Orange County Historian to host trip to Europe to pay tribute to the Harlem’s Rattlers (the 369th New York Infantry Regiment) in World War I
Goshen, N.Y. – Orange County Historian Johanna Yaun will host [...]
Mrs. Dawson’s Wartime Memories
Mrs. Dawson’s Wartime Memories
By Thomas Emme
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
It all started with a gift.
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. I took the book home and set it aside for a more careful look. In the back of my mind, I thought if it wasn’t salvageable, I might be able to turn it into an art project.
Collier’s Photographic History of the European War
Collier’s Magazine was a general interest magazine, founded in 1888 and published weekly until 1957. This “photographic history” was one in a series of five books published by Colliers between 1916 and 1919 to document the war. Before television or the internet, books like this defined what war looked like to the average person. This image is of the cover page from the first volume published in 1916 and the title refers to the “European War”. This was because the United States had not yet joined the war. Future editions included pictures of soldiers from the United States and the series was renamed to the photographic history of the “World War”.
From World War I to now: Helping Veterans One Action at a Time
From World War I to now: Helping Veterans One Action at a Time
By Rhonda Underhill
Special to the Doughboy Foubdation web site
Today’s veterans have many benefits that their predecessors didn’t. When you look, especially, at World War I veterans, who bore the brunt of a society concerned over what they deemed excessive benefits given to Civil War veterans, today’s vets are doing much better. But, it’s not enough.
Let's look at a few different ways that you can help the veterans in your community 100 years after World War I.
Veteran Benefits
Unlike the millions of drafted veterans of World War I, many new military enlistees today go into service with benefits in mind. The most coveted may be the military’s education programs, including the G.I. Bill. Veterans may also qualify for low-cost medical care, job training, counseling, and loans earmarked for former service members. And, in 2022, the majority of disabled veterans will see a disability cost-of-living adjustment of 5.9%, according to Benefits.com.
However, many veterans struggle with a lack of access to these benefits, along with PTSD, sexual trauma, and higher than average unemployment. Homelessness and suicide are also common. But, with help from a community that cares, the veterans in your life can receive the assistance they need and the respect they deserve.
How To Help
There are many ways to help veterans, from offering a simple token of appreciation to launching full-scale fundraising campaigns that provide financial assistance to low-income vets. Other ideas include:
Learn about their needs. Often, we don’t help because we don’t know what’s needed. Consider learning what you can about World War I, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm, and other veterans in your community. This could include looking at the history of the wars, what they’ve been through, and how they were treated upon return home.
New musical honors military exploits of women in WWI
Rosemarie Chandler as Grace Banker in the Phoenix Theatre Companys production of The Hello Girls
New musical honors military exploits of women in WWI
By Bridgette M. Redman
via The Glendale Star newspaper (AZ) web site
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” by the Phoenix Theatre Company.
“The Hello Girls,” which runs through Jan. 30, stars Chandler as Grace Banker, a switchboard operator in charge of a corps of women who went overseas during World War I.
The daughter of two military parents, Chandler lived on Luke AFB in the mid-1990s at the age of 4.
She recalled her parents attending a charity ball and leaving her older brother in charge. Instead of listening to him, she locked herself and her best friend’s neighbor in her dad’s military closet filled with freshly pressed and dry-cleaned suits.
“I started doing makeup and got makeup all over his flight suits and dress suits,” Chandler said. “My mom came home, and she was furious.”
Her younger brother is now stationed at Luke Air Force Base. During visits, she hears stories from female lieutenants.
“It’s definitely been hugely impactful to understand that part of my mom and also what it is like to be a woman in general in the military today,” Chandler said. “They’ve come so far and made great strides, but I think there are still ways we can become even more inclusive.”
Her mother was a protocol officer in the Navy for Adm. William Crowe and traveled around the world with him. It was also how her parents met.
“They held the same rank,” Chandler said. “I love that part of their story. The first time he walked into the office, my mom was doing paperwork. She didn’t even look up. She just handed him his paperwork and said, ‘Here you go, Mr. Chandler.’ My dad was smitten right away and went about pursuing her.”
Uncharted waters
The women in “The Hello Girls” had a more challenging route, as there were no women in the military. The musical is a modern retelling of a critical part of history in the struggle for women’s rights.
The women were part of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, typically known as “The Hello Girls.” They were bilingual telephone operators who helped turn the tide in World War I and fought to make their way to the front lines. After the war, they spent decades fighting for equality and recognition.
The story jumped out at Cara Reichel, the show’s director and co-writer.
