Inspired by Teaching History in England, I Explored the Unconventional Memorials Created by the Forgotten Female Veterans of World War I

By Allison S. Finkelstein
Special to The Doughboy Foudation web site 

For any American who has been in Great Britain during the month of November, the enduring relevance of the memory of World War I in British culture is hard to miss. From the tradition of wearing a poppy to the nationwide two minutes of silence observed on Remembrance Sunday, many Britons remain deeply preoccupied with the Great War. After living among these rituals while teaching in the history department of an English boarding school, I started to wonder: why does the memory of World War I remain so much stronger in Great Britain than in the United States? This question led me on a long path to the publication of my first book: Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945. By investigating the groundbreaking role American women played in the memorialization of the war, the process of writing this book uncovered new ways to answer this question and revealed significant but too often overlooked aspects of World War I’s history that have renewed relevance today.Queen’s Cemetery in Puisieux, France, a British World War I cemetery run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein 

The seeds for Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials were planted during my time in England. After participating in British remembrance rituals and taking our students on a trip to the sites of the Western Front, I entered graduate school upon my return home. At the University of Maryland, College Park, I focused my studies on military commemoration. Two summers spent interning at the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC)—where I would later work—steered me firmly toward the First World War as my area of focus. I dove into this question about the American memory of the war through archival research as well as fieldwork at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in France.

By the time I selected my dissertation topic, I knew enough to realize that answering this question was far too big for just one project. Instead, I decided to approach the question by specifically examining how American women commemorated the war. Doing so, I hoped, might provide some explanation of America’s waning memory of World War I. Little did I know that my research would do more than just shed light on answers to this question, but it would also help to resurrect a forgotten group of American women from the recesses of history. The more time I spent researching these women as I transformed my dissertation into a book, the more passionate I became about sharing their stories.

In its final form, Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials investigates how American women who somehow served or sacrificed in World War I commemorated that conflict. I argue that these female activists considered their community service and veterans advocacy projects to be forms of commemoration just as significant and effective as traditional memorialization methods such as monuments and statues. In other words, these women sometimes preferred projects that helped a broadly defined group of male and female ‘veterans’ as an alternative to physical monuments and memorials. These are the invisible memorials mentioned in the book’s title.

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”.

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 

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.

  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.

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.