles,” secrets and postcards. At the field station they were processed with calendar stamps, packed in bags and sent by transport to the base. From there, correspondence was transferred to sorting points and then followed in mail cars. Hundreds of kilometers under the enemy’s bullets passed "triangles", and everyone knew the price!
Letters from the front, happy and sad
With what impatience the relatives and friends of the news were waiting! Before folding the front-line letter into a triangle and sending it home, the soldier carefully thought over its contents. I did not want to upset my relatives, but the correspondence was not always happy. Many hoped that the terrible government envelopes came by mistake. Wives, children and mothers were so anxious to get a touching “triangle”, reporting that their soldier was alive and well ...
Important historical source
Today, in almost every museum or archive, researchers can find a soldier's triangle letter. How to fold it, everyone knew at that time. Genuine anxiety and love for loved ones are felt in each of them. Dreams of victory, a description of front-line life, hope for a peaceful, happy future - all this creeps to tears when viewing old triangular letters. Lines of comrades who died in the war, a desire to avenge them, a thirst for life - these were the messages that they carried to their families, incredibly touching and sad.
Even the kids coped
Even the kids knew the best way to fold the letter into a triangle so that they could send their father to the front. It did not stick. Before writing a letter, it was necessary to fold a triangle from a blank sheet. They met, even inscribed on pieces of newspapers.
Initially, it was necessary to write the address. The back side was marked by a line or a dotted line along the edge. It remained clean so that postal workers could make notes there. If the hero died, an appropriate entry was made here, and the letter was returned to the addressee. The address side in this case was crossed out.
Next, the sheet unfolds. The letter itself was written. The text was placed so as to fill all the empty spaces on the sheet, except for the reverse and address surfaces.
If for some reason a soldier got to another unit, to the infirmary or to the hospital, a new address was indicated on the clean side of the triangle. Some letters could “walk” for years and found a soldier only a few years after the end of the war.
Front triangles were also written on pages torn from school notebooks. They were issued during the war in a row, the pages were numbered. Of course, it was possible to buy a notebook, but they were rare in stores. Therefore, they wrote messages in a neat, small handwriting, trying to save as much space as possible for the most important news.
The soldier's “triangle” is the so-called echo of war. The surviving letters make us tremblingly think about that terrible time, about Soviet heroes, about the great importance of the support of our loved ones, expressed in warm words written on paper with our own hands.