Rickenbacker was a pioneering racer who drove in the Indy 500 four times from 1912-1916 with three starts. But after the U.S. entered World War I, he enlisted in the Army Air Service, became a fighter pilot in the 94th Aero Squadron, and soared to legendary status as America’s “Ace of Aces” with 26 confirmed aerial victories, earning the Medal of Honor. After WWI, among many other accomplishments, he became second owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway!  The Doughboy Foundation will honor Major Eddie Rickenbacker and the WWI legacy of American motor racing with the sounding of Daily Taps at the National World War I Memorial at 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday, August 22. Racing fans in DC for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix may attend in person at the Memorial. Everyone everywhere can watch Daily Taps online via YouTube every day. 

M-HARP recently hosted a memorial dedication ceremony at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, honoring World War I Army Signal Corps telephone operator Renee Messelin. The event followed the National Cemetery Administration’s installation of an “In Memory” marker recognizing Messelin’s military service and ensuring her legacy will be permanently remembered.  M-HARP member Linda Jantzen reports on this long-overdue ceremony, and how "More than a century after she answered her country’s call, Renee Messelin is finally receiving the recognition due to both a soldier and a trailblazer."

M-HARP member Catherine Bourgin reflects on how, in "a remarkable week in June 2026, the Hello Girls’ story was told in a competition hall at the University of Maryland, on a library balcony overlooking McKeldin Mall, in an ordinary classroom that became a stage, and at a symposium table in Maryland’s Veterans Museum. It was told through research and creativity, through a website and a dramatic reading, through a grandmother’s correspondence aged to look like history, and through words spoken quietly from a podium to an attentive audience of military historians and former officers in Newburg, MD." Read the entire article, and learn how, 106 years after they returned from WWI and were almost lost to history, "The Hello Girls are still being found."

The Maryland Veteran’s Museum is a local initiative of Maryland veterans in Southern Maryland who 20 years ago turned an abandoned schoolhouse into an excellent small museum, local community center, and conference facility. Most exhibits are local donations, but it has been developing an active audiovisual/interactive component and specialized displays.  The Museum has hosted the last three conferences of the Western Front Organization, East Coast US Branch, which has created a desire to strengthen its World War I displays and exhibits. Read more about how the museum is soliciting donations of artifacts (items, books, posters, etc.) about World War I, and find out how you can help build their historical collection on WWI.

"This is a uniform I have had for a while, but it was worth sharing with the world because of something I found in the national archives that really brings this uniform to life. In the past, I’d been able to find a Signal Corps photograph showing Harold Holliday with two other men on patrol in the snow-blanketed woods, clad in white canvas coats and hoods as camouflage to reduce the chance of discovery. This was taken on February 21st, 1919."  Michael Santoro explores more of the hidden history to be found in WWI artifacts. Read the whole story of this WWI uniform, see photos from the front, and watch a remarkable period video of the soldiers of the Polar Bear Division in North Russia.

"In the Spring of 1917, the Pittsburgh Post reported on the enlistment of a certain Andrew A. Cohill into the conflict that is now known to us as the First World War. The Post detailed this story under the headline “Joins to See Brother” stating, “With the hope of seeing his brother, who is now in France with the Thirty-Fourth Gary Infantry…Andrew A. Cohill…enlisted yesterday in the engineering regiment. His brother, J.L. Cohill, went to the front with the first of the Canadian troops. The last word from him was a letter from France received last December.” From this beginning, Katherine Haun traces the journey of Andrew and his sibilings John and Victoria into and after World War I. Learn how the three, separated after the death of their mother, scattered about the world during and after World War I, but  how interesting links remain a century later. 

In late March 1916, the 5^th Cavalry regiment was sent on an expedition across the Mexican Border due to the continuing threat from revolutionary Pancho Villa, who, at this point, had led several raids in United States territory, resulting in the death of American civilians and soldiers. Historian James Angel notes that "The actions along the border are often overshadowed by America’s entry into the First World War the following year. Yet, these actions resulted in the death of U.S. service members and civilians, and their sacrifice remains worthy of research and study." Read about one such soldier, Andrew Watson of Tennessee, who with the rest of the 5^th Cavalry regiment, went on the expedition into Mexico to help aid with suppressing the forces under Pancho Villa.

The Consulate General of France in Atlanta presented Hilliard Chastain’s family with his World War I dog tag on July 13 in celebration of Bastille Day and 250 years of friendship between France and the United States. Delphine Jeroudi, communications and press officer at the Consulate General of France in Atlanta, said the rare reunification of a WWI veteran’s family with his dog tag is “a meaningful reminder of the enduring solidarity and bond between our two nations...this is actually the first time for us that we will give back a dog tag from World War I.” Learn more about the ceremony celebrating the 250th anniversary of the French-American friendship, and Hilliard Chastain, born in Jackson, AL, who deployed to Europe in November 1917 with the 42nd “Rainbow” Division, and somehow lost the dogtag there, and the process that ultimately delivered it to his descendants a century later.

More than a century after the guns fell silent along the Western Front on November 11, 1918, the First World War has slipped entirely out of living memory. Every one of the 4.7 million Americans who mobilized for the conflict has passed on, and the firsthand voices of the trenches went with them. What remains is physical. The objects these men and women carried, wrote, and brought home are now the closest thing we have to their testimony. For the families who keep them, these keepsakes do something no history book can. Read more, and learn how a letter, a dented helmet,or a tarnished medal takes the vast and abstract story of the Great War and anchors it to one person, one name, one life. They are how a great-grandchild comes to meet a man they never knew.

