Original subtitles

82 years ago tomorrow, at 11 a.m., on the 11th day of the 11th month, World

War I ended.

It is commemorated the world over as Armistice Day. In America, we now call

it Veterans Day, a time to honor all who have served in the armed services.

Much of what we know about World War I comes from history books, recitations of

battles fought and soldiers killed.

But there is a far more personal story told by the men and women who saw the

war with their own eyes.

Their words were scribbled on scraps of paper and stuffed into envelopes, then

sent on a long, slow route to loved ones back home.

Tonight, you will hear the words they wrote, their war stories, and get a

vivid picture of what was called the war to end all wars.

February 26, 1915.

Dear Father, It is four months now that we've been on the firing line.

Four months with the noise of the cannon continually in our ears.

I see no end to the thing.

It may go on for years.

You cannot understand how after months of this one longs for the day when this

miserable trench warfare will cease.

It was a war unlike any the world had ever witnessed.

28 nations and an estimated 65 million men fought on three different

continents.

Fighting with the most modern and most murderous weapons of war yet invented.

Machine guns that spit out 500 rounds a minute.

Poisonous gases that incinerated the lungs.

And for the first time ever, tanks.

32-year-old Marion Rice was traveling through Europe when the war broke out.

Eight months later, she returned to France as a volunteer Red Cross nurse,

day after day, witnessing the human toll.

Dear Amy, Monday night, I came in to find that the wounded were to arrive,

which they did.

116 all at once, about 7 o'clock.

You never smelled such smells or saw such sights.

I can't tell you how many amputations there were, almost all of which will

have to be done over.

When I see these men shot full of holes and suffering the tortures of hell and

maim for life, all for nothing, all because one nation was bound to fight,

well, I won't say what I think.

But in 1915, Marion was the exception.

For most Americans, World War I was still very much a war over there.

This had nothing to do with America.

President Woodrow Wilson's policy was to send supplies and money to bolster the

British and French forces.

Under no circumstances, he said, would he send soldiers.

But when Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare and sank six American

ships in one month alone, President Wilson knew that Europe's war had now

become America's war.

On April 6th, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.

America, though, was thoroughly unprepared.

In 1917, there were only 127,000 men in the U.S. Army, many of whom had

never seen combat.

So for the first time since the Civil War, America's sons and husbands were

drafted into the Army.

Within one year, the ranks of the armed services swelled to four million.

Lloyd Staley had been the president of his high school class and the hometown

football hero of Ottawa, Kansas.

Now in the summer of 1917, like so many other young men, he bid farewell to his

sweetheart and to his peaceful life on the plains.

My dearest Mary, there was some crowd at the station, wasn't there?

I think I shook hands with everybody in town three or four times.

Not a very pleasant task under the circumstances either.

Dear Dolly, I arrived here Tuesday afternoon all right.

I like it fine.

Nineteen-year-old Albert Smith was the privileged son of a well-to-do Tennessee

family. This...

was the adventure of his lifetime.

I'm having a big time, just as contented as a flea on a dog's back.

Everything is hustle-bustle. Watch out for yourself.

You are in the army now, not behind the plow.

Reveille is at 5 a.m., and Taps is at 10 p.m. Drill eight hours a day.

I have no time for homesickness.

Write soon.

Love to all.

Albert.

The army had no time to waste.

These green recruits had to be quickly turned into a single fighting force.

It meant teaching law students like Bob Mitchell how to fire a gun.

Dear Winifred, We went to the rifle range Monday and returned Wednesday

afternoon. I'd never handled an Enfield, the rifle we use, but did well enough to

convince myself I know how to use it.

At the 300-yard range, I hit a target, or silhouetted figure roughly

corresponding to a man's head and shoulders.

The first shock is now over, and I'm looking forward with more confidence.

Sincerely, Bob.

We had Bayonet drill for the first time this morning, and it was very

interesting.

