Letters from Will

November last year we visited the new museum Hippo.War in Waregem. In this museum are two exhibitions: one about the role of the horse during World War I and the other one about the importance of the Americans during the Great War.

There are a lot of photos, film and audio fragments, numerous authentic pieces, an interactive quiz and even a reconstructed horse hospital.

In one of the display cases we saw letters of Sgt Willis L. Burnworth. The city of Waregem told us that this letters were found and acquired by Mr Frankie Van Rossem. He borrowed them to the city. After contacting Mr Van Rossem and the city archive they granted us, as adoptants of the grave of Sgt Willis Burnworth, a scan of these letters.

The family of Sgt Willis Burnworth was informed of this find and got a copy of the scanned letters. It took us some time to decipher his handwriting. There were:

• 3 letters when he was at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, AL (March-May 18)

• 1 letter when he was at Petersburg, VA, some days before they shipped out to France

• 2 letters when he was in France the month before they went in to the trenches

We learned from the letters that they were trained very hard and that they were anxious to do what they were trained for.