American soldier Walter Shuka writes letters to Ruth Backof from 1917-1919 about his experiences in France during World War I.

April 1917: Private Shuka writes Ruth Backof from near Bordeaux, France, complaining about not being allowed passes for the city and describing the delousing process to which he and his comrades were subjected. Both the envelope and the letter itself bear censor's marks.

March 1918: Shuka sends a series of postcard views of Bourg-sur-Gironde, France.

May 1918: Shuka remarks that civilians know more about the action in France from newspaper accounts than the soldiers know themselves. He believes that the Germans are "playing a losing game and we all know it. There is not a man here that would return home now if he could. They all say--'I'll be here for the finishing touches, and believe me I want to be in the big parade through Berlin!' " Shuka assures his correspondent that the men remain undeterred by military setbacks and amuse themselves with music and children's games.

July 1918: Shuka regrets that he cannot transmit much information on the action in France since his unit has been pulled back from the forward area, but he describes a delegation that appeared from a nearby village on July 4 to thank the American soldiers for their help to France. Shuka assures his correspondent that her letters to him are not censored and remarks that several other civilians have asked him the same question. "[S]o 'carry on' (English expression) or in other words go as far as you like," he writes.

22 September 1918: Shuka announces in late September 1918 that he and his group have been very busy building and operating light railways in the wake of "the victorious Yanks." He finds many articles left behind in German trenches overrun by the Americans and hopes eventually to send Ruth a German souvenir.

29 September 1918: Shuka thanks Ruth for a gift of chewing gum: "I was camped near 'no man's land' and could not have gotten gum for love nor money." Hearing that a female acquaintance is engaged to an officer, he muses about the close relationships between the soldiers.

November 1918: Although Shuka says in this letter of late November 1918 that censorship has ended, his mention of "the first all-American drive made in the war" and his description of his position have been excised. He reports that he has felt lonely since the armistice was signed "because of the fact that the big guns are not barking and the land shaking with their explosions." He also recounts his bout with influenza.

December 1918: Shuka thanks Ruth for a folder of cartoon clippings and comments about one cartoon that "there is no one on earth who expresses himself so decidedly in anti-religious terms as does the Yank when he gets all heated up about something." By contrast, the Englishman goes quiet and the Frenchman "jabbers and argues." Shuka reports that a piano has mysteriously turned up in camp, where musical evenings are now the norm.

January 1919: Shuka waxes enthusiastic about his leave in Grenoble and Uriage in southern France, describing the efforts of the YMCA to cater to the soldiers and mentioning the old castles in the mountains. Also here are postcards of Uriage-les-Bains and of Vizille, and a copy of "The Dauphine Doughboy", the newspaper put out by the YMCA.

March 1919: Shuka retails his nicknames: "Hun" from his German ethnicity; "Shug" from his last name or his liking for sugar; and "Dynamite" from his propensity to blow his top upon reading the "bunk" printed about the war in newspapers. He also expresses the fear that he will not be home for a long time, although his group has supposedly come to Bourg near Bordeaux to embark for the States.

April 1919: Shuka writes from Camp Upton in New York, where he is overjoyed to be home: "Really I've pinched myself several times to find out if I'm really alive and it's all true. . . . Thank goodness I'll be able to stick this *?- uniform in the furnace soon and yell--'Here goes nothing!' "