U.S. World War I Centennial Commission Commissioner Dr. Libby O'Connell will be the featured speaker at the Washington, D.C. event. She will discuss the essential service that the Hello Girls provided to the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I, and why their legacy of military service deserves to be honored a century later by the award of a Congressional Gold Medal..

Americans everywhere are invited to organize local Bells of Peace ceremonies on November 11 at 11am local time wherever they are. To support these ceremonies across the nation and around the world, a WebApp, created by the Doughboy Foundation, is available at BellsOfPeace.org, for anyone who plans to participate in Bells of Peace ceremonies. Organizations or groups planning local Bells of Peace events are encouraged to register their event via the Bells of Peace website, and to use the hashtags #BellsOfPeace and #TollTheBells to post about their activities on social media.

Before and after November 11, the new campaign for passage of the Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal legislation in the 118th Congress continues. 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 faster end. But 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 you can help make that happen in this Congress!

Nearly 30 military and history museums across the United States are among the well over 100 museums worldwide which will be screening the new film “The War To End All Wars – The Movie” by the Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton, between November 4th and 19th – the two weeks surrounding the 105^th  anniversary of Armistice Day in 1918, observed as Veterans Day in the U.S. The showings are part of the groundbreaking charitable museum initiative entitled “History Rocks“ that offers museums the opportunity to screen the new animated film, with the museums keeping all gate receipts. Click here to read more, and find out how your favorite local area history or military museum can take part in this project, the goal of which is "to drive millions of Sabaton fans worldwide, as well as all history enthusiasts, into these participating museums."

Following sold-out and critically acclaimed performances at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Opera House, historian and narrator John Monsky returns to the storied Carnegie Hall with the premiere of November 1918: The Great War & The Great Gatsby on Wednesday, November 8 at 8:00PM. Readers of DISPATCH can use discount code NYC45600 for 10% off tickets for this performance. November 1918: The Great War and the Great Gatsby takes a musical journey through complex times and a war that was believed would end all wars. Celebrated Broadway vocalists and the revered 58-piece Orchestra of St. Luke’s perform music from the era, including iconic jazz favorites, along with rare archival film and photography combine for a powerful exploration of breathtaking WWI stories often lost to history. Click here to read more about November 1918: The Great War and The Great Gatsby, coming to Carnegie Hall in New York on November 8, 2023. ,

The Union County, NJ Board of County Commissioners, in collaboration with the Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, is proud to host Erik L. Burro, historian and photographer, to give a presentation about World War I memorials on November 8th at the Springfield , NJ Public Library. Titled Cheers Of Joy – Lingering Sorrow, the event will explore Burro's mission to visit and photograph as many WWI memorials as he could, creating his photo exhibition, “Legacy of Remembrance.” The construction and design of the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. will also be covered during his presentation. Click here to read more about this event, and find out how you can register in advance to attend.

The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) has partnered with the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and created a unique book “Time Will Not Dim – ABMC A Century of Service, 1923 – 2023,” which was officially launched on Oct. 24, 2023, through a special event at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington D.C. This project complements the recently released virtual 360s of ABMC cemeteries. Together with Time Will Not Dim, they help ABMC "share the legacy of those buried or memorialized at our sites with generations to come." Click here to read more, and learn how the book's goal was "to bring these sites home to the American people as well as tell the story of the agency and the story of the people who work here.”

The U.S. Naval War College hosted its sixth annual "Cardines Classic" baseball game at Cardines Field in downtown Newport, Oct. 6. Designed to be both fun and educational, the event commemorates American servicemembers’ involvement in World War I and the Navy’s commitment to international partnerships. “A little more than 100 years ago, my predecessor, Admiral William S. Sims - hosted King George V of Britain for the great baseball game between U.S. Army and Navy forces in Europe during the First World War,” said Rear Adm. Pete Garvin, president of NWC. “This tribute to those who gave all in service to our great nation is a fitting reminder of their sacrifices and service.” Click here to read more, and learn how this annual game is played in "the oldest continuously used baseball park in the United States."

 A North Dakota state highway bridge was dedicated to Albert Grass, a member of the Teton Sioux tribe and World War I soldier who died in action. ”He wanted to serve his country and serve his people,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe member Timothy Huntsinwinter from Arizona, whose great-great-uncle fought with Albert Grass. Click here to read more about the ceremony, and learn how his body was laid to rest in the town of Cannonball, ND, and his memory is very much alive in the hearts of his family and now, through a piece of infrastructure in this very same town.

In the trailer for the hit new movie release Killers of the Flower Moon, ambivalent bad guy Ernest Berkhart (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio) wears a distinctive World War I Doughboy uniform in the opening scenes. Berkhart’s WWI military service is noted referentially in various publications writing about the new film. For example, Time magazine calls  him “white World War I veteran, Ernest Burkhart.” Slate refers to him as “Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), newly arrived in town after military service in World War I. ” The Cinemaholic web site, in an article headlined “Is Ernest Burkhart Based on a Real Person?,” dismisses the issue with the curt statement that “Following a brief stint in the military, Burkhart moved to Fairfax, Oklahoma” while confirming that, yes, Ernest George Berkhart was indeed a real person. But did the real Ernest Berkhart really serve in World War I? Click here to find out the real answer, and learn more about researching WWI military service.

In the early 1920s, Tuskegee Institute — a historically Black university — donated land to the federal government to build what was originally dedicated in 1923 as the “Veterans Hospital for Negro Disabled Soldiers.”  Says Amir Farooqi, director of the Central Alabama Veterans Healthcare System, which includes this Tuskegee campus, "I kind of think of this as where health equity for veterans began. It really is a piece of history because there was no other VA built like this, It was built specifically for veterans of color, Black American veterans and others who were not receiving the same quality of care or access to care following WWI that they really should have been and that they deserved.” Click here to read more, and learn how Dr. Joseph H. Ward (left), a major in the Medical Corps during WWI, and the first Black director of a VA hospital, faced death threats and allegations of mismanagement from white supremacists.

Writes author Joe Felice: "In August 2022, when I discovered that my great-grandfather John Faulkner served in the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet during World War I, I thought that concluded nearly three years of research into his life and service. I could not imagine that after spending so long emailing various historical societies, museums, and archives that it was possible to learn any more. However, I was about to be surprised." Click here to read the entire story, and learn how the World War I tugboat U.S.S. Samoset connected two families a century later.

Still, the author’s main argument wasn’t totally discredited. Norman Angell’s 1909 book The Great Illusion argued that war was becoming unprofitable, not impossible. In retrospect, World War I and II proved his point rather than discredited it. Even today, superpowers like China are trying to isolate themselves from the global economy. But should they? Click here to read more, and learn how, although largely forgotten, the work of Norman Angell remains relevant today as the same factors that contributed to the world wars — excessive nationalism, radical ideologies, and misguided isolationism — are once again on the rise.

“I was drawn to it because it was a difficult thing to pull off, There’s no trail. But there’s something about it: Why did no one in the family talk about him? He’d given his life for his country at the age of 32. So that was the hook. There was something about Harry I wanted to find out." Thus does author, comedian, Knight, and member of Monty Python's Flying Circus Michael Palin describe the origins of his new book about a family member who served (and perished) in World War I. Click here to read more, and find out more about how Palin created "a remarkable work of forensic genealogy, reassembling the absent bones of a man who left scant clues, told with quiet, affectionate persistence." 

A spellbinding new work of fiction by a Virginia judge reverently memorializes a Culpeper ancestor who died as a young man on the battlefields of France during World War I. “Buddy Green,” by James W. Haley Jr., a senior judge for the Court of Appeals of Virginia, tells the story of the author’s great uncle, James Lewis Green, born Sept. 28, 1898, at Cherry Hill, an Amissville, VA farm that has been in the Green family since 1748. Click here to read more, and learn how Haley wrote the book as a tribute to the family member who never made it back home.

"There has been a call for nurses and doctors to the Red Cross, for work abroad,” Mary Crawford wrote shortly after World War I began. “Tomorrow I’m going to find out if any women doctors need apply.” In October 1914—during an era when women comprised less than 5% of U.S. medical doctors—she left her private surgical practice in Brooklyn to work in a hospital near Paris just a few months after the war broke out, becoming one of the first female MDs to treat troops in WWI. Her time abroad, and the months leading up to her departure, have been chronicled in a new book: This Ghastly War: The Diary and Letters of a Woman Doctor in the American Ambulance Hospital in France, 1914­–1915.

Hervey Allen’s memoir Toward the Flame holds an important place in the legacy of the First World War and the book’s transformation to commemorative object with the release of the 1934 illustrated edition offers an even more nuanced discussion of its impact. The memoir, now rarely even mentioned in brief author bios of Allen, was first published in 1926 and reprinted during the interwar period. Allen died early, in 1949, but it seems likely that the relative neglect and decline in popularity of Toward the Flame in the latter half of the 20th century is related to the declining interest in and changing collective memory of the war. Click here to read more from author Anne Garwig about this neglected landmark book, and learn how this and "other First World War books of the variety once popular and now seldom read shed some light on what shape the legacy of the war took, especially as absent as it feels in contemporary life."

Michael Santoro was a collector of many things as a kid, beginning with a coin collection. Coins eventually turned into vinyls, and vinyls became World War I militaria on Christmas Day 2016, when he received a genuine WWI propaganda poster (left) as a gift. Now Santoro — who graduated from the University of Buffalo with a master’s in architecture and historic preservation in 2023 — eats, sleeps and breathes World War I militaria. Click here to read his entire story, and find out how the artifacts aren’t just objects to Santoro; they’re their own piece of history, with a deep story to tell.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is First Lieutenant Manderson Lehr.

Three French Breguet 14b2 bombers, flying in a driving rainstorm on 15 July 1918, attacked a bridge filled with retreating German Soldiers crossing the Marne River. After dropping their bombs, the three bombers began their return flight to their aerodrome. On their way they were attacked by ten German Albatros D.Va scout fighters from a nearby aerodrome. One of the bombers carried an American pilot and French Observer and was the first to get in serious trouble. The pilot was struck in the head by a German bullet mortally wounding him. The Observer, also wounded, was able to steer the single engine bomber using his feet until it crashed into trees after on the Allied side of the lines. The Observer was thrown out of the aircraft and knocked unconscious and found by an American patrol. He survived the war. The pilot died in the burning wreckage of the bomber. Our Doughboy MIA of the Month is the pilot, First Lieutenant Manderson Lehr, a veteran member of the Lafayette Flying Corps, and to this day officially listed as Missing in Action.

Click to read Manderson Lehr's whole story.

Would you like to be involved with solving the case of First Lieutenant Manderson Lehr, 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.

Bugler/Poppy Commemorative Coin

A great keepsake to commemorate 
Daily Taps at the National World War
One Memorial in Washington, DC.

• A Doughboy.shop Exclusive Commemorative Coin
• The double-sided design showcases the iconic Doughboy Bugler / Poppy design
• Soft enamel color detailing
• Measures 1 3/4″
• Bronze alloy w/ nickel-silver finish

Proceeds from the sale of these items will help finish the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC.

This and many other items are available as Official Merchandise of the Doughboy Foundation.

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