The American Expeditionary Forces “Christmas Package Coupon” was devised so that each military member still in Europe for Christmas 1918 could get one package from home for the holiday. This example was sent by an Army private, probably to a family member, who used it to send nonperishables weighing less than 3 pounds.  

AEF ‘Christmas Package Coupon’ helped soldiers during WWI 

By John M. Hotchner
via the Linn's Stamp News web site

Linn’s reader Robert Munshower recently came up with a truly unusual item, the American Expeditionary Forces “Christmas Package Coupon” shown here.

The War Department recognized that the United States Army soldiers fighting in France in 1918 were about to endure their second Christmas far from home. To help combat the Christmas blues, each soldier was issued one Christmas package coupon. The soldier filled in his address and sent the coupon home to someone who he thought might send him a Christmas package.

After this concept was devised and put into action, World War I came to an end on Nov. 11, so the troops still in Europe had more than one reason to celebrate.

The directions on the label say that “One Christmas package not heavier than 3 pounds and not larger than 9 by 4 by 3 inches will be carried free from Hoboken, N.J. to each American soldier in Europe. Standard boxes of these dimensions will be furnished upon application, by local chapters of the American Red Cross in the United States. Christmas packages must not contain perishable articles or any articles prohibited by the postal laws from transmission by mail. …”

The package had to be mailed by Nov. 20, 1918, and 15¢ postage to Hoboken had to be affixed. But from there, the package would be shipped free by the military.

In the case of the Christmas package coupon shown here, the package was inspected and accepted by the American Red Cross in Calhoun County, Mich., as certified by the “Merry Xmas” sticker affixed to the left.

Despite the fact that there must have been hundreds of thousands of these labels produced, this is only the second example I have seen. While it is a bit beaten up, it is still an unusual artifact of WWI.

Read more: AEF ‘Christmas Package Coupon’ helped soldiers during WWI

In the completed section of A Soldier’s Journey, the soldier heads into battle with two comrades. Courtesy of Sabin Howard 

Behind the Epic WWI Memorial Being Sculpted in an Englewood Warehouse 

By Leslie Garisto Pfaff
via the njmonthly.com web site

Behind the soaped window of a former warehouse in downtown Englewood, an epic journey is taking shape. Under a skylight that catches the day’s waning glow, Sabin Howard is carefully applying small swipes of clay to the figure of a soldier in a World War I doughboy’s uniform. Howard’s gaze moves from the sculpture to actor Mark Puchinsky, a live model who looks every inch the young warrior, down to the authentic olive drabs that Howard purchased from World War I reenactors.

The figure, about 10 percent larger than life, is one of 38 that will eventually comprise an intricate, 60-foot-long bronze relief titled A Soldier’s Journey. It will form the centerpiece of the country’s first national World War I memorial, commemorating the 4 million Americans who served in what was once known as the Great War. Chosen out of a field of 360 entries in an international competition, Howard’s piece will be installed in Pershing Park, just steps from the White House, in the fall of 2023 or the following spring.

A scale model hints at the scope of Howard’s epic work. To date, he has completed 10 of the planned 38 figures. Courtesy of Sabin Howard

The uncertain timing reflects the arduousness of Howard’s process. Each figure requires some 600 hours of work, meaning Howard can complete only nine or 10 figures in a year, even with two assistant sculptors and a team of models. Considered a master of modern classicism, Howard, 57, creates sculpture that is startlingly realistic. He is, says project manager Traci Stratton—the novelist/documentarian who is also Howard’s wife—a perfectionist: “If he had 800 hours to complete a work, he’d want 1,600,” she says. “If he had 1,000, he’d want 2,000.” 

In fact, the project would literally have taken a lifetime to complete if Howard had followed his traditional routine: creating a drawing of the proposed sculpture, producing a small-scale 3-D maquette (or preliminary model), building foam-covered steel armatures (or frameworks) of each figure, applying clay to the armatures, and then casting the work in bronze. He was able to skip the labor-intensive third step in favor of a digital process in which the armatures are 3-D printed.

Read more: Behind the Epic WWI Memorial Being Sculpted in an Englewood Warehouse

Forgotten for 100 Years 

By Michael T. Naya, Jr.
via the tapinto.net web site

KENILWORTH, NJ – Many of you reading are now witnessing a major moment in our nation's history. We are witnessing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, our nation may be preparing to lockdown once again, and ultimately may come to a halt once more. It was during the coronavirus pandemic that I discovered two veterans of two different wars that were lost to time. I had discovered Horseshoer William T. Regan who perished on November 3, 1918 and Second Lieutenant Roger D. Allcroft who was killed in action on June 22, 1945. Since discovering Roger he has had a street sign dedicated to him and his name is being planned to be added to Kenilworth’s war memorial outside VFW Post 2230.

Thomas W. Regan Seaman's ApplicationI normally write articles focused on World War II and the Greatest Generation but I wanted to take time to write about Kenilworth resident William T. Regan, a veteran of World War I.

