At Sea, May 23rd, 1919 – (Letter #32)
Dear Brother;
Just a few lines to let you know that I am on my way back. I think I will land in Halifax sometime tomorrow if we have any luck. We have a good fast boat, Aquitania, a Cunard liner and we have had very poor weather, very rough most of the way. Everyone sick, about 6000 troops aboard, also 1000 passengers.
There is a friend of mine by the name of Bagley. He was going to call and see you. I wrote to you nearly two weeks ago telling you he is a plumber and he belongs to the Southern States. He is going to try to get a job in Boston and he is alright.
Well, Mother told me in her last letter that you will all be home this summer. I guess I will have to stay there a while to see if I can get some grits into me, but this trip is doing me a lot of good, as they are feeding us pretty good, the first for a long time. I do not know how long I will be in Halifax, as I did not get settled up yet. I did not have any money for three months. They were scared to give us any as there was a wild bunch in Winchester.
Give my best regards to all. Hoping to see you all again soon.
From your brother, Lee.
Editor’s Notes:
- This is Lee’s last letter. Thank you for following along. We look forward to hearing from you with questions or comments.
- RMS Aquitania (1914-50) served in both world wars and it was the grandest ship of its day. It had a long and rich history. At the end of WW1, it was used to transport Canadian solders back home. Lovely video here on Aquitania which includes its service in WW1 and WW2.
- The Letters from the Great War Series attracted visitors from 40 countries. The top ten in terms of traffic volume were Canada, US, Germany, France, China, UK, Netherlands, Australia, Finland and India. Each month, we had an audience of around 700 visitors and they viewed a total of 2200 pages which expanded our audience for our other website stories as well.
- We offer a special thanks to Jon Darrah, Lee’s great-nephew/grandson of Jack for this donation of letters. These letters have offered our audience and future generations a first-hand glimpse into The Great War. For those who knew Lee, they said, “With Lee, there was always a story.” To honour his legacy, we will ensure that with Lee, there will always be a story.
- We engaged Alan Buchanan to voice all 32 letters and those recordings will be donated to The Island Collection at UPEI. Thank you to Alan for capturing Lee’s spirit and bringing these letters to life.
- Thank you to CBC Mainstreet’s Angela Walker for her interest in this series. We were featured in two interviews. The link to the August 22nd interview is here and the link to the November 9th interview is here.
- Thank you to The Guardian for featuring the story in their special edition on the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. Journalist Josh Lewis did a great job of capturing the narrative of the letters. To view the story, click here.
- Thank you to Peter Rukavina of http://www.ruk.ca for featuring two stories on the letters. To view the first story, click here and the second story, click here.
- The letters now appear on a special page on our site where you can read them in chronological order here.
- It is the Clyde River Historical Committee’s honour to recognize the Centenary of end of The Great War and to show our respect to the soldiers who fought. Lee’s letters offer a voice to their heroic service.
Clyde River 
Bravo! I was one of many following along on this trip to the past and it was extremely interesting. Definitely a unique view into WWI. We all have heard about the war of course, and the trenches, but often they were distant facts that never really sunk in. This first hand account really brought us there and gave us an idea of what it was really like. The lack of food, the mud, the illnesses, lack of pay, difficulty with the mail, ever-changing deployments, the loss of life and limb. Thank you all for bringing this out of the family archives and sharing it with the wider community.