The Columbus Dispatch was an important biweekly news source for Lowndes County, Mississippi residents during the first two decades of the twentieth century.  During World War I, the paper’s editor routinely published letters from soldiers who were deployed overseas.  The letters served to connect the local community to events and battles that were an ocean away. These letters, and those like them published in local newspapers around the country, were instrumental in building support for an overseas war that was not initially popular. All of this was in accordance with the Creel Committee who flooded media outlets with propaganda, including film and newspaper outlets providing posters and four-minute speeches, just to name a few of their mediums, to create a heroic and glorified message for World War I.  The letters used in the Columbus Dispatch supported the national effort to create a heroic narrative of the war and connected local communities to a global war.  Analysis of the letters and supporting articles reveals that there were three major categories: the vacationers, the local heroes, and the realists.  Of those categories, the vacationers and the local heroes were far more common, suggesting that the censorship restrictions in place nationally successfully shaped the war message.