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Four of the 55,000 volunteers who powered North Platte's World War II Canteen wave goodbye to service members as their troop train departed the 1918 Union Pacific Depot in July or August 1945. It's possible they could have been from Farnam, which was serving that Aug. 5 while a U.S. Army Signal Corps film crew captured the Canteen in action in the war's last days.
Even on its 1,559th and last day of operation, North Platte wasn’t alone in running its World War II Canteen.
Women from North Platte’s First Lutheran Church were joined that day by their counterparts from St. John’s Lutheran Church of Gothenburg in neighboring Dawson County.
A three-part series honoring the 124 Nebraska and Colorado communities that assisted North Platte’s 1941-46 World War II Canteen. Sept. 18: Logan County and Lincoln County. Sept. 25: Keith County and west central Nebraska. Oct. 2: Dawson County, the Panhandle, east central Nebraska and northeast Colorado.
“The latter church spent a total of 17 days at the Canteen, serving every eight weeks during the last years,” the Gothenburg Times wrote April 4, three days after Canteen Commander Helen Christ and founder Rae Wilson locked the 1918 Union Pacific Depot’s dining-room doors for the last time.
It was a fitting tribute, not just to them but also to Dawson County’s aid to North Platte’s mission of hospitality to U.S. and Allied service members.
Like Logan County, Keith County and North Platte’s Lincoln County neighbors, Dawson County people quickly stepped up to help after the Canteen’s Christmas Day 1941 launch.
“Mrs. Lew Wonderling suggests,” the Times wrote on Jan. 29, 1942, “that Gothenburg people who wish to do something for the boys in the service could be of real help by getting behind the Canteen at North Platte. She offers the use of the Wonderling truck to transport supplies.”
Gothenburg’s Platte Valley Community Club donated supplies to the Canteen that same day, The Telegraph wrote in its Jan. 30 issue.
Today’s final segment of The Telegraph’s Canteen Honor Roll series highlights the involvemen…
Gothenburg had 2,330 people in 1940, compared with 3,469 in 2020. By Feb. 6, the American Legion Auxiliary in Cozad (population 2,156 in 1940, 3,776 in 2020) was preparing to host the first of many regular “Cozad Days” at the Canteen over the next four years.
“This is a very definite way in which we can help our boys, and any day some of our own Cozad boys may be going through on a troop train,” said the Feb. 6 edition of the original Cozad Local.
At Cozad’s Canteen debut Feb. 12, “hundreds of homemade cookies, popcorn balls, candy, stationery, apples, etc., which had been donated here” were given to some 500 uniformed customers.
On June 23, Lexington’s Legion Auxiliary led the first regular Canteen turn for the county seat that grew from 3,688 people in 1940 to 10,069 in 2020.
Volunteers served some 2,000 customers, up to half of them Black soldiers riding a 17-car troop train, the Lexington Clipper (an ancestor of today’s Clipper-Herald) wrote June 25.
From Farnam to Buffalo Grove
Nine Dawson County communities appear on the 125-member Honor Roll list that stretches from the Wyoming border to David City, from the South Dakota to Kansas lines and across the Colorado line into Sedgwick and Phillips counties.
Farnam, which had 346 people in 1940 — exactly twice as many as it had in 2020 — hosted its first serving day on Dec. 5, 1942.
A group of 73 Farnam volunteers may have been captured in U.S. Signal Corps film footage shot at the Canteen. “Moving pictures were taken of the group at noon,” the Times reported, with the Farnam Press supplying the date of Aug. 5, 1945.
The first Canteen visit for Overton, which had 491 people then and 702 in 2020, was noted in the May 14, 1943, edition of the Elm Creek Beacon:
“The opportunity to serve some 3,500 eager soldiers traveling on 16 trains, both regular and troop trains, was a new and pleasant experience for 50 workers who made the trip to North Platte Sunday to truly make it Overton’s day at the Canteen.”
Eddyville mustered 87 volunteers in and near their town to host the Canteen on Sept. 28, 1944. That represented more than one-third of the town’s 1940 population of 237 — a figure that had shrunk to 105 by 2020.
Sumner, with 296 people in 1940 and 306 in 2020, joined North Platte’s Episcopal Church of Our Savior in staffing the Canteen on July 28, 1945, the Daily Bulletin reported.
And on Dec. 11, 1944, the Canteen tables were staffed by some 35 people from Buffalo Grove, based around a store and at least two country churches about 12 miles northwest of Lexington.
They supplied 50 dozen eggs, 57 dozen cookies, 25 birthday cakes, 50 pounds of meat, one-half bushel of apples, 24 pounds of coffee, 90 loaves of bread, 14 quarts of pickles, five jars of sandwich spread, 19 pounds of butter, eight quarts of cream and three dozen doughnuts.
“Thirty-five dollars was also donated to help make ‘Buffalo Day’ at the Canteen a big success,” the Clipper reported Dec. 21.
