Jerry Hester, one of the original twelve Commissioners at the establishment of the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission in 2013, has died at age 90 in North Carolina. Jerry’s indomitable determination was utterly essential to the establishment of the Commission, the broad national commemoration of the Centennial of  World War I, and the construction of the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC. Jerry’s obituary is available here. An In Memoriam essay honoring “One of the most inexhaustible and effective soldiers in the effort to honor the Americans who served and sacrificed their nation in the First World War” is available here. The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Doughboy Foundation mourn Jerry’s passing.

As students head back to school, Verizon is continuing to bolster immersive learning content across its award-winning Verizon Innovative Learning education initiative. Verizon’s impactful partnerships with trusted education companies, edtech innovators ,and cultural institutions enable educators to access new tech-driven lesson plans that utilize the power of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) apps in the classroom, such as the Doughboy Foundation’s WWI Memorial “Virtual Explorer.” The Memorial app introduces a next generation of young adults to the transformational impact WWI had on America. Click here to read more about this exciting new immersive learning content initiative.

Commissioner of the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, John D. Monahan, delivered remarks at The American Legion’s 103rd National Convention. A 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army and member of American Legion Post 18 in Essex, Conn., Monahan spoke of the heroism and legacy of those who fought in the war. “It was the war that changed the world,” he said. “They had been imbued with a fervor for service toward achieving a public good. They sought to channel this energy, enthusiasm and public spirit in ways that would strengthen the nation both physically and morally.” Click here to read the entire article, and watch a video of Monahan’s speech, and learn how that “public spirit” from World War I led to the establishment of The American Legion and a lasting legacy of service.

The first U.S. Navy ship sunk by the enemy in World War I has finally been found, ending 105-year mystery. A team of experienced deep divers were able to locate the missing USS Jacob Jones on August 11, about 40 miles off the coast of the Isles of Scilly in the United Kingdom. The “Tucker-class” destroyer was the first American destroyer ever to be sunk by enemy action, torpedoed in 1917 by a German submarine. Click here to read more, and learn about the century-long search for the Jacob Jones and the remarkable stories that came with her sinking.

The beautiful spruce trees that lined the road leading to the 316th Infantry Regiment monument above Sivry-sur-Meuse in France are now dead or dying from the region-wide infestation of the spruce bark beetle ravaging the Argonne region. This is one of the most iconic monuments in the area, and the hilltop offers one of the best views of the battlefield that exists. Some 50 trees need to be removed, and (hopefully) replaced. The trust fund set up by the 316th veterans that pays for the monument’s maintenance has insufficient funds to remove all the dead and dying trees. A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to supplement the trust fund, so the the work on the trees can take place. Click here to read more, and learn how you can help support this recovery effort at a unique WWI monument.

Battleship Texas has a storied history as the last surviving battleship to serve in both World Wars, a source of pride for those who love it most. “Battleship Texas is one of the most iconic things in Texas, the U.S., the world,” says Bruce Bramlett with the Battleship Texas Foundation. “Talking about the only surviving ship that served in WWI and WWII.” Now after calling the San Jacinto Battleground in La Porte, TX home for more than seven decades, the iconic battleship is about to ship out for a $35 million makeover before it is moved to its new home. Click here to read more and watch video about the storied past of the USS Texas, and the plans for her display after completion of the restoration project.

Sergeant Stubby, the diminutive bull terrier who made a name for himself on the WWI battlefields of France as a mascot, caretaker, and protector of American Doughboys, was already famous when he met President Woodrow Wilson just a few weeks after the end of the war. The two were reported to have shaken paws. But as it turned out, they would soon be neighbors in Washington, D.C. Click here to read the whole story, and learn how Sergeant Stubby became a regular in D.C.’s social scene, and a fixture in the District, especially at events that pertained to the Great War. 

