The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission continues its campaign for passage of the current Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal legislation in the 118th Congress. The Hello Girls made critical battlefield tactical communications work effectively for U.S. and French military forces on the front lines of World War I, saving many lives by helping bring the long war to a quicker end. However, when the Hello Girls returned home after WWI ended, they were denied veterans status and benefits until 1977. The Hello Girls earned and deserve the recognition of a Congressional Gold Medal, and you can help make that happen in the 118th  Congress! Click here for our toolbox that makes the process of reaching out to your Representative and Senators very straightforward. Congress is now in session November 28 to December 16, so this is an excellent time to reach out to your Senators and Representative, and tell them that you want them to cosponsor Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal legislation in the 118th Congress.

When their nation called in 1918, the Hello Girls answered --please answer their call in 2023!

As the nation focused on Veterans Day this month, attention was being paid to The Doughboy Foundation’s award-winning WWI Memorial Apps and core WWI Teaching Resources available to help educate students about the history of The War That Changed the World, and why it was and is critical to our nation’s development.  Click here to read more and watch video of media covering these free, high-quality resources for teaching and learning created in conjunction with world class experts using leading-edge technology.

"The first World War transformed America, but its impact is often forgotten." That's something that technologist Theo Mayer has been working to change for the last ten years, and in a recent essay, he gives an update on the progress made during the WWI Centennial Commemoration and beyond to address this issue. Click here to read more, and learn why "there is clear consensus that “how WWI changed America,” is a subject that has not received the focus it deserves."  

"And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair* is work for choir and chamber orchestra based on texts by World War I poets that debuted on November 10, 2018 in a concert dedicated to Armistice Day November 11, 1918 when the guns fell silent on the Western Front. Composer Joseph Turrin talks about how the cantata came to be written, ahead of another performance of the work in New York City on December 3, 2023. Click here to read more about "And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair*, and learn how to attend the performance next Sunday in Manhattan.

Arlene Bridges Samuels' father, Henry Erwin Bridges, served as a Regimental Sergeant Bugler in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. "Like most veterans then and now, he did not talk about his traumatic war experiences," writes Arlene. "However, Daddy shared one story which laid the foundation for my patriotism, my honor for him, and veterans past and present." While visiting Washington, DC recently, Arlene attended Daily Taps at the National World War I Memorial in her father's memory. Click here to read Arlene's entire essay, and learn how "hearing the uniformed bugler at the WWI Memorial, and reading the tributes, deeply embedded a musical and visual memory into my heart."

Writing for the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Ed Saunders, writer, WWI historian, and photographer, chronicled a recent visit to Washington, DC: "Promptly at 5 p.m., every day, rain or shine, blizzard or heat, a volunteer bugler wearing a period World War I U.S. Army uniform stands at attention near the flagpole at the National World War One Memorial not far from the White House in Washington D.C. On a brilliant autumn day, I watched as a Black soldier attired in a World War I Army uniform marched to the memorial’s flagpole. He wore the distinctive blue helmet of the 93rd Infantry Division, the “Blue Helmets” one of two all-Black infantry divisions of the American Expeditionary Force assigned to the blue-helmeted French army in World War I." Click here to read Ed's entire article, and learn how Taps "belongs to all who wish to render honors for those who wore the uniform of a nation."

Michael Coker, almost on a whim, bought from an eBay dealer a bag of letters that the dealer had purchased  "from a picker who had found them in a dumpster along an interstate near a house that was being cleaned out for sale." A week later, after literally debugging the package of letters, Coker determined that "despite their initial condition they were once treasured family heirlooms" that documented a World War I romance between two young people from Parkersburg, VA. Click here to read more, and find out how these initially buggy letters eventually led Coker to chronicle the WWI love story of Cecil “Zeke” Gabriel and Louise Marsh in an academic project and a West Virginia museum exhibit - and he's not done with them yet!

“Private Thomas Neibaur is not listed among the most prominent names in the annals of U.S. military history,” his biographer writes, “but some think he should be. . . . Neibaur was one of the most decorated veterans of the Great War.” So begins the exploration by writer Tara Ross of how in "a one-man battle against roughly 50 Germans" Neibaur, who enlisted in the Army when he was just 18 years old, earned the nation's highest battlefield honor. Click here to read the entire story, and learn how Neibaur, returned home a hero, but encountered challenges in the aftermath of World War I.

Key Publishing’s new book Contact! Early US Naval and Marine Corps Aviation, 1911-1918 by Alan C Carey, notes that the Navy and Marine Corps "had little idea of how to prepare for aerial warfare, as evidenced in a cablegram from the Secretary of the Navy to Admiral Sims dated April 20, 1918. Sims pointed out: “Immediate and complete information is desired by the Navy Department regarding the current development of the British of their naval aeronautics. For example, what aircraft style is most used and successful over the water? What is the method of launching at sea when the carrier vessel is underway? For coastal patrol and submarine searching, what aircraft types are used?” Click here to find out how the Fleet and the Corps answered those questions, and created Naval Aviation for America.

