Support America's national WW I memorial

By Joseph Weishaar
via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review TribLive web site

Joseph Weishaar, lead designer for the National World War I Memorial at Pershing Park in Washington, DCIf you weren't aware that there isn't a national World War I memorial in Washington, D.C., I can't say I blame you. The war happened nearly two generations before I was born, and all of its veterans have passed.

When I submitted a design for this memorial two years ago, I did so with the idea that it was important to do all we could to honor the men and women who once defended freedom for their towns, states and country.

Building a memorial is a tribute to our humanity and a marker of courageous acts in the most harrowing of circumstances. It sends a signal to our families, children and grandchildren that courage, honor and sacrifice still mean something. It is a message to our current and future veterans that they will not be forgotten.

One hundred years ago, more than 116,000 Americans lost their lives fighting for the ideals that would go on to define our place in the world. This year, I hope you keep the soldiers of World War I in your thoughts. It is time for us to give back for the sacrifices they made.

Read more: Architect Joe Weishaar OpEd in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Four Questions for Gerald Meyer

"This truly is remembering a forgotten war."

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, U.S. World War One Centennial Commission

Chautauqua was an adult-education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In those days before film & radio, the Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for a whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America."  A modern version of Chautauqua events are alive and well today -- and there will be a World War I-themed Chautauqua event held in Seward, Nebraska, on June 12th-18th, at the Nebraska National Guard Museum and the city of Seward. There will be speakers, presentations, reenactors, and displays, all talking about the Nebraska Guard, World War I, and present-day. All events are free and open to the public. We caught up with the one of the organizers for the event, Gerald Meyer, to talk to him about what visitors will see there.Greg Meyer

You have a big event coming up soon. Tell us about the Chautauqua event in Seward. Is the public invited?

Yes! Public is invited to all aspects of the event. The Nebraska National Guard Museum is hosting pre-Chautauqua events on June 12-14 (Mon-Weds) to get people excited about the event.

The Chautauqua will be held during Seward, Seward County, and the Nebraska’s 150th birthday. The Nebraska National Guard Museum is now housed on the land that was known as Chautauqua Park for Seward and is the site where the Chautauquas played when they were in town.

We understand that there will be presentations on World War I topics. What can people see & hear while there?

We have a full schedule that will be posted on the Humanities Nebraska website website. The wide variety of events include talks on literature from World War I, a flyover by vintage aircraft, a General Pershing reenactor presentation by noted living-history expert David Shuey, and many other things to see. 

The Chautauqua has a long history, some of which is related to World War I. Can you tell us about that history & connection?

The park where the current Nebraska National Guard Museum is located is old City Park (or Old Chautauqua Park). The city used to host the Red Path Chautauqua back at the turn of the century into the 1920's.

Read more: WWI focus at Chautauqua Event in Seward NE

The Library of Congress Veterans History Project launches World War I website companion exhibit

By Rachel Telford
Library of Congress, Office of Communications

The Veterans History Project (VHP) has launched a web exhibit that complements the Library of Congress’s major exhibition “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I.” The three-part web companion, “Experiencing War,” will help tell the larger story of the war from the perspective of those who served in it.

American soldiers examining their new rifles after turning in the old ones. From the Library of Congress collection.Part I is now available at loc.gov/vets/. Part II and Part III will be available in July and September 2017.

Drawing from nearly 400 personal narratives from World War I, VHP’s archive is an unparalleled source on the individual experience of the Great War.

The concerns and stories of World War I veterans resonate today. World War I saw the use of poisonous gas, both the advancement and the devastation wrought by battlefield technology and arguments over America’s role in foreign conflicts—themes that occur in today’s world.

Part I, titled “Arguing Over War and Over Here,” focuses on veterans who served both at home and abroad. It reveals insights into public sentiment immediately before and after America’s entry into the war. From an oral history now 40 years old, Leonard Maunder recounts the days leading up to his enlistment in World War I and the feeling of the country as it prepared for war. Though not in the trenches, Maunder experienced deprivation, as did most servicemen and servicewomen in France.

