The Doughboy Foundation and Verizon have executed a Partnership Agreement to bring the award-winning WWI Memorial “Virtual Explorer” App and other supporting WWI Educational materials to Verizon Innovative Learning HQ. The Verizon Innovative Learning HQ education portal focuses on delivering free Next-Gen learning for all. Aimed at K-12 students and teachers, the portal offers innovative augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) apps, tailored lesson plans and professional development resources that make learning contemporary, engaging, and immersive. Click here to read more about this exciting new partnership that will bring learning about America and World War I to schools all across the nation this fall.

This month, Matthew Barker, who prefers to be called Matt, shares his unique story with us as one of the buglers who sounds Daily Taps at the National World War I Memorial, “Rain or Shine.”

Says Matt, “I grew up in Houston, Texas, and currently live in Columbia, MD. I’m a full-time member of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra trumpet section; I won that position in 2016. A trumpeter friend of mine who is the main bugler at the WW1 memorial graciously asked me to play Taps on occasion, as my schedule allows.” Click here to read more, and find out how sounding Taps has a deeply personal meaning for Matt.

The widely-read Military.com web site published an extensive article recently on the Doughboy Foundation’s commitment to ensure that Taps is sounded every day at 5:00 pm Eastern Time, rain or shine, at the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC. Writer Blake Stilwell looks at the history of Taps in America since it came into usage since the middle of the Civil War. Click here to read the entire fine article, and learn how the official “National Song of Remembrance” is “especially fitting for the National World War I Memorial.”

Every day is Memorial Day at McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan. It has been for more than 100 years, courtesy of a haunting, dusty reminder of the last stateside meal enjoyed by young American men before they were killed in Europe in World War I. Click here to read the entire article, and learn how “Amid the bonhomie of a nostalgic neighborhood beer joint, McSorley’s quietly displays a haunting tribute to American doughboys whose wish for safe return from the battlefields of World War I was never granted.“

Writer Chris Gibbon frequently chronicles the stories of the over 1,500 alumni of Philadelphia’s Roman Catholic High School who served in World War I. Thirty-four of them gave their lives. He writes “When I found the World War I Service and Compensation File of 1st Lieutenant John H. Jenkins, I immediately looked at the document’s “Engagements” section. I often do that now when reviewing these files because this section lists the battles in which a veteran fought, which will give me an idea of what he may have endured. There are two words I often find in this section that always give me pause.” Click here to read the whole article, and learn how “the largest and deadliest battle ever fought by American soldiers” had a particular impact on the Roman alumni.

Members of the Corry community gathered on a warm and sunny Memorial Day afternoon to honor WWI veteran and Corry native Charles P. Keating, not only for his service in the war, but for the key role he played in selecting and bringing home America’s first unknown soldier, now buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. A historical marker recognizing Keating’s service was unveiled in front of the building where Keating and a partner operated the Alexander-Keating Funeral Home in the 1920s and early 30s. Click here to learn more about how Keating braved shellfire and mustard gas to retrieve and identify fallen American soldiers, and without whom the nation likely would not have recovered its first unknown soldier.

On Saturday morning, March 24, 1917, a telegram messenger shouted the awful news from the front gate, across the Poor family’s Illinois front yard and into their windows. Their son was dead. Pvt. John Poor was killed the previous day in a midnight shootout at Fort Williams, far away, on the coast of Maine. German spies were thought to be responsible. Click here to read more, and learn how, though the country didn’t officially enter WWI for another 10 days, Poor’s death while guarding the seaside battery in Cape Elizabeth, likely made him the first serviceman to die in the line of duty while serving in the United States’ armed forces during the “War to End All Wars.”

U.S. Marines participated in a memorial ceremony alongside representatives from the French and German militaries at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France, 29 May 2022. The ceremony is held annually in recognition of the Marines, soldiers and sailors of all three nations who fought and died in the Battle of Belleau Wood in June of 1918. Click here to learn how this annual event is “an essential part of the work for peace, and a foundation for the prevention of future wars.”

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and a former third baseman who played for the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. Click here to learn more about Grant, who enlisted at age 33 because “I believe there is no greater duty than I owe for being that which I am – an American citizen.’’

“Hopefully the word ‘finally’ has come to pass, and we won’t be doing this again anytime soon,” said Jeremiah O’Connor, as a new monument to his uncle, a fallen World War I soldier, was unveiled Friday. It’s the third time O’Connor’s family has tried to honor Carlo Lafazia, who was killed on French soil, fighting back the Germans in a final Allied assault during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He died Oct. 11, 1918, one month before the war ended. Click here to read more, and learn how two previous memorials to Lafazia in Providence disappeared or were destroyed.

In the shade of an old beech tree at the Christ Church cemetery in Port Republic sits a dark gray headstone pockmarked with splotches of moss. While his grave may be unassuming, the life of First Lt. Milton Barkley Mackall was anything but. After being seriously injured in World War I by a sniper’s bullet to his spine, Mackall spent six years confined to a bathtub.  Click here to read more, and learn how “Mackall’s story is the most unique from that era because of his circumstance of treatment.”

Louisiana’s Fort Polk could be renamed, along with eight other U.S. Army installations around the nation which were originally named for Confederate leaders. The announcement comes from the military’s Naming Commission, which has submitted its report to Congress. Under the recommendation, Fort Polk could be renamed to Fort Johnson, in honor of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, an African-American World War I Medal of Honor recipient from North Carolina who served in the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment. Click here to read more about Johnson’s heroic service in World War I, and the Naming Commission’s report.