I don't imagine, though, that it would be quite so nice when you are cutting up

another fellow while he is trying to do the same thing to you.

We had three hours of gas drill this morning.

Gas drill is not very appetizing.

The neutralizing gas that you breathe certainly makes you slobber.

A soldier must be able to put on and adjust the mask in six seconds.

They were made to practice and study the ways of war.

One of the few things that broke the drudgery was a care package from home.

Dear Mother, sometime I want you to send me a box of fried chicken and some cake

and candy.

I must have candy to whip the germ out of Germany.

Write soon.

Letters cheer me up as nothing else can.

My dearest Albert.

I'm sending to you by parcel post a box with a slice of every kind of cake that

we had at the banquet we gave last night.

They were the nicest cakes I ever saw.

Please quit cigarettes.

Watch your language and your speech.

Speak slowly and distinctly.

You must write me every day or two for I miss you so.

It would break my heart to have anything happen to you.

The Army encouraged every soldier to write home.

In this booklet given to new officers, the official policy was laid out.

Every young man ought to feel interest enough in his parents to write to them.

Any man who fails to take that small trouble should be ashamed of his

neglect.

The YMCA teamed up to help. They opened centers at every camp where soldiers

could get free writing paper and stamps.

In one year alone, YMCA volunteers gave out more than 400 million sheets of

stationery and half again as many envelopes.

Dear Winifred, I'm writing this in our new YMCA building.

This is the first time I've used either the building or its stationery for this

purpose. The paper is supplied free.

There are about 200 men in this room, writing, reading, talking, and singing.

Altogether, it's hard to collect one's thoughts.

All too soon, orders came to ship out.

On June 14, 1917, only two months after the war was declared, the first troops

left for France.

Neither they nor their loved ones knew when or if they would ever return.

My dearest Albert, a friend told me in New York that Southern boys, as a rule,

all were homesick for their mothers.

And they said they did not mind going to war, but they hated to leave their

mothers and have them grieve so.

I could understand that, for we southern women love our boys better than any

other people.

As long as you are soldiers, stand is the best.

My dearest Mary, I write this on board a boat that will leave for overseas soon.

I can scarcely realize we are going.

Goodbye, little girl, for a time at least.

Keep on writing.

With truest love, Lloyd.

Dear Stull, The last you saw of us was in the pouring rain at the end of the

pier. We stood until we could not see anything but the outline of the ships,

and then headed for home.

I wandered around for a while, and then finally gave way to a grand old weep.

I'm not ashamed of myself, either.

Don't tell anybody this, will you?

Good luck, Lois.

I've been having a great time after a slight attack of seasickness the first

day out.

Today has been frightfully rough. The waves swept the entire front part of the

boat.

The two-week trip over seemed interminable.

And the soldiers entertained themselves any way they could.

but ever present was a threat lurking beneath the surface my dearest parents

i suppose you read of us losing our good ship we was four hundred eighty

miles off the coast of france she sank in thirty-seven minutes after the two

torpedoes hit the explosion was so violent it tore enormous large holes in

her hull on the port side

It knocked me flat on the deck, and a shower of salt water and wreckage of

hatch covers came falling all around me.

I jumped and swam to a raft.

Some of my best friends lost their lives when she went down.

Once in Europe, the Americans were met with open arms.

The French and British had waited nearly two years for help.

Their greatest hopes were pinned on these arriving troops.

But General John Blackjack Pershing, the American military commander in Europe,

was adamant that America's boys not be thrown into battle until at least one

million of them were amassed and ready to fight. And that, would take almost a

year.

So off they were sent for more training.

Jack Douglas was a white commander of an all-black troop.

He and his men traveled for three days by train to get to their post in eastern

France.

He wrote to his wife and eight-year-old daughter.

Dearies, at last I have a few minutes to myself in which to write to you and to

tell you that I am all right.

We left the seaport and traveled in an easterly direction three whole days.