“As someone who makes musicals, I’m always on the lookout for stories and ideas,” Reichel said. “I kind of have a mental Rolodex of things. I remember clearly when I first encountered their story — a very brief mention of them in a larger documentary on the history of women in the military. The name was ‘Unsung Heroes,’ and I thought maybe someone should sing about these women.”
Family Research and Service Projects Lead to Better Understanding of Doughboy Heroes
Family Research and Service Projects Lead to Better Understanding of Doughboy Heroes
By Ann Silverthorn
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
On November 13, 2021, I met my great uncle who died in France during World War I. To be more exact, I met the young man who personified my uncle in a local play called A Doughboy’s Story. Witnessing the living, breathing characterization of the young man who had previously been just a story to me was incredibly moving.
Ann Silverthorn (right) and Rob Gatesman, who portrayed her grand uncle Russell Silverthorn in a play produced by American Legion Post 494 in Girard, Pennsylvania.The project was originally planned as the 2019 program for the 100th anniversary celebration of American Legion Post 494 in Girard, Pennsylvania, but the pandemic caused a two-year delay. Instead, A Doughboy’s Story debuted at the post’s Veterans Day dinner in November 2021, and I was there.
My interest in World War I reaches back to a decade ago, when I started to research our family history. My father shared a piece of paper with me containing an image of Russell Worth Silverthorn, my grandfather’s brother. To the right of the image on the landscape-oriented page was a report from a “Mr. Scott” detailing Russell’s last hours in a hand-grenade torn French wine cellar.
PFC John Harding Scott, Jr., a medic from Bradford, PA, wrote that he and his partner had been captured by the Germans in Fismette, France. They convinced their captors to let them locate and treat the American soldiers who had been highly outnumbered by the Germans in the battle now known as the Tragedy at Fismette.
Scott wrote that he came upon an old wine cellar, or the remains of one, and found 24-year-old Russell Silverthorn, the only Doughboy among at least a dozen, who appeared to be alive. The soldiers had taken refuge underground and tried to defend their position in vain against the Germans, who tossed grenades through the opening. The medic bandaged my great uncle the best he could, but it was clear that the hole in his chest was fatal. Scott wrote that Russell had died like a man and that the men in the cellar had fought to the finish.
I was horrified at the monsters who had so coldly killed my great uncle, but not long after, I learned of another great uncle who died at age 19 in World War I. That revelation made me rethink the concept of enemy.
Many years ago, in her thick German accent, my late grandmother Catherine told me that her fiancé was killed in the war, but I don’t remember a mention of her brother. She did tell my Uncle Dan, who wrote a manuscript about Catherine’s early life in Germany, including details about her brother who had died in World War I.
Josef Wäschle Josef Wäschle was killed by a French sniper’s bullet as he stood watch in an observation tower near Rheims. As Catherine’s mother watched her husband walking up the street after fetching a telegram, she said, “Joe’s dead.” She said she could tell by the way her husband walked.
Reading further how my great-grandmother wailed, I felt empathy for her and for my great uncle. I was sad about the horrors of war and how each of my uncles just wanted to stay alive. Just who was the enemy?
I wrote an impassioned piece for my blog about the concept of enemy. The regent of my Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) chapter, Mary Jane Koenig, thought I’d be interested in the committee she was organizing to honor Erie County, Pennsylvania’s involvement in World War I for the upcoming centennial in 2018. This involvement led me on a rewarding journey.
The Erie County World War One Centennial Committee raised money for a memorial that lists the names of the Erie County soldiers who sacrificed their lives in World War I. We consulted a book published in the 1920s that listed the names of 154 fallen soldiers from our area. Several members of the committee, including myself, researched the names, qualifying them for the memorial. Through our work, we discovered even more names, and the list grew to nearly 200.
Liberating Belgium: Driving a 1918 Liberty B truck back to the Western Front under its own power. What could possibly go wrong?
Apart from new tyres and a replica cab and body this Liberty is remarkably original and a very good runner.
Liberating Belgium: Driving a 1918 Liberty B truck back to the Western Front under its own power. What could possibly go wrong?
By Tim Gosling
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
“We are taking a couple of trucks over to Belgium for the Armistice commemorations, would you like to come?” asked my good friend Ian Morgan. He briefly explained the plan, that his 1918 Liberty B truck and 1913 Model T Ford would be trailered to the Pond Farm museum just outside Ypres where they could be stored and we would sleep in a nearby barn for three nights. Travelling out on the Saturday we would come back on the Tuesday which would give us a couple of days to visit the battlefield and attend the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate. The museum was having an open weekend and the trucks would make an interesting addition to their display.
