LETTER: We promised you more of the letter from Private First Class Vincent A. Roy, sent home to his family in September 1918, as printed in The Era.
“‘This is a great life, if you don’t weaken,’ ‘If I were back home now,’ ‘Why back in the States,’ ‘It takes a man’ — these are some of our common sayings and they’re true. We have plenty of hard work and always our laugh. If there isn’t anything to laugh at, we laugh just the same. If spirit wins this war, we’re going to win it soon.
“News is another thing. We don’t get near the amount here that we were used to at home. Once in a while we get a two page European edition of the New York Herald. We’re just the same as if we were in the middle of the Sahara desert in that respect.
“However, we are surrounded by the finest country that I have seen yet. England reminded me of a fine piece of machinery — all the houses built on the same plan and with monotonous regularity. All the gardens and yards were carefully laid out and cared for scrupulously. The railroads are the best equipped and maintained of any I have ever seen.
“But I don’t think much of their rolling stock. It’s only a short distance from one town to another, and it’s the most thickly populated country I have ever seen or imagined. Well kept hedges are everywhere, dividing the property, and the roads are excellent, running between fine shade trees and hedges. We passed through many places about which I have had and I even saw Ireland. I saw one cathedral nearly 1,000 years old.
“The English channel is rough, far rougher than the Atlantic, and France being much larger than England is not so congested. It is evident that the wheat crop this year will be large.
Our platoon is getting special work in trenches and entanglements. Those of us who learn best how to do the work will act as foremen over the men from other companies when we get to the front.”
The end of the letter was signed: “From your son who has stood everything so far without ‘falling out.’ Pvt. Vincent A. Roy; Hqrts. Co., 52nd Inf., American Expd. Forces, via New York
Be sure to take a look at our special commemorative World War I edition in today’s Era.