We carried our food along and lived on bread, corned beef, cold canned

tomatoes, and jam during the trip.

There are no toilet facilities on European trains, and our efforts to wash

and shave were strenuous and amusing.

We filled our canteens whenever opportunity offered.

I never dreamed that water could be so scarce and so precious.

After we reached the railhead, the men were put under their small tents and the

officers were taken through the town and billeted in the homes of the town

people.

By the way, the officers are unanimous that they haven't seen a single good

-looking French woman since landing.

The hardships of life in war-torn France, even far from the battlefield,

were many, as Stull Holt found out.

Twenty-year-old Stull, a Cornell University undergrad, was a volunteer

ambulance driver stationed near Verdun.

He wrote to his fiancée, Lois Crump.

Dear Lois, We are quartered in a chateau built in 1659.

The word chateau is misleading.

It doesn't mean electric lights, running water, or anything like that.

Our bathtub is a little creek that runs about a hundred yards in back of the

chateau, and we don't use it very often.

I know one fellow who didn't change his underclothes for three months, and

several who had to use gasoline to get clean.

For nurses like Marion Rice, the lack of modern facilities, not to mention simple

supplies, meant the difference between life, and death.

The handkerchiefs have been a godsend.

We needed them terribly.

We also have an awful dearth of washcloths.

We haven't a real one in the place.

Have to use any old rag we can lay our hands on.

What we need most is money, gauze, ether, alcohol.

While most American troops were still settling in and training, safe from the

battlefield, Volunteer nurses, doctors, and ambulance drivers like Marion and

Stull were already surrounded by its horror.

I walked about four miles to the highest hill nearby and watched the fight.

I could see the French guns around and beneath me shoot.

And see the shrapnel explode over the German lines.

I can understand why so many men have nervous breakdowns and suffer from shell

shock.

It hasn't bothered me at all yet, probably because I haven't seen any men

hit before my eyes.

That makes a big difference.

I've carried some pretty badly wounded.

They all lay still with an amazed, uncomprehending stare.

Dear Amy, they have been coming in pretty rapidly since the 1st of July.

One little youngster was operated on this afternoon.

He is only 20, and when he was coming out of the ether, he cried and cried

because he hadn't seen his mother for 13 months.

He kept saying, it's too long, it's too long, but I must be brave.

Neither pen nor camera can tell it. You have to see for yourself.

The nearer I get to war, the more confusing it seems.

A handful of Americans were already feeling the heat of battle.

Those like Alan Seeger, who had volunteered to fight with the British

and French armies.

Seeger was a 28-year-old Harvard-educated poet who had fought

with the French Foreign Legion for two years when he wrote this letter to a

friend.

Dear Harry,

We go up to the attack tomorrow.

This will probably be the biggest thing yet.

We are to have the honor of marching in the first wave.

No sacks, but plenty of cartridges, grenades, and bayonet.

I will write you soon if I get through all right.

About four o'clock, the order came to get ready for the attack.

Nuncadel thinking of what the next few hours would bring.

I caught sight of Seeger and called to him, making a sign with my hand.

He answered with a smile.

How pale he was.

His tall silhouette stood out on the green of the cornfield.

His head erect and pride in his eye, I saw him running forward with the bayonet

fixed.

Soon he disappeared, and that was the last time I saw my friend.

Fall 1917.

American troops had been in Europe for only a few months.

Back home, thousands more were readying themselves to go.

With more men in uniform than ever before, America struggled to provide for

them all.

Factories kicked into high gear.

The four million soldiers needed to be clothed.

They needed to be fed.

They needed transportation.

And they needed weapons.

A country that had been so reluctant to join the war six months earlier was now

determined to win it.

And everyone was encouraged to do their part.

I wish right now more than ever before that I were a man and could help my

country fight.

Being a woman, I shall have to stay here.

I'll do my best, though. Have listed my services in several different places and

expect to be very busy this summer.