After the end of World War I, the Louis E. Davis Post 56 of the American Legion in Bloomington, IL “out of a need and desire for a specific burial plot for veterans of the Great War (today known as World War I)” decided to create a designated section of the Park Hill Cemetery and Mausoleum for the burial of members of their organization who had served. It seemed like a good idea in 1919, but little did they know the challenges they would face before the dedication almost a decade later. Click here to read the entire story, and learn how, despite the obstacles, the facility now stands as “a proof that we do not forget, that we have not forgotten the boys who gave their lives to bring peace to this world.“

Supporters, friends, staff, veterans and dignitaries attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Lewis County War Memorial and Louis Bennett Jr. Public Library on Friday, August 26. The occasion marked the 100th anniversary of the memorial and library. Following the death her son, Louis Bennett Jr., in WWI, Sallie Maxwell Bennett bestowed her family home and private library to Lewis County to live on in perpetuity as a war memorial and public library. Click here to read the whole story, and find out how Weston America Legion Post 4 helped create the “amazing resource” that is now home to the library, war memorial and American Legion Post 4 offices.

Soldiers assigned to U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa joined members of the Italian Army, Aug. 28, near Gallio, Italy, to honor those who were killed in action during World War I while defending Vicenza and Venice, Italy.The Bersaglieri Brigade of the Italian Army celebrated its annual pilgrimage to Cima Valbella near Gallio, to honor the sacrifice of the Bersaglieri soldiers of the 5th and 14th Regiment in the ‘Great War.’ Click here to read more, and learn how, to remember the battle, the Italian and U.S. soldiers hiked 40 minutes to the top of Mount Valbella for memorial services..

Manuel E. Reams Jr. was a cattleman and former baseball player when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War I. He was killed Oct. 31, 1918, the first day of the Ypres-Lys Offensive. He was 27.Fifteen months later, on the evening of Jan. 7, 1920, in the Odd Fellows Hall in Suisun City, 37 men who had served in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps during the Great War voted to create California American Legion Post 182 and named it after Reams. That post, from Sept. 5-10, will be honored at 5 p.m. each evening with the playing of Daily Taps at the World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. Click here to learn more about Manuel E. Reams Jr., and the Daily Taps program.

The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. has returned a manuscript gospel that is more than 1,000 years old to the Greek Orthodox Church after finding that it was looted from a Greek monastery during the First World War. The museum said it returned the artifact, which its founders acquired at a Christie’s auction in 2011, to a representative of the Eastern Orthodox Church in a private ceremony in New York. Click here to read more about the late 10th or early 11th century manuscript, and learn how several other American institutions have turned up with artifacts looted from the same monastery in WWI.

Roger Hager has long been a person of reflection, piecing together cross-sections of family and local history in an effort to acquire a better understanding of how military service shaped the lives of his ancestors. Most recently, he has collected information regarding the World War I service of his late great uncle, who was among the brave Marines who earned the admired title of “Devil Dogs” in the historic Battle of Belleau Wood. Click here to learn more about Willard Paul Gress, and how this Marine fought in many historic battles of World War I, concluding with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. 

Writing on the the War History Online web site. author Samantha Franco asserts that “The Battle of Cantigny was the first great American victory of the First World War. With a military that was under-trained and ill-prepared, a win on the global stage was necessary to prove the might of the United States. Cantigny was the first time during the conflict where the US military was forced to prove itself – and it didn’t disappoint.” Click here to read the entire essay, and learn how “the Germans were prepared for the US military to either spend a long time training troops or be ill-prepared and easily defeated. What they realized after the Battle of Cantigny was that this wasn’t the case.”

The FBI investigation into possible Espionage Act violations by former President Donald Trump has sparked curiosity about the World War I-era law. The Espionage Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Woodrow Wilson in a climate of xenophobia and anti-Red hysteria in 1917, the year the U.S. entered WWI. But because many Americans opposed fighting in what they viewed as a war between European colonial powers, Congress included provisions allowing the federal government to crack down on dissent. Click here to read more, and learn how the Espionage Act, despite its name, has rarely been used to punish actual espionage.

