The DowntownDC Business Improvement District hosted its 2021 Momentum Awards on Thursday, March 24, 2022, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC. At the ceremony, the World War One Centennial Commission received the Downtown Detail Award for the opening of the new National World War I Memorial at the former Pershing Park, on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, “which serves as a beautiful dedication to the heroism and sacrifice of Americans.” Click here to read more, and see video that was played for attendees at the award ceremony last month.

The Daily Taps program at the National World War I Memorial, in Washington, DC was launched November 11, 2021 by the Doughboy Foundation as part of its ongoing commitment to Honor All Those Who Served in WWI. To ensure this commitment would be steadfast, Jari Villanueva, lifelong bugler, considered to be the country’s foremost expert on military bugle calls, and Director of Taps for Veterans, was chosen to lead this effort. Jari sounded the first Daily Taps at the WWI Memorial, DC, and continues to play, as well as organize many other dedicated buglers who have stepped forward to honor all our Veterans and active-duty military, rain or shine. Click here to learn more about Jari and the Daily Taps program at the National World War I Memorial.

When Justus Doenecke retired in 2005 at age 67 from the faculty of New College of Florida, the state’s honors college, where he had taught for 36 years, he was “hoping for a large project to keep me occupied during my new ‘permanent leave.’” He realized that he had “collected a number of contemporary books” on World War I, so he decided to read them. One thing led to another, and 17 years later, his retirement “hobby” has turned into two monumental books on WWI. The latest book, More Precious Than Peace: A New History of America in World War I  was published this spring by the University of Notre Dame Press. Click here to read more, and find out how some light reading about WWI evolved into two important contributions to the canon of writings about the “diplomatic, military, and ideological aspects of U.S. involvement as a full-scale participant in World War I.”

The Des Moines Register newspaper in Iowa recently ran an extensive article on the work of researchers on the Valor Medals Review Project at Park University’s George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War. Supported by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, the Valor Medals Review is searching for WWI American service members who deserved to be awarded the Medal of Honor, but received a lesser decoration due to their race, ethnicity or religion. Click here to read more, and learn how research team members such as Tim Wescott (top left) and Josh Weston are racing the calendar to complete the review by 2025.

James Butler, who died last month at the age of 90, was a famous British figurative sculptor and the longest serving member of the Royal Academy. His notable works include not only large-scale bronze statues of famous historical figures like Queen Elizabeth, but also several memorials commemorating WWI and WWII in England, France and the United States. Commissioner Monique Seefried of the US World War I Centennial Commission pays fond tribute to the artist and his work on several monumental sculptures that honor American soldiers who served and died in World War I.

On May 20, 2022, and in celebration of EMS week, Washington DC Fire & EMS Deputy Chief Michael Knight and Boston researcher George Whitehair will lead the recognition for all EMS workers and in particular, a World War I veteran, doctor, and surgeon, who served in France with the 92^nd Division (Buffalo soldiers). He then returned to start an ambulance corp and a hospital, both of which continue to serve their communities almost 100 years later. His name is Dr. Frank Erdman Boston, and he will be honored at the World War I Memorial along with all EMS workers during EMS week. Click here to read more about Dr. Frank Boston and EMS Week 2022.

Helen Grace McClelland was born in Ohio in 1887. She enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in 1908 and graduated in 1912. When the Red Cross asked for volunteers in 1914 to aid overseas during World War I, McClelland answered the call. She volunteered in 1915 for the American Ambulance Service and served in France. The U.S. officially entered the war in 1917, but McClelland saw it as her duty to continue helping in the humanitarian effort overseas. Click here to read more, and learn how, after briefly returning to the U.S., she officially joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1917 and was brought back to Europe’s Western Front to continue aiding in the war effort.

Private First Class Abraham Smith was part of the U.S. Army’s WWI American Expeditionary Force, known as the “Polar Bears.” On Oct. 27, 1918, PFC Smith carried wounded soldiers to the dressing station and delivered a message under artillery fire in north Russia. Unfortunately, he was never awarded the military medals that he valiantly earned. But recently, Congressman Hal Rogers of Kentucky presented the Silver Star, the WWI Victory Medal, and the WWI Bronze Victory Pin to Smith’s descendants. Click here to read more, and find out how this century-long oversight was at least partially rectified with the assistance of the Congressman’s office.