On Sunday, July 5, at Arlington National Cemetery, representatives from France and the United States, including U.S. Gold Star Mothers who have lost children in recent conflicts, marked 250 years of shared commitment to liberty by dedicating a restored World War I monument. Gold Star Mothers placed into the memorial “sacred soil” they gathered this past May from French and Belgian World War I battlefields. Find out how the original Sacred Soil Marker, the only one outside France, was placed at the Arlington National Cemetery in 1929. But that memorial was destroyed in 1938, leading to this new effort coinciding with the 250th U.S. birthday and longstanding U.S.-France relationship.

Named after a mythological one-eyed figure, the USS Cyclops just disappeared. The U.S. Navy bulk cargo ship departed Barbados for Baltimore on a scheduled nine-day voyage. The vessel—540 feet long and 65 feet wide—carried more than 300 people along with approximately 11,000 tons of manganese ore. The metal is a key ingredient in steelmaking and heavy artillery. The last known sighting of the Cyclops was on March 4, 1918. It went down in the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious stretch of the North Atlantic Ocean in which roughly 50 ships and 20 airplanes reportedly were lost over the years. Read more about the ship, the disapearance, the conspiracy theories, and how Marvin Barrash, whose great-uncle died on the sunken ship, remains cautiously optimistic that divers eventually will find the Cyclops.

The Great War began in the summer of 1914, more than 100 years ago, and for many Americans it still sits in the shadow of the Civil War before it and World War II after. The United States held back from the fighting in Europe for three years before joining the first transatlantic war on April 6, 1917. The fighting ended the next year, in the fall of 1918. In that short stretch, the country changed in ways that outlasted the war itself. Learn ten of the more enduring and interesting changes the war left behind, from the factory floor to the ballot box to the backyard garden.

Kansas City sits on something most Americans don’t know exists. Right in the middle of town, on a hilltop near Union Station, a museum tells the full story of World War I, and it’s the only one in the country that does.Congress made it official in 2004 as the national WWI museum, then added the memorial designation in 2014. The collection inside ranks among the largest in the world. Read more, and find out how the museum's innovative design means your visit starts before you even walk through the door.

From its founding, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) has maintained close ties with the US military. During its first five years as a professional organization, the ACS appointed Navy Surgeon General Charles F. Stokes, MD, FACS, as a member of the first Board of Regents, recruited thousands of American surgeons to serve in World War I, and deployed its first president, John M. T. Finney, MD, FACS, to Europe. These actions represent just a few of the measures taken by ACS founder Franklin H. Martin, MD, FACS, and others to ensure military surgical care met the same rigorous standards they had set for civilian surgical care. Learn how these efforts resulted in optimal clinical outcomes on the battlefields of Europe and strengthened medical readiness at home, and how today, ACS continues to take a leadership role in medical preparedness efforts, maintaining the legacy and advancing the ideals of its early leaders.

Pioneering military doctor Army Brig. Gen. (Dr.) Roger Brooke, whose name is honored by Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, trained thousands of military doctors and specialized in infectious diseases. The hospital continues the medical foundational figure’s legacy through award-winning care for warfighters. Read more about Brooke, who played an important readiness role during America’s involvement in World War I, leading the Medical Officers’ Training Camp at Camp Greenleaf in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, from September 1917 until December 1918, and received one of the first Distinguished Service Medals for his leadership.

On 15 July 1918 American forces in France began fighting a two-month campaign that—to that point—would become the largest battle the nation had ever engaged in.  The Second Battle of the Marne marked the turning of the tide in World War I. It began with the last German offensive of the conflict and was quickly followed by the first Allied offensive victory of 1918. The 270,000 soldiers committed and the nearly 40,000 casualties suffered dwarfed the totals of the previous record holder, the Battle of Gettysburg, which had lasted 3 days and involved 165,000 men counting both sides. But learn how there are a lot of reasons that this rather remarkable fact is overlooked, despite the Yanks constituting about half of all the troops engaged in the fighting in the battle. 

Frank W. Buckles (left), the last known surviving World War I veteran, died in 2011 at 110 years old. In 2025, the VA estimated the United States had only 45,418 World War II veterans still alive, a loss of just under half since 2022. It’s a stark reminder that one day there will be no one left of the 16.4 million who served during World War II. It can’t be easy to be the last of a dying generation, but someone has to be. Read more, and meet the men who were, like Buckles, the last living veterans of America’s other conflicts.

A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

Our Doughboy MIA this month is Private Verne Blythe, born in Marshall, Indiana on May 28th in 1892. Blythe was working as a telegraph operator in Danville, Illinois before the war for what would eventually become AT&T when he enlisted in early June, 1917. He received his training at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas before embarking for overseas duty on February 19th, 1918 as a member of Company C, 5th Field Signal Battalion which was part of the 3rd Division.

During the second battle of the Marne – where the 3rd would gain everlasting fame as the ‘Rock of the Marne Division’ – Private Blythe was severely wounded by artillery fire on July 15th, 1918, and died soon thereafter. Little more of his story is known at this time, but it is currently believed that he may have later been buried as an Unknown.

Would you like to be involved with solving the case of PVT Verne Blythe, and all the other Americans still in MIA status from World War I? You can! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to our non-profit organization today, and help us bring them home! Help us do the best job possible and give today, with our thanks.  Remember: A man is only missing if he is forgotten.

The Doughboy Foundation Shop is featuring this month our three great Doughboy Foundation Bio-Washed Classic “Dad Hats.” The Navy blue caps feature choice of the traditional Embroidered Flag Design (top), the new Embroidered Poppy Design (middle), and our exclusive Battlefield Soldier Design (bottom). Check out the designs, and select your favorite!

Proceeds from the sale of these items will help keep watch over the new National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC.

This and many other items are available as Official Merchandise of the Doughboy Foundation.

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