In the audio segment, Maunder recalls meal after meal of canned corned beef and prunes. In another offering, a newly-digitized diary—belonging to Augustus Bennett Warfield—offers an intimate view of “camp life” for the 332nd Field Artillery Regiment during its time at Camp Sherman, Ohio.

Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000 to collect, preserve and make accessible the first-hand remembrances of America’s war veterans from World War I through the current conflicts, so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war. For more information, visit loc.gov/vets/ or call the toll-free message line at (888) 371-5848. Follow the Veterans History Project on Facebook at facebook.com/vetshistoryproject.

Read more: The Library of Congress Veterans History Project Launches World War I Website Companion Exhibit

Four Questions for Josef Kelly

"These pictures bore witness to suffering, hope, and sacrifice"

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, U.S. World War One Centennial Commission

Josef Kelly is a professional artist based in the DC-area. He has recently become inspired by the stories of World War I, and started painting a series of pieces related to many themes found in the war. His work is remarkable, and it has earned him endorsement from the U.S World War I Centennial Commission, as a commemoration partner. We spoke with Josef recently about his work, about his inspirations, and about the series he is creating on World War I.

You are a visual artist with a unique WWI-themed style and topic-interest. Tell us about your work. What WWI-themed projects have you been working on?

The style of my work has been often been called “Impressionistic Realism” because it tends to take on a blend of the two genres. I LOVE the Impressionists - Monét, Van Gogh, Manet, etc. The time period of WWI came after the impressionist period. Yet, it seems to blend in with that era through the lens of time. I take my inspiration from the thousands of photos from WWI period. They convey drama, passion, grief and hope, victory and defeat, and countless story lines - both big and small. “On the Champagne Front” -- 16x20 acrylic on canvas

When one takes a look at the varied paintings that were created during WWI, there is a vast array of techniques, styles, genres. It was a time of rapid changes, and the art reflected that same pace. However one hundred years later, looking backwards and reflecting on this part of history and its stories, I think that my style of impressionistic realism seems to “fit.” The impressionist style with its sense of vagueness, colors, and often purposeful lack of definition goes well with the distance of a century. While adding a dose of realism to these paintings I hope conveys the value of focus and intentional clarity to certain aspects that I, as the artist, choose through both my eyes, and the historians who help to clarify the important parts of that time.

I feel that I am only beginning my WWI series. My goal is to finish one piece per month between now and the the centennial of the war’s end on Nov. 11th, 2018. Depending upon feedback, interest and time, the volume of work may either grow or shrink.

You have mentioned that your inspiration is limitless, from the thousands and thousands of faded black & white images that have been left behind for us from the World War I conflict. How does your creative process work? Where do you find your source material, how do you review it? What catches your eye, and why?

Wow, I love these questions! The thousands of images from the WWI era contain such a plethora of material for me as an artist. As one dives into the various story lines, the multitude of countries around the world who participated and sacrificed; men, women, children, old and young. As I search through the images I find dramatic pictures ranging from battlefields, factories, cavalry, tanks, ships, planes and artillery. Trenches... lots of trenches. These pictures bore witness to intense suffering, hope, and sacrifice and are worthy of recreating in a fresh medium to bring attention to some of the stories from that time.

Read more: Four Questions for Josef Kelly

American "Polonia's Army" fought for nation not on map in 1917

By Jan Lorys
via the Polish Museum of America

The enlistment of 30,000 men to fight for a country that had not been on the map of Europe for some 120 years did not resonate within the larger effort to raise the American Expeditionary Force that eventually grew to some 4.7 million men and some women. One of the first things I found when joining the Centennial Commission was that in 100 years little had changed. Sometimes the use of secondary sources can have a better impact than quoting dry primary sources, especially those written in another language. In order to “prove” the existence of the Polish Army in France, I found information in some unexpected sources.

