Dear Brother . . .
Charles “Dutch” Riggle was drafted into the US Army in 1917 and trained at Camp Lee, Virginia, where so many Wheeling draftees and volunteers—including his sister-in-law Minnie Riggle’s brother, Lester Scott—were trained. Dutch Riggle was a Private First Class in the 314th Field Artillery Supply Company, Battery “A,” 80th (Blue Ridge) Division in France.
Riggle was a farm boy with little formal education who grew up in the hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He spelled many of his words phonetically. His letters have been transcribed exactly as they were written. Dutch, who arrived in Petersburg, Va. on September 21, 1917, sent the below letter home to his brother James following his first week in Camp Lee. Read More