Our speakers will dive into well-known, less well-known, and almost unknown aspects of the American experience in World War I, and make the case that the after-effects of the Great War are still being felt in the United States and across the world, more than a century after the Great War’s end.

Don’t miss this opportunity to take in a full day of lectures on The Voices from the Great War from our many award-winning authors and presenters. The Symposium will conclude with a visit to and wreath laying at the National World War I Memorial. The Symposium is presented by the Doughboy Foundation, and The MacArthur Memorial, which is a museum and research center dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the life of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. The Doughboy Foundation and its generous sponsors are offering the Symposium registration fee for only $25. Learn more about the Symposium, and get your tickets here.

WWI Living History Day September 13 at the National WWI Memorial will give the public a chance to learn what it was like to be an American Doughboy during World War I. Through interactions with living historians, displays which feature original vehicles and equipment worn by soldiers, presentations, and musical concerts, attendees can get a glimpse into the era. The one-day Living History display is sponsored and presented by The Doughboy Foundation to benefit its work in support of America’s National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C, and by The MacArthur Memorial. Living History Day is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. RSVP Here For WWI Living History Day Sept. 13!

The Doughboy Foundation and the American Friends of Lafayette will host an event honoring the Marquis de Lafayette on his 268th birthday on Saturday, September 6, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. EDT  We will also commemorate the bicentennial of his tour through the United States (1824- 1825), and The Maryland Military Band will play music heard by Lafayette during that visit. The afternoon program will include notable speakers and descendants of pilots from the WWI Lafayette Escadrille. And the Marquis himself may make a cameo appearance!  The ceremony concludes with a wreath ceremony and the sounding of Aux Morts and Taps. This ceremony is free and open to the public.  Find out more about this great commemorative event and RSVP to attend on Saturday, September 6!

At the Inaugural World War I Symposium on September 12, Theo Mayer, proprietor of techapplication.com will review how the high tech apps developed during the Commemoration of the Centennial of  World War I were used to educate Americans about the new National WWI Memorial. Then he will demonstrate the next level of WWI education: the WWI Professor, a prototype interactive, RAG-enhanced, agentic AI avatar stuffed full of all the rich “America in WWI” content developed during the Centennial Commemoration. Read more about this upcoming presentation, and how the WWI Professor will revolutionize the way that Americans will be getting smart about World War I in the future and beyond.

Syracuse Stage has announced a special performance of the 25/26 season opener “The Hello Girls” (music and lyrics by Peter Mills, book by Mills and Cara Reichel, directed by Reichel) for veterans, military members and their families on September 9 at 7:30 p.m. The evening also includes a pre-show reception at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are free of charge, but must be reserved in advance by calling the Box Office at 315-443-3275.  Learn how Syracuse Stage is partnering with Clear Path for Veterans, Honor Flight Syracuse and the National Veterans Resource Center at Syracuse University to support the Central NY veteran community.

In ceremony at Bob Hope Memorial Chapel, Los Angeles National Cemetery, at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 24, 2025, on behalf of the U.S. Army and a grateful nation, author and researcher Edward E. Saunders, LTC, USA (Ret.) will present the Silver Star Medal to the descendants of World War I U.S. Army Lieutenant (nurse) Elizabeth Dorothy Sandelius. Learn how, in dusty archives of the Montana state library, Saunders pieced together “the remarkable, unheralded, and compelling story of a courageous young Montana woman: a uniformed WWI angel of mercy and a sister-in-arms,” and arranged for her family to receive the medal that she earned in war, but was never awarded.

“On a late April evening in the spring of 2022, after two long years of the pandemic, the world that had been shut down for so long, was just beginning to open up again,” recalls author Briana Gervat. “It was just after midnight that I learned that it is possible to walk along the Western Front.”  Find out how that revelation inspired Gervat to embark on a pilgrimage of sorts: “a thousand-kilometer journey of remembrance” that is chronicled with great eloquence in her new book There Will Come Soft Rains: A Journey Along the Western Front.

The U.S. East Coast Branch of the UK-based Western Front Association will hold its fall symposium on Saturday, 25 October at the Maryland Veteran’s Museum, 11000 Crain Highway, Newburg, MD. The conference fee is $25 for non-WFA members and $20 for WFA members. The conference fee includes admission, program, lunch, drinks, and snacks throughout the day.  For more information on the Symposium, and to register to attend, please visit the East Coast Branch’s Facebook page here.

The 100th anniversary of the Bladensburg WWI Memorial — better known as the Peace Cross and owned by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission — was commemorated in July by federal, state, and local leaders, veterans, and a passionate community of preservationists. For Edward Day, Chief Historic Preservation Officer/Cultural Resources Planner at Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the ceremony had a particularly poignant meaning. Learn how Day and many others have helped to ensure that the famous “symbol of unity, sacrifice, and resilience” will continue to stand “restored and renewed for future generations.”

See other coverage of the Bladensburg WWI Memorial’s 100th  Anniversary and view television footage of the ceremony here.

The First World War was a conflict unlike any before it — a mix of brutal trench fighting, industrial-scale destruction, and human stories that still echo today. While history books give you the facts, films and documentaries bring the mud, fear, and heartbreak into focus in a way that words on paper rarely can. But with so many options out there, where do you begin? Let’s dig into some of the best World War I films worth your time, each with its own style, tone, and perspective.

“While World War II still figures prominently in American historical identity, World War I is largely forgotten,” curator Roger Connor wrote in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Air and Space Quarterly last fall. And while the “World War II in the Air” exhibition at the museum remains closed until the next round of gallery openings in July 2026, “World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation” has a chance to pique the interest of visitors, drawn by the colorful biplanes hanging outside its two entrances. Read more about “the museum’s third different exhibit to dive into the legacy of the Great War, and the new theme explores how the use of balloons, airships and planes evolved over the course of the war.”

World War I created the legal and cultural toolkit that still guides U.S. surveillance. Congress and agencies built powers for secrecy, censorship, and internal security, then kept and adapted them as technology advanced. Historians trace this lineage through statutes, court rulings, and routine policing. Modern readers, students, and history essay writers can follow a straight line from wartime mail scrutiny to today’s data harvesting and algorithmic flags. Learn more about how state surveillance born in World War I has evolved into today’s ubiquitous digital monitoring of our lives.

World War I changed much more than just borders and politics. It reshaped societies, economies, and even the environment. You might not realize it, but how World War I contributed to climate displacement in the United States is a story worth knowing. The war’s effects went beyond the battlefield, touching the land and the lives of many Americans in ways that still echo today. During the war, the demand for resources and food grew fast. This pushed farms and industries to their limits. The pressure on land and nature triggered changes in the climate and forced many families to move. Understanding this connection helps you see how big events like wars can affect both people and the planet at once.

The historic battleship USS Texas (BB-35), America’s last surviving dreadnought to have served in both World War I and World War II, has been saved and secured a new permanent home at Pier 15 in Galveston. After years of languishing in a state of disrepair, the ship is undergoing extensive restoration to transform it into a state-of-the-art museum with interactive exhibits. Read more about the USS Texas, commissioned in 1914, serving in WWI, and providing crucial gunfire support in WWII landings, earning five Battle Stars, securing its place in naval history.

But the good news about the “two-world-wars champ’s future new home” is potentially bad news for another maritime museum. Learn how the new home of USS Texas, just 7 short miles from Pelican Island, home since 1971 of the Galveston Naval Museum, could be trouble for the small and unsung facility that hosts important World War II  warships and other significant naval artifacts.

On August 13, 1918, the United States Marine Corps opened its ranks to women for the first time in its history. The country was in the final months of World War I, and the demand for personnel was higher than ever. By allowing women to serve in non-combat roles, the Marine Corps could free more men to fight overseas. The first woman to take that step was Opha May Johnson. Find out more about how this 40 year old USMC civilian clerk became the very first woman to officially enlist in the Marine Corps.

