Featured Articles
After proving his leadership in WWI, General Graves B. Erskine was entrusted with escorting the body of the Unknown Soldier from Le Havre, France, to the United States
Prior to shooting Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949, John Wayne and Republic Pictures enlisted General Graves B. Erskine as a military consultant to give the film an authentic representation of Marine life and combat. Erskine’s [...]
Opha May Johnson was first woman in the United States Marine Corps
On August 13, 1918, the United States Marine Corps opened its ranks to women for the first time in its history. The country was in the final months of World War I, and the [...]
Roy H. Oplinger and the 158th Aero Squadron Survive the Sinking of the SS Tuscania
The 158th Aero Squadron and the Sinking of the SS Tuscania On the night of February 5, 1918, the troopship SS Tuscania was steaming off the coast of Islay, Scotland, when it was struck by a torpedo [...]
Essential Reads: 11 Books That Shaped Our Understanding of U.S. Involvement in WWI
Turn your attention to the groundbreaking works that shaped how generations understand America’s role, sacrifices, and shifting perspectives during the First World War. World War I forever altered America’s place in the world, and [...]
How a 5-foot porter from Albany became America’s first Black war hero in WWI France
Henry Johnson’s Heroic Stand Against Overwhelming German Forces The Harlem Hellfighters Memorial in New York honors soldiers who fought harder for respect than victory. Henry Johnson was a 5-foot-4-inch railroad porter from Albany who [...]
WWI Films and Documentaries Worth Watching
The First World War was a conflict unlike any before it — a mix of brutal trench fighting, industrial-scale destruction, and human stories that still echo today. While history books give you the facts, [...]
‘The Hello Girls’ tunefully honors America’s first female soldiers at Syracuse Stage
In 1918, under the order of General John J. Pershing, the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit sailed for France to run switchboard operations on the frontlines during the twilight of the First World War.Nearly [...]
Silver Star Medal for Lieutenant (nurse) Elizabeth Dorothy Sandelius Army Nurse Corps, World War One
In dusty archives of the Montana state library a lone military historian, an Army combat veteran, pieced together a remarkable, unheralded, and compelling story of a courageous young Montana woman: a uniformed World War [...]
There Will Come Soft Rains: A Journey Along the Western Front
The Dream of Walking the Western Front On a late April evening in the spring of 2022, after two long years of the pandemic, the world that had been shut down for so long, [...]
