April 6, 2017, marked the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entrance into World War I, the “Great War” that had been raging unmercifully in Europe since the summer of 1914.
President Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to send troops into the early years of the contentious morass, but later determined that the cause was worthy: that this would be a war “to end all wars” and “to make the world safe for democracy.”
Before finding out that I had two direct-line ancestors who fought in France during World War I, I had little knowledge or interest in that war. Very limited coverage from those times had been taught in my early 1960s high school history classes, unlike the Revolutionary War, the U.S. Civil War and World War II. Evidently it was looked upon as being less significant, more of a “forgotten war” similar to the way the Korean War was skipped over.
In the early weeks at Parris Island boot camp, I became acutely aware of Marine Corps valor in the vicious June 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood near the Marne River in France. Victory there was very costly in lives, but it stemmed the tide of Germany’s spring offensive and marked the turning point in the war.
We learned of Marine Capt. Lloyd Williams’s retort “Retreat, hell! We just got here!” to a French officer who urged turning back. And the battle cry of Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daley, who roared to his troops: “Come on, you sons-of-bitches. Do you want to live forever?”
Learning decades later that I had family lineage from soldiers of the First World War, I wanted to find out more.
Oscar R. Nichols served in the U.S. Army’s 26th (“Yankee”) Division. He was killed in action July 20, 1918, in France during the Second Battle of the Marne, the last German offensive on the Western Front. He is buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, Plot A, Row 6, Grave 88.
In 1930 his mother visited his grave in Belleau, France, as part of the Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages. She was one of 6,654 women who visited the graves of their fallen loved ones between 1930 and 1933, arranged and paid in full by our government.
On my mother’s side of our family, Floyd H. Shattuck enlisted in the Army and served in Co. B, 101st Ammunition Train, 26th Division. During combat in France, he was gassed and physically wounded, for which he received the Purple Heart medal. He traveled to Boston from Brest, France, aboard the passenger steamer Winifredian in April 1919.
My mom speaks of how as a young child I used to follow Floyd around when he visited the family farm in Loudon. Floyd died in 1961.
The United States was engaged in the war for less than two years and mobilized more than 4 million men, tens of thousands through conscription.
As in European countries, major divisions persisted for and against joining the war. Exuberance clashed with dissent and resistance before and during the slaughter. Exuberance vanished in the war’s tragic aftermath.
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the magnitude of casualties from the war is unfathomable. In less than two years, recorded U.S. casualties totaled over 323,000, including 116,516 deaths. Allied countries’ casualties numbered in the countless millions over the course of the war. The civilian death toll was even higher.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, known as the Spanish flu, spread worldwide, partly due to the transport of troops to and from many countries during and after the war’s end. This epidemic killed more people than the war.
Many excellent nonfiction accounts of World War I have long been available, as have novels, memoirs and poetry.
A fact-based book I highly recommend is To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by historian Adam Hochschild. It is truly mind-blowing to learn the magnitude and ramifications of that horrific war, which ended with the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.
Hochschild notes that with the armistice, English poet Thomas Hardy wrote:
Calm fell. From heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?“
In addition to gruesome physical wounds from fierce trench warfare, the life-altering scourge of “shell shock” (now recognized as post-traumatic stress) took a tremendous toll on surviving troops.
Two famous British soldiers hospitalized in Edinburgh from severe injuries to mind and body were Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Both became acclaimed poets. Owen was killed in action a week prior to the signing of the armistice. The beginning lines of Sassoon’s poem, “Dreamers,” from 1918 eerily apply in 2018:
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.
Unlike all other major wars of the 20th century fought at the behest of the United States, no national memorial in Washington, D.C., currently commemorates veterans of the Great War. The 100th anniversary of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is approaching.
A memorial was authorized by Congress in 2014, a design was accepted and a groundbreaking ceremony took place at the site last fall. However, there have been ongoing disputes about the scope of the project and the timing of its completion. It’s a certainty that the memorial will not be completed, as initially intended, in time for a 100th year commemoration this November.
I twice contacted the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., inquiring about the status of the monument. I received no reply. It wouldn’t surprise me if Donald Trump’s pathetic Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke puts the kibosh on the monument altogether.
National memorials should in no way glorify war or ramp up jingoistic fervor in the naive minds of youth. They should serve as a place for reflection, to signify the terrible costs of war. Nevertheless, honoring those who fought in WWI and the nurses and doctors who cared for them is too important to be cast aside as it has been in our country over all these years.
(Paul Nichols lives in Loudon.)