TRANSCRIBED FROM THE LOG CABIN DEMOCRAT DECEMBER 5, 1918 P. 3
France, October 23, 1918.
Editor Log Cabin Democrat:
Regularly my folks send me clippings from your paper in their letters from Conway, where, in more peaceful days, I have had my residence. On several occasions these clippings included published letters of Lieut. Theodore Smith to his good mother in Conway. I have found them very interesting reading. Having been continuously on front line duty since June 23 to the present time, the incidents of movements, barrages, sleepless days and nights, horrors of the battle and its aftermath are pretty well appreciated according to the measure of my personal experiences. With regard to any of them I have no illusions, neither am I afflicted by the flights of imagination to exaggerate the results of modern warfare. So far, I have not been a victim of "shell-shock"---canned hash" or "bully beef" has not yet ruined my digestive organs. My grouches at strategic marches, the purposes of which were not ours to know, I have forgotten after the first explosion of impatience--and that, times without number. Sleepless nights were always recompensed in due season by an intensive wooing of Morpheus. All in all the hardships have been none the less for any of us. Surely the doughboys life in this man's war is never classed by anyone who has seen line duty as a sinecure---yet. I really think that most of us will concede that we were never in better physical condition and are as cheerful as voluntary exiles can be.
Remember, if you please, I am not writing this from my study at home. After three weeks of driving the Hun from a terrain, difficult and miserable, we are resting in a rain-soaked woods awaiting as reserves any new call to the front line. That kind of rest is, to our present mode of thinking, quite a blessing. That is why I say that we suffer no illusions on modern war and its hardships. Perhaps we quickly come back in moments of necessity to an appreciation of simply truths long forgotten; one of them certainly is this--by a gradual process of hardening, we reclassify what once were called hardships as tolerable discomforts or inconveniences. Another one is this, that is the privation of a hundred and one creature comforts, once deemed necessary in civil life, in this present game does not so nearly destroy our physical, moral or intellectual well-being, as some of our fond folk at home might imagine. If we have such comforts, well and good--if we cannot procure them, then we vainly wish for them for a moment and as soon forget about them in the distraction of more important matters that await our attention.
The whole fact of the matter is that amidst the hardships and vicissitudes of war--without any attempt to minimize its realities--we are providentially safe and sound. In war, some of us must die, others will be preserved. If your little messenger of death is coming, you cannot help matters by worrying--if it is not coming, why worry anyway?
But this is not the attitude of our beloved ones at home. Their picture of battle is purely of the imagination, to their mind's eye we stand in the path of every enemy shell and bullet--a gass cloud or shell completely surrounds us more than anyone else, the attack is thickest where we are, etc., etc.. and our silence is a certain confirmation of the facts to them.
This has been more impressed upon my mind since I read the letters from my folks who enclosed the clippings mentioned above. I have noticed their influence upon my own folks. Thus far, I have tried, with fair success, to keep them from worrying about me--but after all, we have control of only our own correspondence. The personal correspondence of others is a liberty that we cannot and would not curtail; at the same time, dear editor, we wonder if some scenes and experiences that come to us in these days of war could not be more kindly passed in silence for the present, for who can adequately express in cold print the exact truth with regard to the things of which we would now speak, without the danger of exciting in loved hearts anxieties and pangs that we would suffer much to prevent?
In the bosom of his family after the cessation of hostilities, the soldier may narrate more dispassionately and a little less superlatively his modest share in this great war.
Very sincerely yours,
Grover Graham.
"On active duty."
NOTES: Captain Grover Cleveland Graham of Conway, Arkansas was writing to Log Cabin editor Frank E. Robins. He was serving in the 308th Infantry, 77th Division. He also served as a Sgt. on the Mexican border for five years in the 22nd Infantry Regular Army prior to the World War 1. He was born on November 25, 1896 in Apollo, Pennsylvania and died on August 25, 1965 in Arkansas. He is buried in the Little Rock National Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas. His military headstone identifies him as an Arkansas Col. serving in both World War 1 and World War II. He departed Brest, France on April 19, 1919 onboard the America. He arrived in Hoboken, NJ on April 28, 1919. He was serving as a Captain in Regimental Headquarters 308th Infantry.