Thomas was born in Sligo County, Ireland on July 1, 1892. He immigrated to the United States at some point prior to 1910. From 1910 to 1916 he had been employed as a Seaman and his last assignment in 1916 was aboard the S.S. Edmund on a trip from New York to Texas. Through his employment, he was able to apply for a Seaman’s Certificate of American Citizenship which allowed him to work and live in the U.S. legally.

Shortly after his last assignment at sea, he moved to Kenilworth where he was living on 11th Street as of June 5, 1917. As of 1917, he had been employed at the American Can Company in Kenilworth. At that time the American Can Company had been producing shells for the Russian military who were our Allies throughout World War I.

On July 9, 1917, Thomas enlisted in the New York National Guard at the age of twenty-five. After enlisting he was assigned to First Company Military Police, New York National Guard. From there he was assigned to the 27th Company, Military Police, New York National Guard.

He was sent overseas on May 17, 1918 at the rank of Corporal which he had attained on July 21, 1917. While overseas he was demoted to Private on January 2, 1918, before being promoted to Horseshoer on January 3, 1918. He served overseas until his death on November 3, 1918.

Thomas, like so many other Doughboys did not die from an artillery shell, a bullet wound, or war related injuries. Thomas was killed by an invisible plague known as pneumonia. I speculate that Thomas may not have died of pneumonia but rather the Spanish Influenza which had not been widely studied at the time. Much like pneumonia and the present day Coronavirus, Spanish Influenza was a respiratory illness. The Spanish Flu had targeted young, healthy adults in the prime of their lives separating it from other known viruses throughout the years. This is why I believe that Thomas may have been among Kenilworth’s casualties due to the deadly virus.

Thomas’s story deserves to be remembered especially today. An immigrant who felt the need to serve his country so he answered the call to duty. Although he may not have died in combat he gave his life serving his country in uniform and that is what makes him a hero. November 3, 2020 is the one-hundred and second anniversary of his death and I hope that you will remember him.

Read more: Forgotten for 100 Years

Hard Hat Turns 101; Impact on Industrial Safety Never Gets Old 

By John Hitch
via the industryweek.com web site

Luckily for industrial workers everywhere, Lt. Edward Wheatley Bullard of the U.S. Cavalry climbed out of the French trenches with an idea that would spark the industrial safety movement: the hard hat. Bullard, the son of a mining equipment supplier, was inspired by the metal helmets Doughboys wore to deflect the hail of bullets raining down on them courtesy of the Kaiser. When he returned home, he invented the first commercially available industrial hard hat, called the Hard Boiled hat. Prior to its invention and subsequent production in San Francisco, gold and copper miners in California and Nevada basically wore leather caps—which might not be all that good at stopping hail, let alone the rocks or tools potentially pouring down on them.

Now a century later, Bullard's great granddaughter, current Bullard CEO Wells Bullard, recounts how this now 100-year-old equipment was invented and how it redefined protecting the workforce.

NED: What's the Hard Boiled Hat's origin story?

Wells Bullard: My great grandfather, E.W. Bullard, was exposed to miners his whole life because his dad supplied them with equipment such as carbide lamps. When he was in the U.S. Cavalry during World War I, he wore one of those metal doughboy helmets in the trenches, so he came back and pointed out to his dad that miners were only wearing canvass caps at that point, and they faced very similar hazards to what he saw in the war. For miners it was falling rock and ore, or tools dropped by workers higher up in the mine.

As an inventor, he was very user focused and understood the miners couldn’t afford metal helmets. And metal was a lot heavier and they didn’t need to be protected against bullets. So he invented the Hard Boiled Hat, which was made with steamed, or hard-boiled, canvass, leather, glue, and a very elementary suspension. It was shellacked with black paint. 

Read more: Hard Hat Turns 101; Impact on Industrial Safety Never Gets Old

French cavalry with an aircraft overhead, 1916. World War I was a time of incredible technological innovation and so is its remembrance.

Technology & World War I: Then and Now 

By Theo Mayer
Chief Technologist, Director of Public Affairs, United States World War One Centennial Commission/Doughboy Foundation

“The soldiers rode into World War I on horseback and rode out in tanks and airplanes,” is a popular quote about WWI. "The War that Changed the World" was a driving force for incredible technology advancement and innovation. So it is only fitting that WWI’s remembrance should also be imbued with innovation.

The industrialization of warfare and its horrific destructive forces such as machine guns, poison gas, airplanes, bombs, tanks and submarines were one aspect, but WWI also helped shape the modern world with incredible advancements in medicine, radio, automobiles, even personal technologies like wrist watches, and pocket cameras.

The point of this article is not those 20th century technologies. Instead, we are going to present the new 21st century technologies being used for the remembrance and commemoration of WWI including Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, podcasting, streaming, photogrammetry, 3D printing and more.

Augmented Reality Used for a Virtual Field Trip to the WWI Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In August of 2020, the Doughboy Foundation released a very advanced smartphone app called the: WWI Memorial “Virtual Explorer”. The App allows anyone to take a virtual field trip to the WWI Memorial in Washington, D.C. using a powerful technology called Augmented Reality or AR.