On May 7, 1915, Royal Mail Ship Lusitania was sunk within sight of land by a German submarine. Of her 1,962 passengers and crew, 1,199 (some estimates are higher) lost their lives. In the midst of the Dardanelles-Gallipoli crisis, the tragedy seemed incidental to some. Yet for a century, rumors swirled that Lusitania was deliberately sacrificed by the British, chiefly Winston Churchill. His alleged aim was to so infuriate the Americans as to bring them into the war against Germany. More recently, critics charged that Churchill’s Admiralty purposely contrived to steer the ship into harm’s way. Click here to read more from The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College about this World War I controversy still swirling after 100 years. 

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth has approved the recommendation of the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to set aside the courts-martial convictions of the 110 Black Soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (also known as the Buffalo Soldiers), who were convicted following the World War I-era Houston Riots. The records of these Soldiers will be corrected, to the extent possible, to characterize their military service as honorable. Click here to read the entire story, and learn how "this decision provides the Army and the American people an opportunity to learn from this difficult moment in our history.”

Harry Parkin (1880–1946) was born into a well-to-do Pittsburgh family. He was a product of the prewar Plattsburgh training camp as well as the April 1917 Fort Niagara Officers Training Camp. Commissioned a captain, Parkin commanded a company and then a battalion of the 316th Infantry Regiment, part of the National Army’s 79th Division. He rose to the rank of major and was in temporary command of the regiment for a short time during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Severely wounded in action and captured by the Germans on 4 November 1918, Parkin, who earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on that day, survived the war and captivity and wrote this excellent memoir describing his service. Click here to read more about this "wonderful addition to the historiography of the American Expeditionary Forces."

Capt. Hamilton was the on-the-scene commander of the Marine companies of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, charged on 6 June 1918 with the capture of Hill 142 overlooking right flank of the attacking French 167th Division and the left flank of the subsequent U.S. main assault on Belleau Wood. He was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). The account of the action was included in a November 1919 letter to the Marine Corps commandant requesting a clarification in the citation accompanying the award. Click here to read the entire letter describing the events of June 5-6, 1918 that earned Hamilton the DSC, and another of his soldiers the Medal of Honor.

A letter to The Washington Post evoked the story of how, from 1929 to 1938, Arlington National Cemetery was home to a unique memorial honoring Americans killed in World War I.  Designed by French sculptor Gaston Deblaize, the memorial was a four-foot tall concrete column containing sacks of soil, each from a battlefield on which American soldiers had fought. A gift to America, it was erected in Section 18 of Arlington National Cemetery, on the west side of Clayton Avenue, in March of 1929 and dedicated the following May. Click here to read more about this unique memorial connecting the battlefields of France to the grave sites at Arlington National Cemetery--a memorial that, regrettably, no longer exists.

As far back as 1908, when the Australian Prime Minister invited the U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet to stop in Australia during their world tour, the U.S. and Australia have been military allies for over one hundred years. In World War I, soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force’s II Corps served with Australians, New Zealanders, and Canadians as part of the British Fourth Army, which spearheaded the Allied Hundred Days offensive that began in the British sector with the Battle of Amiens and ended with the Armistice in November 1918. Click here to find out more about how the colonial cousins trained and fought together in the Great War, forging a relationship that has had great value in many conflicts since then.

Winston Churchill’s remarkable life was filled with genuine “OMG” moments, from withstanding the disastrous Gallipoli campaign during the First World War to leading Britain through World War II as prime minister. Churchill held a front-row seat to many history-defining moments, even including the little-known origin of the term “OMG” itself. The expression “OMG,” an acronym for “Oh My God,” became popular as early internet lingo during the 1990s, and is omnipresent now. But click here to learn how the first known use of the acronym actually dates back to a letter written to Churchill in 1917, while he was serving as First Lord of the Admiralty in the British navy.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Second Lieutenant Chester Hinkley Kennedy, of the 1st Aero Squadron. Chester Kennedy was born November 25, 1895 in McMinnville, Tennessee to Clarence and Myra Hinkley Kennedy. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where he majored in Engineering. According to the Volunteer yearbook for 1917, his junior year, Chester was a vice-president of the Engineering Society and a member of the university’s Rifle Club.

Before the start of his senior year, Kennedy enlisted in the U.S. Army at Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. Sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, he served with Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 6th Field Artillery. He received his commission on August 15, 1917. Kennedy later transferred to the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, and began training at Selfridge Field, Michigan, a center for aerial gunnery and photography training.

On July 8, 1918, 2nd Lieutenant Kennedy sailed for France aboard the liner America. Once in France, he continued his training at the 2nd Aviation Instruction Center in Tours. There, he would receive intensive instruction in aerial observation, gunnery, and radio. After several weeks of study, Chester Kennedy was finally ready to join an operational squadron.

Click To Read 2LT Kennedy's Whole Story.

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