Doughboy's letters home rediscovered
Letters have always been the lifeblood for soldiers and their families back home.
The ones from Roy E. Kidd to his folks in Emsworth are yellowed from the 90 years that have passed since he wrote them in 1918 as a young infantryman with the American Expeditionary Force in war-ravaged Europe.
As a first-hand account of the horrors of World War I trench warfare, they're too mundane to offer much insight. The sentiment of the day was to avoid nasty descriptions of life at the front.
But to Mr. Kidd's descendants, who didn't know the letters existed until a Clarion County teacher found them at a yard sale two years ago, they provide a personal window to a war almost entirely faded from living memory.
Read entire article at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The ones from Roy E. Kidd to his folks in Emsworth are yellowed from the 90 years that have passed since he wrote them in 1918 as a young infantryman with the American Expeditionary Force in war-ravaged Europe.
As a first-hand account of the horrors of World War I trench warfare, they're too mundane to offer much insight. The sentiment of the day was to avoid nasty descriptions of life at the front.
But to Mr. Kidd's descendants, who didn't know the letters existed until a Clarion County teacher found them at a yard sale two years ago, they provide a personal window to a war almost entirely faded from living memory.