Featured Articles
Review: Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War
“They roll about,” wrote Brown of his subjects, “gripping at the sides of the stretcher, or rolling on the floor, tearing at their hair with their hands, contorting themselves in every possible way, foaming at [...]
Fayette County, Ohio’s Last World War I Death in Service
Nearly eight months to the day after Armistice had been declared, Fayette County, Ohio lost its last son in World War I. Seaman Second Class Homer Perdue drowned on July 12, 1919, in the sinking [...]
Has the U.S. Ever Fought On Russian Soil? You’d Be surprised.
The story of how American troops battled Lenin’s soldiers in northern Russia may be missing from most history books—but the forgotten conflict still influences relations between nations to this day. Then he left Michigan in [...]
How the Start of World War I Changed an American Heiress’s Life Forever
On the one hand, Mrs. Stan Harding Krayl, as she was known in Germany, and Mrs. Marguerite Harrison had much in common. Well bred, well educated, and well traveled, both were reddish-haired beauties with mischievous [...]
Veteran seriously wounded during Second Battle of the Marne in World War I
Throughout the years, Mark Weber heard many fascinating tales about his great uncle, Henry Weber, who was wounded in World War I and laid in a trench before being discovered by a fellow soldier. [...]
World War Wednesday: Ice Cream and Hospital Ships (1918)
Ice Cream, the Navy, and World War I I've been getting a lot of calls for information about ice cream lately, and that has sent me down a rabbit hole. I did a whole talk [...]
What the Doughboy Really Carried In World War One
Imagine you’re a twenty to-year-old 2nd L.T. in the U.S. Army. You joined the American Expeditionary Force in Europe in 1917. The Great War is raging on. You have an infantry platoon to lead, so [...]
The American Sculptor Who Rebuilt Faceless Veterans
During World War I, Anna Coleman Ladd – born 145 years ago this month – moved to Paris and made masks for men whose physical identities had been ripped apart by the conflict. Thanks to [...]
A fallen Doughboy’s well-traveled footlocker
Last spring, I posted a two-part blog about Howard Lee Strohl, an Army officer who was killed in France in the First World War. A nice surprise followed. I heard from his great-niece, a researcher of her [...]
