World War I has no national monument. No iconic images. And only one soldier is still alive.
Comment: There is a WW1 monument, it.s on the National Mall, not too far away from the Vietnam Memorial.
It.s not in great shape, and mostly forgotten.
I have washed it,s floor twice,to pay my respects, It's a shame we don't respect our dead.
Michael Garringer
gmangmc1@hotmail.com
Comment: The country as a whole seems to be wantenly isolated, not getting involved, we might upset someome or hurt somebodies feelings. All of our freedoms that we have, are because our veterans have sacrificed themselves and families the protect our freedom that we take so much for granted. We live in a society that believe they are entitled to all of our freedoms, that is far from the truth, we have to fight and protect what we have, or it will all be lost. If we give up this right, we might as well live in a dictatorship and let the "Government" tell us what we can have, do, or where we can go.
I am not willing to do this, I love my country and my freedom and want the same for my grandkids.
When you have the chance, make an effort to thank a veteran for his/ her service to protect our freedom.
As for WW1, my grandfather had two cousins die in Europe, while fought in Northern Russia, per his words, lived like wild animals in 50 below zero weather and not getting inside from September till around Christmas of 1918, after the war was declared over. They were fighting in 1919 and did not get home until July of 1919. They deserve a place to be honored and not forgotten.
Bruce Bartels, grandson of a WW1 Polar Bear
Comment: Anyone who has materials relating to the Great War, please feel free to contact me. I am the Asst. Editor of two online Great War magaziens, "The St. Mihiel Trip-Wire" (http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/smtw.htm) and "Over the Top" (http://www.worldwar1.com/overthetop/about_ott.htm). Interest in and studies of the Great War are thriving, actually. Books abound, vintage planes are restored and flyable (www.ghosts.com), and there are indeed memorials and monuments to the Doughboys. My grandfather was one of them, and he left a very interesting diary. These primary sources are of much value to us scholars of th e Great War. Please send any inquiries to me at: saxonpeg@gmail.com.
BTW, this is a very difficult site to post on!
Comment: This is not a forgotten war by any means. Indeed, this war was instrumental in creating the 20th century and arguably was but the first half of a 30-year war of which the second half was WW2. There is plenty of documentation if one knows where to look. The American presence there was short, officially, but it was a significant one. I urge anyone interested to look at the websites noteed below I edit two online magazines focusing on the Great
Comment: This article failed to mention the soldiers who served in Northern Russia during WW I. My grandfather also served with thwe Polar Bears. It's sad to think that these men that served will be forgotten and never to be recognized at the national level.
Dave Bartels
davbar2@gmail.com
Comment: Maybe it's a pity that the war is so forgotten that in an article dealing with the last surviving US soldier, you accompanied it with a picture of French troops in the trenches, not US.
Comment: I am an 8th grade student in Kansas and I just hope we dont forget about the great world war. I am just starting to learn more about the war. My Social Studies teacher told us about Frank Woodruff Buckles and it kinda made me unhappy that we are going to loose all of the generation before me and maybe even my parents. I think this is to special to forget about. It is really a big chunk of American History and we need to make more memorials and statues to these soldiers who gave their lives for us. Eventhough we have the WWI musuem in Kansas City we still need more places to learn and remember the war. I wish there was just as much reconsaton to WWII then to WWI.
Comment: Being the granddaughter of a WWI veteran, and an officer of an Association that spends a lot of time trying to make sure these men and that war are not forgotten, I actually take umbrage with your classification that all of us have forgotten this war. Here in Michigan, we have a wonderful museum honoring Michigan???s Own veterans, and they have a wonderful area solely dedicated to WWI veterans. And there are hundreds of us that gather every Memorial Day to honor these men specifically, and while seeing this article gives me hope that keeping the subject alive will only enhance the topic, I feel it necessary to inform all of you that some of us truly do care and will work tirelessly to make sure they are not forgotten! If interested, please check out our website devoted to WWI???s truly ???forgotten??? heroes... a group that has been dubbed Polar Bears. The link is: http://pbma.grobbel.org/ You may be surprised by the wealth of information in there.
Kathy Canapini
Polar Bear Memorial Association
Secretary/Treasurer
kc_pbma@yahoo.com
Comment: Thanks for your comments on the Polar Bears. My grandfather was in Company K 339th Infantry.
Dave Bartels
davbar2@gmail.com
Comment: Being the granddaughter of a WWI veteran, and an officer of an Association that spends a lot of time trying to make sure these men and that war are not forgotten, I actually take umbrage with your classification that all of us have forgotten this war. Here in Michigan, we have a wonderful museum honoring Michigan???s Own veterans, and they have a wonderful area solely dedicated to WWI veterans. And there are hundreds of us that gather every Memorial Day to honor these men specifically, and while seeing this article gives me hope that keeping the subject alive will only enhance the topic, I feel it necessary to inform all of you that some of us truly do care! If interested, please check out our website devoted to WWI???s truly ???forgotten??? heroes... a group that has been dubbed Polar Bears. The link is: http://pbma.grobbel.org/ You may be surprised by the wealth of information in there.