News of America's sons began hitting the streets, filling families with pride as

well as fear.

Stahl Halt won the Croix de Guerre, the French Army's medal for bravery.

and instantly became a hometown hero.

Dear Stahl, I don't doubt but that you deserve the cross for doing your duty at

such awful risk.

But as I see it, crosses will make little or no difference to you a hundred

years hence.

Your highest duty is to yourself, to live.

Whatever happens, take no unnecessary risk.

Your proud and loving father, Byron.

At first, the news was scattered. American volunteers cited for bravery.

A hospital bombed in a German air raid.

But in the spring of 1918, American soldiers joined the fight in earnest,

and news from the front came flooding in.

But official reports captured only part of the story.

Impersonal information about troop movements, offensives, breakthroughs.

The official version was often completely at odds with the truth the

soldiers themselves were seeing.

Dear Lois, reading about the war, and especially about aviation in the Sunday

supplements of American papers, is one of the best forms of amusements we have.

After this, I will never believe anything I read in any newspaper.

I wouldn't even believe my own death notice.

The real story came in battered, dirty envelopes, more often than not marked,

somewhere in France.

They were filled with stories of everyday life, of battles and boredom,

loneliness and longing, fear and fatigue.

Dear Lois, I had a very close call with gas, which they use a lot.

We got to within about a hundred yards of the post, and a few seconds later a

big gas shell went off within twenty feet of me.

Something hit me on the head, making a big dent in my helmet and raising a bump

on my head.

As it was, I was dazed, knocked down, and my gas mask knocked off.

If it hadn't been for the fellow with me, I probably wouldn't be writing this

letter, because I couldn't see.

My eyes were running water and burning.

So was my nose, and I could hardly breathe.

I gasped, choked, and felt the extreme terror of the man who goes under in the

water and will clutch at a straw.

Dear Aunt Cecil, I will never forget the first time that I was under shell fire.

I was laying in a graveyard and I almost pushed a fella out of his grave trying

to flatten myself out on the ground.

I wonder if I will ever be where the guns don't roar and the birds are

singing.

Dear Ma,

I'd find myself sitting in a thick, muddy forest with my knees in a gas mask

as a table writing to you.

I went through my first real touch of war.

Small in comparison to many operations.

To we rookies, it was a real battle.

Machine guns, rifles, shells, aeroplanes and tanks.

Everything you read about.

I saw them all.

Dear folks, It has been some time since I wrote you last, but I have moved

again.

We move at night and lay in woods by day.

As soon as we make a hike and have a new location, we dig in.

Small holes and dugouts for protection from shells.

We use everything to dig with.

Our kitchen generally follows, and we eat when we can.

Nearly everyone is a fatalist here.

It is hard to dodge a shell, and when your time comes, it's going to get you.

These letters expressed what no newspaper or newsreel could, and the

Army knew how important for those at home and those on the front they were.

Soldiers and civilians alike were reminded to write.

Dear Bib and Dots, I wish you could see me now.

I'm sitting on an extemporized bunk in an old truck with my corona on my knees

and a candle on each side.

I cannot say much in my letters because some of them may be opened and read by

the base censor.

But soldiers were not free to write as they pleased.

All letters leaving France had to be censored. Any mention of location,

plans, American wounded, even morale, was strictly forbidden.

Officers were instructed to read all the mail leaving their company, and a

certain random portion was sent directly to a censoring center in Paris, where a

staff of nearly 300 combed through it.

Those on the home front wrote back with enthusiasm.

They sent countless millions of letters and bundled up newspapers, magazines and

care packages by the ton.

One officer bragged that his wife sent him a loaf of bread every week for the

entire war.

Once in France, the mail would go to one of four distribution centers where army

postal workers cross-referenced the soldier's name and company with ever

-changing master charts of troop locations.

From there, it continued its long journey by rail, by road, and often by

foot to smaller postal units in the fields.

where men like Lloyd Staley made certain every letter reached the soldier it was

sent to.

