Letters From An American Soldier To His Father, By Curtis Wheeler, Second Lieutenant Of Field, Artillery, U. S. R.

Lieutenant Wheeler was one of the contingent selected from the first Plattsburg camp to be sent abroad for three months’ study, close up, of modern warfare. Prior to his Plattsburg experience he had spent four months on the Texas border in Battery C of the First Illinois Field Artillery. Before that, while a student at Yale (class of 1911), he had joined a troop of cavalry then in. training in New Haven, maintaining his connection with it for two years while still pursuing his academic course.
These letters were written with no thought in the mind of the writer of their being published. The personal note is obvious in them and no attempt has been made to edit it out. The editing, in fact, has been of the slightest. About all that has been done is to give initials in place of names where persons are mentioned by name, to give a heading to each letter, and to eliminate here and there a personal reference that would be blind to the reader. Otherwise the letters are just as written-the fresh, spontaneous, unconstrained narrative of personal experiences that link themselves up closely to a million American homes from which boys have gone to prepare themselves for similar experiences.