Kathy Canapini
Polar Bear Memorial Association
Secretary/Treasurer
Comment: I"m no historian, but I believe the soldiers pictured in the trench are not American soldiers. Our "doughboys" wore a saurer shaped helmet. These look like French soldiers! Anyone else agree! If so, maybe Newsweek forgot something about this war also!
Comment: My grandfather was in WWI. He died when I was about 5, so I never really knew him. Recently, my mother brought me a stack of pictures he came home from Germany with. I don't know any of the people in the pictures, but would love to make them more public in case people on the net recognize a father or grandfather. I have posted the pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/EricCh63/WWI.
Comment: Tony:
My grandfather was a sergeant in the 91st division, 363rd infantry, Company K. As a child, I am almost 60; I played with all of his gear, in those days they sent you home with everything but your gun I guess. Perhaps it was because he remained in the reserves, I still have his helmet, leather leggings and many other items, including was to become his purple heart. However after reading your article, I smiled because I have a bunch and I mean a bunch of negatives! He often told me of the strict measures taken if you were found with a camera. NO PHOTOS AND NO DIARIES! There was this fear that if you were caught by the Germans and they read your diary or developed the film they would discover weaknesses in your defenses. Well a fellow he was very close to had a camera and must have been using it often. Around 1955 this fellow passed away and he left specific instructions to his wife to give my grandfather the negatives, which later passed to me. I once tried to give them to the US Army and they were delighted to have them. The officer took them and I followed him to an old building in San Francisco where he put them on a shelf in a dark corner. I reached down and took them back.
So if you know of some official historian or someone that will develop them and use them let me know. I have no idea what all is there, I have looked at a few of them, but they are old and I would like to help history if possible. How knows they may not be important or may be.
JR Hyatt
Comment: When I read about the death of next to last veteran Harry Landis the story said there was a WWI veteran who was American who served in the Canadian Army. Which country's army is he listed with?
Comment: Very large error on the part of the author. There is a WW1 memorial on the Mall in Washington. SInce this was the major point of the article, I would think it needs to be addressed with a full article exploring how such a blunder could be made. This should not just be dismissed with a small "correction" bruried somewhere in the next issue or even wrose, on line.
Comment: Please visit the web site libertymemorialmuseum.org. It is the USA's only national memorial to WWI. It is as fine as any memorial that Washington has to offer. Do more research before you write or blog.
Comment: Please visit site libertymemorialmuseum.org learn about the only National Memorial to WWI in the USA. It is as fine as any memorial or museum that Washington has to offer.
Comment: What war?
Comment: That's a pretty BIG Journalistic ERROR to put... "World War I has no national monument." in your SUBTITLE...
FYI - The Liberty Memorial, located in Kansas City, Missouri, is the National World War I Memorial of the United States and houses the The National World War I Museum, as designated by the United States Congress in 2004. On September 21, 2006, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne declared the memorial a National Historic Landmark.
It was dedicated on November 11, 1926, by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. In attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony on November 1, 1921, were Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium, Admiral Earl Beatty of Great Britain, General Armando Diaz of Italy, Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, and General John Pershing of the United States. In 1935, bas reliefs by Walker Hancock of Jacques, Beatty, Diaz, Foch and Pershing were unveiled.
The Liberty Memorial houses the official World War I museum of the United States. Among other landscaping, its grounds include two large sphinx sculptures, the centerpiece 217-foot (66 m) tower, and the museums around and under the tower. Commensurate with the memorial's congressional designation as the "NATIONAL MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM" a new, much larger museum opened in 2006 beneath the main memorial to form a huge museum complex.
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Comment: Again... THE... NATIONAL WWI MONUMENT ("THE LIBERTY MEMORIAL") AND MUSEUM IS IN KANSAS CITY, MO.... AND HAS BEEN DECORATING THE KANSAS CITY SYLINE SINCE 1926! PERIOD! GOOGLE IT! PICK-UP A HISTORY BOOK... TAKE A CLASS... WHATEVER! IT"S ONLY A FORGOTTEN WAR BY IGNORANT PEOPLE... LIKE THE GUY WHO WROTE THIS ARTICLE! AGAIN... WWI NATIONAL MONUMENT AND MUSEUM... NOT IN D.C. - IT'S IN KC!
Comment: The WW I memorial in Washington DC was placed there by the people of Washingotn DC to honor its native sons that fought and died there (so a city of Washington DC memorial). The reason it looks so dilapidated is DC government thinks that the Feds (park service) should care for it and the Feds think since it is a DC memorial, that DC should care for it.
