In recognition of the 105th anniversary of the American entry into World War I, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the Doughboy Foundation, the Embassy of Hungary, and Mathias Corvinus Collegium invite you to a Book Launching ceremony and Photography Reception for the premiere of Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy’s forthcoming two-volume book, “In the Centennial Footsteps of the Great War.” The event will be held at the DAR Headquarters, located in the heart of Washington D.C at 1776 D St NW,, on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 5 p.m. Click here to read more about the event, and learn how “In the Centennial Footsteps of the Great War” chronicles and explains the historical events and the horrors of the First World War through photos that were taken 100 years later,

The National Museum of the United States Army is presenting a “Virtual Fieldtrip” to 100 years ago in history for a close look at “Our Girls Over There”: The Hello Girls of World War I.  Supported by the U.S. Army Women’s Museum, the free online program has three showings: Wednesday, March 9, 2022, 10 a.m. EST; Wednesday, March 16, 2022, 10 a.m. EDT; and Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 10 a.m. EDT. Click here to learn more, and to sign up for a session exploring “the commitment, sacrifice and challenges of the Hello Girls during World War I.“

Through rain or shine, (and this winter through heavy snow as well), rotating buglers fulfill the Doughboy Foundation’s mission to sound “DAILY TAPS” at the National World War One Memorial in Washington, DC. This month one of our dedicated buglers, recruited by Taps for Veterans, Daniel Sharp shared his story with us. Click here to read more, and learn how sounding Taps at the Memorial “has become very meaningful” to this Former Surface Warfare officer in the U.S. Navy, who remains active in the Navy Reserve.

When James Larrimore’s mother died in 2001 at age 94, Larrimore was stunned to discover family records from the World War I era. His grandfather, Don Martin, who Larrimore never met, had died in France while serving as a highly-regarded war correspondent. Looking through the treasure trove of documents, Larrimore realized “that I had to learn about the role my grandfather had played in World War I.” What Larrimore discovered was published on his blog over several years, and is now captured in his new book “ In Their Own Words, Writings of war correspondent Don Martin and his 11-year-old daughter Dorothy. An intimate view of WWI.” Click here to read more about the book, and learn how Larrimore discovered that the grandfather that he had never known “was a role model and a hero.“

Leslie Halleck of the Produce Grower web site noted recently that “March being Women’s History Month and all, I of course find myself thinking about where women stand today in the world of agriculture, and society.” Noting that the official theme for Women’s History Month in 2022 is “Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope,” Halleck cites an interesting historical example, asking “have you ever heard of the Women’s Land Army?” Click here to read more, and learn how during World War I the Women’s Land Army of America (WLAA) put 20,000 women to work in agricultural fields, many of whom “believed that doing their patriotic duty in the agricultural sectors would also help the suffrage movement” in the United States after the war.

When 20-year-old Jens Olaf Kittlesrud arrived in England with a few thousand other American troops to fight in WWI, he was handed a letter from the King of England. The letter had apparently been tucked away for years when Jens Kittlesrud’s great-niece, Betty Hoff, found it among her parents’ possessions. She was curious about the story behind the letter and wondered if other soldiers had received it. Click here to read more, and learn how many American soldiers received similar royal correspondence in WWI.

“Have you ever gotten exactly what you wanted? It’s hard to imagine that any PlayStation 5 on Christmas morning could beat a pack of cigarettes showing up when you’re stuck in the trenches, but add to it that it’s delivered by an adorable dog. That’s what the soldiers of the 11th Engineers were treated to when Mutt, a YMCA trench runner loaded with ciggies, visited them in 1918 in the Aisne-Marne operation during World War I.” Click here to read Miranda Summers Lowe’s entire article about Mutt the cigarette delivery dog, and all the other canines with a job supporting Doughboys in World War I.

Beatrice Mary MacDonald, a World War I nurse, was the first woman to be awarded the Purple Heart. One night in August 1917 during World War I, a German aerial bomb exploded at a military field hospital in Belgium during the Third Battle of Ypres. Metal shrapnel ripped through a tent at Casualty Clearing Station #61, where the 36-year-old was rising from her cot to start her shift caring for wounded Allied soldiers. Click here to learn about what happened next, and six more interesting facts about this American WWI heroine.

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson learned of a shocking piece of paper that made America’s entry into World War I inevitable. And current research shows the Americans didn’t know everything German diplomats intended. The Zimmermann Telegram was a message sent on January 12, 1917, from the German foreign minister Arthur Zimmerman to the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C., to be relayed to German representatives in Mexico. Click here to read more about the infamous telegram, and learn how there was a lot more to the message than the American government knew at the time.

David Hickey was 38 when he answered the patriotic drumbeat in April 1917 to fight in the Great War. He was assigned to a U.S. Army artillery battery in France at the village of Seicheprey, near the slaughterhouse known as Verdun. Hickey had grown up just north of downtown and was a newsboy. He later worked in shoe factories and the Post-Dispatch mail room, where newspapers were bundled. He played on local amateur baseball teams and never married. His distinction was posthumous: “First St. Louis Man Killed in France,” was the headline in the Feb. 27, 1918, Post-Dispatch. Click here to read the entire article, and learn how the battlefield death of an obscure newspaper employee became really big news in wartime St. Louis.

From November 9 through 11, 2021, thousands of people came to Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) to participate in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Centennial Commemoration. To supplement the in-person anniversary events, a comprehensive digital media campaign enabled millions more to participate in the centennial virtually. Click here to read more, and learn how, throughout 2021, ANC featured blog and social media posts (identified with the hashtag #Tomb100) about a rich variety of topics related to the Tomb’s history, meanings, and global significance as a memorial site.

Judy Bruckner’s lifelong passion for family history began at a young age. An interest sparked by a multi- generational collection of stories, photographs and countless afternoons with her beloved grandparents who cared for it all. Most prized amongst this collection of treasure; a black, leather-bound album containing photographs, letters, documents and a one-year diary by a 19- year-old WWI ambulance driver named Charles C. Leonard, Judy’s grandfather. Click here to read more, and learn how this vast collection of memories allowed her to experience World War I through Charles’ eyes, and led to an amazing new book.

Nearly 8,000 Black Ohioans served in the United States Army and Navy in World War I; many made the ultimate sacrifice. The story of these heroes is often overlooked. In today’s classroom, teachers are often forced to balance the volume of content against limited time. World War I content would likely be covered in one to two weeks of class time. Click here to see the resources that Paul LaRue, retired high school teacher and former member of the Ohio WWI Centennial Committee, has made available to teachers that will enable better thoughtful classroom coverage for Ohio’s (and other states’) forgotten World War I heroes.

Current events unfolding in Ukraine are raising fears of possible global grain shortages as a fallout from the conflict, as Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat. In his new book Oceans of Grain, author Scott Reynolds Nelson shows that a century ago, “Grain was key to almost every stage of World War I.” Click here to read more, and learn how “Fearing the threat to its grain exports, imperial Russia helped provoke this global conflict,” and “as the conflict dragged on, Germany, also suffering from a dearth of cheap bread, found a unique path to Russia’s bountiful harvest.”

The National World War I Museum in Kansas City has launched an ongoing project to diversify its collections by calling on family members or other people related to Black World War I soldiers to donate their loved ones’ treasured items from the war. Click here to read more, and learn how one of the museum’s goals with the project is “showing how that history affects us today. It’s their objects, their statements and their letters. We need to have that to tell the story” of how “African Americans were well represented, both on the battlefield and the home front.”

Wartime is a crisis not only because men and women are being sent into a warzone where untold numbers may be killed, but also because resources diverted to the war effort mean privation and shortages for the folks back home. Those who were left had to make sacrifices too, in ways they might never have imagined. Click here to read more, and learn some of the conservation measures made during wartime that really hurt, and others that were really unusual…like mowing the White House lawn with a flock of sheep.

The Pritzker Military Museum & Library present their 2022 On War Military History Symposium featuring Dr. Margaret MacMillan, recipient of the 2021 Pritzker Military Museum & Library’s Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The symposium will consider the current state of military history under the theme of “What is Military History Today?” This year’s Symposium will take on a hybrid format with an option to join in person or virtually online. Click hear to read more about the event, the speakers, and how you can register to attend.

For the past few years, a task force at a Missouri university has made it its goal to give many Doughboys of World War I the proper recognition for their acts of valor. A team from Park University’s George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War — located in Parkville, Missouri, near Kansas City, Missouri, — is working on the project with the World War I Centennial Commission, members of Congress and veterans service organizations, including the VFW. Click here to read more from the VFW web site about how the Park University team has taken on the task  of correcting the military records of marginalized veterans of WWI.

Writing on the Food History Blog web site, author and baker Sarah Wassberg Johnson recounts her search for and discovery of “historic recipes for bacon fat cookies” from World War I. Click here to read more, and learn how a World War I “Soft Molasses Cookies” recipe, listed as a “Conservation Recipe” in the February, 1918 issue of American Cookery (formerly the Boston Cooking School Magazine) got itself baked (and enjoyed!) again 104 years later in February, 2022.

World War I was The War that Changed the World, and its impact on the United States continues to be felt a century later, as people across the nation learn more about and remember those who served in the Great War. Here’s a collection of news items from the last month related to World War I and America.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is PVT Franklin Ellenberger – and he has a special story!

Born on 12 July, 1892, Frank Ellenberger was from Wilmington, Ohio and was drafted into the army on 27 May, 1918. Sent to Camp Beauregard at Alexandria, Louisiana he was assigned training with the 41st Company, 159th Depot Brigade for indoctrination before being sent to Company I, 153rd Infantry Regiment, 39th ‘Delta’ Division. The 39th left for France on 6 August, 1918 and once Over There was re-designated as the 5th Depot Division (replacement division). From there, Ellenberger was sent to Company K, 128th Infantry, 32nd ‘Red Arrow’ Division in September, 1918. When the 32nd went forward to relieve the 91st Division during the Meuse-Argonne campaign on 4 October, 1918 PVT Ellenberger was among them. The 32nd would be the first division to crack the Kriemhilde Stellung six days later, on 10 October, 1918, but by that time Ellenberger was already dead. A statement by his sergeant says he “saw Private Ellenberger killed instantly by fragments from a high explosive shell. Hit in the head… on October 7th, 1918 while in action near Epinonville.”

At the time Ellenberger’s battalion (the 3rd) was supporting attacks made by the 125th Infantry south of Romagne sous Montfaucon who would, within a few days, capture the ground that the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery occupies today.

No record of his burial ever made it back to the Graves Registration Service however, and while two separate searches were made for him following the war, nothing further was ever found concerning his case and it was closed in December, 1919. His mother, Laura Ellenberger (right) made the Gold Star Mother’s Pilgrimage to see her sons name on the Tablet of the Missing at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in 1931.

Then, on the evening of 4 November, 2019, our Assistant Field Manager here at Doughboy MIA, Mr Jeremy Wayne Bowles (at left, commonly known as ‘The Dayton Doughboy’) was doing some research into Ohio soldiers that served in the war with his family’s help when his mother happened to notice a name that rang a bell with her… Ellenberger. Later that night, just on a hunch, she pulled out the family tree to check that name and found an entry for a Private Franklin Ellenberger KIA in the war, who had been her great grandmothers brother. Jeremy checked the ABMC website to find out if this relative of his – whom he had not known about before – was buried in France or had come home and found he was MIA!

Infer what you want about this story, but it certainly would seem some sort of intervention was at work here for a worker with Doughboy MIA to discover through accident and hunch that HE was related to an MIA from that war – another example that a man is only missing if he is forgotten!

Soy Candle
Camp Mug

• A Doughboy.shop Exclusive!
• This replica tin mug has been upcycled into an all-natural soy candle
• Candle filled by Charleston Candleworks (USA)
• Made from all organic soy wax, cotton wick, essential oils
• The “Morning Java” scent will fill the room with a wonderful coffee aroma that includes just a hint of chocolate.
• Camp mug is reusable once the candle has burned down
• Makes a great 2-in-1 gift. (Reduce + Reuse)

Proceeds from the sale of this item will help build the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC.

This and many other items are available as Official Merchandise of the Doughboy Foundation.

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