“No, these are to last me a year,” the soldier confessed. “I promised my mother that I’d get some envelopes backed and that once a month I’d slip a dollar bill in one and mail it to her and by that she’d know that I was still alive.”
Some were too proud to confess their illiteracy or to ask for help, and their difficulties were multiplied. Some carried letters in their pockets for days before they could overcome their pride sufficiently to ask someone to read them. One soldier was sent to the guard house for disobeying orders, and after he had served his sentence, it was disclosed that he had disobeyed his orders only because he could not read them.
Meanwhile, the moonlight schools and first aid classes were “leavening the whole,” and an illiteracy campaign was finally in progress at Camp Taylor under government auspices, with the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission as the base of supplies. The war against illiteracy in this camp was the inspiration for others which soon followed its example. Camp Shelby at Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Kentucky troops were being shifted from time to time, was the next to organize, and though no preparation had been made by the Government in the beginning for this educational emergency, the most pressing of the War, the need was being realized in every camp, and soon illiterate negroes were being taught at Camp Lee in Virginia, illiterate foreigners at Camp Dix, New Jersey, and illiterates of every race and class in the other camps throughout the nation, and even overseas.
A Bible was presented to each American soldier by certain organizations as they embarked for France, and as the first troops began to move overseas, the President sent them this message:
To the Soldiers of the National Army:
You are undertaking a great duty. The heart of the whole country is with you. Everything that you do will be watched with the deepest interest and with the deepest solicitude not only by those near and dear to you, but by the whole nation besides. For this great war draws us all together, makes us all comrades and brothers, as all true Americans felt themselves to be when we first made good our national independence. The eyes of all the world will be upon you, because you are in some special sense the soldiers of freedom.
Let it be your pride, therefore, to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are, keeping yourselves fit and straight in everything, and pure and clean through and through. Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it, and then let us live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America. My affectionate confidence goes with you in every battle and every test. God keep and guide you!
The White House,
Washington.Woodrow Wilson.
But, alas, there were many among them who could not read the Word of God or the President’s benediction.
By the spring of 1918, America had many men overseas, and homesickness was reported to be acute, and in some cases even fatal among them. General Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, realized that there was something more essential in keeping up the morale of these boys than the socks, sweaters, candy and tobacco with which the American people showered them and so he issued this order to the women at home: