WWI / USA Soldiers' Mail - Printable Version

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WWI / USA Soldiers' Mail - Hugh - 10-08-2025

Interesting bit of soldiers' mail from the US during the final year of WW1. A picture postcard sent from Camp Merrit in NJ by Tommie Rhoades to his brother Edgar back in Arkansas.

There is a machine cancel with a single ring die and six wavy lines. Inside the ring it reads, JERSEY CITY, N.J. / MERRITT BRANCH. Inside, JUL 30 / 8AM / 1918. The wavy lines obliterated two 1c Washington stamps.

Writing the day before, he says:

Dear Brother.
We are at Camp Merritt.
Am feeling good. Have an
outfit of O.D. clothes. We
may stay here several days
and hoping this will all
be over soon.
Tommie

1st Co: July Auto: Repl. Draft
Around Camp Pike
Camp Merritt

It's an interesting point in time. According to his return address, he is in the 1st company of the July Auto Replacement Draft from Camp Pike. In the Spring of 1918, when US AEF casualty rates increased following the German Spring Offensive, divisions could no longer keep up their own replacement pools. Army camps across the US - Camp Pike in Arkansas, Camp Jakobson in South Carolina, Camp Hancock in George and others organized replacement drafts. Men moved through the pipeline on a preset schedule without waiting for a specific unit vacancy. These drafts were named after the month they were organized and broken into numbered companies. Hence, 1st company, July automatic replacement draft from Camp Pike (Little Rock, Arkansas).

It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that Tommie was from Arkansas which is supported by his writing 'home' to his brother.

It would appear that he had just arrived at Camp Merritt, one of the embarkation camps, for processing and staging for overseas deployment. He mentions getting an outfit of OD clothes. That would be, Olive Drab (similar in concept to the Field Grey of German troops). In a few days, his unit would probably have been marched or sent by rail to Hoboken and then shipped to France.

About four million US troops were sent to the Western Front in WW1, one million of them passed through Camp Merritt. The camp was decommissioned after the war.

The picture side of the card is of a Church in Illinois. My guess is that soldiers at the camp were provided time and random or donated cards to write home. This was one.

PS ... another find from one of Roy's fifty-cent boxes on club night. 

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