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‘We have to remember’: World War I memorials across the US tell stories of service, loss

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‘We have to remember’: World War I memorials across the US tell stories of service, loss

While the 58-foot-long bronze sculpture in Washington D.C. will now be the country’s foremost World War I memorial, it is far from the first.

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From community tree dedications and summer camp plaques to towering monuments and grand museums, World War I remembrances sprawl across the United States, seeking to remind Americans of a defining yet overshadowed chapter in the nation’s history.

The long-anticipated national World War I monument will be unveiled in Washington D.C. on Friday after years of planning and a decades-long gap in the capital’s collection of national tributes. While the 58-foot-long bronze sculpture will now be the country’s foremost WWI memorial, it is far from the first.

Community leaders, historians, and veterans have commemorated past residents who served in World War I while seeking to educate future generations about the plight of war through hundreds of memorials from coast to coast. World War I Centennial Commissioner Matthew Naylor, who also leads the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, told USA TODAY he was excited to see the fruition of the yearslong effort in Washington D.C.

“The installation of this large bas-relief is another additional element in the important work of memorializing those who served in World War I, and it ought to be in the nation’s capital,” Naylor said. “I think that this is correcting a wrong for the last many, many years.”

‘A Soldier’s Journey’ depicts heartfelt scene

After eight years in the making — and more than a century after the war’s end — Washington D.C. will finally unveil its national tribute to WWI.

Thirty-eight larger-than-life figures mounted across roughly 60 feet of wall depict five scenes in the journey of an American soldier. In the first scene of the sculpture, titled “A Soldier’s Journey,” the soldier’s daughter hands him his helmet while his wife touches his shoulder, urging him to stay — representing the debate over U.S. involvement. The sculpture then goes on to show the death and destruction of combat, ending with celebration of the soldier’s return. The soldier’s daughter looks into her father’s helmet and sees the oncoming WWII.

Interest in memorializing the Great War evaporated after the onset of WWII, but the 100th anniversary sparked renewed interest in commemorating the critical chapter of history. The World War I Centennial Commission was established under the Obama administration in 2013.

Three years later, the commission selected sculptor Sabin Howard to create the one-of-a-kind monument, a $40 million project funded mainly through private fundraising efforts. Howard, 61, told USA TODAY the process included more than 700 hours of drawing, taking 12,000 images of models in soldier uniforms, and years of meticulously sculpting each figure.

He sculpted from live models — including his daughter — who inspired the first and last figure in the sculpture.

“I am a different person today than I was when I started this nine years ago,” Howard said.

Howard said he received some pushback from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which governs the design of all construction in Washington D.C. Their approval process took about a year and a half, he said, adding much of the opposition was related to the sheer size of the monument as well as the depiction of the trauma of war. But Howard said the final product captures what he envisioned – a radical, artistic tribute that can be understood by the average viewer.

“The art represents our country, so you can’t make a mediocre monument — you have to make something of excellence.”

National museum offers glimpse into local and national identity

Roughly 1,000 miles west from the site of Washington D.C.’s monument sits the National WWI Museum and Memorial, nestled in Kansas City, Missouri. Built less than a decade after the Great War ended, the museum offers a glimpse into a critical chapter of history, said museum president and CEO Naylor.

Days after the armistice, a group of community leaders came together to find a way to honor the 441 fallen soldiers from Kansas City and create a tribute for peace. In October 1919, Naylor said there was a 10-day citywide fundraising campaign in which Kansas City residents raised a total of $2.5 million — equivalent to about $45 million today.

The community has largely maintained the place since then. The museum was temporarily closed in the 1990s for maintenance, and city taxes and philanthropic efforts restored it, Naylor said, which now tells a local story of community dedication, the national democratic spirit expressed in volunteerism, and a global story of sacrifice.

“The work of memorializing the founding catastrophe of the 20th century, this cataclysmic World War, it seems to me to be really important,” Naylor told USA TODAY.

The museum and other memorials seek to honor the service of people in pursuit of ideals such as peace, democracy, and freedom. But Naylor added that it also shows the horrors of war and unpacks a complicated chapter of world history, especially in a country where World War I falls into the shadows despite its lasting impacts.

Honoring sacrifice while remembering horrors

Naylor said European reporters who interviewed him around the time of the 100th anniversary were often puzzled by how little attention the U.S. paid to WWI. As an Australian American, Naylor said he has seen firsthand that the war is a much larger part of national identity in other parts of the world.

