Letters from WWI topic of talk

BANGOR – Between May 1917 and April 1919, Arthur Ramsdell wrote 93 letters and postcards back home to parents Lilla and Charles Ramsdell of Market Street.

Often marked simply “somewhere in France,” the missives from the 21-year-old soldier claimed he was in the “best of health” and staying in fine quarters, at least at first. Later he wrote after being in the trenches and at the front of World War I.

The note Ramsdell wrote in January 1918 was probably not unlike what some families receive these days from servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“I was thinking today of where I was a year ago, little dreaming then where I would be now. I am many miles away in a foreign land, but my thoughts go back home tonight.”

Back home in Maine, after World War I had concluded, Ramsdell never was a man to talk about what he’d experienced.

But son Arthur Ramsdell Jr. cherished the letters and postcards, keeping them carefully in a box his grandfather had made by hand, next to his dad’s gas mask and ditty bag, and the leggings he wore with his uniform.

Ramsdell Jr. died a year ago, but the story of the World War I letters continues.

Wife Janet Ramdsell will speak about them during the meeting of the Bangor-Brewer Christian Women’s Club at noon Thursday, Nov. 8, at Spectacular Event Center, 395 Griffin Road. Men are welcome to attend, as well.

Tickets are $10 for the luncheon meeting. Free child care will be available. For reservations, call Barbara at 945-3209.