Letter to Crockett From the Great War

By Greg Ritchie

Messenger Reporter

CROCKETT –   Almost five million young men served in the First World War, or the “war to end all wars” as they called it. Over 116,000 of them never came home, even though for us, the Great War lasted less than two years. Among those American “dough boys” fighting in Europe was a young man from Crockett, named James Lipscomb. A fascinating letter written home by Lipscomb was provided to The Messenger by Chris Ramirez, owner of C&C Antique and Resale Emporium in downtown Crockett.

Although the war is largely forgotten today, Europe is still covered in massive gravesites from that conflict, which for several of those countries, cost them even more than the Second World War, soon to follow. Young men would volunteer together, be enlisted together and serve at the front together. A botched attack or vicious artillery barrage could take out the entire youth of a small town in only a few minutes.  

Lipscomb’s take on the war is a tiny fraction of the overall picture, of course – his view from one of the tens of thousands of trenches could never tell the full story. It is one young man’s view, from his position serving with the artillery, which proves so interesting, giving a local boy’s perspective on the death and destruction all around him.

The letter came with a thank you note from the “Crockett County Courier,” thanking Mrs. Lipscomb for providing the letter for their readers. How soon we forget how times have changed, when news of big battles could take days or weeks to reach home. No viral videos, no quick email dashed off before battle – mothers in Houston County could wait months agonizing without knowing if their “boy” was alright. 

The letter is very much of its time, with cursive writing which looks more like a school essay than a chronicle of war. Lipscomb is still very much a young man, at one point bragging about the champagne and fine wines he and his buddies found in a French cellar. No doubt an exciting find for a local kid at that time, Lipscomb and his friends presumably consumed as much of that liquid as their bellies could hold. He didn’t say as much to his parents back home, writing only that, “Everyone made a joyful evening.”

The boy has also become a man, as witnessed in the letter, writing about incidents one can only try and imagine. He states the facts bluntly, but there were real young men here, on both sides, fighting, suffering and dying, in between each word Lipscomb wrote. 

“We had been working feeding the artillery lines for a terrific barrage which was laid down at 6 a.m., under which the infantry went forward for a three-mile drive, but was terribly cut up by German machine gun fire,” Lipscomb wrote.

The letter is dated Nov. 11, 1918, or Armistice Day, the end of the war. To this day, this date marks our modern Veterans Day, when when we honor those who served in that war and all our nation’s other conflicts. 

“Dear Papa, the war is over,” Lipscomb’s letter begins.

He speaks of events both large and small – this was the greatest adventure in two lifetimes for a small-town boy from East Texas – getting to go to Europe and being part of such a great war. Sometimes he speaks of mundane events such as sleeping and eating, and like soldiers of all times, complains about the weather, the mud – moving out when they thought they would get a break. He also speaks about museums and Napoleon and the long history of the area. 

He writes about watching the great air battles overhead, a great innovation at that time, while the men had nothing better to do. All armies live on a “hurry up and wait” schedule, with days of boredom, pierced by hours of action. 

“I blew my whistle, the men snapped the breech blocks home, pulled the lanyards, and my part of the battle was on,” Lipscomb wrote. They were shooting shrapnel that day – small fragments meant to tear into an enemy – trying to cover advancing infantry and keep the Germans’ heads down while the Americans moved forward. 

In that age of slower communication, Lipscomb reveals how bored and homesick those boys became, buried in the mud and brutality of northern France.

“Tell Will and Bella to write,” Lipscomb wrote. “Letters mean a great deal to us. We have nothing to read. One always finds them on the dead officers.”

In a more hurried script, Lipscomb – the brave young soldier – gets back to business and ends his letter home.

“Call is sounding at battalion headquarters and I must go. Love to Mama. Your affectionate son, Jim.”

Young Lipscomb might be embarrassed to know his letters would be found over 100 years after they were written. He might have wanted to write something more poetic, more poignant, had he known this letter would be published in two different newspapers over the course of more than a century.

The letter touches the heart more deeply, and a sense of the young man’s character comes through in his simple letter home than in all the poetry and fancy prose the great writers could use. It stands as a day-in-the-life look of a brave young Crockett boy, doing his best to defend his country and his brothers in the war which was supposed to have ended all wars. 

Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]