Featured Articles
March 1915 – At a Crossroad in the Development of U.S. Navy Submarines
A little under fifteen years from the day the US Navy purchased their first submarine, the future of the small craft was still not settled. In 1915, the United States faced a number of [...]
Women’s History Month: Honoring World War I Nurses and Norfolk’s Own Kate Talcott Cooke
World War I (1914-1918) played a critical role in advancing the nursing profession in the United States and the role of female nurses in general. During World War I women joined both the U.S. [...]
Liberation: 29th Division Association leads efforts to construct Meuse-Argonne Offensive monument
The 29th Division Association is leading the efforts to construct a monument to honor the contributions of the 79th, 29th, and 33rd Divisions to the great Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The Offensive was a key part [...]
“Willing to die with fatigue”: Rebecca N. Rhoads, canteen worker in WWI
Rebecca N. Rhoads, from her 1925 passport application. A member of a Quaker family, Rebecca Naomi Rhoads was born in Bellefonte, PA, in November 1872. Her father, Daniel Rhoads, first worked in [...]
Why I Wrote the Book: The Robust Life & Music of Noble Sissle, Sr.
Biography of a Broadway Show Co-Producer, Lyricist, Tenor Soloist, Harlem Hellfighter, Veteran, International Jazz Conductor and Entrepreneur During the pandemic in mid-April 2021, I started researching Noble Sissle, Sr. There were a few pages [...]
WWI Trench Guns: Shotguns for Ferocious Fighting
The warfighters of World War 1 had one foot in the past and one in the future. Swords and horses were still being used but automatic weapons, airplanes and tanks were newfangled weapons. When [...]
Bennie Owens, QMC
During World War I, African Americans volunteered and participated in droves to fight for their country, just as they have done in every military conflict in the history of the United States. One such [...]
Meet ‘Sergeant Stubby’—A WWI Dog Who Wandered Onto A U.S. Army Training Ground In 1917
As history has shown, animals have never been spared from the horrors of war. Horses carried cavalry through blood-soaked battlefields, pigeons risked the skies as couriers and dogs patrolled the trenches, sniffing out dangers before human senses could [...]
The hidden stories of the First World War
A message, written on somebody’s skin: “lesion to upper thigh, wound infected”. The message would have been read by a volunteer nurse who stood in the vaulted room of what had once been a hotel, [...]