The Odel Myers mystery

Back in April I posted a small story about V-Mail, the miniaturized copies of letters reconstituted from the significantly less-bulky microfilm that was sent back and forth between the troops and friends and relatives back home during WW2. That post was more about process than content, but in a conversation with my sister, I discovered a small, overlooked mystery in the content.

The first paragraph of the V-Mail that I featured in that blog starts off, "My I do get around, don't I? Who knows, it may be Germany next. Just hope I don't see Odel under unexpected circumstances unless it is here in England."

The name "Odel" seemed familiar to me, so I went back to the scrapbook where I found the original V-Mail and looked at a 2nd V-mail letter that was preserved there, and sure enough, it is from Odell Myers, another Tyler acquaintance of my aunt, the keeper of the scrapbook.

Ken Rasco, author of the 1^st V-Mail, and Odell Myers were classmates at John Tyler High school, where my aunt was a math teacher until early in the 1940's, when she took a position at TCU. She must have made quite an impression on her students if they were corresponding with her after leaving school.

Odell's V-Mail letter was written in November 1942, and according to newspaper clippings I found in the album, was captured and imprisoned by the Germans when his plane was shot down, just one month after he wrote my aunt! 

 

So the meaning of Ken's statement, “Just hope I don't see Odel under unexpected circumstances unless it is here in England." is "I don't want to meet up with Odel in a POW camp!" The story ends happily, though.