To the Editor
of the Simcoe Reformer:
Dear Sir, -- I am writing this letter for the benefit of
the friends of Private Thomas Miller, of which he had no
small number in Simcoe and around Renton.
He was a boy who
was well liked both in civilian life
and during the time he
was a soldier.
Tommy enlisted three or
four days before I did and went to Niagara under Lieut.
George Curtis, and it
was there that I became acquainted
with him.
Private Will Ringler, Tommy
and myself were the only ones picked for the draft, and sent
to England. There
we left Ringler, as he was taking a
machine gun course.
Tommy and I came to France
together and although
we were in different platoons we were
nearly always together and I miss him very much. We used to
talk about the folks at home and as we got your paper
nearly
every week we found lots to discuss.
I wish Tommy's friends to
know that he died as bravely and as courageously as any
soldier who has left Canada for active service and I am sure
his name will be honored with the best.
I regret not having written
before but since we have been moving from one place to
another, never knowing where we were going next.
I regret too, to say that
my chum Private Ringler has been killed by shell fire. I do
not know wtether he had any friends in Simcoe, as his home
is somewhere near Ottawa, but nevertheless he enlisted in
Simcoe with a better heart than a good many.
He was drafted into the
29th Battalion, Machine Gun Company, and I only saw him once
in France. He had just come from England and was joining his
battalion and I just had time to shake hands with him. I did
not see him again.
I saw the boys of my old
battalion (the 58th). [They] were all looking well and were
just going into the trenches. Lieut. Curtis was much grieved
to hear that two of his old platoon had gone.
Hoping this will interest
the readers and the friends of my two chums, and that you
will be able to giive this letter a small space in your
paper, which I get weekly, and which is, by now, going to
many parts of France.
