Victory Girls
Darlene Click
Nov. 11, 2018
One hundred years ago today, Armistice was declared between the Allies and their last opponent, Germany. Armistice Day became Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all veterans. And while that is noble, World War I has faded from memory. Indeed, not until this year was there a national memorial in Washington D.C. to The Great War. Today, I publish a letter from a young Marine who was captured in No Man’s Land in Verdun, France, on April 19, 1918, and who barely survived eight months as a POW.
The young man is my great-uncle, Ray Howard Aseltine. His younger sister, Mildred Aseltine Rippel, is my maternal grandmother. This is his story. I will provide links within the text to relevant sites for further information. I’ve not corrected for spelling in Ray’s letter.
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The first question people ask me when they discover I have been a prisoner of war is, “How did you feel when the Germans captured you?†All I can truthfully say is, “I just didn’t—†I wasn’t conscious of any feeling. I often wondered after I was in the prison camp why I didn’t kill myself before they got me. Well again, I just didn’t. It’s not a all easy to describe one’s feeling while a prisoner and I guess, on the whole, it’s better to forget one’s thoughts; for the worst kind of a ghastly night-mare is a beautiful fairytale compared to the horror of eight months spent in a German prison camp.
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http://victorygirlsblog.com/veterans-day-2018-a-wwi-american-marine-writes/