On Dec. 23, Buffalo Grove-area residents held a “coyote hunt.” Echoing similar regional Canteen fundraisers, hunters auctioned off their trophies to send funds to the North Platte volunteers.
As North Platte's World War II Canteen closes on April 1, 1946, founder Rae Wilson (left) and Helen Christ, her 1942-46 successor as Canteen commander, help lower its iconic sign from its perch outside the 1918 Union Pacific Depot. Also shown are C.H. Land, who helped hold the ladder steady, and Frank Cornwell, atop the ladder.
Buffalo Grove’s example wasn’t unique. The Canteen Honor Roll includes a few other communities that were never formal towns, like Thune in McPherson County and Lillian and Tallinn Table in Custer County.
The Canteen also received regular help from small-town and rural church groups and service clubs, which often didn’t wait for an organized community day to travel to North Platte and pitch in.
“The 2-Better-U Club was assisting the North Platte Canteen on Thursday of last week,” the Local reported on Jan. 29, 1943.
Twenty-one farm women in the Hillside Hustlers club, also northwest of Lexington, served almost 4,000 service members on March 24, 1945.
This list of the 125 Canteen Honor Roll communities comes from an Aug. 14, 1946, North Platte Daily Bulletin advertisement of the city's postwar Canteen Workers Reunion. They stretched from the Wyoming border to David City near Lincoln, the South Dakota to Kansas lines and across the Colorado line into Sedgwick and Phillips counties in that state's northeast corner.
“Ten sons of individuals in the group are in the service, and with the shortage of help many of the members have had to assume added duties about the farm,” the Clipper wrote March 30.
Dawson County’s dedication to aiding the Canteen almost cost four Cozad women and volunteers their lives on Nov. 25, 1944.
Driving back home on U.S. Highway 30, their car collided with a truck west of the Maxwell U.P. viaduct while coping with what the Times called “a blinding snowstorm and icy pavement.”
Both drivers “apparently were blinded by the smoke of a passing train and snow and did not see the other,” the Kearney Hub added.
Three of the women suffered serious injuries, including 36-year-old Mrs. Verne Dickinson. She suffered a deep gash above her knee when the truck fell on top of the women’s car.
Fittingly, a service member saved her life. The Hub said Pvt. Clyde Rowley, stationed at the Bruning Army Air Base in south central Nebraska, arrived a few seconds later and applied a tourniquet so she wouldn’t bleed to death.
After the Canteen closed, the Gothenburg Times — whose Honor Roll town was there at the end — recalled how North Platte-born U.P. President William Jeffers had supplied its permanent home.
When Jeffers did so, “the North Platte Canteen was on the way toward making World War II history,” the Times wrote.
It’s not just North Platte’s history. It belongs to all the 125 communities and 55,000 volunteers who won the lasting gratitude of 6 million service members who fought the Second World War.
In the first of three parts, The North Platte Telegraph revisits the contributions of the Canteen Honor Roll communities, the hundreds of smaller towns that chipped in to help the Canteen continue on.
UPDATED, Sept. 21, 2022, 10 am: Updated to correct release date to coincide with Canteen Festival.
A look back — through newspaper clippings from the time — at the Canteen contributions from surrounding Lincoln County communities.
As one might expect, the bulk of the 125 communities on North Platte’s World War II Canteen Honor Roll came from the 22 west central Nebraska …
UPDATED, Sept. 21, 2022, 10 am: Corrects dates of October Canteen Festival.
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Today’s final segment of The Telegraph’s Canteen Honor Roll series highlights the involvement of communities across a 350-mile-long swath of N…
Four of the 55,000 volunteers who powered North Platte's World War II Canteen wave goodbye to service members as their troop train departed the 1918 Union Pacific Depot in July or August 1945. It's possible they could have been from Farnam, which was serving that Aug. 5 while a U.S. Army Signal Corps film crew captured the Canteen in action in the war's last days.
This list of the 125 Canteen Honor Roll communities comes from an Aug. 14, 1946, North Platte Daily Bulletin advertisement of the city's postwar Canteen Workers Reunion. They stretched from the Wyoming border to David City near Lincoln, the South Dakota to Kansas lines and across the Colorado line into Sedgwick and Phillips counties in that state's northeast corner.
As North Platte's World War II Canteen closes on April 1, 1946, founder Rae Wilson (left) and Helen Christ, her 1942-46 successor as Canteen commander, help lower its iconic sign from its perch outside the 1918 Union Pacific Depot. Also shown are C.H. Land, who helped hold the ladder steady, and Frank Cornwell, atop the ladder.
A three-part series honoring the 124 Nebraska and Colorado communities that assisted North Platte’s 1941-46 World War II Canteen. Sept. 18: Logan County and Lincoln County. Sept. 25: Keith County and west central Nebraska. Oct. 2: Dawson County, the Panhandle, east central Nebraska and northeast Colorado.
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