More than 100 years ago, women from every state in the U.S. volunteered to serve as switchboard operators and real-time translators on the front lines of World War I. They served under commissioned officers, wore dog tags, rank insignia and uniforms and swore the Army Oath, but the 223 women and 2 men of the Signal Corps Telephone Operator Unit were told when they came home that they had served as “civilian contractors” instead of soldiers. Click here to read more, and learn how Director Daniela Larsen of the John Hutchings Museum in Lehi, Utah is doing her part to get the “Hello Girls” (including 2 from Utah) recognition they’ve long deserved.

During Women’s History Month, inspirational women such as Harriet Tubman or Susan B. Anthony are often remembered, but it is also important to recognize women closer to home. During World War I, women from Rock Island and Moline, Illinois, Davenport, Iowa, and the surrounding areas, were hired in large numbers at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois for the first time, in order to support the war efforts. Click here to read more, and learn how women at RIA emerged from strictly clerical jobs, and put their lives on the line by working one of the most dangerous tasks at the arsenal, filling 155mm shells and setting fuses.

Carl Westmoreland, who was the senior historian at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center for the past 20 years, died March 10, two days after his 85th birthday. He had an “extraordinary friendship” with Paul LaRue, a retired social sciences teacher and former member of the Ohio WWI Centennial Commission. Click here to read more, and learn how the two men “came together because of a passion they shared for making sure the Black men who took up arms to fight oppression in the Civil War and World War I were never forgotten.”

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, and all of its eerie associations with and similarities to the World War I-era Spanish Flu epidemic that killed millions globally, the crisis in Ukraine has emerged carrying its own unsettling resonances with the Great War. Writing on the EVN Report web site, Todd Gernes, Associate Professor of History at Stonehill College in Easton, MA, takes a look at the grim parallels. Click here to read more, and see how “Putin’s war against Ukraine evokes so many images and plotlines from the Great War of 1914-1918.”

Buried side by side at Suresnes American Cemetery just outside Paris, lie the Cromwell sisters, who traded in a life of prominence in New York City to be frontline nurses during World War I. The twin sisters survived the war, but overcome by what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), jumped to their deaths from the ship that was to take them home in January 1919. Click here to read the whole story, and learn how the “Misses Cromwell,” as they were sometimes referenced in newspapers, were never far from active warfare, and how their shocking suicide helped put the mental trauma of war in a different light for the public.

Texas A&M University has announced the discovery of 15 additional Aggie veterans who died in the First World War. The additional names have been added to a WWI commemorative site on Simpson Drill Field in the center of campus, joining the 55 Texas Aggie Gold Stars who are all remembered with individual oak trees and plaques. Click here to read more, and learn how research efforts by the Brazos County World War I Centennial Committee identified the additional Aggie veterans who died during the war.

Beginning in January 2021, Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) commenced a monthly program of events focused on different aspects of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as part of its year-long centennial commemoration. While the initial planning for these programs in 2019 envisioned that they would primarily be held in-person, ANC had to pivot due to ongoing Covid surges. Click here to read more, and see how this challenge came with creative opportunities, and how the benefits this shift afforded ultimately outweighed the difficulties.

In a situation where people had to stand for what they believed in and at the same time run on their feet whenever needed, it is important to ensure that they are able to do so. In a war where weapons and tactics and how to defeat the enemies were the main focus, it was fairly easy to forget about the significance of small things like socks. As ridiculous as it might sound, a small detail as this one could dictate the fate of the soldiers in a war, and history had proved that to be true. Click here to read more, and learn how socks, relatively uncommon before World War I, became a battlefield essential often supplied by American volunteer knitters back home.

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.

Maybe it had to do with the hand-to-hand combat onstage at this year’s Academy Awards, but for some reason, two major cinemaphilia web sites (now settle down, that means “a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism“) took it upon themselves to issue their own lists of “the best World War I movies of all time.” You’d think these two lists would have a lot in common, but remember, we’re talking about cinemaphiles here: the two lists are actually quite different, both in their evaluation approaches, and the specific films selected for the honors. The Stacker web site posted its “Best World War I movies of all time” list on March 30, after consulting “the top-rated war films on IMDb and ranked the top 25 about WWI.”

However, five days earlier on March 25, the slashfilm.com web site was out with its own “The 14 Best World War I Movies Ever Made” list. Intriguingly, the two lists are quite different (quite apart from having a different number of films), and not all of the films on the shorter list are included on the longer list. (Bonus question: what now-famous actor appears in one film that is on both lists, and another film that is only on one list?)  So if you are looking for an excuse to binge watch a bunch of WWI movies, check out these two lists, and maybe come up with your own list of “the best World War I movies of all time.”

