To My Brother Joseph Collins, July 3, 1917
As kids we always talked about the adventures we would go on together, and the things we would do to make this world a better place. Remember when we'd play marbles together and afterwords go in to eat beans an stew with ma and pa we did everything together. Inseparable we are an will always be, a bound like no other we share.
5 days from now I will be enlisting in the Military's National Guard. I want you to enlist with me still like we always talked about, I know we haven't been on good terms as of lately but it would mean the world to me if you did. Did I do something wrong? I would really love for our relationship to go back to the way it was we are brothers and brothers we will always be no matter what. For a minute I thought you were afraid to join because of all of the risk that might happen.
Tell Sofia and the boys I said hello cant wait to see them again. I haven't heard from ma and pa in a while I guess they decided to stop answering my letters. Do me a favor and tell them I miss and love them. I might not get the chance to ever tell them that myself.
I know i never really gave you an explanation on why I ran away . Truthfully I dont know why I guess it was because I felt different. Jealous of the relationship that you had with ma and pa that I didn't. It wasn't really them I was the problem I never really gave them a chance.