The journal First World War Studies has published a Special Issue that examines “the specifically American literary and cultural production of the First World War and what distinguishes it from other national war literatures and cultures.” In her introduction to the special issue, Alice Kelly says that “the articles seek to assess how we should characterize, theorize and categorize American First World War cultural production.”  Click here to read more, and learn why “Despite the many memorials and memory sites to American participation, and the impact of the recent centenary, public memory of the conflict in the US remains minimal…”

The University of Sothern California’s SC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences recently published an article in its magazine featuring USC Dornsife and WWI Centennial Commission alumnus Chris Isleib, noting how he “helped create the first national memorial for World War I veterans, part of a long career spent telling the stories of America’s military.”  Click here to read the entire article, and see how the self-described “big history nerd” learned about the Centennial Commission and became one of its first volunteers and later a full-time employee as the Director of Public Affairs.

As part of the centennial commemoration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) released a special Tomb of the Unknown Soldier education module. This module explores themes and topics related to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier through digital materials created for audiences of all ages. This module was the fourth education module released as part of Arlington National Cemetery’s (ANC) first Education Program, launched in 2020. Click here to read more, and learn about the centrality of World War I to the story of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. 

Once America entered World War I some of the first forces it sent to France were those of the newly-formed Air Service. Among those troops was a relatively famous racecar driver and mechanic: Eddie Rickenbacker. When Rickenbacker enlisted in the Army, he had dreams of flying but was shipped to France as a driver for the General Staff due to his experience as a racecar driver. His advanced age (27 at the time) and lack of a college degree also disqualified him for flight training – but he was undeterred. Click here to read more, and learn how “friends in high places” got Rickenbacker into flight training, and how he got himself into the history books as America’s “Ace of Aces.”

Writing  for the Daily Kos web site, Lenny Flank takes a look at how “during the First World War, the US Army depended for most of its tactical communications upon a small group of female volunteers called ‘the Hello Girls’.” He notes how, for military communications, “the armies of the First World War turned to another new technology—the telephone…During the Great War, troops on all sides laid thousands of miles of telephone wires.” Flank notes further that “When the United States entered the war in 1917, General John “Black Jack” Pershing needed to set up a similar communications network. But there was a problem: the US Signal Corps had fewer than 1600 men, and most of them were telegraph operators who had never been trained to run a telephone switchboard.” Click here to read the entire article, and learn how Pershing asked the famous “Hello Girls” to solve his critical problem, and how they responded.

Writing for the Nursing Clio collaborative blog project web site, Evan Sullivan uses a 1919 novel that “reflected the American public’s simultaneous confidence in medicine, and searing unease about the facial reconstruction of wounded soldiers after World War I” as the springboard for a look at the work of US Army General Hospital No. 40 in St. Louis to reintegrate facially wounded WWI veterans into postwar society. Click here to read the fascinating story, and learn how the effort to focus on “medical transformation rather than trauma” was a common (and unfortunate) factor in both the novel and the Army hospital’s work.

The Civil War in the United States ended on May 9, 1865. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 2022. (That’s 51 years, 10 months, 29 days, if anyone is counting.) Yet there are two United States Army officers who managed to serve in both conflicts. Major General Peter Conover Hains was a 1st Lieutenant at the first battle of Bull Run when he fired the signal gun that started the battle. He finished WWI as the oldest officer in the service. Click here to learn more about his incredible career, and why Washington, DC remembers his name to this day. Major (Dr.) William Williams Keen, Jr. was a pioneering military doctor whose career spanned surgical duty on the bloody battlefields of the American Civil War through influential research work during World War I. Click here to read more about “America’s first brain surgeon,” and learn how Keen’s work led to significant improvements in battlefield survival rates during conflicts in the 20th century.

When America entered World War I in 1918, the United States military was equipped with the then-modern Model 1903 Springfield rifle, but it lagged behind in new technologies like machine guns, and modern metal helmets.  Most U.S. soldiers were issued a helmet that wasn’t really all that different from the British MkI “Tin Hat,” which had been introduced in the early months of 1916. The United States would continue to wear the basic helmet — albeit with an updated liner — until 1940. Yet, largely forgotten is the fact that the United States had sought to develop its own helmet during the war. Click here to read more, and learn how several models were actually considered, how Dr. Bashford Dean became an important name in the discussion.

British historian Dr. Mark Felton takes a look on his YouTube channel at how, in New York in 1919, two strange pyramids were built as part of US victory celebrations. The pyramids were made from captured German Pickelhaube, the iconic spiked helmet. Click here to view the video, and read the accompanying article from the Rare Historical Photos web site, as Felton explores the long and colorful history of the iconic Pickelhaube, how they fell ingloriously out of use in the carnage of World War I, how the artifacts ended up in New York City after the war, and how there could be one still floating around out there that might be worth a whole lot of money.

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 1st LT Arnold Matthew McInery.

Born April 23rd, 1893, Lieutenant McInery was a student at Notre Dame University when war broke out. He enlisted in the first officer’s training program at Ft. Benjamin Harrison on May 15th, 1917. Upon completion of his training he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and went overseas with the 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division. While leading his company into an attack during the Battle of Soissons on July 18th, 1918, Lt. McInery was killed in action and interred in a makeshift battlefield grave, which was never located after. The company he led into battle that day was later decorated by the French for bravery in action during that attack.

Would you like to help us solve this case?  Give ‘Ten For Them’ to Doughboy MIA and help us make a full accounting of the 4,423 American service personnel still listed as missing in action from WW1. Make your tax deductible donation now, with our thanks.

Poppy Lapel Pin

Back in stock!

♦ Exclusive Commemorative WW1 Poppy Lapel Pin

♦ First Colors Commemoration

♦ Soft enamel color design

♦ Approx. 1.5 inch in dia.

♦ Standard military clasp

Proceeds from the sale of these pins will help finish 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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