Standard-issue Valentine

In the February/March 1981 “Postscripts,” you published an article concerning the standard-issue postcard used in World War I, which as you said, was a “masterpiece of tight-lipped communication in which the soldier had only to cross out what he didn’t want to say.”

I have one of these postcards, which my father, Albert Gall, sent to my mother while he was fighting overseas. I admire his creative cleverness in turning it into a love letter. You’ll notice that his postcard is stamped by the censor, who must have gotten a chuckle out of it.