The Pond Farm museum is a remarkable private collection set up by Stijn Butaye comprising exhibits that he has dug up on the family farm. The collection includes shells, grenades, bullets, tools, personal equipment, parts of a MK IV tank and every imaginable kind of detritus that was left on the battlefield all of which he has displayed in one of the barns. Also currently residing at Pond Farm is the replica MK IV tank Damon II which was built by the Poelcapelle 1917 Association and which occasionally makes appearances at public events.
Unfortunately a small problem occurred 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 drive under its own power from Calais to Ypres. This was a distance of just over 60 miles. Not an insurmountable problem but one which did not fill me with much enthusiasm if we were to lose the light.
The Liberty does look a little incongruous on such a modern train, but the channel tunnel is a lot quicker and easier than taking a ferry.
The Decision That Changed The World – America’s Entry Into World War I
Jane Addams (third from left) and pacifist colleagues on Noordam before departure, April 13, 1915. (Library of Congress, LC-B2- 3443-11).
The Decision That Changed The World – America’s Entry Into World War I
By Neil Lanctot
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
“World War I? Why are you writing about that war?”
It 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. Indeed, World War I, at least among the general public in the United States, remains a sort of red-headed step-child to more “popular” conflicts such as the Civil War and World War II. After all, America’s participation was fairly brief and our combat losses, compared to the European powers, were relatively light.
Neil Lanctot But I had long been intrigued by World War I. Our Times, Mark Sullivan’s massive popular history of America in the early 20th century published between 1926 and 1935, had especially kindled my interest. Sullivan, a well-known journalist of the period, wrote from the perspective of a keen observer who had experienced the era firsthand and knew many of the major players. And his volumes on the World War I era were particularly fascinating, especially his coverage of the rapid changes occurring in America, the colorful political personalities, and the United States’ expanding global role.
I knew there was a story to be told, one that had long been overlooked. 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? Without American involvement, Germany might never have been decisively defeated. In such an alternate scenario, there is no Treaty of Versailles to redraw the map of Europe, no reparations imposed on Germany, and no Hitler to set off a second World War twenty years later.
I felt the best way to tell this story was through a character-driven approach. The choice of the “characters” was not difficult. President Woodrow Wilson, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, and the social worker and reformer Jane Addams not only knew each other well and were major figures in the Progressive reform movement of the early 1900s, but they were also deeply involved in the crucial episodes on America’s path to involvement.
Ending 2021 on a Positive Note
Ending 2021 on a Positive Note
By Dorian de Wind
via The Moderate Voice web site
December 31, 2021 — It is good to be able to close out this “annus horribilis” on a positive note.
Up to the beginning of this year, while there are several local and state monuments and memorials commemorating the more than four million Americans who served in World War I, there was no true “national” monument.
Finally, in January 2013, Congress established the World War One Centennial Commission “to ensure a suitable observance of the centennial of World War I, to provide for the designation of memorials to the service of members of the United States Armed Forces in World War I…” and in December 2014, Congress designated Pershing Park as the site for the memorial.
On April 16 of this year, more than a century after the “Great War” ended, the long-awaited memorial rightfully joined the three other national memorials honoring those who served and sacrificed in the three other major wars the U.S. fought in the 20th century: World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The image below – a screen shot from the WW Centennial organization – shows the memorial.
The 60-foot long, 12-foot-tall bas-relief sculpture, “A Soldier’s Journey,” is scheduled to be installed in 2024. For now, a canvas with sketches of the sculpture stands in its place.
Of the more than 3,550 Medal of Honor recipients to date, 126 served in World War I, 92 receiving the award posthumously.
In addition, “Congress awarded six Medals of Honor to unknown, unidentified soldiers of Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Rumania, and the United States to pay tribute to each country’s unknown dead.”
Like the World War I monuments and memorials, there are several state monuments, memorials and museums honoring those who received our nation’s highest military award for valor in combat, but no national monument exists.
Connecticut’s 1st State Troubadour Connects To WWI
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Connecticut's 1st State Troubadour Connects To World War I
By Tom Callinan, Connecticut's 1st Official State Troubadour
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
As background to my formative years, my parents met at a barn-dance in Middletown, CT, my mother's hometown, in the early 1940s. My father, Joe, was the sixth of seven children, born in New Haven to Irish immigrant parents, who eked out a living until my grandfather succumbed to the Spanish Flu, when my dad was only five. His widowed mother was left with six at home, and another one who had gone to Ireland to live with his maternal grandparents, and helped tend to their meager farm. With flaming, red hair and a muscular build, Dad was a scrappy kid, as were many of the poor, fatherless, Depression-Era boys. To help his mother, Dad dropped out of high school to join the Civilian Conservation Corps to earn $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home. In addition to being a boxer, Dad was a born entertainer, who had performed in minstrel shows and on street corners during the 1930s as an amateur barbershop-quartet singer.
