Field Of Glory Napoleonic

[Darios Uclaray]

Themen of my unit were of one mind. There was a war to be fought and they intended to win it... In this war, at least, the moral[e] was not something brought down from the top. It came up from the bottom.

Private Robert E. Glover

Company D, 342nd Machine Gun Battalion, 89th Division

World War I was a pivotal clash that forever changed the world. Empires collapsed, new nations were born, and the maps of the Middle East and Africa were redrawn. Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine were created, as well as Ukraine, the Baltic nations, Poland, Hungary, and others. Today's conflicts and wars in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe are directly rooted in World War I. This war unleashed a century of conflicts that included the Second World War and the Cold War. American diplomat and historian George Kennan was right to call it the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century.

World War I changed the way nations waged war. The slaughter on battlefields like Verdun and the Somme, the horrors of gas warfare, and the power of modern industrial armies altered how people viewed war. Any pretense of glory quickly disintegrated in battles with unprecedented casualties. And yet, war's hunger was not satisfied on the field of battle. It reached far beyond the trenches and struck into the heart of London, Paris, and other cities through the targeting of citizens by aerial bombing or long range artillery. The sinking of ships in international waters by U-boats also emerged as another means of waging war.

The introduction of tanks, machine guns, and other innovations in mechanization dramatically altered the method of warfare as the era of glorious Napoleonic charges came to an end. In the midst of this trying era, the modern U.S. Army was born. Entering the war in 1917 with barely 200,000 Soldiers, the U.S. Army quickly expanded to over 2 million men under arms, and by the end of the war, more than 1.2 million of them fought in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, America's largest military operation ever. In the midst of this campaign, the burden of success or failure, and victory or defeat, often fell upon individual Soldiers, who rose to the challenges and made history. Although World War I is often forgotten today, it is the source of many of the challenges the world still faces.

"Good-Bye Broadway, Hello France" - America in the Era of World War I is a two part exhibit, the first of which opened last year in the USAHEC's Ridgway Hall, and the second of which is now open in the new exhibit gallery in the Visitor and Education Center. Artifacts, photographs, and archival materials from the USAHEC Collection tell the Soldier stories and history of the First World War. In the second part of the exhibit, these items are exhibited in an in-depth and engaging battlefield landscape, providing visitors with the feeling of walking through the trenches, as they learn about the lives and experiences of Soldiers who called them home. Plan a trip to the USAHEC to witness this incredible new display, highlighting the many actions and sacrifices of the courageous Soldiers who waged the forgotten war that changed the world.

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We have been gathered together to-day by a proclamation of ourPresident, to return thanks to Almighty God for a series of brilliant victorieswon by our gallant soldiers over the invaders of our soil. Mostfervently do we thank Him for his presence with us upon those fields ofterrible conflict, for the skill of our commanding generals, for the heroismof our officers of every grade, for the valor and self-sacrifice of our soldiers,for the glorious results which have followed upon the success of our arms.Most devoutly do we praise and bless His holy name, this day, for thedeliverance of our country from the polluting tread of the enemy and forthe punishment which he has seen fit to inflict upon those who vainlyboasted that they would devour us. We give all the glory to Him, whilewe cannot forget the living heroes whose inspired courage led them triumphantover fields of desperate carnage, nor the martyred dead who havepoured out the gushing tide of their young and noble life-blood for the sacredcause which carried them to the battle-field. But battles, at last, even withall the dazzling halo which surrounds them, are but fields of slaughter, unlessmade illustrious by the principles which they involved or by the spirit whichanimated and ruled over them. The meeting of barbaric hordes upon thefields of blood, of which history is full, where men fought with the instinctand ferocity of beasts, simply for hatred's sake or the love of war, isdisgusting to the noble mind, and carries with it no idea save that ofbrutality. We could not thank God for victories such as those, and thereforein keeping this Holy Festival, our thankfulness must rest more uponthe cause for which he has called us to arms, upon the spirit which hasaccompanied it, and upon the guardianship which he has established overus, than upon the mere triumphs of the battle field.

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