But say you’re a bibliophile rather than a cinemaphile—we still got you covered. Writing on the intercollegiate Studies Institute web site, David Hein is pleased to present his great big list of The Great Books of the Great War for your reading pleasure. And since we don’t have another contemporaneous list of WWI books to which to compare and contrast his, perhaps you can come up with your own!

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Eugene Sharp. Eugene was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on May 31^st, 1896. He was the youngest of the 6 children that Sterling and Delphia Sharpe would have, farmers by trade.

Tall and stout, Sharpe had already done a year and half in the US Army before he enlisted in the Marine Corps on 13 February 1918. Upon arrival overseas he served as a Private in the 17^th Company, 5^th Regiment of Marines and was killed in action on 3 August 1918. His body was never recovered or identified and he is memorialized on the Tablets to the Missing in the chapel at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau Wood, France.

What makes PVT Sharpe’s case so special to us at Doughboy MIA is that we found a long forgotten ‘movement card’ for a set of remains received at the cemetery on 11 December 1922. These were deemed unidentifiable and so interred permanently there on 18 January 1923. This card indicates the remains were those of a Marine that carried the name ‘Eugene’. In looking on our comprehensive list of MIA’s, we find that there is but one Marine with that first name who is still missing in action from WW1. The likelihood of the man described on the card being Eugene Sharpe are very good then – however, in order to investigate further there is a batch of long missing paperwork we need to find that we have been searching for a very long time. Once we find that paperwork, we will be able to either raise the case for the man on the card being our man or else dismiss it all together. In fact, Sharpe’s would be the fifth case we could do this on – WHEN we locate this paperwork!

Now that the National Archive system is beginning to open up again, Doughboy MIA can get back in there and resume doing what we do best there: root out the clues that help us locate these men for recovery and/or tell their stories. FOR THAT WE NEED YOUR HELP. Every trip to the archives or to the battlefields costs us money, and we survive solely on donations – donations that help us bring closure to these long-forgotten cases. Our recent trip to the battlefields of France last November has put us tantalizingly close to possibly recovering at least two sets of remains, and we’ve got a follow-up trip in the works – a trip that may prove very exciting and a real breakthrough for us after many years of dedicated work!

BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! Won’t you consider giving to Doughboy MIA? We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and your donation is tax deductible. Every dollar is used for our mission – a mission we believe is worthy of our best efforts. Here is YOUR chance to be part of this great endeavor. Please give today, and don’t be afraid to give generously! Visit us at www.ww1cc.org/mia and donate today with our everlasting thanks. Also visit us at www.doughboymia.org, or on Facebook at Doughboy MIA. Want to know more? Drop us a line – we’ll fill you in! But above all GIVE PLEASE: www.ww1cc.org/mia

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

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 books 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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Battery E, 349th Field Artillery Commander Lieutenant Everett Warren Johnson (1896-1964) and one of the non-commissioned officers in his unit, Sergeant Robert Chase (1891-1958), entered the war from similar backgrounds. Johnson volunteered for an officer training program and Chase was drafted, but they fought on the same battlefield and chose similar post-war professions. Click here to read the entire story, and learn just how “War impacted their lives in profoundly different ways.“

“Why does the memory of World War I remain so much stronger in Great Britain than in the United States?” Seeking the answer to this question led historian Allison Finkelstein “on a long path to the publication of my first book: Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945.” Click here to read more, and learn about “significant but too often overlooked aspects of World War I’s history that have renewed relevance today.“

After spending her childhood on Luke Air Force Base, Rosemarie Chandler finds it fitting that she’s playing one of the first women in combat during World War I in “The Hello Girls” production by the Phoenix Theatre Company. “The Hello Girls” stars Chandler as Grace Banker, a switchboard operator in charge of a corps of women who went overseas during World War I. Click here to read more, and learn how being the child of two military parents gave Chandler an interesting perspective on the challenges faced by the first women in Army service during and after World War I.

This symposium, hosted by the First Division Museum and sponsored by The
Great War Institute at Park University will be held May 13-14, 2022, at the First Division Museum, 1s151 Winfield Road, Wheaton, IL., 60189. Paper and panel proposals in all fields of history related to “Lesser-Known Stories of the Great War: Women, Minorities, Civilians, and the Untold” are invited. The symposium is particularly interested in proposals for complete sessions, including panelists, chairs, and commentators. All proposals should be submitted no later than March 1, 2022. The symposium encourages aspiring and young historians, including graduate students, to present their work. For questions about submitting a proposal, please contact us at gsrcentre@park.edu.

