37. My father, Orson Pratt Miles, passed away 38 years ago today, veteran of World War I.
This post is a bit longer than most. It tells of my father, Orson Pratt Miles's time in the army, and the heart touching story just before he died. In 1987, Mavis’ son Russell was living with Ruth Miles, his grandmother, attending Dixie College. He was in the “middle bedroom” and in cleaning out the closet he found an old box. It contained, among other things, a small journal which Pratt, his grandfather, apparently kept in his uniform pocket during World War I. Pratt would have been 27 years old at the time the war entries were made. (Russell typed what his Grandfather Pratt had written.) Some of the entries in the journal were of signals, etc., used in war training. The following tells some of his experiences during that time. It is interesting to notice the notes seem quite happy, but because of some experiences which undoubtedly were not recorded, he was left with “shell shock”, or what would now be called “Post-traumatic stress syndrome”. He entered the
