It is a far cry from the school-houses of Kentucky to the army occupation camps in Germany, but the moonlight schools had trailed the illiterate soldier through the camps, across the seas, through England and France to the army of occupation on the Rhine. Letters came from many soldiers. This one from a lieutenant in the army—a Kentucky boy—was the last received and made a fitting close to the part the moonlight schools had played in the War:
Dear Mrs. Stewart:
I suppose it will come somewhat as a surprise to learn that we are conducting moonlight schools according to your plans in far-off Germany. I’m now on outpost duty, and your book is in use in the point furthermost from Coblenz in the American area. Six months ago I don’t suppose many people expected the moonlight school movement to reach beyond the Rhine.
I have a fine class, mostly Italians. They’re all anxious to learn, and I get as much pleasure from teaching as I did when I opened the first moonlight school in Camp Shelby. I wrote you about that.
The teaching of illiterates is being carried on throughout our division, and I suppose in other units also. We keep records of their work and submit reports from time to time in the same manner that other work is being done in the army.
Good luck to the moonlight schools and I hope that every American boy when he returns from overseas will be able to read and write.
CHAPTER XI
MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS
Soldiers returned from France talking education, urging a better school system, and a provision for everybody, young and old, to improve themselves. It was the burden of almost every soldier’s heart. Alvin York, acclaimed the greatest hero of the World War because of his remarkable feat of capturing 132 Germans single handed, came home and started raising money to build a school for the people of his native hills, and Sergeant Sandlin, the Kentucky mountaineer, whose record as a war hero was second only to that of York, returned to Kentucky, and, enlisting under the Illiteracy Commission, joined in the illiteracy crusade. None who listened to York’s earnest plea for the people of the mountains of Tennessee, or heard Sandlin tell of the army commissions offered him in France which, because of his limited education he could not accept, will forget the crude but eloquent appeal they made. Like other soldiers returned from overseas, they came back preaching the gospel of education. It was a universal feeling among soldiers of the Allies, even of those from India, a country where few women are taught to read and write. The illiterate soldier in Kipling’s story, “Eyes of Asia,” dictated this letter to be written home from France. “We must cause our children to be educated in the future. This is the opinion of all the regiment, for by education even women accomplish marvels, like the women of Franceville. Get the boys and girls taught to read and write well. Here teaching is done by government order.”