Racy messages were exchanged between soldier and their homebound sweethearts during World War II ( WW2 ) , as letter exchanges were process by censors and a new mail system called for concise phraseology . Whether in a bid for privacy or to keep passion awake in a special wordcount , soldiers got creative with acronym to make the short , sweet , military equivalent of a modern day sext .
Millennials may remember " ASL " like a nostalgic biff in the face . afternoon frittered away in the depths of Habbo Hotel commute their age , sex , fix with unknown on the internet . While Habbo Hotel inhabitants used it for rest in the internet , textspeak age , soldiers in WW2 ask to get similarly creative in response to military monitoring and outcry for quad preservation .
Unlike the rather more pro forma ASL , however , WW2 postal acronyms were relative works of artwork , show impressive wordsmithery on the part of soldiers trying to pen their passion from the frontline of warfare .
WW2 was a gold mine for acronyms across the control panel , from military to sarcastic and romanticistic . You may have discover something as a snafu , which come from the 1941 military slang acronym for “ situation normal , all f****d up ” .
In state of war , it was used as " an expression conveying the vulgar soldier ’s terse acceptance of the disorderliness of war and the slowness of his master , " according to theOxford English Dictionary . Today we practice it to say something was helter-skelter , for example : " The departure do was a total snafu , thepensioner accidentally ejected himself out of the belligerent jet-propelled plane . "
Victory mail , or V - mail , was in all probability also in part to give thanks for the explosion of acronym , because it reduced the authorship space for messages as they were microfilmed for dispatch . The cognitive operation meant letters took up less infinite , so more could be sent alongside other shipment in a undivided payload .
The acronym that cropped up among the more romantic of censored WW2 letters and atomic number 23 - mail are , in our opinion , poetry . They range from the wholesome ( SWAK : sealed with a kiss ) , to thedownright raunchy . accord to a report fromHistory , a few uncovered by source Simon Garfield in his bookTo The Letter : A Celebration Of The Lost artistic production Of Letter Writing , let in : ITALY , I believe And Love You BURMA , Be Undressed Ready My Angel MALAYA , My Ardent Lips Await Your Arrival VENICE , Very Excited Now I Caress Everywhere EGYPT , Eager to Grab Your Pretty T**s
Ooh , matron .