Author Rufus Ward writes about how, in the recognition of the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, frequently overlooked “were the code talkers of many other Indian nations including the first code talkers, the Choctaw” in World War I. To support his point, Ward dives into a 1919 Stars and Stripes newspaper article that “told the story of the first code talkers, who were 19 Choctaw Indians.” Click here to read Ward’s entire article, and learn how “While the Choctaws were noted for the Choctaw Code, there were more than 9,000 Native Americans from 60 different tribes serving with American forces in Europe. They were among the American troops most feared by the Germans.“

A construction crew in Waco, TX recovered two bombs from a Little League baseball fields construction site; the McLennan County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad determined the devices were not live but likely practice bombs from former military installations on the same site. “This is the original site of the Rich Field Army Air Base built in 1917 after the United States got involved in WWI,” Sheriff Parnell McNamara explained. Click here to read more, and learn how the discovery of the inert WWI ordnance “hits pretty close to home” for the county sheriff.

“In March of 1918, word began traveling of a flu-like illness slowly spreading throughout the country from its place of origin, Camp Funston, Kansas. The sickness swept through the ranks of the American military, knocking many-a-men down for a few days, but killing very few. This influenza epidemic caused few in DC much concern during that spring.”  But that would change quickly. Click here to read Meaghan Kacmarcik’s absorbing look at how in 1918 “there seemed to be relatively little attention paid to how to protect the District from the seemingly inevitable spread of the malady to DC. And spread it did.”

Peggy Burch on the Chapter 16 web site reviews the new book “The War Librarian” by Addison Armstrong, and finds lots of resonances between the challenge faced by her female World War I protagonist. “The War Librarian switches between two narrators, seemingly unrelated women living in separate times and places whose tales gradually converge.” Click here to read more, and learn why the novel about a WWI librarian and a U.S. Naval Academy plebe is “a page-turner” that “confronts urgent contemporary cultural conflicts — misogyny, racism, and book banning — by taking a detailed dive into two moments in history.“

Over 200 remarkable pictures taken by a young American soldier during World War I are featured in a new book published by Tallahassee surgeon Dr. Charles E. Moore. Moore’s father, the late Paul Handy Moore, a native of Charleston, Missouri, and later a resident of Tallahassee, volunteered in 1917 for service with the French army and documented his experiences as an ambulance driver on the battlefields of France in a photo album created more than a century ago. Click here to find put more about the book, and learn how the the volume “provides an unusually complete picture of what a young American soldier saw and experienced as he picked up wounded soldiers from the trenches and brought them to temporary hospitals behind the lines while dodging shells and shrapnel.“

Analyst Hal Brands asserts that “when analysts warn of an unwanted war with China, or bemoan America’s alleged lack of magnanimity following its victory in the Cold War, they are invoking perceived lessons of World War I. Alas, some of the most commonly held ideas about the war are wrong — and they deeply skew our understanding of the modern world.” Click here to read Brands’ entire contrarian take on much of the perceived lessons of WWI, supporting his contention that “For the U.S. to thrive in the great rivalries shaping this century, it must better understand the conflict that ushered in the last.”

General of the Armies
John Joseph Pershing
Born September 13, 1860

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month this time around is a man we just searched for in August: PVT Edward Michael McAvoy ASN3193251 M CO/314th INF/79 DIV – KIA September 26th, 1918.

Edward Michael McAvoy was born in Benedicta, Maine on 28MAR1887, to Mary T McAvoy. Little is known of his father other than his death in occurring in 1908. Mary McAvoy had two sons, the other being Frederick McAvoy. On draft registration day  Edward listed his home address as Webster, Massachusetts and his occupation as shoemaker. He is described as tall and slender with brown hair and brown eyes. He claimed no exemption from service.

He was inducted into service at Southbridge, Massachusetts on 26MAY1918 and sent to Camp Upton in New York for induction and assigned to the 8th CO/152nd Depot Brigade. From there he was transferred to the 79th Division at Camp Meade, Maryland on 22JUN1918 and assigned to M CO/314th/79 DIV on 27JUN1918. He sailed with his new unit to France from Hoboken, New Jersey aboard the USS Leviathan on July 8th, 1918.

