During our Fleet Week activities in New York City in May, the U.S. World War One Centennial Commission (WWICC) highlighted a new genealogical tool that has a limited-time offer attached. The World War I Genealogy Research Guidehelps trace American military and noncombatant ancestors. It is provided courtesy of WWICC and the Doughboy Foundation. This guide is authored by Debra M. Dudek, with a foreword by Col. Gerald York, grandson of Medal of Honor recipient Alvin York. As well as over 100 pages of information and guidance, it features over 250 links to resources on the Web. The guide is available in PDF form, free of charge.  Click here to be among the first 5,000 people who download it FREE. After the download limit has been reached, it can be purchased in book form online or wherever books are sold. Get your copy of the WWI Genealogy Research Guide now!

National History Day (NHD) has engaged with several partners to commemorate the World War I Centennial. NHD has created resources to offer different perspectives on the war, engage students with unique primary sources, and remember those who served and sacrificed as part of the war effort. Free tuition and credit is available for two teachers from every NHD Affiliate. Through this program, teachers can earn a certificate of professional development hours or three graduate extension credit units from the University of San Diego. Applications for a scholarship will be accepted through July 30, 2019. Click here to read more about this exciting opportunity for teachers to be part of the Legacies of World War I Webinar series in the fall.

On Wednesday, June 19, Park University will host a program “From Kansas City to Washington, D.C.: World War I Valor Medals Review,” at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., starting at 6:30 p.m. Admission to the event is free and open to the public, but attendees must  RSVP. In mid-April, the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and Park University announced that they were spearheading the effort of a Congress-led systematic review of minority veterans who served in World War I who may have been denied the Medal of Honor due to race. Information on that effort can be found here on the Centennial Commission’s web site. To find out more about the event in Kandsas City, and to RSVP to attend, click here.

The Task and Purpose military and veterans web site published an extensive article last week on the Valor Medals Review project. Click here to read the entire article on the Task and Purposeweb site.

The World War I Centennial may be over, but the NYC Parks continue its mission and mandate to preserve the city’s touchstones of the past, including all of the 102 World War I monuments in the city’s parks, such as the Bronx Victory Memorial at left. In the run up to Memorial Day, the NYC Parks’ small but dedicated field staff were engaged in ongoing care of many World War I memorials. This work included detailed cleaning, waxing, and minor repairs. Click here for more about this effort to make the WWI memorials in NYC look their very best for Memorial Day 2019.

In related news, NYC Parks’ Citywide Monuments Conservation Program (CMCP), a public-private partnership, recently commissioned a precise replica of the severely deteriorated oak door at this landmark monument. The new door (seen at left)  was fashioned by master carpenter Tim Fagin, and reuses the original forged decorative ironwork. The project was supported in part by a $2,000 award from the US World War I Centennial Commission’s 100 Cities/100 Memorials Grant Program, with oversight by NYC Parks Art & Antiquities. Click here to read more about this remarkable restoration project for a key NYC World War I memorial.

When Chris Davis (left) was asked by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro History Department what course he would like to teach for the fall of 2018, there was no hesitation in his response: he wanted “to teach a course that gave The Great War its due.” In the fourth year of his Ph.D. program in U.S. History at Greensboro, Chris got his wish: not only would he be teaching a course on his favorite topic: WWI, but this course would coincide with the centennial of the war’s end. Click here to read more about the course, the content, the students, and how the results reinforced Chris’ determination to “keep the public interest now that we have had the opportunity to temporarily seize it” about the significance of World War I.

“The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I” examines the stories of the young American men and women who transformed the meaning of volunteerism in World War I. Prompted by altruism, personal ambition, a search for adventure or hope for an Allied-led redemption of a devastated Europe, these American volunteers engaged in the war before the United States entered the conflict. Click here to learn more about this digital exhibition, produced by the National World War I Museum and Memorial in collaboration with AFS Intercultural Programs, which shares the inspirational stories of these American volunteers.

The 2019 Memorial Day festivities were like no other as the Village of Covington in Ohio honored those residents who fought in World War I with a monument. Nearly 300 Covington servicemen fought in World War I with the United States Army’s 148th Infantry Regiment in the battles to liberate Belgium in 1918. On hand to represent Belgium in paying respects for the sacrifices of the Covington servicemen who sacrificed on behalf of freedom was Lieutenant Colonel Heidi Libert of the Belgian Armed Forces. Click here to read more about this memorial, and watch video of the unveiling ceremony.

The names of 26 Jefferson County, Georgia men who gave their lives in service to their country during WWI were revealed, etched in granite, on a new monument in the newly redesigned veterans plaza on the county courthouse lawn Thursday, June 6. The WWI monument is part of a veterans plaza originally started last year by Dr. Lamar Veatch, a Jefferson County native and member of the WWI Commission who brought the idea of a WWI memorial to the board of commissioners and historical society. Click here to read more about this new Memorial in Georgia to recognize the sacrifices of the World War I veterans.

Just one century ago, the world was in the grips of one of the deadliest pandemics in history. At least 50 million people – 3 percent of the world’s population – were killed by the Spanish influenza pandemic that swept across the planet, considerably more lives lost than in World War I, which was also occurring at the time. While much has changed since this chapter of the 20th century ended, the story of Spanish flu still holds a valuable lesson in not underestimating the pathogens we share Earth with. Click here to read about a new study which has detailed that the outbreak sharply highlights the importance of vaccination programs and the risks of complacency when it comes to communicable diseases in the globalized world.

