"I pity the man who couldn’t come over." My Grandfather in WWI Letter to his sister.

Louvanoy, France, May 9, 1919. 

Mrs. Alice .....: 

Dear Sister: I am writing from Louvanoy, France. This is a bright, sunny day. I am well and waiting for my time to come home, the same thing that all the A.E.F. are doing.  It is looking good for us now, for Secretary Baker has promised to have us all home by September 1, and that will not be long coming for we have been over here so long we have learned to wait. The men you hear talking most of coming home are the last ones who came over. You don’t hear any kicking among the men about not getting home, although they are all anxious to go.

Living over here is not so bad since I am getting mail from home regular, but it was some months before I got a letter from home when I first got over here, and then it was dated two months before I received it.  I do not blame Mr. Barleson or any one else for that, for I was moved around so fast it would have taken four race horses to have kept up with me, but I guess I am now stationary for a while. I have met lots of friendly people among the French. As a rule, they are all friendly and will do anything they can for us. I stayed in a billet where the old lady was a mother to us. She kept warm water for us and would not let us wash in cold water. Most all the people you see over here are women and children. You see scarcely any able-bodied men. I hear that some of the boys have gone home and given the people the black side of France. I suppose that is the side they wanted to see, and, of course, they found what they were looking for, but I found France and the French people to be what they truly are, a worthy people. The women wear mourning for their loved ones who died for France, which we respect as D.S.C. or Croix de Guerre. They sure are worthy of the honor we give them for the brave deeds they have done and the hardships they have suffered in this war. Some of the French soldiers are coming home now. They are glad their work is finished and glad to get back home, although I do not imagine it seems much like the home they left four years ago. How do you imagine I would feel to come home and find the country full of strangers.  I guess it would be not much like home.

            But the French do not deserve all the credit, for the English, the Italians, the Canadians, the Australians, the Sammies and all the others did their part and did it well. However, the men at the front are not all who should be praised, for the war would surely have been a failure had it not been for the people back home standing so loyally behind us. In England I saw women who I knew did not have to work for a living doing men’s work on the railroads, or the highways and on the farms – pretty and refined girls working like men. I talked with a little girl, 12 years old who was driving a gravel cart repairing the road, near Winchester, England. She told me she had two brothers in the war then and her father and another brother were killed at Ypres, and she had two sisters who were Red Cross nurses in France and another sister who was sunk on a British hospital ship by a German submarine. Her mother and grandmother and she were keeping house. I told her I thought her family had done enough for the war, but she said no, she had a part to do and she was going to do her best for England. I talked to a ten-year old boy who was selling papers and his mother was washing clothes to support five younger brothers and sisters, while his father was in France fighting.

            I will never forget the good treatment I received in an English hospital. I have been around several hospitals over here and know the fuss they raised in the states about the boys not getting good treatment is not true.

            The men over here sure thank the people at home for the way they stood by them through the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., Knights of Columbus and the Salvation Army. They sure have been a great help to us.

            Well, sis, this is all I know to write. I suppose that the soft, sad, tenderfooted soldiers who stayed in the states until after the war was over and then raised a yell because they did not get to go over, are going to take the boys’ service stripes off of them. Well, I am sorry they did not get to come over and learn what a soldier was, for if they knew they would not be kicking. They say that the salt water stripes makes a distinction between the soldier who came over and the one who stayed at home. I am of the opinion every man that wanted to come came. I could have come sooner than I did, and you know they did not have a man in the army that was not as good a man as I was when I went in. I guess if these good home soldiers could have come over after the armistice was signed they would have put on three service stripes and half a dozen wound stripes and in two weeks been raising cain to be sent home, but probably, there is no difference after all between the soldier who stayed, in a nice canteen or personal office, or walked the streets of New York or some other place and the one who crossed the pond with Boch sub under the ship which happened to have been an English cattle boat before the war, and after accidentally landing safe, carried his full equipment five miles on his back and waiting hours for something to eat, stretched his pup tent over a mud hole the next morning and slept, the next morning to get in a funked box car 7x20 feet with 45 or fifty others and ride four or five days, eating corned beef and hardtack and then drilling two or three weeks day and night, to say nothing of the man who walked post in mud knee-deep guarding supplies for the front – and the trenches, shrapnel, shells, cooties, rats, gas and other little things of that kind. I pity the man who couldn’t come over.

           

Your Brother,

Homer .....