Upon arrival in France on the afternoon of July 15^th 1918, the 314th Infantry was sent towards the 10^th Training area where it trained under French officers until September 7^th, when they took up positions in the Avocourt-Malancourt sector to partially relieve the French in defensive positions near Hill 304 in preparation for the Meuse-Argonne offensive. M CO/314th Infantry spent most of this time in reserve, creating defensive positions and assisting in repairing roads. On the Morning of September 26^th 1918, the 79^th  Division went into attack against Butte d’Montfaucon. Montfuacon sat on top of a large hill, making it a key part of the German defensive line, where German artillery observers used it to great advantage, directing artillery on American positions. In order for the American offensive to be successful, the 79th DIV had to capture Montfaucon as soon as possible. The position was fortified with a series of consecutive trench systems, bunkers, and machine gun nests. The 79th were under orders to capture the butte by the end of the day. At 5:30am on the morning of September 26^th 1918, Co M/314th infantry moved forward toward Malancourt, supported by the 315th Infantry. Under a heavy smoke screen, they appeared in front of the first line of German defenses and took the German machine gun nests head on. By the afternoon the Company found itself again taking on heavy machine gun fire while taking the second line of German trenches. That was as far as they were able to get; the company reorganized and stayed overnight in the second line of trenches. The Germans were only a few hundred yards away and harassed Co M/314th with machine gun and sniper fire the entire night. It was there, around 9:00 pm, that PVT McAvoy was struck by a bullet in the stomach and died almost instantly. He was buried by the regimental chaplain.

Following the war, his family was first informed that PVT McAvoy had been recovered and buried in the nearby newly established Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, however this was found to be in error and in 1921 an investigation was initiated. It was found that PVT McAvoy had not been recovered and despite further searching by GRS field personnel his remains went unlocated.

Doughboy MIA was asked by Nancy Schaff and leaders of the 314^th Infantry Historical Association to look into the case, which we did. Robert Laplander did the initial work on the case in 2017, which was found to have good merit, and it was then handed to Alexander Curran for further examination. In late 2021, the case was presented to the team by Alexander with the recommendation for possible recon on site in the 2022 season, and this past August the team did indeed spend a day on the site that the research pinpointed. Our findings are encouraging and will be discussed in an upcoming Zoom call tentatively scheduled for the last week of September. Stay tuned for more details on that, and we look forward to YOU attending the call and seeing just what your contributions are accomplishing to get our lost Doughboys found.

Want to donate and be part of the action? Hop on over to www.ww1cc.org/mia or www.doughboymia.org and make a tax-free donation to our non-profit and help us find these boys, and we’ll see YOU soon on the Zoom!

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Can you spare just ten dollars? 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
• Soft enamel color design
• Approx. 1.5 inch in dia.
• Standard military clasp

Proceeds from the sale of these pins will help complete the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC.

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

Pershing Sponsors

This month, National WWI Memorial Daily Taps bugler John Schmitt shares the story of his life-long commitment to honor Veterans and their families by sounding Taps. He is also known by his peers as one of the greatest trumpet players of his generation.

Says John, “I’m from Northeast Ohio originally. I moved to Baltimore to live with my wife about twenty years ago. I don’t recall the first time I sounded Taps, but I think it was in high school at a Memorial Day event. A few years later I sounded Taps at my grandpa’s funeral.”

Click here to read more, and find out why John thinks that “Sounding Taps is a unique experience.”

After weathering many cancellations and shutdowns due to the disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic, the WWI Mobile Museum is back in action and on the road again, bringing artifacts that tell the story of America and World War I to senior centers, schools, and other facilities nationwide. And as a nice way to get things rolling again, the Museum received a very special recognition, via a Proclamation from Congress. Click here to read more, and find out how the museum is expanding its vision, and taking aim at bringing WWI history to Americans everywhere.

