The Hello Girls of the World War I U.S. Army have never been officially recognized for the groundbreaking service they provided as America’s first women soldiers. In this call to action, an incredible group of people joined the Battles of the First World War Podcast to talk about why the Hello Girls should receive a  Congressional Gold Medal to honor them.  Click here to read more, and find links to two podcasts featuring the campaign for the Congressional Gold Medal for America's First Women Soldiers.

Over the Christmas period in 1914, some  fraternization took place in No Man’s Land between British and German soldiers at St. Yvon in Belgium. Memorials in the Belgian villages of St. Yvon and Messines commemorate a football game played between the British and the Germans during the Truce. However, evidence from accounts by those who took part in the Truce casts doubt over whether such a game took place at all. Take a look at this in-depth exploration of the history behind this story of Christmastime soccer, and learn what conclusion the author draws about the putative match on Christmas 1914.

The ongoing campaign for passage of the current Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal legislation in the 118th Congress continues through the holidays, and will ramp up even more in 2024 -- will you answer their call, and make a call to help?

The Hello Girls made critical battlefield tactical communications work effectively for U.S. and French military forces on the front lines of World War I, saving many lives by helping bring the long war to a quicker end. However, when the Hello Girls returned home after WWI ended, they were denied veterans status and benefits until 1977. The Hello Girls earned and deserve the recognition of a Congressional Gold Medal, and the World War I Centennial Commission asks you to help make that happen in the 118th Congress! 

Click here for our toolbox that makes the process of reaching out to your Representative and Senators very straightforward. Congress is going home for the holidays shortly, so you can also reach out to the local and district offices of your Senators and Representative, and tell them that you want them to cosponsor the Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal legislation in the 118th Congress.

When their nation called in 1918, the Hello Girls answered --please answer their call for recognition in 2024!

World War I is something of a blank spot amid the general American habit of forgetfulness. The epic bloodbath has almost disappeared down the memory hole. It returns now as the focus of an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where its representation as perhaps the first “media war” gets examined. Click here to read more about this show that pulls together about 200 objects to look at how the war was presented to an international public through emerging mass media 100 years ago.

Sabaton’s recently concluded “History Rocks” museum charity project, which revolved around the global premiere of the heavy metal band’s animated film, “The War To End All Wars – The Movie“, was a resounding success according to the participating museums. It played to a packed house at the National World War I Museum & Memorial in Kansas City, MO (left), and at 140 other museums big and small spanning 30 countries. Click here to read more, and find out why 100% of the museum respondents in a post-event survey stated that they would be open to future collaborations with Sabaton on projects of a similar nature.

National Wreaths Across America Day 2023 saw wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as over 4,000+ additional locations in all 50 U.S. states, at sea, and abroad. The Doughboy Foundation participated in  the event in 2023. Many organizations take part in the annual event for a variety of reasons. Click here to learn how American Legion World War I Memorial Post 109 decided to focus its energies by taking over responsibility for several cemeteries in and around Mechanicsburg, PA.

Friend of the Doughboy Foundation, historian Allison S. Finkelstein, is excited to share with our readers that her book is now available in paperback. Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945 investigates the groundbreaking role American women played in commemorating those who served and sacrificed in World War I. The book reveals how an overlooked community of women who supported the war effort fought to be recognized for their contributions while pursuing service-based memorialization projects. Click here to read more, and learn how the book seeks to raise awareness about the pioneering unrecognized female veterans of World War I.

Writes Nate Hendley "I first encountered the story of His Majesty’s Hospital Ship (HMHS) Llandovery Castle while doing online research about the First World War. I came across a reference to the Leipzig War Crimes Trials—the forgotten attempt to bring German war criminals to justice in the early 1920s. To my surprise, one of the pivotal cases involved a Canadian hospital ship called the Llandovery Castle. Surprise turned to astonishment when I discovered the Llandovery Castle ruling set an epochal precedent that was regularly cited in Nazi-era war crime prosecutions." Click here to learn how Hendley's discovery led him to write the book Atrocity on the Atlantic to renew interest in the World War I Llandovery Castle tragedy and its reverberations in post-World War II events and after.

It was Fredric Winkowski's third-grade teacher who, "on November 11, on the day then called Armistice Day, made a statement that was literally burned into my consciousness."  Over the years since then, "the 'what' and 'why' " of World War I have kept his intense interest. Recently,  Winkowski' wrote and illustrated the book “Trench Talk, Trench Life, A Beginner’s Guide to World War One” in an attempt to answer the questions raised by "the distant voice of that elderly lady." Click here to read more about Trench Talk, and find out how Winkowski's discovery of "an old book in a used-book shop in downtown Albany" was a major influence for his latest work.

DISPATCH readers were introduced to Michael Santoro’s World War I Militaria Collection back in October of 2023. Now Santoro is back with the first of what will be an ongoing series of articles about the fascinating WWI artifacts that he has accumulated, and the human stories behind them. The helmet shown at left, "gracefully covered by century-old burlap," belonged to Elmer W. Bowman, Company D, 30th U.S. Engineers. Click here to learn more about this helmet and "an American regiment made up of engineers, pharmacists, & chemists made proficient in chemical warfare" during World War I.

Just after noon on August 30, 1914, about a month into World War I, a biplane marked with the German iron cross under its wings flew 6,000 feet above France’s capital city. Soon, to the surprise of Parisians below, four explosions rocked the city as Ferdinand von Hiddessen (in the aft cockpit at left) dropped four bombs, by hand, in the world’s first aerial raid on a national capital. As an increasing number of attacks came from German planes (as well as the first wartime Zeppelins), Parisians decided to take drastic action. Click here to read how, in late 1917, engineers commissioned by the French government began creating a fake Paris just outside the capital in an effort to fool the German air force.

Massachusetts Maritime Academy is the recent recipient of a $50,000 donation from the Provincetown VFW Post 3152 to establish an annual scholarship in tribute to Lewis Armstrong Young, a Provincetown native and World War I veteran who died in 1918. Young enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve Force as a machinist’s mate in July of 1917, and died onboard the U.S.S. Marietta from the influenza pandemic in 1918. In the 1930s, charter members of the Provincetown Veterans of Foreign Wars named their post in honor of Young. Click here to read more, and learn how this donation is .intended to "keep the legacy of the Provincetown hometown hero alive."

"Mud, blood, and barbed wire. To an Allied soldier in the trenches of the Western Front in 1917, that seemed to be the future as well as the present." So begins the Popular Mechanics look at the situation on the Western Front in 1917, and what new technology and tactics the Allies used to finally break the stalemate and in the Hundred Days Offensive of 1918, smash through the deep fortifications of the Hindenburg Line, and compel Germany to sue for peace. Click here to read the entire article, and learn what the lessons learned in World War I mean for the current trench stalemate in Ukraine.

Harris County has issued a formal apology to the African American soldiers convicted in the wake of the 1917 Camp Logan riot. County commissioners voted unanimously for the resolution. The vote came just a few weeks after the U.S. Army set aside the convictions of 110 Black soldiers sentenced for their participation in the incident. The soldiers of the 3^rd Battalion, U.S. 24^th Infantry Regiment had been sent to Harris County to guard the construction of Camp Logan, on the grounds of what is now Memorial Park, during the First World War. Click here to read more, and learn how Harris County "will remain committed to creating a more equitable justice system for all and standing against the scourge of racism wherever it exists.”

The horrors of World War One were expressed by many of the soldiers who fought in the conflict but few did so with such power and eloquence as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Owen is often regarded as the best wartime poet of his generation but his potential may never have been realized had he not met Sassoon at Craiglockhart, a hospital in Edinburgh for shell-shocked soldiers. Click here to read more, and find out about a new book exploring how enlightened treatment of what was then called "shell shock" at Craiglockhart was able to return more soldiers to the front than other mental hospitals during the war, as well as play a role in the writing of "the best poetry of the First World war."

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Corporal Everett Hogoboom. He was born on November 13^th, 1895, in Onetta, New York. He was a Firefighter for the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Buffalo, New York. He was inducted on September 20^th, 1918, in Laporte, Pennsylvania, and sent to Camp Meade for basic training. Initially a member of HQ Co. 314^th Infantry, 79^th Division, he was transferred to Company “M” of the same regiment before sailing to France in July of 1918.

On September 27^th, 1918, Company “M” of the 314^th Infantry led the attack towards Nantillois from Montfaucon when they came under intense bombardment and machine gun fire. CPL Hogoboom was declared Killed in Action and reportedly buried the following day by Chaplain H.L. Kearns. After the war, the graves registration service could not locate the grave of CPL Hogoboom, and a search of the reported burial site was completed in 1927 without results. Chaplain Kearns recalled burying the remains of a shell-torn body near the listed burial location of CPL Hogoboom but could not recall the man's identity. CPL Hogoboom is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, France.

Would you like to be involved with solving the case of Corporal Everett Hogoboom, 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.

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