Leslie W. Quirk and Walker H. Mills correspondence, 1926-1931
18 items
This collection contains eight typed letters by author Leslie W. Quirk to his friend, fellow World War I veteran Walker H. Mills, and retained copies of Mills's nine responses to Quirk. Mills and Quirk served together in the American Field Service on the Western Front, Réserve Mallet, Motor Transport Company 839. Quirk struck up the correspondence in 1926 as he began writing a juvenile novel about the war, which he eventually published as Jimmy Goes to War (1931). They discussed the potential contents of the book, what parts of the story it would leave out or keep in, and descriptive details (such as insignia colors, the text of French signs, and other minutia). An inscribed copy of Jimmy Goes to War to Walker Mills accompanies the letters. The volume contains manuscript notations that appear to be an effort to identify the real names of fictionalized characters in the story.