A Newport News woman served during World War I, but no one played “Taps” or folded and presented the American flag at her funeral. She was buried without military honors — a wrong that a group of people wanted to make right. Marie Garrow Moss was the only Virginian who joined the “Hello Girls,” women recruited to the U.S. Army Signal Corps to operate the military’s telephone switchboards during WWI. Click here to read more, and learn how several Virginia organizations worked together to give Marie the honors that she didn’t receive at her funeral in 1987.

The summer’s unusually hot temperatures have led to several wildfires across Europe and they are setting off unexploded World War 1 bombs in the process. A wildfire in the southwest Kras region of Slovenia, the biggest since the country’s independence in 1991, has destroyed more than 8,000 acres of farmland. It’s also led to the explosion of countless WWI-era bombs, which had laid dormant for more than 100 years. Click here to read more, and learn how the legacy of World War I has become all too current a field of study for some parts of Europe.

On July 23, 2022, the cities of Fère-en-Tardenois and Seringes-et Nesles honored the sacrifices of the U.S. 42nd (Rainbow) Division in WWI and commemorated the 104th anniversary of the battle of the Ourcq River (July 25 – August 3, 1918). On the battle site of Croix Rouge Farm stands a powerful memorial to the Rainbow Division by the British sculptor, James Butler (1931-2022), a member of the Royal Academy who passed away this year. Each year, a ceremony takes place there to commemorate the anniversary of the battle. Click here to read all about the ceremony at Croix Rouge Farm event, and how the event honoring those who died was all the more poignant this year.

Originally from Chatham in New Brunswick, Canada, Lenah S. Higbee came to the U.S. to study nursing. She completed training at the New York Postgraduate Hospital in 1889 and began working as a surgical nurse for a private practice. During this time, she met Marine Corps Lt. Col. John Henley Higbee. They married in 1899. After her husband’s death in the spring of 1908, Higbee decided to volunteer for the newly formed Navy Nurse Corps program and traveled to a naval hospital in Washington, D.C. to take exams. Click here to read more about how Higbee became part of the “Sacred Twenty,” the first group of female nurses to serve in the Navy, and played an important role in expanding opportunities for woman in Naval service.

A group of veterans, politicians, locals and descendants of Martin A. Treptow gathered at the American Legion in Bloomer, MN last month to honor a serviceman who never made it home from World War I. During the ceremony, attendees gave the pledge of allegiance, listened to the story of Treptow, and saw the man honored with a 21-gun salute and the taps bugle call. The gathering was a long time coming. Click here to learn how Treptow’s family spent the last three years trying to secure their great-uncle a Purple Heart for his sacrifice.

The chance discovery in 2021 of a damaged piece of history — a gift from President Woodrow Wilson to Marquis de Lafayette — started a year-long effort to restore the piece of history to its proper place. Yorick de Guichen of the Society of the Cincinnati tells the enthralling story of how a gift from the American president to “a fellow Servant of Liberty” took place in 1919, and how she and others took on the mission of restoring it to its proper condition at Lafayette’s tomb where Wilson had placed it 104 years ago.

Some 33 million Americans, about 10 percent of the national population, work hard-hat jobs, requiring them to wear the iconic protective helmet that “is the team headgear of working-class America — the people who built the United States with their bare hands.” But not many Americans who wear the hard hat as part of their jobs know that they came out of one American’s experience in World War I. Click here to meet Edward W. Bullard, a U.S. Army veteran who crafted the world’s most important piece of industrial protective equipment after returning home from Europe and the carnage of World War I.

Founded in the 1940s, American Legion Post 18 was named for a local Queen Anne’s County hero, county born and raised Jefferson Davis of Church Hill, who was the first county resident to sacrifice his life while fighting for freedom during World War I. Davis died July 24, 1918, during the Second Battle of the Marne (France), July 15 — August 6.  Click here to read more, and learn how, 104 years after Davis’ death, Post 18’s members must engage in ongoing efforts to combat incorrect assumptions linking the World War I hero with another historical figure bearing the same name.