Dear Mary, we have our office in an old barn of some sort.

The floor is so rickety here that we are in danger of going through every time we

make any movements.

I have had to look through a half dozen sacks of mail for a man.

I don't mind, though, as I know how mail is almost as essential as a square meal.

You can hardly imagine the excitement and joy there is in a bunch of fellows

when the mail comes in.

Dear Lois, It is near September 17th when I could go home, and I know I'm not

going.

To make a long story short, I've entered the aviation school.

When you get this, Please sit down and write me. You're glad I'm going to stay.

Stull Holt had the chance to come home when his six months of service as a

volunteer ambulance driver was up. But he chose to stay on, enlisting in the

Army Air Service to train as a pilot.

Dear Stull, I asked you please not to join the Aviation Corps.

Please be careful, don't take unnecessary risks, and be a good boy.

Lois. Dear Lois, This is quite a unique letter, my first since I came to the

aviation school, and the only one I will ever be able to write to you on my 21st

birthday.

I can't begin to tell you what it is like up in the air, because I can hardly

realize yet that I'm not dreaming at all.

The only thing I ask of you is don't change too much, or even as much as I

have changed from the fellow you used to know.

Yours, Stull.

Dear Stull, Paula sent me a photo which I could look at. I looked and looked and

looked before I realized what the matter was.

Oh, Stull, where did you get that mustache? I'm so upset I can't even

spell it.

Dear Lois, I don't wonder that you didn't recognize those pictures.

Don't worry. That mustache is only on for the duration, a war atrocity, and

goes when the war does.

As for the internal changes, they are many and large but come too slowly for

me to recognize them.

Good night, my love.

Spring, 1918.

Germany unleashed a series of ferocious attacks.

They succeeded in breaking through the Allied lines.

But as spring faded into a long, hot summer, Americans began their

counterattack.

July 22nd, 1918.

Last night we went out as usual, crawling through the German wire.

We suspected that Fritz might lay in wait to ambush us, but our fears were

set at rest when we arose and leaped into his trench.

Ed Lukert was stationed in France's Vosges Mountains. He fought hand to

hand, trench to trench.

we paused here almost five minutes and were just about ready to dash in and

start the fuss when we heard a smothered cough directly in front of us and then

the ground seemed to spring up in one great roar and flame and we knew it had

been a trap ahern and several other men dropped the first half second and from

the scream one of them let out i knew they had been hit

then i have a faint recollection of another burst of thunder as we threw our

grenades and emptied our guns i also remember shouting orders at the top of

my voice all this time they continued to pepper us with grenades and pistols

and finally the man in the rear of me pulled me back by the coat and i knew it

was my time to cease firing and back out once again within our own wire

The firing stopped and I took account of losses.

Ahern was hit five times all around his hips and thighs.

Lieutenant Brown had his face looking like a piece of beef, and four of the

men had been hit in the chest and limbs.

It must have been a sorry, bloody-looking bunch that came dragging

each other into our own lines.

Jack Douglas and his men delivered food and ammunition to those same front

lines.

Dearie, I cannot begin to describe the conglomerate mess.

We were mingled with convoys of foot troops, camions, ambulances, artillery,

etc., all moving both east and west.

Our trucks were on the road almost continuously for four days and nights.

Both men and officers were dead tired.

In front of us, the sky was lurid, and the noise of the cannon sounded like

thunder.

Sounded to me like a severe thunderstorm, such as we have in

Pennsylvania hills during the summer.

We are holding a sector of the front now, and every night there is

cannonading and bombing.

And almost daily and nightly, Both friendly and enemy planes fly over us.

They come and go quickly, like hawks.

Sometimes they fly so high they look like swallows.

Dear Lois, I am doing day bombing.

We fight in formation except when they shoot everybody down but one, and then

he fights alone.