The Harlem Hellfighters Memorial in New York honors soldiers who fought harder for respect than victory. One of the Hellfighters was Henry Johnson, a 5-foot-4-inch railroad porter from Albany who enlisted in 1917 with the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment. White American troops refused to fight alongside them, so they were assigned to the French Army. On May 15, 1918, Johnson and teenager Needham Roberts faced 25 German soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat in the Argonne Forest. Johnson’s rifle jammed, so he used it as a club until it splintered, then grabbed his knife. He killed four Germans and wounded twenty others while suffering 21 wounds himself. France immediately awarded him their highest military honor, but America ignored his heroism for decades.Read more about this black granite memorial that tells the full story of Johnson’s incredible night of combat.

“Now Europe is a ring of fire,” the Russian poet Zinaida Gippius wrote in 1914, not long after her country declared war on Austria-Hungary. Soon afterward, Germany, France, and Great Britain would enter the fight and begin mass-mobilizing troops. “I look at these lines, written by my hand, as if I was out of my mind. World War!” Today, the causes and consequences of the First World War can be as puzzling as when Gippius put those words to paper. Fortunately, a new book, Ring of Fire: A New Global History of the Outbreak of the First World War, aims to help a new generation of readers understand how this pivotal moment in modern history began.

Prior to shooting Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949, John Wayne and Republic Pictures enlisted General Graves B. Erskine as a military consultant to give the film an authentic representation of Marine life and combat. Erskine’s authority on the subject came from his long and decorated career in the Marine Corps, spanning both World Wars. In the Second World War, he led Marines during the ferocious Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the Pacific campaign’s most costly and decisive struggles. Yet his connection to the Corps stretched back much further. In 1921, he was entrusted with escorting the body of the Unknown Soldier from Le Havre, France, to the United States—a solemn duty that reflected the esteem in which he was already held early in his service.

Germany invading the United States might sound crazy by today’s standards, but global power at the turn of the 20th century was very different from what it is today. The great powers of Europe were carving up Asia and Africa for imperial clout, riches, and raw materials, and sending their forces all over the world required a lot of manpower and firepower. The need for more resources meant that empires required more colonies, but space was limited; uncolonized areas were being snatched up quickly.  Read more, and learn how the Germans’ low opinion of the U.S. Army, and even lower opinion of the Navy, led the Kaiser’s strategists to come up with some rather ambitious plans to extend the German Empire to North America.

When one thinks of tanks, one may not instantly think of Laurel and Hardy, the legendary comedy duo of the silver screen. Nonetheless, in their 1932 feature-length picture Pack Up Your Troubles, the duo exchange their iconic bowler hats for helmets in the trenches of the First World War. After being effectively press-ganged into the US Army, their usual tomfoolery results (for all of two minutes) in the duo briefly becoming the crew of an abandoned tank lost in no-man’s-land. Learn more how the comedy duo’s second feature film used a M1917 FT tank in a very anachronistic manner, as none of these tanks actually saw active service in World War I.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Private Otto Vernon Taylor of Alexandria, Indiana. Drafted in April, 1918, he was sent to Camp Taylor, Kentucky for training. Eventually assigned to Company K/339th Infantry, on July 14th, 1918, his unit deployed to Archangel, Russia as part of a multinational force sent there to protect allied interests. He was killed in action on October 16th, 1919, and reported buried at Kadish, Russia, 400 yards from the Onega River. That spring, the Onega over ran its banks, producing severe flooding along much of its length. In the ensuing inundation, Private Taylor’s grave was washed away.

Would you like to be involved with solving the case of PVT James Argiroplos, and all the other Americans still in MIA status from World War I? You can! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to our non-profit organization today, and help us bring them home! Help us do the best job possible and give today, with our thanks.  Remember: A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Pershing Sponsors