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| Caryl wrote "Talmont, France / Winter 1918-19 |
On November 12, 2018 I was looking through the letters my grandfather, Caryl Holton, wrote home from France during World War I. I found this letter that mentions the Armistice, the agreement to stop the fighting and start negotiating peace. Tears came to my eyes as I realized I was reading this letter exactly 100 years after Grandpa wrote it.
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France, Tuesday Nov. 12, 1918
Dear Dad,
These are great days. All our prognostications have gone by the board because none of us in our most insane moments dared forecast the end of such an early date. There will be very few who can honestly say “I told you so.” I didn’t know that so many things could happen in such a short time. The newspaper accounts have read like pages from a novel - and even yet it is hard for me to convince myself that the terms of the armistice aren’t fiction. They were just published today - they must have been very humiliating to Germany. It certainly takes no chances on their resuming hostility. But at that they are receiving more consideration than they deserve.
Of course the big question on everybody’s lips now is “when do we go home?” We really haven’t any idea what they will do with us for they may put us to training up north [not sure of this phrase] or send us up to help reconstruct some of the devastated country - or they may even sent us home from Bordeaux I really think that we’ll be kept in this base - in different jobs until they’re ready to ship us back. I figure that they can send us back at the rate of five or six hundred thousand a month. The ships can sail home by the direct route - and they won’t travel in convoy which held the fastest boats to the speed of the slowest - then too they can use neutral shipping - and shipping will be realised [?] constantly which had been transporting food and supplies. So I’m expecting to get home by June at the very latest. [jht – He did go home June 1918]
………. [comments about the election & flu epidemic]
You notice I refer to us as “old men” for we have been over almost 5 months now - although I admit it didn’t doesn’t seem possible. Dec 22 we sew on a service stripe. It would be a joke if we would not stay long enough to get one - but it would be agood[ underlined twice] joke. I don’t want one bad enough to be willing to wait one extra day for it!
Lovingly
Caryl
Lt CHolton
CoD 32ndEngr
American E.F.
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