Guest Opinion in the New York Times

Dear Mom, the War’s Going Great 

By Mitchell Yockelson
Member, Historical Advisory Board, Director of Public Affairs, United States World War One Centennial Commission

On Sunday morning, May 12, 1918, Arthur Wolff penned a four-page letter to his mother, Frances, in New York City. A captain in the 306th Infantry Regiment, Wolff was quartered in Calais, France. He was safely behind the lines, but he could hear the distant roar of the giant guns at the front. Wolff wrote to his mother faithfully each week to assure her that he was safe. But this correspondence had special meaning — it was Mother’s Day.

An American soldier in France writing a letter home during World War I. (Credit: Bettmann, via Corbis)“Dearest Mother,” he began. “I am back from a four days trip to frontline trenches. … Today is known as Mother’s Day and every American soldier is writing home today. I never felt better in my life.”

A hundred years later, with email, Skype and text messages, such letters seem quaint, even antiquarian. But during World War I, pen and paper provided one of the only links between soldiers like Wolff and home. By May 1918, the Army had deployed more than one million soldiers on the Western Front to fight in a distant war over tangled loyalties and imperial aspirations. Keeping morale high meant reminding them of home.

Perhaps no one knew the tug of family ties better than the chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, Gen. John J. Pershing. A hard-bitten veteran of the Spanish-American and Philippine wars, Pershing, known as Black Jack, hardly seemed the type of soldier to harbor a sentimental streak. But it was Pershing who, on May 8, 1918, issued a general order strongly suggesting that American soldiers, known as Doughboys, write Mother’s Day letters.

“I wish that every officer and soldier of the A.E.F. would write a letter home on Mother’s Day,” Pershing declared. “This is a little thing for each one to do, but these letters will carry back our courage and our affection to the patriotic women whose love and prayers inspire us and cheer us on to victory.” He then encouraged his commanders to allow men to write letters that day “as the preoccupying business of war will permit.”

Pershing’s suggestion came not from pathos, but from an affectionate family and personal tragedy. Though his mother, Anne, was no longer alive in 1918, he had fond memories of her from growing up in the town of Laclede, Mo., about 100 miles northeast of Kansas City. Anne Pershing made sure that her children were well read and well clothed, and that they attended church every Sunday.

Read the entire article on the New York Times web site.

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