It seems that this mail never made it through the first time, so I am resending it.
I've written a small script that can be run through your mailcap file. It uses wvWare and lynx/netscape to view word files through your mail program (pine, mutt, netscape, anything that uses mailcap).
The script is at http://db.ilug-bom.org.in/lug-authors/philip/bin/ and a mirror on my downloads page (ncst/~philip/downloads/).
Instructions are in the file. You'll have to make it executable and copy it to /usr/local/bin/ before you can use it.
Philip