Letters from The Great War
During World War I, letters were the main method of communication between soldiers and the homefront. This gallery of war letters from the Center for American War Letters offers a glimpse into the lives of the men and women who lived through World War I, in their own words.
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Courtesy of the Center for American War Letters Archives, Leatherby Libraries, Chapman University, CA Scan by National Postal Museum of loan for exhibition "My Fellow Soldiers: Letters from World War I"
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Courtesy of the Center for American War Letters Archives, Leatherby Libraries, Chapman University, CA Scan by National Postal Museum of loan for exhibition "My Fellow Soldiers: Letters from World War I"
Letter from Alfred Robinson (16th Infantry Regiment) to his mother, dated November 14, 1918, sent from Base Hospital 114, Bordeaux, France to Crandull, Tennessee
…the Allies are the victors, and the world is a garden of joy, but what has been the cost. Besides the towers that are nicely injured, a thousand of them in France and Belgium are in desolation and ruins, some of them merely the cornerstones standing, worse than any ancient ruins in existence. Thousands and thousands homeless, orphans, penniless. Many and many a time as I have passed through these places I have said to myself “Poor, poor France, may her day of victory be near. I hope that after this war no man will dare to call himself a German with pride. England, France, Belgium, Italy, the Central Powers, America, and many others have lost the flower of their youth, for what?
The Argonne will always live in the memory of our boys, these many a poor sammie lies mouldering away. I have heard that all American dead are to be taken home in the course of time. I hope it’s true. I will close, Ans soon,
From your loving son,
Alfred