Photo from Leslee’s The Illustrated Weekly Newspaper of December 8, 1917 in article Polish Army and its camp in Niagara, Ontario.Leslee’s The Illustrated Weekly Newspaper in its December 8, 1917 edition referenced the Polish Army and its camp in Niagara, Ontario. It states that “the men will be led by French officers, though they are to wear the British uniform. The various regiments are made up of Poles from Canada and the United States. A group is seen above beneath the flag of one of the Polish National Societies.”

There are a few mistakes. The enlistees were issued Canadian Army surplus and police uniforms, but it was always foreseen that they would be issued French uniforms with Polish distinctions. Based on some of the photographs in the PMA holdings, we can trace the “evolvement” of the Canadian and French supply systems. The early ones show some volunteers in Falcon field uniforms (US Army surplus) and others (like those pictured) in Canadian issue. After a few months, the officers are wearing French style uniforms, some produced in the USA. As the war progresses, recruits are given a mixture of Canadian and “Franco-Polish” uniforms, usually the four cornered caps.

While the senior officers in Europe were French, usually descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Polish troops or of exiles from the 1830/31 failed uprising, (who usually spoke little or no Polish) many of the Polish speaking junior officers were trained in Canada and had been active in the Falcon movement.

The Canadian government did not encourage its citizens to enlist in the Polish Army in France, since it would take away from the Canadian war effort. The bulk of the volunteers were from the US. The flag in the photo does not belong to a Polish National Society, it is a recruiting banner.

Read more: American Polonia's Army fought for nation not on map in 1917

Rebecca and Charles: A testimony from beyond the Atlantic

On the Occasion of the Centenary (1917-2017) of the Arrival of the Americans at the Mars-sur-Allier American Base Hospital

By Lucy DeVries Duffy
Special to the U.S World War I Centennial Commission web site

Rebecca

My mother Rebecca Goethe DeVries wrote a letter to the Nevers, France newspaper, La Montagne, in 1968 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Armistice of World War I. I find it poignant that here I am writing about the war and my parents fifty years later. I remember my mother’s pleasure in having her letter published. It pleases me to honor my mother and her beloved village in this way.

Rebecca Goethe DeVriesRebecca was 12 when the war began and 16 when the Americans came to her village. Her memories of this time were keen as evident in her writings in Vignettes de Moiry which tell of life in Moiry in the early part of the 20th century leading up to the war.

In her letter to La Montagne in 1968 Rebecca writes of her memories of the war, of how badly things were going for the French, her amazement with seeing the first American soldiers who came to build the camp, the arrival of the wounded in the trains that passed behind her home, of giving water to the wounded, the tremendous effect on the village of the American “invasion”, the warm relations which developed between the soldiers, the nurses, and people of the village, the daily sadness of hearing taps for those who died, her observation of the Annamites, the workers of the camp, her memories of the excitement when the war was over, the emptying of the camps and what was left, things: towels, shirts, socks, brick barracks, etc. and memories. The village was affected by the war but, nevertheless, it reverted back to the quiet life of a rural peasant village. However, for Rebecca life would never be the same. Rebecca wrote:

Wars are all the same... For certain people, they bring unhappiness, misery, mourning. For others, fortunes, and alas, profit and again, for others, a love so strong as to overcome time and distance, the differences of mores and of language, between two beings who could not live without each other. It is for this reason I left my pretty village, my dear country. I have returned there three times since the Armistice of 1918 and I hope to do it one more time.

I believe in my heart that Rebecca has returned again in spirit as the dear village of Saint Parize-le-Châtel and the hamlet Moiry honor the presence of the Americans who arrived there in 1917, and also the story of love that came out of a disastrous war.

