Clark Bruster To His Family, June-Sept. 1917

Clark Bruster's great-grandfather was an early settler of Waverly, N. Y., a village on the New York/Pennsylvania border. Harvey and Cora Bruster raised Clark and his brothers there in the early 1900s. Waverly had about 6,000 residents at that time. Clark had finished school and begun working as a meat salesman in nearby Elmira, when the U.S. entry into World War I changed his life dramatically. From Fort Slocum on Long Island, Clark boarded a train to travel to Fort Riley, Kansas, in June 1917, to begin training with an Artillery Battery. These are excerpts from letters he wrote to his family from Fort Riley during the summer and fall of 1917. They begin on June 21st, the week the first U.S. troops were landing in France.