The number of incidents I could tell you about fellows who have had bullets go

through their clothing, graze their heads, hit their guns, and do other

queer tricks are innumerable.

Way up so far that a city looks like a village, and a village looks like a few

pebbles, with air rushing by so fast it blows right through you and makes you

feel like jumping out and try flying by yourself.

Stahl.

About 1 a.m.

An artillery bombardment commenced.

I never heard anything like it.

At six o'clock we were in no man's land.

The sights which greeted my eyes as we pushed ahead were frightful.

Our men, and Germans too, were lying around in heaps.

The wounded smiled and cheered us on, and the dead were a sight to behold.

Some of them were blown to pieces, while others, killed instantly by bullets,

still grasped their rifles, eyes open.

but ghastly white and cold.

I saw Lieutenant Weldon lying in a hole with his body cut in two and alive.

He smiled as I saw him, but did not move.

He just looked at me appealingly.

Dear Amy, Day before yesterday we heard there was a train with American wounded

at the station, so a few of us flew over.

One man has both legs gone.

He lay on a shell hole six days. There was nothing to eat, but the hole was

filled with water, and in that water lay decaying the body of his best friend.

And he had to drink that water to keep alive.

Pleasant, isn't it?

Such wrecks as many of these men are.

Such faces.

The Allies pushed the Germans back bit by bit.

But success came at a steep price.

By the end of the summer of 1918, nearly 10,000 Americans were dead.

Another 50,000 wounded.

Albert Smith wrote to his brother, who was back home, training to join the

fight. Dear Greg,

I have been on practically every battlefront in France.

The fight at San Miguel was a picnic compared to the one that has been raging

for the past week, and the Chateau Terry fight was nothing compared to this one.

Imagine the most devastated, most forlorn place imaginable, or just recall

our trip across Death Valley, California, and imagine that desert all

netted with barbed wire entanglements and trenches, and you can have a little

idea of no man's land.

I haven't changed for over two months, and haven't even had my clothes off for

that length of time.

I've not had a bath for six weeks, and none in sight, for I haven't the

slightest idea of using what little drinking water I got in my canteen for

bathing purposes.

I shave as often as possible, for the beard on my face keeps my gas mask from

being effective, and the Germans use quite a bit of gas.

You just think that you want to come over here.

The months of mud, stench, death, and fear were taking their toll.

Like so many soldiers, Stull Holt yearned for the world he had left

behind.

Dear Lois, I've got them bad.

All shades from a light violet to a deep purple.

It's just plain homesickness.

The other day in the train, we went through a tunnel and I tried awful hard

to persuade myself.

I was on the way uptown, and that pretty soon the train would go above the ground

at 149th Street.

But honest, it was no use.

My dear darling wife, instead of being with you, here I am in a dark, dismal

hole, and before the arrival of your letter, planning how to kill or capture

a German whom I located in the woods this afternoon.

I do wish I could see you, dearest.

The war must soon end.

October 9th, 1918.

Dear Lois, War news certainly has been startling during the last few days.

The prospect of peace is intoxicating and alluring.

Just think what it would mean to be sure of going back.

After four bloody years, the tide of the war had turned.

On the Western Front, more than one million Allied troops, including 800,000

Americans, were engaged in the brutal Argonne offensive.

In the newspapers, reports were circulating of a compromise, of a

negotiated peace.

Soldiers in the trenches were incensed.

They would not leave the battlefields where so many were buried.

with anything less than an unconditional German surrender.

Dear Bib and Dazi, the peace news is not encouraging.

We do not want Germany to say after peace is made that she was not beaten

but quit voluntarily.

It would mean only one thing, that she would have to be whipped again.

Despite the rumors of peace,

The fighting continued as viciously as ever.

Dear Uncle Harry, as we moved out of the Argonne, we were exposed in the open

country.

On every hill and every woods, the Germans had machine guns.

Rain was falling all the time and mud was over knee deep.

