“Mail Call”: Robert Sherrod and LST-689

World War II correspondent Robert L. Sherrod could never be certain which of his dispatches from the Pacific would appear in "Time" magazine. Fast-breaking news often relegated feature articles to file drawers or wastepaper baskets—a pity because such pieces brought to life little-known aspects of what it meant to serve overseas. 

One good example is an article Sherrod wrote on the USS LST-689, a tank-landing ship originally laid down in Jeffersonville, Indiana, by the Jeffersonville Boat and Machine Company and which served in the Asian-Pacific Theater during the war. 

This unassuming vessel was actually, in view of Pacific fleet sailors, “the most important ship in the navy,” said Sherrod, because it served as the link with home for thousands of Americans by delivering mail. Whenever a ship entered the Ulithi anchorage (a major staging base for the U.S. Navy), one of LST-689’s small boats scurried over to deliver a load of mail, noted Sherrod. 

When the fleet was out to sea for long periods, LST-689 dispatched mail to it via tankers or destroyers. First-class mail, all of which was brought from the United States by plane, reached within “spitting distance” of the Philippines within six to fifteen days. “The admirals learned long ago,” Sherrod wrote, “that mail is the prime factor in morale and no effort is spared to facilitate delivery.” 

Most of the work done by LST-689’s mail officers, men who had long experience with the U.S. Postal Service in civilian life, involved second-class mail and lower, Sherrod reported, brought to the Pacific by cargo ship, although any vessel could contain mail—at one time a battleship delivered 3,700 sacks. “A single cargo ship has brought as many as 12,000 sacks,” he added. 

Packages from home were the bane of the mail officers’ existence, as they often contained food that spoiled quickly in the tropical heat. “But the first class mail is the all-important item in the life of LST 689,” Sherrod said. The average sea-going sailor received three letters a week, with an Essex-class carrier, Sherrod said, receiving about two bags (1,300 letters) per day. 

On one horrible day, 131 bags of first-class mail designated for a task group were lost at sea. “When the word spread a pall settled over the group and one captain took the mike to tell his men they would soon be back in port where there would be more mail,” he reported