{"id":6448,"date":"2018-01-30T10:05:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T10:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=6448"},"modified":"2018-01-31T04:11:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T04:11:03","slug":"from-camp-lee-to-the-great-war-january-30-1918-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/from-camp-lee-to-the-great-war-january-30-1918-podcast","title":{"rendered":"From Camp Lee to the Great War: January 30, 1918 – Charles Riggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cWell Abe it look like they will haft to do something pretty soon over in Germany. The way the people is doing there, I think the war will close in 2 or 3 month\u2026\u201d<\/h2>\n
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In his eighth letter home from Camp Lee, Virginia, dated January 30, 1918, PFC Charles \u201cDutch\u201d Riggle, a WWI soldier from Wheeling, WV, tells his brother James \u201cAbe\u201d Riggle that Les (PFC Lester Scott) is in the hospital with the mumps, like a lot of other boys in camp. He says they are practicing on the \u201cbig guns,\u201d which \u201cdo roar when they go off.\u201d Though it\u2019s raining \u201clike the devil,\u201d Charles has never seen a nicer winter. He\u2019s impressed that camp is \u201cfixed up dandy,\u201d complete with a cement road to hike on, electric lights everywhere, and hot and cold water in the bathhouse. He inquires about the corn husking back home. He thinks the German people are suffering, so the war will have to end soon. Charles is writing on his birthday. He is 24 years old.<\/p>\n

In this letter, when Charles Riggle writes about the \u201cway the people [are] doing\u201d in Germany, he is undoubtedly referring to the food shortages suffered by the German people in the months preceding January 2018, during which a quarter of a million people had starved to death. Also as of the end of January, more than four million workers were striking in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Kiel, Cologne, and Hamburg. The German government\u2019s reaction was swift and harsh, even as the German military dropped 14 tons of bombs on Paris. Despite its tenacity, the Germany Charles Riggle read about in the newspapers was in bleak disarray and must have appeared on the verge of inevitable collapse.<\/p>\n

Charles \u201cDutch\u201d Riggle was drafted into the US Army in 1917 and trained at Camp Lee, Virginia, where so many Wheeling draftees and volunteers\u2014including his sister-in-law Minnie Riggle\u2019s brother, Lester Scott\u2014were trained. Dutch Riggle was a Private First Class in the 314th Field Artillery Supply Company, 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. This is his eighth letter from Camp Lee, dated 100 years ago today, January 30, 1918.
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January 30, 1918 Letter Home \u2013 Charles Riggle to his brother James Riggle<\/h2>\n
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Letter to James Riggle from Dutch Riggle, January 30, 1918.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n