The Great War, prematurely coined as the “war to end all wars,” marked the first time the nation sent soldiers abroad to defend foreign soil. About four million U.S. Army soldiers fought, along with 800,000 in other military service branches. The U.S. sustained over 320,000 casualties in the war, including more than 53,000 killed in action.

The war began in 1914, and Americans did not enter the war until three years later. But its impact on the nation is still felt today.

“It was essentially dragged onto the world stage and came out as a financial powerhouse and a military powerhouse,” Naylor said. “It really did set the trajectory for the United States.”

The war, which spurred development in weaponry and medicine, redefined the nation’s role on a global stage. Naylor noted redrawn borders and fallen empires from the war, as well as the British government’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, which led to the creation of the state of Israel 31 years later that continues to significantly impact U.S. foreign policy.

WWI also offered an opportunity for the world to learn about the importance of having defeated nations at the negotiating table. Germany was not at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations, leaving them with a heavy burden from the war and to some extent, spurring the Second World War, Naylor said.

“We learned that’s not the best way for victors to behave, and I think that’s been of tremendous value for the world.”

‘Living memorial’ in San Francisco

Thomas Horn, a National Guard veteran who leads the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, told USA TODAY the historic complex dedicated to San Francisco’s WWI veterans, for example, serves as a place to gather and reflect.

“We have to remember,” Horn said. “If we don’t learn from the past, we’ll just make the same mistakes in the future.”

The San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, just across the street from City Hall, traces back to a historic collaboration between veterans and community artists.

In the 1920s, arts and culture groups in the city struggled to raise enough money for an opera house, and returning veterans searched for a way to commemorate the war, said Horn, who was first appointed to the board in 1981 by then-San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein. The plaza now includes the Davies Symphony Hall, War Memorial Opera House, Herbst Theater, and Veterans Building.

It has been home to thousands of performances, host to international dignitaries, and the setting of two major historical moments — the drafting of the United Nations charter in 1945 and the 1951 ceremony in which the Allied Powers recognized the sovereignty of Japanese people over Japan in a peace treaty.

Horn said the San Francisco tribute is unique from most other stationary monuments as people can actively experience the space through veterans’ events or by attending a performance in what he calls a “living memorial,” the way it was originally intended.

“Art is a peacemaker,” Horn said.

Maine history class documents World War I memorials

As the Great War’s 100th anniversary spurred a resurgence in interest in the war, Dr. Libby Bischof searched for a meaningful way to commemorate it in her state.

A historian and professor at the University of Southern Maine, Bischof in 2019 led her class in a project to document every WWI memorial in the state.

The class found uniquely local commemorations of fallen soldiers that reflected a town’s identity beyond the nationwide implications of the war. Summer camps, for example, are commonplace in Maine and date back to the early 1900s. Bischof found some erected memorials to former campers who served in WWI and didn’t return home.

“They’re really personal to that community, and those ones really interest me a lot,” Bischof said.

But in her research, Bischof was surprised to find the sheer number of WWI memorials given that they often seemed out of the spotlight. In fact, Bischof said that she found more memorials for WWI than for the Civil War.

“Civil War monuments are so visible in a way that the World War I memorials aren’t,” Bischof said.

She noted the Civil War was a defining moment for U.S. identity and is reflected in prominent memorialization across the nation. And while WWI memorials sprung up after the armistice, interest in commemorating it dissipated after the onset of WWII.

As an educator of the visualization of history, Bischof said she also had wondered about the lack of photos, documentation, and memorials for the Great Flu of 1918, which played a major role in the war as a global disaster that killed at least 21 million people, though other estimates are much higher. The pandemic, according to the Pan American Health Organization, killed 675,000 Americans – more than the nation’s death toll in both world wars, the Korean War, and Vietnam War combined.

“I don’t ask the same question after living through our pandemic, because no one wants to talk about it now,” Bischof said. “I think it impacted the memorialization of World War I, because once people were through the pandemic, they didn’t want to think about it.”

But after decades of the chapter of history fading into the nation’s background, WWI’s 100th anniversary in 2018 spurred another wave of interest in commemorating it, Bischof said, noting the unveiling in Washington as the capstone of that resurgence.

“This is, I think, the culmination of that centennial work, and I’m fascinated to see if this provokes yet another wave of remembrance and work on World War I.”

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