Everett Willard Gazaw WWII Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brown

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Town of Sand Lake, New York

Everett W. Gazaw, Military Grave Marker: Notes that Everett was born October 14, 1917, and died March 3, 2003. He is buried in the Taborton Zion Cemetery in the Hamlet of Taborton and Town of Sand Lake, NY.
Everett W. Gazaw, Military Grave Marker

Notes that Everett was born October 14, 1917, and died March 3, 2003. He is buried in the Taborton Zion Cemetery in the Hamlet of Taborton and Town of Sand Lake, NY.

Name/Title

Everett Willard Gazaw WWII Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brown

Entry/Object ID

2021.2.83

Scope and Content

This entry documents a series of sixteen letters that Taborton resident and Private First Class (at the time) Everett Willard Gazaw wrote to his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brown, back in Sand Lake from December of 1943 through January of 1945. Everett wrote the letters while deployed to Europe in defense of Great Britain and during the further liberation of France after D-Day. At the time, Everett was approximately 27 to 28 years old and had been away from home for over two and going on three years. Thus, he understandably wondered if he would survive his deployment to Europe and ever see Sand Lake again. He had reportedly yet to see combat. However, the Army strictly limited the content of such letters to purely family matters for sake of operational security. Thus, exactly how close he came to combat is uncertain. For example, the letters necessarily only reference being "somewhere" in England or France and exclude any sort of operational details. Rather, the letters primarily relate to the weather in Europe, who had and had not written him recently, packages requested and received, and hopes to resume a normal life with a good job, decent food, and at least reliable used car once he returned home. Regardless, the letters clearly communicate the gnawing and seemingly endless, "hurry up and wait for possibly the very worst," situation that he faced. Also, his exemplary service as evidenced by receipt of an Army Good Conduct Medal. Many of the letters are formatted as microfilmed V-mails (Victory Mail) in a condensed format that can be best read while fully logged into this system if at all. One can imagine the need for such a system given the number of letters Everett posted as well as the millions of other service members deployed during WWII. The WebLinks portion of this entry provides additional information regarding V-mail. In addition, for ease of reference, the PDF included below summarizes the date, location and general subject matter of each letter. Since there are more envelopes than letters in the collection, at least several letters are missing and the envelopes have become shuffled between letters over the years. Per his grave marker, Everett was apparently promoted to Corporal before being discharged from the Army. However, little else is known about his service or life thereafter. Thus, please contact the Town Historian if you can help shed any additional light upon Everett's service and life thereafter. The original letters are stored in a binder marked, "TOSL Misc. Photos and Ephemera Binder #1," per the photo below and stored on a shelf in the Town Historian's Storeroom of the Sand Lake Town Hall.

Cataloged By

Michael Frederick Perry

Acquisition

Accession

2021.2

Acquisition Method

Found

Web Links and URLs

Victory (V) Mail History per the National WWII Museum

Created By

curator@slhstrustees.org

Create Date

March 23, 2023

Updated By

curator@slhstrustees.org

Update Date

March 28, 2023