The replacement of a 99-year-old granite cornerstone plaque of the New York National Guard’s historic Harlem Armory drill floor exposed a mystery when contractors found a sealed copper box inside the stone on Feb. 19, 2022. The copper time capsule, which was not known to be in the corner stone, contained documents pertaining to the 369th “Harlem Hell Fighters” of World War I fame, as well as documents of importance to the Black community in 1923 New York City. Click here to read the whole story, and learn how the chance discovery “highlighted the pride of Black New Yorkers in their regiment, their culture, and city officials’ recognition of the 369th and the black community” after World War I.

On Sept. 9, 2022, Col. James E. Rieger will be inducted into the Missouri National Guard Hall of Fame at Kirksville. The building where the induction ceremony will take place is the Missouri National Guard Armory named after him in tribute to his service in France during WWI, and in helping building the modern state National Guard before and after World War I. Click here to learn more about Reiger, and how he was “lauded in France and the United States as the ‘Hero of the Argonne’ for the series of heroic feats he accomplished during the first three days of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.“

After World War I ended, American military intelligence officers reviewed troves of documents that detailed interrogations and intercepted diplomatic cables. They also compiled the opinions of German soldiers and citizens upon meeting Americans for the first time. It was released in a 1919 report called “Candid Comment on The American Soldier of 1917-1918 and Kindred Topics by The Germans.” The We Are The Mighty web site takes a look at the top 10 comments about the American soldier from the point of view of their German enemy.

As Monk Eastman lay in a field hospital, he learned his infantry division was preparing to breach the Hindenburg Line — the Germans’ last line of defense on the Western Front during World War I. Despite being sidelined with leg injuries and the victim of a gas attack, Eastman didn’t come this far to be a bystander. Half-naked and with bare feet, Eastman fled the hospital under the cover of night to join his company. He helped the Allies penetrate the Hindenburg Line on Sept. 29, 1918, six weeks before an armistice agreement was signed. Click here to read more, and learn why it wasn’t surprising that Eastman did not follow doctor’s orders. Following rules was not in his DNA, for Eastman had been a gangster before he enlisted in the New York National Guard in 1917.

It was on July 18, 1918, that George Dilboy was killed on a battlefield near Belleau, France in WWI after fighting so courageously that he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest medal for bravery. The Greek-American’s conspicuous heroism was so outstanding that he was recognized and honored by three US presidents. Woodrow Wilson signed the authorization awarding Dilboy the Medal of Honor while Warren G. Harding brought his remains back to be buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery, and Calvin Coolidge presided at his final burial there. Click here to read more about George Dilboy and how events during and after WWI affected his legacy.

One of the most well-known and oldest malls in the entire state of Iowa opened in 1959. It’s named after a man who died more than four decades earlier. Merle Hay Plaza in Des Moines opened on August 17, 1959. It was originally to be named Northland Shopping Center. Executives from Younkers, its first anchor store, believed the mall should be named Merle Hay. The road in front of the shopping area under construction was already called Merle Hay Road,  something that had happened not long after its namesake had died in 1917. Click here to read more about Merle Hay himself and his the shopping center named for him that became a Mall in 1972.

The City of Albany is soliciting nominations for the Henry Johnson Award for Distinguished Community Service, which recognizes an Albany resident who has given their time and talent to Albany and has displayed community leadership in any of the following areas: arts and history, social justice, education, or volunteerism.  The Award will be presented at Albany’s Riverfront Jazz Festival on Saturday, September 10. Click here to learn more about the award, given to commemorate the acts of valor by Sgt. Johnson during combat in WWI, which earned Sgt. Johnson the Medal of Honor. The award also recognizes the courage Sgt. Johnson exhibited when he returned home to the United States and spoke out against racism in the military and in Jim Crow America.

