{"id":7353,"date":"2018-06-22T23:02:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T23:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=7353"},"modified":"2018-07-29T21:18:24","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T21:18:24","slug":"from-camp-lee-to-the-great-war-june-22-1918-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/from-camp-lee-to-the-great-war-june-22-1918-podcast","title":{"rendered":"From Camp Lee to the Great War: June 22, 1918 – Charles Riggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSomewhere in France\u2026It\u2019s is a nice country alright. It\u2019s no wonder the French is fighting so hard for it\u2026\u201d<\/h2>\n
\n

In his sixteenth letter home (his first from France after fifteen from Camp Lee) dated June 22, 1918, PFC Charles \u201cDutch\u201d Riggle, a WWI soldier from Wheeling, WV, tells his brother James \u201cAbe\u201d Riggle, in a letter addressed \u201cSomewhere in France,\u201d that the weather is dandy and that he likes France just fine, but he\u2019s not sure how he will like it when he gets \u201cinto the scrap.\u201d He says the \u201ctrip across the pond\u201d was a long one. Les got a little seasick. The Germans are getting about all they want now. He hopes to finish the war in time to make the rabbit hunt in fall.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on the same day, a horrific train wreck occurred near Hammond, Indiana when an engineer fell asleep, allowing his locomotive to crash into another. The Hammond Circus Train Wreck<\/a> killed 86 people, many of them circus performers, in one of the worst such disasters in American history.<\/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 Battery F of 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 sixteenth letter home, dated 100 years ago today, June 22, 1918.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

To listen to the podcast, visit our SoundCloud page<\/a>, or subscribe through your favorite podcast app.<\/p>\n

\n

June 22, 1918 Letter Home \u2013 Charles Riggle to his brother James Riggle<\/h2>\n