The nights were cold and at times we would have to halt for hours at a time

and would nearly freeze.

The Germans have been shelling us pretty heavily the last few days.

Last night we laid down a small barrage and threw the Germans back.

Finally, the word came. An armistice had been reached.

The time of peace was set, November the 11th, 1918, at 11 a.m. All

fighting was to cease.

We fought right up to the last minute.

I pulled the lanyard on the third gun at 10-59-38, using a 22-second burst that

made the shell reach the German trenches at 11 o'clock sharp.

And then... Oh, joy.

Such quiet has prevailed.

It seems strange out here not to hear the guns roaring and the shells

screaming.

The night after the armistice went into effect, the skies were bright with

rockets and other flares.

The Germans had a band playing concert, and some Germans carried a keg of beer

into no man's land and gave it to an infantry company.

Dear Brownie, You can imagine the rejoicing on both sides since everybody

knew the war was really over.

Our men ventured out and came back smoking German cigarettes and eating

German crackers.

This kept up all day.

Exchanges of food and social visits.

My dearest, Monday morning, about 11 o'clock, the anti-aircraft guns around

Paris began shooting, and the church bells cut loose, and we then knew that

it was all over but the shouting.

By the time we got into the town, the crowds were parading the streets with

flags and singing the Marseillaise and shouting, Viva la France!

And as they would pass us, they would shout, Viva la Marie!

It was just about the happiest crowd one could imagine.

In America, it was unbridled euphoria.

The Kaiser was beaten and the boys were on their way home.

But it would take almost a full year to ferry the two million Americans back to

their loved ones.

The wait was excruciating.

Dear Ian Dodds, I have not much of an idea how long we shall stay here.

Some say six weeks.

I sat next to Serge and Evans at dinner tonight, and we both remarked that if we

were home, we would be trimming Christmas trees tonight.

Of all the nights in the year, this is one night home-loving folks like to

spend with their families.

I am homesick and lonely tonight, and I want my wife and baby.

Dear Father, The beginning of a new year finds my thoughts more and more of home.

This is quite a different prospect ahead of me in this new year.

Last year, I was preparing to come across and couldn't help from wondering

whether I would live through the awful hell.

But now peace has come, and I have lived through the hell of war, and I am

wondering about my prospects as a peaceful citizen.

I am a soldier and man, having left as a boy.

My mind is full of what is before me.

Dear Lois, expect to sail within a week.

Save me a date sometime in March.

Also, have the bands tuned up and the flags ready.

Stall. Dear Mary, I can begin to feel the thrill of Homeward Bound now, and it

is some feeling.

It will be real spring weather by the time I get home, and we used to have

some wondrous times in the springtime, didn't we?

That was a good while ago.

Three thousand miles of sea and uncharted futures lay before them.

It was the end to a journey they could never have imagined, and one that would

haunt them the rest of their lives.

But at least now, they were coming home.

Dear Amy, It may sound queer, but it makes me homesick to think of leaving

France, much as I want to see you all.

I foresee I shall always be torn in two directions.

Dearest Mother, Each evening I watch the sun set and realize it won't be long

before I watch it set from home.

I hope you have plenty of garden planted and lots of frying chickens.

I'm two years behind on eating and I must make up for lost time.

Lots of love, Albert.

Dear Brownie, I can hardly believe that such good things as you and home are in

store for me.

It doesn't seem real.

I feel absolutely lost.

Dear Stull, I have been trying and trying to imagine how, when, where, and

why I'll see you first after you get back.

What would you do if I put out my hand, gave you a nod, and said, how do you do?

Dearies, I am hungry to see you all.

I fear I shall not know you.

If you have letters from World War I, we at the History Channel encourage you to

make sure those letters are preserved.

You can send them to the following organizations.

The Liberty Memorial Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Legacy Project in Washington, D.C. Or for more information, visit our

website. For the History Channel, I'm Harry Smith.

Thank you for joining us.