May 24th’s edition of the WWI Centennial News Podcast, Episode 124. Podcast Researcher Dave Kramer jumps into the WWI centennial time machine to look at the Middle East 100 years ago. A major challenge, and one that frustrates President Wilson time after time, comes from the wartime agreements between nations, oftentimes secret, that addressed short-term war needs but created long-term headaches. Click here to read the entire transcript of this fascinating look at the complex Middle East events a century ago that were the prologue for the intractable Middle East issues of today.

In May 24th’s edition of the World War I Centennial News Podcast, Episode 124, host Theo Mayer interviewed Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay, a historian at the National Portrait Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. Dr. Lemay curated the new “Votes for Women: Portrait of Persistence” exhibit at the Portrait Gallery. Click here to find out more about the exhibit, the history of the women’s suffrage movement, and how the movement intersected with World War I.

The WW1 Centennial News Podcast is about WW1 THEN: 100 years ago this week, and it’s about WW1 NOW: News and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. 

Available on our web site, iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, TuneIn, Stitcher Radio on Demand.  Spotify  listen on Youtube. New – Comment and ask questions via twitter @TheWW1podcast

Episode #126
Teaching & Learning WWI

Host – Theo Mayer

Lafayette, Here We Go Again –  Host | @ 02:15
Killing the Angel of Peace
– Mike Shuster | @ 07:15
War Memoirs From WWI: “Siegfried Sassoon”
– Dr. Edward Lengel | @ 11:30
Updates From The States: Hawaii
– Col. Arthur Tulak (ret.) | @ 17:20
Education in 1919
– Host | @ 25:15
WWI Educator’s Tool Kits
– Dr. Jennifer Zoebelein | @ 28:15
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
– Ron Nash | @ 36:25

“They were mortal, but they were unconquerable.” Willa Cather and the WWI Memorial in Washington

By Mark A. R. Facknitz

What does it mean that Willa Cather ‘s words from her novel, One of Ours, “They were mortal, but they were unconquerable,”will join Woodrow Wilson, Archibald MacLeish, and the American nurse Alta May Andrews on the future WWI Memorial in D.C.’s Pershing Park?

That two of the four whose words will be immortalized in stone are women is remarkable, representing the maturation of our sensibilities as we grasp more completely that the long-term consequences of wars transcend gender. As WWI literary specialist and historical advisor to the WWI Commission, Mark Facknitz, explains in this post, they also exceed the usual limits of class, region, and literary prejudices. Discover Willa Cather’s impact on war and literature by reading “They were mortal, but they were unconquerable.” Willa Cather and the WWI Memorial in Washington at WWrite this week!

A sister mourns for her younger brother, killed just days before his 22nd birthday — his body never found. Read more at “The Unreturning.”

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Monday’s MIA this week  is Private First Class Arthur Wylie. Born at Forsyth County, Georgia in March, 1899, the only son of James and Ida Wylie, Arthur C. Wylie enlisted in the Georgia National Guard at Atlanta on 23 July, 1917 and was assigned to Company K, 5^th Infantry, GNG. Stationed at Camp Wheeler, at Macon, Georgia, the year before this unit had been federalized for duty on the Mexican Border as Company K, 122^nd Infantry. Following the declaration of war in 1917, the 122^nd had been assigned duty with the 31^st ‘Dixie Division’ which would go overseas as a replacement division in September, 1918.

By that time however, then Private First Class Wylie had received machine gun training with the 122^nd before sailing for France aboard the troopship Elpenor on 20 June, 1918 as a member of Company #1, Camp Wheeler June Automatic Replacement Draft, which had been drawn from Camp Wheeler trainees. Ten days later he landed in France and a week after that he had been assigned to Company B, 150^th Machine Gun Battalion, 42^nd ‘Rainbow’ Division. He was with them but a short time when, on 18 July, 1918, he was killed in action, having been in France barely 18 days.

PFC Wylie is memorialized on the Tablets to the Missing at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau Wood. Nothing else is known about his case at this time.

Want to help shed some light on PFC Wylies’s case? Consider making a donation toto Doughboy MIA and help us make a full accounting of the 4,423 American service personnel still listed as missing in action from WW1. It takes only a moment and your tax deductible contribution can be as large as you want or as small as $10.00 on our ‘Ten for Them’ program. Make your tax deductible donation now, with our thanks.

“Lest We Forget: The Great War”

World War I Prints from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library 

As the United States commemorates the centennial of World War I, one of the nation’s premier military history institutions pays tribute to the Americans who served and the allies they fought beside to defeat a resourceful enemy with a lavishly illustrated book.  It is an official product of the United States World War One Centennial Commission. The story of WWI is told through the memorable art it spawned―including posters from nations involved in the conflict―and a taut narrative account of the war’s signal events, its major personalities and its tragic consequences; and the timely period photographs that illustrate the awful realities of this revolutionary conflict. Most importantly, this book is a tribute to those who served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and what would become the Air Force. Proceeds from the sale of this book help fund the WW1 Memorial in Washington, DC.

This and many other items are available as Official Merchandise of the United States World War One Centennial.

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