The Great War Comes to Kansas: Camp Funston, 1918

Two views of the Detention Camps at Camp Funston in 1918.

Welcome

Follow along as Ward C. Griffing is inducted into the infantry during WWI while his sweetheart, Minnie G. Frey, faces her first year of teaching school in a one-room rural schoolhouse in Riley County, Kansas.

Please note that the entries on each page are in reverse order, oldest at the bottom. Readers interested in following the letters in chronological order should therefore start with the oldest blog post and scroll upwards.

If interested only in reading the letters or postcards written by me, click on "Ward" from the labels list at the bottom of the page. If interested only in my sweetheart's letters, click on "Minnie."

Use the "search" feature in the upper left corner of this blog if you are looking for something or someone in particular.

Suggested Reading

Readers interested in life at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas would enjoy the "Reflections of Army Sergeant Charles L. Johnston" who was a member of Ambulance Company 239, 10th Sanitary Train. He nursed soldiers during the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

Ward Griffing's paternal grandparents came to "Bleeding Kansas" in 1854 shortly after passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act. Letters exchanged between this couple -- some 500 of them written between 1841 and 1882 -- can be found in the website; Private Letters, the Correspondence of James S. Griffing and J. Augusta Goodrich.

I have found the experiences of Sgt Sam Avery during WWI to be very interesting. You can find them at Soldier's Mail, Letters of a New England Soldier 1916-1919.

The Great War Comes to Kansas

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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Camp Funston, 1918

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