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Friday, March 22, 2019

Letter from George F. Woodfin, Soldier in France, 1919

From the Brevard News, March 21, 1919

Letter from France

Dear Sir:

Just to show you how much I appreciate the News in France I will write you a few lines to publish while we are marking time waiting on a boat and an order to take us home.

The weather is very cold here now, snow fell about two weeks ago and about every other day a new two inches falls on what is already here, and the ground has been white since. Hope you good people of old Transylvania are having better weather than we are.

I was very glad to have my old friend, Guy M. Allison of the Boilston section stop and stay over night with me. We sat up and talked of the good old times we had back home waiting for us, both were very homesick and ready to come home at a minute’s notice, so we call ourselves the “Minute men of the A.E.F.”

After meeting some of the boys from home that were over here only a few weeks before, I know that the Company that I am with made the best time of any in getting from the states to the Great Front, for one month from the date we left the camp at Woodbridge, Va., we had two men killed in action and 12 wounded, so that they went to the hospital and some went back to the U.S.A. and some got back with the organization, and I think that was the best time made by any Co. or Regt. That left the Camp in the states.

It has been a great mystery to the boys over here why the Y.M.C.A. is getting so much more of the money that is being given in the states, than the Salvation Army or the K. of C., for they are the two organizations that helped the boys that won the war, for they were always there at the front with Hot Chocolate and cigarettes and candy, for the boys, of course the Y.M.C.A. may have been doing good work back in the S.O.S., but the boys who came over here to win the war never got any benefits of anything back there, for they charged enormous prices for what they did sell, while other organizations gave away things, or sold them at a little more than they would cost at home, and with all the money they are getting donated it is a plain problem, for the men in the A.E.F. to study over and Try to solve, for when they all get back, there should be a real investigation by proper authorities to determine what all and how it was spent, and form all the talk I have heard in this area; there will be a real report of it or the Y.M.C.A. is dead forever in the hearts of the American people.

Not that I favor one organization any more than another, do I write this, only I think it is proper for the people to know about these things, and as for taking my word you can easily get hundreds of men, in fact all the largest per cent of men that have served in the Advance Zone. Just write any of them that have seen real active service, and see if their opinion and mine are not just the same.

Hoping to see the people of my native land real soon, and that this reaches all in good health, and that the people may prosper in all their undertakings, have good health in all ways.

I am as ever,
George F. Woodfin

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