Background
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson delivered his War Message. Four days later, war was officially declared on Germany. Joseph J. Jones Sr. was still a bit more than six months shy of his 18th birthday when he joined the Fighting 69th Rainbow Division on April 13, 1917.

The regimental chaplain of the Fighting 69th was Father Duffy. A stirring account of his deeds during the Champagne Defense on July 14, 1918, a battle in which Joe participated, can be found at www.hourigan.com/~69thny/duffy.htm.
Another renowned member of this famous regiment was the American poet, Joyce Kilmer. It was Joyce who advised Joe to keep a diary during the war. A sniper's bullet ended Joyce Kilmer's life on July 30, 1918. For more information about Joyce Kilmer, visit
www.hourigan.com/~69thny/newpage5.htm.

About Joe's Diary
Much of the diary was written in pencil and has greatly faded. Some entries are indecipherable. A great many cities and towns are mentioned in the diary, but many of the names were not clear. The names of cities that could not be deciphered are followed by a question mark (?) within parenthesis.

The diary was a one year book that had preprinted dates for the year 1918. Joe's starting entries, because they occurred prior to 1918, were written on the inside cover of the diary. The first of these entries was for Nov 4, 1917.

Because Joe was still overseas when 1919 began, he went back to the front of the diary and wrote in the new dates below entries he had made in 1918. There were many dates in 1919 where no entries were recorded. There were probably two reasons for this. One was that some pages for the same date in 1918 already had entries. The other reason is that the war was starting to wind down and Joe did not expect to be there that much longer. His last entry was for Apr 2nd, 1919, the day he received a telegram with orders to start home.

The entries at the beginning of the diary were written with dashes between related words. They are displayed in this same fashion on the following pages.

Summary of Contents
For the purpose of this Web site, journal entries were divided into 15 sections covering the dates indicated: