Presentation on the service of foreign-born men and woman in U.S. military during WWI scheduled November 16 in Henrico, VA

CW4(ret) Alexander F. Barnes give a presentation on the service of foreign-born men and woman in the U.S. military during the First World War. It will take place at the Belmont Recreation Center, 1600 Hilliard Road, Henrico, Virginia at 2:00 p.m. on 16 November 2025.

Al and Pete Belmonte co-authored the 2018 Foreword INDIES Gold Award Winner “Forgotten Soldiers of World War I: America’s Immigrant Doughboys” in 2018.

The United States is a nation of immigrants, and the U.S. Army during World War I certainly reflected this. Irish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Cuban, German, Armenian, Greek, Russian, and Turkish immigrants, among others, all had come to America in search of work, citizenship, or both. As a result, they too became part of the US military during the war. For some, military service was a ready-made path to citizenship while others were much less enthusiastic about taking up arms. Nonetheless, in 1917 the draft became the law of the land and all men, regardless of birthplace, between the ages of 18 to 45 were subject to it. The story of the “aliens” in the AEF is compelling and points to a further definition of what citizenship implies.

Al Barnes was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and grew up in an Air Force family. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1974 and then joined the Army National Guard in 1977, retiring as a Virginia Army National Guard chief warrant officer in 2004. He retired from the US Army at Fort Lee in July 2015 after 30 years of service as an Army Civilian including deployments in Desert Storm, Bosnia, and Kuwait. He has a master’s degree in Anthropology and has authored or co-authored ten U.S. military history books including “In a Strange land: The American Occupation of Germany 1918-1923”; “To Hell With the Kaiser: America Prepares for War”; and “Bullets, Bandages and Beans: U.S. Army logistics in France in World War I.” He is currently serving as the Command Historian for the Virginia National Guard.

His next book will be published by McFarland Publishing this fall and is entitled “Follow Me! Pershing’s Division Commanders in World War I.”

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