Orange County Historian Johanna Yaun will host a trip to Belgium and France next year to honor the soldiers who served in the 369th New York Infantry Regiment. The trip will take place from July 10 -19, 2023 and will explore locations that served as notable backdrops during World War I. Harlem’s Rattlers, the 369th New York Infantry Regiment, later nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, was a regiment of soldiers of African American descent from New York City, the Hudson Valley and other parts of the county. Click here to read more, and find out how you can join this limited-space tour to sites of significance related to the 369th. 

Blue Lion Films, Inc, the authors of the award-winning documentary ‘Paris Noir – African Americans In The City Of Light’ has launched a new film in their series examining the African American experience in France. ‘Fighting For Respect – African Americans in WWI‘ digs deep into the often overlooked yet compelling story of 200,000 Black soldiers willing to fight for democracy abroad while it was violently refused them at home. The film shows why their story still matters today. Click here to read more, and learn how this film grew out of director Joann Burke’s “deep passion and commitment to tell the exciting but also heartbreaking stories of African American soldiers during WW1.”

Kacie and Karen Devaney are a mother-daughter team who wrote an original full length play entitled The Great Forgotten, the story of the American nurses who served in France during World War I, which had a sold-out run in the 2015 New York City International Fringe Festival. After years of aiming for Broadway, the team changed course and dived into “the arduous climb of transitioning from playwrights to television writers.” The result? Click here to read more, and find out how the duo pushed through the challenges of the last two years to go “from play to Pilot, to a fully fleshed out season with nine episodes’ ideas and a detailed Show Bible Long and Short,” and learn what comes next.

James L. Uber has been missing in action since Oct. 8, 1918, and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France in World War I. However, since his dog tag made its way to the Pennsylvania National Guard Museum in 2019, a group of volunteers have a pretty good idea of where the young corporal is buried. Click here to read the full Pennsylvania newspaper’s interview with the Doughboy MIA team that is closing in on accounting for Uber, one of over 4,000 Americans still MIA from World War I.

Writing on the National Archives’ Rediscovering Black History web site, researcher Cara Moore Lebonick takes a look at the first Black yeowomen to serve in the U.S. Navy who were later referred to as the “Golden Fourteen.”  Known as  Yeoman (F) (also as Yeowoman and Yeomanette), these pioneers in Naval service were headed by Armelda H. Greene, who enlisted August 13, 1918 becoming the first Black Yeoman (F). Click here to read more about how Greene and those that joined after her formed a WWI Navy active unit consisting of all Black females – the first Black female non-nursing unit of the Navy.

“We are taking a couple of trucks over to Belgium for the Armistice commemorations, would you like to come?” That sounded like a good idea to Tim Gosling in 2018, but as his memoire of the trip reveals, that didn’t last. The first clue that the trip might be an adventure was “when the transporter was unable to take the Liberty all the way to Belgium so it would have to be unloaded at the channel tunnel and then driven under its own power from Calais to Ypres.” And then…no, we won’t spoil the story. Click here to read the whole tale of a memorable journey in a century-old American truck that was, looking back at it from three years later, “a remarkable exercise and great fun.”

On the night of November 2, 1917, Company F of the 16th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, held off a night raid from German forces at Bathlémont, France, and sustained the first of many combat casualties of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I (1917-1918).  Among these casualties were Sergeant Edgar M. Halyburton and Private Clyde Grimsley, who were captured by the Germans and became some of the first American prisoners of war (POW) in the conflict. Click here to read the entire article, and learn how both men performed their military duties with distinction in the POW camps until liberated at war’s end.

“World War I? Why are you writing about that war?” says Neil Lanctot, “was an all-too-common attitude I encountered when I shared with family and friends that my new book would explore America’s path to involvement in the Great War.” But Lanctot knew there was a long-overlooked story to tell: “How did America come to make the fateful decision to join the Allies in 1917, a decision that actually changed the course of the 20th century?” Click here to read more, and see how a focus on some key characters in the process led to interesting discoveries on America’s path to involvement in World War I.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was a critical Allied forces operation of World War I, during the Hundred Days Offensive. It lasted for a bloody 47 days, starting on September 26th of 1918 and ending on November 11th by armistice. Writing on the Rebellion Research web site, Tony Cao analyzes the American effort in the epic struggle. Click here to read the entire article, and learn how “At Argonne, undertrained American Doughboys learned how to conduct mobile warfare through bloody experience.”

