Taps is sounded each day at 5:00 p.m. at the new National World War I Memorial in Washington DC. The National World War I Memorial is located on Pennsylvania Ave between 14th and 15th Streets. Taps is sounded by a bugler from Taps for Veterans to honor the memory of 4.7 million Americans who finished a fight they did not start, in a land they had never visited, for peace and liberty for people they did not know. The sounding honors those Doughboys who did their ‘bit’ for their country. The daily sounding of Taps began Monday May 24th and will continue through Veterans Day, at the foot of the flagpole at the Memorial. Click here to read more about the daily sounding, with cooperation of the U.S. WWI Centennial Commission, The Doughboy Foundation, The America Battlefield Monuments Commission, the National Park Service and Taps For Veterans.

“It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more,” John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776. For 245 years the Fourth of July has been synonymous with hot dogs, red, white, and blue outfits purchased from Old Navy, and fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks. Precisely as our Founding Father predicted. But in 1917, as war continued to rage on the Western Front, the newly arrived American Doughboys expected little pomp and circumstance to mark their nation’s independence. However, leave it to the nation’s oldest ally, the French, to throw a party. Click here to read more about how America’s Independence Day was celebrated in Europe in 1917.

“Most Americans with a passing knowledge of history know of General Pershing’s July 4, 1917, march through Paris with the newly arrived American troops to the tomb of Lafayette where, on behalf of America, Pershing’s aide Colonel Charles Stanton uttered the famous words “Lafayette, we are here.” But too many are unaware of the actions and sacrifices of Kiffin Rockwell and other American boys dating back to the outset of the Great War more than two and a half years before Pershing’s arrival.” Author Mark M. Trapp helps build more awareness of that pre-1917 service by Americans in WWI with his new book A Destiny of Undying Greatness: Kiffin Rockwell and the Boys Who Remembered Lafayette. Click here to read more about the book, and learn how a chance encounter with an unusual first name began five years of research that changed the author’s life.

In late July 1914, American artist Ernest Peixotto and his wife, Mary, returned from a sketching trip in Portugal to the small studio-home in the French village of Samois-sur-Seine that had been their base for 15 years. A week later, Germany and France declared war on each other. Overnight, the atmosphere of gaiety disappeared. The Allied victory at the Marne dashed hopes on both sides that the war would be brief, and the Peixottos decided to return to the United States. Four years later Ernest Peixotto would return to France as one of eight artists attached to the American Expeditionary Forces. Click here to read more about Peixotto’s experience as a uniformed artist, charged with the often conflicting tasks of documenting the war for the historical record while creating stirring images of American soldiers in battle that could be used for propaganda at home.

Basic training follows a predictable pattern. A bunch of kids show up, someone shaves their heads, and they learn to shoot rifles. But it turns out that training can be so, so much better than that. In World War I, it included mascots, tarantulas, and snowmen. Click here to view a collection of rarely-seen photos from the We Are The Mighty web site and learn about what it was like to prepare for war 100 years ago when the United States entered World War I.

In the years between the first and second world wars, most people thought World War I really was the “War to End All Wars,” and they reacted appropriately. Memorials were raised all over the country to men who died in the trenches “over there.” At the time, there weren’t really national memorials dedicated to those who died in America’s wars, and those that were built weren’t in Washington, D.C. After the unprecedented destruction and loss of life that came with World War I, municipalities across the United States began dedicating memorials to their local war dead. Click here to read more, and learn how the people of Barren County, Kentucky, through the local American Legion post, placed the tribute to their fallen loved ones inside of nearby Mammoth Cave.

Elizabeth Francis was born in 1909. William Taft had just become President of the United States. The NAACP was in its infancy, only a few months old. At 7, Francis watched women fight for the right to vote. She lived through World War I and the Spanish Flu. She survived the Great Depression and lived through World War II. The March on Washington happened days after her 54th birthday. She saw the images from Vietnam and kept up with the space race. She’s seen technology evolve and saw a monumental shift in civil rights for Americans. Click here to read more about Elizabeth, and see video of her drive-by 112th birthday celebration in Houston.

Imagine the Fort Worth of a century ago. Imagine what the Star-Telegram at the time described as “a wind-swept, untrampled tract of a prairie” on the western edge of town. Now imagine that in just three months that wind-swept, untrampled tract of prairie would become decidedly trampled, would become transformed, would become a city of thirty thousand people. But this instant city would be different. It would have a rifle range, an artillery range, battlefield trenches. And its population of thirty thousand would be mostly male. Click here to learn more about the Army’s Camp Bowie in the summer of 1917, and how, in terms of America’s response to the nation’s declaration of war against Germany in World War I, Camp Bowie was Camp Quick.

Writing for the Marine Corps University Press, Thomas Bruscino notes that “A common view is that the U.S. military adopted wholesale the Soviet concept of operational depth in the 1970s and 1980s. However, a closer look at U.S. Army concepts, doctrine, and planning reveals that the concept, word, and definition of depth existed in the U.S. military prior to the 1970s. The beginnings of depth in the U.S. Army predate even the great interwar Soviet theorists. The American idea traces to the World War I era, during which it was made manifest in the Joint campaign and operations known as the Meuse-Argonne offensive.” Click here to read more about how this key military doctrine emerged from one of the bloodiest battles in American history during the closing months of World War I.

The U.S. Naval War College (USNWC) and the Naval War College Foundation (NWCF) have used the centenary of the first “great war” and the pandemic of 1918 to reconsider the historical influence upon contemporary discussions of future maritime strategy. Research in original documentary sources has enabled practitioners at the USNWC to develop fresh strategic perspectives about the future of American sea power. Just as Admirals Stephen B. Luce and Alfred Thayer Mahan used history with an applied purpose, the NWCF has encouraged contemporary historical research with the gracious support of the Pritzker Military Foundation, on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. Click here to read more, and learn how the experts continue to discover fresh historical perspectives about the lasting influence of the First World War upon contemporary concepts of American sea power and the future of maritime strategy in the twenty-first century.

On July 4, 1918, the biggest sports competition in Europe wasn’t soccer, rugby, or cricket. Rather, two teams of “Yanks” — one from the Army and another of Navy personnel, drawn from soldiers and sailors sent to England for World War I — squared off in what British newspapers called the “extraordinary baseball match” pairing teenagers off hometown sandlots with major leaguers. The game brought a stoppage to wartime London and was watched from the stands by no less than King George V and Winston Churchill. Click here to read more, and learn how this game, the brainchild of Rear Adm. William Sims, grew out of the desire to improve morale among the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe.

A few years ago, Matt Cavanaugh was standing in Memorial Park in Manitou Springs when he noticed an enormous rock in the middle of the park. It was a platform for a bronze statue of a World War I-era soldier, a “Doughboy,” lunging forward towards Pikes Peak, as if to meet some unseen danger. But, Cavanaugh wondered, who was he? Click here to read more, and follow Cavanaugh’s deep dive into into historical records and old newspapers that revealed the statue’s honoree: Marine Corps Pvt. George Eber Duclo.

Bethel School in Honesdale, PA may have closed decades ago, but there has been no shortage of learning there. On Sunday, July 11 Bethel School held an open house and a lecture. The old wooden desks were occupied with those eager to learn something new once again as local historian Bernadine Lennon presented a lecture entitled “The Army within the Army.” The lecture focused on the volunteers and other unsung heroes that kept the American armies fighting. Click here to learn more, and read about the efforts to identify and honor the local men and women who served the nation during World War I.

Springfield, IL’s Lafore Lock Post 755 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this month, is named after World War I U.S. Army Pvt. Farley Lafore Lock. Lock died Oct. 18, 1918, of wounds he suffered from an artillery shell the day before in the Verdun sector of France. Born in 1896, Lafore was one of 10 children (eight of them boys) of Nelson and Gretta Lock. Click here to read more about Lock, and learn how, when Springfield veterans of World War I formed Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 755 in April 1921, its members voted to name the post after him.

Just over a century ago, the United States government – in the midst of World War I – undertook unprecedented efforts to control and restrict what it saw as “unpatriotic” speech through passage of the Sedition Act of 1918, signed by President Woodrow Wilson on May 16 of that year. The restrictions – and the courts’ reactions to them – mark an important landmark in testing the limits of the First Amendment, and the beginnings of the current understanding of free speech in the U.S. Scholar and lawyer Eric P. Robinson has studied the federal government’s attempts to restrict speech, including during World War I, and the legal cases that challenged them. Click here to read more, and learn how these cases from WWI helped form the modern idea of the First Amendment right of free speech, and how the conflict between patriotism and free expression continues to be an issue a century later.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Corporal Juet Caudle.

Not much has been discovered about our man this month, with further efforts hobbled by the continued closure of the National Personnel Records Center, which continues to try and catch up on their backlog of work due to Covid closure. What we do know is that Juet W. Caudle was born 14 October 1898 in Millville, Kentucky to George and Lida Caudle. He was the oldest of the five children the couple would have. They were a farming family, who owned their own land. Juet is occasionally listed as George J. Caudle and Jewet or Jewel Caudle.

It appears that Caudle may have enlisted before the war (1915) while underage. What is known is that he was among the first of our troops that arrived overseas in June, 1917 with the 18^th Infantry, 1^st Division. Fighting all the way through the engagements the 18^th Regiment was involved in during their first year in France, Caudle went into the Soissons Offensive with them on July 18^th, 1918. Corporal Caudle is sometimes listed as having been killed in action on the first day of the offensive, while the ABMC officially lists his date of death as July 21^st, 1918. Unfortunately nothing more is known about his case at his time. He is memorialized on the Tablets to the Missing at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau, France.

Want to help us find out more about Caudle and the other 4,423 missing American service personnel from the war? Please consider making a donation to our 501(c)3 not for profit organization. Just visit www.ww1cc.org/mia today and make your tax deductible donation today. That way you’ll have done your part to help us account for our missing boys too. Help us keep their memories alive.

Can you spare just ten dollars? Give ‘Ten For Them’ to Doughboy MIA and help us make a full accounting of the 4,423 American service personnel still listed as missing in action from WW1. Make your tax deductible donation now, with our thanks.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

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