Ann Coleman and Joe Callihan, Tom Callinan's parents, during World War II. Joe served with the Army's 83rd Infantry Division in the European Theater of Operations, while Ann served as the secretary of the local Draft Board.When WWII erupted, Dad served with the Army's 83rd Infantry Division in the European Theater of Operations, while my mother, Ann Coleman, an only child, had grown up in a middle-class family, and graduated high school in 1940 with a commercial diploma. During the war she served as the secretary of the Draft Board in Middletown.
Before Mom was born, her late-uncle, Jeremiah J. Coleman served with the 107th Regiment of the 77th Division (National Army) in The Great War. He was killed in action at Chateau Thierry, France in late-August, 1918, and other than seeing his photo when we paid frequent visits to my Aunt Mary (Uncle Jerry's sister), I knew little about him, except that he is interred in St. John's Cemetery in Middletown; he's listed on the WWI memorial obelisk on the Washington Terrace Green; and one of the trees planted in memory of Middletown's fallen was planted in his honor.
In the late 1960s, I was an English major/Music minor at Central Connecticut State College (now University), with eyes toward becoming a teacher. However, a number of factors caused my life to spiral out of control, and as a result, I dropped out of school. Pretty much rudderless, I bounced-around from job-to-job, trying to deal with my free-fall with too much alcohol, and too little self-control. In the first draft lottery of 1970, I received number 29, so I decided to turn my life around by enlisting in the Marine Corps. As luck would have it, while being processed for deployment to Vietnam, the Marine directly ahead of me in line was the last 0311 (rifleman) in the quota for DaNang, so I was diverted to Camp Pendleton, CA, and never got out of the country.
After my Honorable Discharge, I returned to CCSC to resume my academic studies, and graduated with a B.S. in Secondary Education in 1973. That led to a junior high school teaching job, and a serendipitous meeting with two musicians who had a weekly gig at a pub in Hartford, performing Irish music and sea chanteys. Since my musical proclivities ran parallel to those genres, they asked me to sit-in, and in late-1973 I became the third member of The Morgans, which became known as "Connecticut' Premier Irish and Sea Songs Ensemble."
Veterans Day Celebration with the launch of a new comic book featuring a WWI hero
Veterans Day Celebration with the launch of a new comic book featuring World War I hero Dr. Frank Boston
By George Whitehair and Leigh Ferrier
Special to the Doughboy Foundation web site
Participants in the event announcing the new comic book about World War I hero Dr. Frank Boston (left to right): Ouli Sow; George Whitehair; Washington D.C. Deputy Fire Chief Michael Knight; Heather Pham; Khoi Pham.Hidden History comes to the comics. The Boston Legacy Foundation returned to the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. on November 11th, Veteran’s Day, to continue to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Frank Boston, a WWI Veteran, alongside all of those who have served their country and to celebrate the release of the Doc Boston Adventures comic book. Joining this effort was Washington D.C. Deputy Fire Chief, Michael Knight, who was one of the keynote speakers.
By way of background, after serving in WWI, Dr. Boston returned to his community and applying his military experiences, he started both a Hospital and a First Aid Emergency Squad, both of which flourish to this day. For his contributions to society, Dr. Boston received two separate U.S. Presidential Citations and was recently honored by the Pennsylvania Senate and Pennsylvania House with unanimous resolutions issued in his honor. A Congressional Resolution was submitted to Congress and a Citation was issued by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley and one from Congresswoman Madeleine Dean.
Dr. Boston has also been recognized by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Pa. VFW, U.S. Senator Bob Casey, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, Fort Des Moines Museum, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, and many others.
To further recognize his contributions to society, a comic book is being published, called the “Doc Boston Adventures”, which is based upon a true story when Doc Boston and his team of first responders saved lives during the 1936 floods.
This story is updated to reflect America today and introduce a unique and diverse group of young first responders, including - Chase and Penelope of European backgrounds; Ouli from Africa; Maya from South America, Sophal representing Asia; Murtuza, of Arabic origin; and of course, Doc Boston’s beloved St. Bernard, “Tiny” and one of his horses, “Danny.”
