Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen

In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today -- a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons.

During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen.

Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen -- staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers -- was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended.

In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.

Soldiers and sailors all over the country spoke in awe about the wonderful food and treatment they got from the townspeople of North Platte, Nebraska. Many soldiers struck up penpal correspondence with townspeople they met. A number of women in the North Platte area ended up marrying soldiers when they returned from the war.

Bob Greene takes a "Studs Terkel approach" to this subject and much of the book consists of narratives of older people who were present at the time. One thing that really stands out is the unbelievable effort that the people in North Platte (and surrounding areas) made to run the canteen. Only a few thousand people lived in the area. Yet, millions of soldiers passed through the town. Nevertheless, very soldier was served food and drink. Many people contributed their ration coupons, personal savings, and a huge amount of unpaid labor to see that the canteen was always running. These people will forever remain in the hearts of the soldiers and sailors who received their warm hospitality

Greene also relates the changes that have come to North Platte since the war. Sadly, many have not been for the good. A town that used to see 32 passenger trains a day pass through it, now sees none at all. The railroad station and area where the canteen operated was torn down by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1973. All that remains is a small historical marker commemorating the canteen. It strikes me that North Platte has suffered the way many small towns in America have. Agriculture has declined. Industry and technology tends to base itself in large urban areas.

This is a "feel good" book. As I read this, I was reminded of the adage that when it comes to saving our world all of us must "think globally and act locally". This is precisely what the people of North Platte, Nebraska did during World War II. Any serviceman who passed through there will tell you that it made an enormous difference too.


About People Who Made a Difference   June 7, 2002
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

Bob Greene, like his fellow Chicagoan, Studs Turkel, knows how to write about people. In "Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen" Greene brings out the humanity of a small, almost forgotten town in the flats of Nebraska.

Across the world, America was fighting in a war, and in America, men were kissing girlfriends and hugging parents good-bye. Some didn't live to come back. In between the tragedy of war, and the sadness of leaving home was North Platte, a town which just happened to be where trains full of soldiers stopped briefly to reload supplies. In WWII the town was booming with commerce, as much as any small town might boom with anything.

Merely being a significant stop might be a story enough, but Greene goes deeper than the train stop, and into the core heart of the town. He discovers the great strides the community made to welcome the soldiers. The soldiers came from places just like North Platte, and most would've given anything to stay home. Duty called them to the war, and North Platte did everything they could to help them get there.

Whether is was the food and kind words, or just the friendship offered, the hospitality North Platte provided extended well beyond the expectations of the usual train stop.

Bob Greene describes the town with color and excitement, and brings us back 60 years. As now, with America again sending young men and women to the front of a complex, violent war, Greene's testimonial of the goodness of one community might spur us on to do likewise, in the context in which we live.

I fully recommend "Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen" by Bob Greene.

Anthony Trendl


A Sweet, Sentimental Tale of Patriotism   June 17, 2002
 14 out of 15 found this review helpful

It all happened because of a mistake. It was 1941, ten days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the people of North Platte, a small town in Nebraska, had heard that a train carrying Nebraska National Guard's Company D would be passing through, carrying soldiers to the West Coast and to war. It would be their very own sweethearts, sons, and buddies, and the town showed up at the station with food to give to the boys. But it turned out that this was the Company D of _Kansas's_ National Guard. The citizens of North Platte may have been chagrinned about their mistake, but they made sure those Kansas boys were sent away as well appreciated as their own sons would have been. After all, they were going to war for them as surely as if they had been home town boys. The idea struck some of them that sending the soldiers off this way was just the sort of appreciation the little town ought to be showing. And so the North Platte Canteen was born, serving soldiers crossing the nation during ten minute refueling stops in a little town of people they didn't know. Serving millions of soldiers and sailors, train by train, day by day, until after the war ended.

Bob Greene says he was on a hunt for the "best America there ever was," and if there are other nominations in the category, I bet he has them beat. His _Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen_ (Morrow) is the story of his visit to North Platte, research into the history of the Canteen, and interviews with the now quite elderly people who took part, both as donors and recipients of the town's hospitality. Twelve thousand people lived in the little town, and six million soldiers got a sincere greeting on their way through. The members of the town paid for it all themselves, used their rationing coupons, made do somehow, and made sure that the tables set up in a room of the station house were full of fried chicken, cakes, pheasant sandwiches, hot coffee, and chewing gum. They made an unforgettable impression on the young soldiers and sailors, many of whom did not even know, for security's sake, where they were eventually headed and many who would never get American hospitality ever again. One remembered, "Those people spent all that time and donated all that money - to get the sugar and all that stuff. They gave up their own ration stamps. They were using their ration stamps for us. We all knew what that meant. I wrote home about it."

And their mothers wrote to the town, having read their sons' stories of how well they had been treated at North Platte. "Heaven bless you for what you did for my boy and every other mother's boy." The town still gets letters of thanks from the servicemen who came through, but Greene's fine book must be the best thank you written. He has told about the current North Platte, too, and of course it isn't anything like the one of sixty years ago, though his visit to an abortive Bikini Contest is hilarious. His last book, _Duty_, was about patriotism writ large in the crew of the Enola Gay, and this one is about the smaller, home-grown version. It is sweet, and if he gets schmaltzy now and then, that's the right tone exactly, and thank goodness he got some of these old folks to tell this story before it was too late. There are other fine stories of Americans doing the right thing, stories that are current; but the North Platte Canteen was inspiring, and sentimentally fulfilling, and unique, and gone forever.


A Little-Known Story   September 17, 2002
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

From "Be True to Your School" to "Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Dreams" to this, his most recent ode to American, Bob Greene's topics never fail to appeal to me.

In "Once Upon a Town", Greene visits the now-bypassed town of North Platte, Nebraska to write about the North Plate Canteen, operated from 1941-45 by volunteers who staffed and stocked the train station to offer food and comfort to American soldiers passing through on the troop trains.

Greene writes of an amazing series of events, started by a letter to the local newspaper asking why the townspeople could not use the short stop of the troop trains in North Platte to cheer the soldiers up and show support for what they were doing. Within days, women from all over the state arrived with provisions to make sandwiches, and with cakes, cookies, magazines, playing cards, coffee, fruit and cigarettes. The first night the volunteers provided these things to the soldiers was Christmas night, 1941--I can only imagine how surprised these soldiers must have been to be greeted, in the middle of nowhere, by women with fruit, coffee, and sandwiches!

In a time of restriction, shortages, and rationing, this incredible volunteer effort continued every single day, from dawn until midnight, for four years. Most days, they gave out twenty bushel baskets of sandwiches a day....sometimes egg salad, sometimes pheasant!

Word was passed as a train approached North Platte and the GIs were ready to debark as soon as the train pulled in, looking forward to the hospitality of the citizenry. Soldiers would often play on a piano that was in the train station and those inside sang along.

The story of the coffee cups was interesting (there were no paper cups in those days)--the soldiers took the cups with them to the next station where they were collected and returned to North Platte on the next train back.

Greene uses the words of many of those who were involved with the canteen and those who were on the trains -- and shows us the roots of American generosity and patriotism, small kindnesses that, when multiplied, become a nation's pride. This heartwarming book is sure to delight.

In the same vein, I just read of a new book about the people of Gander, Newfoundland, who opened their hearts and homes to 6,000 people whose planes were grounded there on September 11. I look forward to reading that as well.