The American Heritage Museum presents the first annual World War I Aviation Special Event Weekend at the museum and airfield in Hudson / Stow, MA, on September 17 and 18, 2022. The weekend will feature the official unveiling of the museum’s original 1917 Nieuport 28 restoration project. Click here to find out more about the exciting lineup of World War I aircraft that will be flying, as well as the extraordinary American classic automobiles, historic tanks, armored vehicles, and WWI military artifacts that will be on display during the event.

“As a former journalist and an avid history reader, I believe wholeheartedly that some stories MUST be told. One of those is Harold W. Pierce’s story – his diary, really – of his experiences with the 112th Infantry Regiment (28th Division) in World War One.” So begins author William J. Welch in telling the story of how a chance encounter with the existence of Pierce’s diary while reading a book about the Meuse-Argonne campaign led him to look for and find the soldier, diarist, and artist, and publish an edited version of the WWI diary. Click here to read more, and learn how Welch discovered that “I thought I had a decent idea” of what the WWI soldiers’ experience was like, “but reading Pierce’s diary taught me so much more.”

Lynne Dayton was the wife of 52 years of World War I Centennial Commission Executive Director and Doughboy Foundation Chairman Daniel Dayton.
Lynne was born 8/2/1939 in Rockwood, TN, and passed away 7/25/2022 at age 82 in Washington, DC.

Click here to read more about Lynne.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month Sergeant Wallace Green, DSC. Very little is known about Wallace Green’s early life. He was born and raised in the little town of Eure, North Carolina and may very well have been a pre-war soldier, serving with the 9th Cavalry. What is known is that he sailed as a corporal from Hoboken, New Jersey, bound for ‘Over There’ aboard the transport Covington on 09APR1918, assigned to Company M, 6th Infantry Regiment, 5th ‘Red Diamond’ Division.

The 6th Infantry Regiment is one of the oldest of the ‘regular army’ regiments in the army inventory, tracing its roots back to 1812. In November 1917, while still in the States, the 6th was assigned to the assembling 5th Division. Then once overseas, when the 1st US Army was organized in France to bring off the St. Mihiel Offensive, which began on 12SEPT1918, the 5th Division was one of the divisions assigned to it on 10AUG1918. At that time, however, the division was serving in the Vosges Sector and preparing for a limited offensive of its own. It was during that limited offensive that SGT Green disappeared.

At 4:04 am on the morning of 17AUG1917, after a 10-minute artillery barrage, the 6th Infantry Regiment launched an attack against the village of Frapelle in that sector. Two minutes into the attack, a heavy German counter barrage began to fall on the American trenches and the attacking Doughboys. Nevertheless, the 6th pressed on doggedly and by 6:30 am had reached and liberated the town of Frapelle, freeing it from four years of German occupation. By then however Sergeant Wallace Green wasn’t with them; he had been killed in action during the initial attack, in the process earning the Distinguished Service Cross. Reports of him being both KIA and MIA appear simultaneously in papers back home as early as 24SEPT1918. On 05OCT1919 his award of the DSC was officially announced:

GREEN, Wallace Sergeant, Company M, 6th Infantry.
For extraordinary heroism in action at Frapelle, France, August 17, 1918. He unhesitatingly and with great coolness and courage went forward under a heavy enemy barrage to destroy wire entanglements and continued this hazardous work until killed.
General Orders No. 15, War Department, 1919

Sergeant Green’s name is among the 284 names which grace the Tablets of the Missing at the beautiful St. Mihiel American Cemetery at Thiaucourt, France.

Want to help us solve Sgt. Green’s case? Consider making a tax-deductible donation 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. Every penny goes toward our mission. Got only $10? 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.

Soy Candle
Camp Mug

On sale now!

• Doughboy.shop Exclusive
• This replica tin mug has been upcycled into an all-natural soy 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 candle has burned down
• Makes a great 2-in-1 gift. (Reduce + Reuse)

Proceeds from the sale of these mugs 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.

Pershing Sponsors