Over four pages, "Aunt Pete" wrote to her nephew, on the frontline with news from back home. She spoke of a mobilized America, of the difficulty of finding domestic help, and of the massive draft of black Americans. She regretted the effects of the scissors of censorship and gave here nephew advice on this subject.
Morres V. Liepman, who studied in Pittsburgh (Kansas), was enlisted on July 25, 1917. Reaching Le Havre in June 1918, he participated in the battles of Argonne, Saint-Mihiel, Verdun and Vosges. In the autumn of 1918, his unit was stationed in the Haye Forest sector (near Nancy) not far from the "Noires terres" where his letter was found.
Morres V. Liepman returned back to the States in 1919 and was demobilized on September 3 at Camp Dodge (Iowa).

Aunt Pete's letter was written in blue ink (primarily composed of aniline) on four single side sheets of mechanical pulp paper set in an envelope. The letterhead paper is that of Robert M. Scott, a hardware drugstore owner in Oklahoma City. A small amount of water at the bottom of the bottle slightly damaged the edges of the envelope and the pages with which it was in direct contact. The envelope was torn when it was first opened in 1918. Restoration of this manuscript was undertaken by the graphic document, binding and gilding workshop of the conservation department of the Archives Nationales.

For the past fifteen years, archaeologists in eastern and northern France have often encountered remains from the Great War. First considered as contaminating factors in archaeological excavations, or even as a potential source of danger (ancient ammunition), these remains have little by little become the subject of archaeological research in their own right. Archaeologists have been particularly interested in funerary archaeology, with meticulous excavations of the grave of Alain Fournier at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne, the ditch of the 10th Lincolnshire at Arras…
In 2003, a team of Inrap archaeologists returned the bodily remains and personal belongings of two American soldiers killed in action at Soisson in 1918. One of them, Francis Luppo, was identified through DNA analysis and buried in the Arlington military cemetery on September 25, 2006.