Read more: Rebecca and Charles: A Testimony from Beyond the Atlantic

WWI well-represented on Memorial Day 2017

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, U.S. World War One Centennial Commission

General Pershing would have been proud - our American World War I veterans were well-represented and well-honored this Memorial Day, thanks to the work of hundreds of volunteers across the entire country.

Photo of this year's Garden of Flags, placed in Boston Common by the Massachusetts Military Heroes Fund.The U.S. National WW1 Centennial Events Register on the WW1CC web site showed over 50 Memorial Day Weekend events/exhibits/activities/parades on our Events Calendar, shared by groups and individuals in Arkansas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Ohio, and Florida.

The Centennial Events Register is open and interactive, and we welcome the addition of World War I-themed input from all sources.

In Boston, WW1CC Commissioner Tod Sedgwick was a featured speaker at the dedication of this year's Garden of Flags, sponsored by the Massachusetts Military Heroes Fund. The Garden of Flags was 37,252 individual US flags placed in Boston Common, each symbolizing a Massachusetts resident lost in America's wars since the American Revolution.

The other speakers included Boston's Mayor Martin Walsh, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.

The WW1CC's new partnership with International League Baseball brought a week's worth of World War I-themed ball games across the league, offering giveaways, historical trivia, and honors for local veterans. Commissioner Sedgwick attended the Pawtucket Red Sox baseball game with Dr. David Kohnen, Director of Naval History at the US Naval War College, and Dr. Nathaniel Sims, grandson of ADM William Sims, Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe During World War I.

Read more: WWI well-represented on Memorial Day 2017

Four Questions for Sabin Howard

"What the memorial needs to do is appeal to the general public."

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, U.S. World War One Centennial Commission

Last week, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts gave approval for the design-concept for the new National World War I Memorial in Washington DC. This vote of support was a huge milestone in the creation of the memorial, and came as great news to the World War I Centennial Commission, and to the Memorial Design Team. We spoke to the memorial's sculptor, Sabin Howard, about the approval, and what it means for the project.

Congratulations on the successful presentation to the US Commission of Fine Arts! Tell us about how you approached your pitch to them, and what you told them.

Sabin Howard, shown speaking in April 2017 at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC.It is our job to create a memorial that will bring visitors to the site and with the purpose of creating something that will spark interest in a war fought 100 years ago. It is my job as an artist to bring the memorial to life; and there are two main components of creating this commemorative art.

First, I need to teach and excite interest in a way that can be understood by all sectors of society. The story is not only understood by your average visitor but has many layers of allegory and symbolism as well that a PhD in art history would appreciate.

The relief that I have designed would answer the question - What did World War I look and feel like?-So in the studio we assembled real people in uniforms from World War I and staged scenes based on photographs that we found as reference of what happened in this tragic and epic moment in history.. When we dressed up these young men and women and placed them underneath lights, certain feelings and emotions entered into the room. A relational energy was created as the actors fed off each other emotionally. It was powerful.

Through this process, my artistic approach changed from a more static classical format to one that was filled with drama and movement as I captured a single image (with multiple scenes) that would explain a complete movement and story.

I like to think of it as a spark that time traveled to my studio in the Bronx allowing us to feel what it must've been like for those young men and women fighting overseas.

The second component of creating this commemorative art was to establish a narrative of a war fought 100 years ago. Here, America is represented by this soldier that tells the story of World War I through an emotional truth. We have created a story that is inclusive of all sectors of society. And the characters depicted in the sculpture present all of the emotions that humans have; mad, glad, sad, and anger.

We very specifically picked a relief to tell the story rather than sculpture in the round. A relief is both pictorial and sculptural, giving tremendous range to tell a story in a space. I call this "spatial narrative." The relief is also very cinematographic which is something that our society understands well. Visual narrative through film is very similar to visual narrative in a sculpture, except in a sculpture the viewer is the active observer rather than a static observer.