So no, there is no National memorial for WW I.
Comment: There is a World War I Memorail on the Mall in DC. I was suprised a couple of years ago, when we happend upon it after taking my father; a World War II vet to see the Memorial. His father fought in World War I. After we let my dad spend his time at the memorial, we walked along the Reflecting pool along the left walkway towards the Lincoln Memorial and Korean War Memorial; my father walked down a path off to the left, and came upon The World War I memorial, kind of deladpidated, and not taken care of, which is kind of what our government does to all the vets of foreign wars. This memorial had listed names of soldiers either lost, missing or killed in action; I'm not sure if it listed all of them, or only soldiers from the DC area.
The unique thing that happened to my dad was that along this path he ran into a middle aged couple from England that were talking to him, and thanked him personally for what he did in the European theater; her comment was that, 'If it were not for the United States and their Military, she would be speaking German today'.
Tony, if you work in Washington, go visit the World War I Memorial and tell me if I'm correct, in that, there is a National World War I Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Comment: Maybe there is another reason this war is forgotten. Because our militarists want it not to be thought about. In 1917, when the Unitred States entered the war, the western front was a bloody stalemate. If the US had not provided 500,000 fresh troops, the exhausted parties would have probably recut the boundary at the middle trench and gone home. Instead, we were the tide of "victory".
This allowed a peace of suffocating reparations upon Germany. That caused a great depression, in Germany, allowing Hitler, a cprporal and his radical Nazi party to take over Germany. It also allowed Lenin to overthrow the Kerensky regime which was forming a republic patterned after the US constitution.
So, if there had been no US intervention in what was then called The Great War, there would have been no WWII, no Cold War, no Communism, no Viet Nam. There might have been Japanese incursions in the East, but they probably would have been contained, facing united world opposition.
A lot of Pentagon and Blackwater types will be glad when Corporal Buckles is gone, but they won't be caught dead at his funeral.
Comment: That's complete bunk. American entry into the war did NOT stop Russia's collapse, and neither did it cause it...Germany had already defeated Russia by the time the US started seriously sending troops over in 1918. So you can withdraw the "no Cold War, no Communism, no Viet Nam" line.
How about this: had the US entered the war in 1915, Germany would have been defeated earlier, Russia would not have collapsed, and the czar may not have been executed.
Comment: will799--Good points! Not many realize we would have been better off neutral.
Comment: Unfortunetly, this article was sorely lacking in details. Such as, what did Pvt. Buckles do during the war, where does he live now, what did he do after the war, etc? Also, how does the U.S,'s non-position on the last soldier from WW I bode for others that are the last to die from their respective wars (WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) in the future? Will their be no honors or ceremonies for them also?
Will we just forget them too?
Comment: Mr. Dokoupil
FYI...
The Liberty Memorial, located in Kansas City, Missouri, is the National World War I Memorial of the United States and houses the The National World War I Museum, as designated by the United States Congress in 2004. On September 21, 2006, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne declared the memorial a National Historic Landmark.
It was dedicated on November 11, 1926, by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. In attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony on November 1, 1921, were Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium, Admiral Earl Beatty of Great Britain, General Armando Diaz of Italy, Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, and General John Pershing of the United States. In 1935, bas reliefs by Walker Hancock of Jacques, Beatty, Diaz, Foch and Pershing were unveiled.
Comment: Mr. Dokoupil,
The Liberty Memorial, located in Kansas City, Missouri, is the National World War I Memorial of the United States and houses the The National World War I Museum, as designated by the United States Congress in 2004.
It was dedicated on November 11, 1926, by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. In attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony on November 1, 1921, were Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium, Admiral Earl Beatty of Great Britain, General Armando Diaz of Italy, Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, and General John Pershing of the United States. In 1935, bas reliefs by Walker Hancock of Jacques, Beatty, Diaz, Foch and Pershing were unveiled.
Try a little research before you write an article... ever heard of Google!
Comment: That monument is for residents of Washington DC who served in WWI -- it's not a national monument. http://www.dcpreservation.org/endangered/2003/warmemorial.html
Comment: There is a monument for WWI on the Washington Mall. It is a small dome supported by round pillars. Under the dome it says that it is a memorial for "The World War."
Carol K.
Comment: That's a bloody shame, really. I NEVER realized that there wasn't a single monument to this war. Movies have been made-All Quiet on the Western Front, anyone?-but sure, it's not nearly as well covered as WWII has been. You wanna understand the 20th Century, you better understand WWI. Plain pure and simple.
Comment: There is a monument to WWI on the Washington Mall. It consists of a small dome with pillars and below the dome it says that it is a memorial for "The World War."
Carol 2/10/08
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