TRANSCRIBED BY LAEL HARROD
France, October 23, 1918.
Editor Log Cabin Democrat:
Regularly my folks send me clippings from your paper in their letters from Conway, where, in more peaceful days, I have had my residence. On several occasions these clippings included published letters of Lieut. Theodore Smith to his good mother in Conway. I have found them very interesting reading. Having been continuously on front line duty since June 23 to the present time, the incidents of movements, barrages, sleepless days and nights, horrors of the battle and its aftermath are pretty well appreciated according to the measure of my personal experiences. With regard to any of them I have no illusions, neither am I afflicted by the flights of imagination to exaggerate the results of modern warfare. So far, I have not been a victim of "shell-shock"---canned hash" or "bully beef" has not yet ruined my digestive organs. My grouches at strategic marches, the purposes of which were not ours to know, I have forgotten after the first explosion of impatience--and that, times without number. Sleepless nights were always recompensed in due season by an intensive wooing of Morpheus. All in all the hardships have been none the less for any of us. Surely the doughboys life in this man's war is never classed by anyone who has seen line duty as a sinecure---yet. I really think that most of us will concede that we were never in better physical condition and are as cheerful as voluntary exiles can be.
Remember, if you please, I am not writing this from my study at home. After three weeks of driving the Hun from a terrain, difficult and miserable, we are resting in a rain-soaked woods awaiting as reserves any new call to the front line. That kind of rest is, to our present mode of thinking, quite a blessing. That is why I say that we suffer no illusions on modern war and its hardships. Perhaps we quickly come back in moments of necessity to an appreciation of simply truths long forgotten; one of them certainly is this--by a gradual process of hardening, we reclassify what once were called hardships as tolerable discomforts or inconveniences. Another one is this, that is the privation of a hundred and one creature comforts, once deemed necessary in civil life, in this present game does not so nearly destroy our physical, moral or intellectual well-being, as some of our fond folk at home might imagine. If we have such comforts, well and good--if we cannot procure them, then we vainly wish for them for a moment and as soon forget about them in the distraction of more important matters that await our attention.
The whole fact of the matter is that amidst the hardships and vicissitudes of war--without any attempt to minimize its realities--we are providentially safe and sound. In war, some of us must die, others will be preserved. If your little messenger of death is coming, you cannot help matters by worrying--if it is not coming, why worry anyway?
But this is not the attitude of our beloved ones at home. Their picture of battle is purely of the imagination, to their mind's eye we stand in the path of every enemy shell and bullet--a gass cloud or shell completely surrounds us more than anyone else, the attack is thickest where we are, etc., etc.. and our silence is a certain confirmation of the facts to them.
This has been more impressed upon my mind since I read the letters from my folks who enclosed the clippings mentioned above. I have noticed their influence upon my own folks. Thus far, I have tried, with fair success, to keep them from worrying about me--but after all, we have control of only our own correspondence. The personal correspondence of others is a liberty that we cannot and would not curtail; at the same time, dear editor, we wonder if some scenes and experiences that come to us in these days of war could not be more kindly passed in silence for the present, for who can adequately express in cold print the exact truth with regard to the things of which we would now speak, without the danger of exciting in loved hearts anxieties and pangs that we would suffer much to prevent?
In the bosom of his family after the cessation of hostilities, the soldier may narrate more dispassionately and a little less superlatively his modest share in this great war.
Very sincerely yours,
Grover Graham.
"On active duty."
NOTES: Captain Grover Cleveland Graham of Conway, Arkansas was writing to Log Cabin editor Frank E. Robins. He was serving in the 308th Infantry, 77th Division. He also served as a Sgt. on the Mexican border for five years in the 22nd Infantry Regular Army prior to the World War 1. He was born on November 25, 1896 in Apollo, Pennsylvania and died on August 25, 1965 in Arkansas. He is buried in the Little Rock National Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas. His military headstone identifies him as an Arkansas Col. serving in both World War 1 and World War II. He departed Brest, France on April 19, 1919 onboard the America. He arrived in Hoboken, NJ on April 28, 1919. He was serving as a Captain in Regimental Headquarters 308th Infantry.
TRANSCRIBED BY LAEL HARROD