This will be on the back page of this Sunday’s November 11, 2018. 25th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B) bulletin at Fishkill UMC.

Today is the 100^th anniversary of the  Armistice of World War I.  In the diary he kept during his service in France, my grandfather wrote, very simply,

NOVEMBER 11, 1918. –ARMISTICE DAY–

November 11, 1918

A great day. The armistice was signed today. We were to resume our attack at 2 p.m. in case it was not signed. Slept in a German dugout last night.

Though he had a lot of pictures showing the consequences of war, with one exception, nothing my grandfather wrote told me how he felt about war. It was what he wrote on the front page of the diary that told me he saw war for what it was and what it could be.

If I should fall, will the finder of this take it on him or herself to see that it gets to my wife, Mrs. Walter L. Mitchell, 4150 A De Tonty Street, St. Louis, MO., USA? By doing so, they were conferring a favor upon Walter L. Mitchell, Captain, 34th US Infantry, American Expeditionary Forces, France.

My grandfather would retire as a Colonel in the Army and die at his home in St. Louis in 1955.

~~Tony Mitchell