“Historic photos are fractions of time frozen forever. They are windows on the past.” Jim Hinckley takes a look through one such window–photo of the Mohave County Courthouse at the dedication of a World War I memorial in 1928–and shows how the image is a key that unlocks some fascinating facts. Click here to read the entire article and learn about rare WWI memorials dedicated to  brave warriors, and how the experience of the war changed the county

“On November 13, 2021, I met my great uncle who died in France during World War One,” says Ann Silverthorn. She adds: “To be more exact, I met the young man who personified my uncle in a local play called A Doughboy’s Story.” American Legion Post 494 in Girard, PA was the site of this meeting, which was the end of (or perhaps a waypoint on) a “rewarding journey.” Click here to read the entire article, and learn how family history research sparked an interest in WWI, which led to remarkable commemorative efforts for the centennial of the war.

When Ben Dunham encountered the etching in an antique booth in New Bedford, he thought it looked familiar. Then I signaled to my wife and asked, “Doesn’t this look like one of the cathedrals done by the brother of your great grandmother’s second husband?” The distant relative was the British artist James Alphege Brewer, and Dunham’s purchase of the etching with that tenuous familial link led to a cascade of collecting, and a book: Etched in Memory: The Elevated Art of J. Alphege Brewer. Click here to read the entire story, and learn about the significance of this and other Brewer etchings in regard to the Doughboys of World War I.

In 2021, Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) served as the designated government leader of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Centennial Commemoration, recognizing the 100^th anniversary of the Tomb’s creation at ANC on November 11, 1921. The ANC team produced a wealth of content for the public about the history and meanings of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, much of which focused on World War I, which will be shared with Dispatch readers in the coming months.  Click here to read more, and learn about  ANC’s amazing Commemorative Guide to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. 

“It was a thoughtful gift; the giver knew that I had an interest in the history of the Great War and it was a book full of World War 1 photography. It was over a hundred years old but in bad shape. The binding was broken and unravelling, and the cover almost fell off when I opened it.”  But Thomas Emme was not discouraged. Click here to learn how his painstaking restoration of the WWI volume rescued a book that was “Too special to throw out, too damaged to keep.“

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is1st LT Leonard Charles Aitken.

Born in Reno, Nevada on 10 June 1897, Leonard Aitken grew up in California, where he joined the California National Guard at 18 years of age. When the trouble broke out with Mexico, he reported for duty in June 1916 and served along the border with the hospital corps, attending elements of what would, a year later, become the 160th Infantry, 40th Division. Following America’s declaration of war on Germany, on 7 April 1917, Aitken reported to the Officers Training School at San Diego and upon graduation was shipped to France in August 1918 as a 2nd lieutenant with the 158th Infantry, 40th Division. There, on 20 October 1918, he was sent as a replacement officer to the 372nd Infantry, 93rd Division, then holding a section of the line in the Alsace sector near Hill 607. On 7 November, while leading his platoon on a night action, Aitkens and his men captured several prisoners but unknowingly walked into the line of fire of a German machine gun nest, which opened up on them, killing or capturing all but two enlisted men of the patrol and freeing the prisoners. Without hesitation Lieutenant Aitken immediately advanced against the position with the intent of eliminating it, but he was shot twice in the chest and killed in the endeavor. The end result was that they captured 1 officer (Aitkens) and 22 men; however, the date of Aitkens’ death is given as 8 November 1918.

Following the Armistice, Graves Registration Service (GRS) officials went on the search for Aitkens’ remains, but had little luck. Their hardest clue was a report that German officers had buried Aitkens with full military honors “in the church yard of the tiny hamlet of La Paive, some 40 miles east of Epinal, France.” There being no town by that name anywhere in that area, this was almost certainly actually the town of La Pariee which is indeed in the area of the action of 7 November. Nothing was ever found however, and his remains continued to be unlocated in the years following the war. As investigations continued, in January 1924, GRS sent a letter to Aitkens’ father requesting a civilian dental chart, but also admitting in the letter that in all probability he was among the Unknown burials, though how this information was considered is not stated in his surviving file. A final attempt at some kind of identification came in December 1926 when the case files of Aitkens and one other officer from the 372^nd Infantry were checked against a set of Unknown remains at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery morgue. It was a long shot, however, as the remains being checked came from a French cemetery in the Marne sector some 300 kilometers northwest of where both officers in question were at the time of their deaths. Not surprisingly, neither officer’s remains were a match and Aitkens’ case was officially closed in 1932 without resolution.

Would you like to help solve Lt. Aitken’s case? Please consider a donation to Doughboy MIA and help us make as full an accounting of our American service personnel still listed as missing in action from WW1 as possible. 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.

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