Featured Articles
Truman’s ‘Rough Bunch’: Future President Learned Leadership Lessons In WWI
He was a decisive, plain-spoken leader who became the 33rd president of the United States. But more than two decades before he became president, Harry Truman served as an artillery officer in World War I. [...]
During World War I, cats were used in the trenches to boost morale
The Great War was such a difficult time, some soldiers sought out the assistance and comfort of four-legged friends — including cats, who were used in the trenches to boost morale. Dogs, homing pigeons, foxes, [...]
As Empires Clashed During World War I, a Global Media Industry Brought the Conflict’s Horrors to the Public
An exhibition at LACMA traces the roots of modern media to the Great War, when propaganda mobilized the masses, and questions whether the brutal truths of the battlefield can ever really be communicated More than [...]
A Chicago Doughboy’s Postcard from France
Paul Kurowski Nothing makes history more interesting than a personal connection to the distant times one usually only reads about in books. And so, when I learned from a cousin in 2018 that [...]
Mercy Dogs: Meet the Heroes Who Delivered Aid and Comforted the Dying On the Battlefields of World War I
Over 16 million total animals were in service during the Great War. In the agony of trench warfare and no man’s land, the sound of a skitter and a wet nose — typically a rat, doubled [...]
Grace Banker and Her Hello Girls Answer the Call: The Heroic Story of WWI Telephone Operators
Several years ago I spent quite a bit of time studying the early 1900s through WWI. I read nonfiction and fiction about and from that era. So I was fascinated when I discovered Switchboard Soldiers: A [...]
The Christmas Party at Camp Upton 1918
Telephone Operators Quartered in U. S. Army Barracks Transform Their Home at Upton Into a Santa Claus Paradise CAMP UPTON!" called the conductor. The train came to a standstill, wheezing and coughing as its burden [...]
In World War I, France started to build a fake Paris to confuse German bombers
Just after noon on August 30, 1914, about a month into World War I, a biplane marked with the German iron cross under its wings flew 6,000 feet above France’s capital city. Soon, to the [...]
The Great War Atrocity That Changed War Crimes Prosecutions Forever
I first encountered the story of His Majesty’s Hospital Ship (HMHS) Llandovery Castle while doing online research about the First World War. I came across a reference to the Leipzig War Crimes Trials—the forgotten attempt [...]
