In a letter to her family from November 26, Minnesota Red Cross nurse Marion Backus describes the hospital she was working at in France when they received the first news of the Armistice on November 8. She writes that the French and Americans at the hospital celebrated the Armistice by all getting drunk, but she went for a walk to really wrap her mind around the idea of the war finally being over. When she arrived back at the hospital she couldn't believe that she saw the hospital all lit up for the first time in 4 years. Backus describes her mixed feelings of joy that the war is over and everyone will be returning home soon and sadness over the soldiers who died who will never return home to their families. They were then told that the "news was a little premature" and had to wait until Monday, Nov. 11 for the official news of the Armistice.
Marion Backus was a Red Cross nurse from Minnesota serving in France. In a letter to her family, Backus describes the excitement of American soldiers going through the town she was stationed in when they realized that she and the other nurses walking around town were American. The soldiers would stop the nurses in the street to talk to them because they had not seen or talked to American girls for 5-6 months.
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