Read more: Four Questions for Sabin Howard

Minnesota Doughboy rededicated 75 years after dedication

By Kevin Sweeney
via The Journal, New Ulm, MN

Representatives of the American Legion Post 132 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1648 in New Ulm place a memorial wreath at the base of the “Spirit of the American Doughboy” statue.NEW ULM — Nearly 75 years to the day after the dedication of the original statue, New Ulm veterans, city officials and Brown County Historical Society members rededicated the “Spirit of the American Doughboy Statue” that has stood in the New Ulm City Cemetery Soldier’s Rest section.

The Doughboy, with a rifle in one hand and a hand grenade raised in the other, was designed to represent the grim realities of war that the average American soldier endured in World War I, Mayor Robert Beussman said. The designer, Ernest Moore Viquesney, didn’t want his statue to glorify warfare.

The statue is one of many created from Viquesney’s original designs across the nation, but it is the only one in Minnesota.

The statue that stands today is a rebuilt version of the original. In 1995, the statue was found on the ground, the apparent victim of vandals who had pulled it down. The statue was shattered, but pieces of it were used to rebuild a new statue. Beussman said it cost $45,000 to replace it, but the funds were quickly raised from local banks, businesses and private donors.

In honor of the American soldiers represented by the statue, George Glotzbach read the poem “In Flanders Fields” by Lt. Col. John McCrae, Canadian physician serving during World War I after the Second Battle of Ypres, where a friend and fellow soldier had died.

Read more: Minnesota Doughboy rededicated 75 years after dedication

Four Questions for Robert Laplander of Doughboy MIA

"Chasing their stories in order to understand what happened to them."

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, U.S. World War One Centennial Commission

This has been a big month for our friend Robert Laplander. He is the leader of a small group of volunteers called Doughboy MIA, a group that does research into the 4,224 missing service members from World War I. They try to bring accounting for those missing, as the U.S. Department of Defense is only able to support MIA research going back to World War II. Laplander had a breakthrough discovery on the case of Seaman Herbert Renshaw, a U.S. Navy sailor who was lost at sea during an anti-submarine combat patrol, off the coast of Virginia on 22 May 1917. In the Renshaw case, the seaman's name was evidently omitted from those MIA's named on the chapel wall at Brookwood Cemetery. The Brookwood chapel is an American Battle Monuments site, in the UK, which bears the names of missing US sailors, soldiers and Coast Guardsmen who died at sea during World War I combat operations. Laplander's success with the case has brought him significant media attention, which may help the Doughboy MIA group's efforts. Robert spoke to us about the efforts, and what this new attention means.Robert Laplander

This week before Memorial Day has been a very busy week for you. Tell us about your news media activity.

The media interest has been extraordinary! I've had to take two days off from work just to cover everything on the heavy days, and spend a certain amount of time each day answering email, doing interviews and answering calls. It really has been amazing and humbling. I am very gratified as the response and at the level that people do care about what we're doing and these men. It really has been something.

The reporters seemed to really respond to the Doughboy MIA story. Were there any surprising questions, or surprising approached to the story from them?

I have been very struck at the depth of real interest that the reporters have shown; a genuine, deep desire to hear the story and understand the organization. No one has just been going through the emotions on this. They have all asked intelligent and meaningful questions with as much of a desire to know for themselves as to report to story to their listeners/readers/viewers. It's amazing to see.

What does this attention mean for Doughboy MIA? How does this change the game?

The attention the Renshaw case has brought us has enabled us to get the word to a much wider audience and all that brings possibility for more support. I've already been fielding inquiries from folks wanting to know how they can help.

What are your next steps? What else needs to happen for the Doughboy MIA efforts?

Moving forward, we continue walking the same path - chasing their stories in order to understand what happened to them. We are now looking closely at possible recovery attempts in France, as well as continuing to comb the government archives for the missing paperwork we've been seeking for 12 years now that will enable us to successfully at least one case.

Read more: Four Questions for Robert Laplander of Doughboy MIA