Many people have heard about AR but most people have not used it much. This virtual field trip brings the new National WWI Memorial to living rooms, classrooms and backyards anywhere, in a very realistic and experiential way. It is also filled with stories and information about WWI. Learn more with this video that provides a demonstration, as we explain a bit about AR and follow a group of first-time users, aged 17-48 while they discover and explore the App and its content.

Read more: Technology & WWI: Then and Now

Joe Hartnett and Dayle Hartnett, Ph.D. are on location, filming outside the crumbling walls of the redoubtable Fort Souville, near Verdun, France.  Camera operators and a boom soundman are setting up to shoot a scene for the documentary movie, Pershing’s Paths of Glory. Some young American student cadets can be heard talking nearby with decorated Army veteran, David A. Poe. Sandra (Sandy) S. Pershing, the granddaughter-in-law of General John J. Pershing, is on set to talk about his accomplishments as the leader of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in WWI. The filmmaking team of 32 people spends two weeks shooting on the battlefields, in the trenches, and at the graveyards left behind by this “war to end all wars”. The group will also discover small, home-built WWI museums whose proprietors/guides add emotional texture to the emerging documentary. Returning to the United States, the documentary team films in historic American locations such as Laclede, Missouri, the boyhood home of Pershing, Kansas City, Missouri, the WWI Museum, and Washington D. C., the Arlington National Cemetery where Pershing is buried. The resulting 45-minute documentary film, Pershing’s Paths of Glory, is distributed via Dreamscape, and available as a DVD on Amazon.com.

Pershing’s Paths of Glory Comes to Life 

By Joe Hartnett and Dayle Hartnett, Ph.D.
Special to the United States World War One Centennial Commission web site

Following careers in marketing and education, we (Joe Hartnett and Dayle Hartnett, Ph.D.) decided to direct and produce documentary films. Initially, Joe produced branded content and marketing documentaries. He was fortunate to have worked with Oscar-winning documentary director, Mark Jonathan Harris on the short documentary, A Delicate Balance, shot in 2005 at the City of Hope (Duarte, California), his marketing client. To raise funding for that effort, the Pacific Film Foundation (PFF), a 501c3 IRS-approved nonprofit was founded.

We then began a prison project, visiting and filming inside two California prisons, San Quentin and the Valley State Prison for Women in 2012. Unfortunately, the project was interrupted and subsequently cancelled by the closure of the women’s prison. However, the property is now in pre-production, entitled Female and Finally Free.

We produced and directed a documentary titled With One Tied Hand in 2013 which explores the fighting and subsequent liberation of Tuscany in WWII by American Buffalo Soldiers. During this process, we learned that Pershing had commanded the Buffalo Soldiers three times during his legendary military career.

After that, in late 2015, Sandra (Sandy) S. Pershing, the granddaughter-in-law of General John J. Pershing, reached out to the Pershing Rifles, a college drill fraternity Pershing had founded, originally called Varsity Rifles in 1894, offering to fund a film to help people understand the achievements of Pershing and his role in the defeat of the Central Powers in WWI. We were introduced to Captain David Poe, a former national commander of the National Society of Pershing Rifles. Poe, representing the organization, then recommended the Pacific Film Foundation (PFF) to make this film honoring Pershing and his diplomatic expertise in asserting the right from our Allied partners to have American commanders lead American troops.

We additionally decided to explore the importance of Pershing’s influence and legacy on contemporary students in the Pershing Rifles, Pershing Angels (female university cadets), and Blackjacks (high school cadets). These groups currently learn and practice leadership, teamwork, and competitive drilling in his name.

Read more: Pershing’s Paths of Glory Comes to Life

A page from the new book International Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology of Lost Voice, edited by Connie Ruzich.

“Here is poetry’s abundance in the face of horror” 

By Connie Ruzich
Special to the United States World War One Centennial Commission web site

I’ve always loved browsing used bookstores: the beauty of decorated book spines, the smell of well-loved volumes, and the surprise of finding a treasure you didn’t know you were searching for. In 2014, I was granted a Fulbright Scholar award to live in England and research the ways in which poetry was being used in commemorations of the First World War.

In my free time, I visited second-hand bookshops and developed a passion for volumes of poetry published during the war. Although these one-hundred-year-old books were often dirty and tattered, their poems were alive with the voices of ordinary soldiers, nurses, and sweethearts from a century ago.

I began to collect these lost poems and share them on a blog I’d created, Behind Their Lines (endorsed by the USWW1CC). After six years, 250 posted poems, and over 500,00 views, the research from the blog has been extensively revised and published as a book: International Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology of Lost Voices. One reviewer has described the collection as “an astonishing feat of literary archaeology… [that] cuts through the smoke and noise of the First World War to present us with poems that have been hidden in history's unforgiving mud for far too long…. Here is poetry's abundance in the face of horror.”

For me, the most important part of the journey has been rediscovering and sharing these lost voices, for they show us that there was no single representative experience of the First World War, nor was there a typical response to the conflict. This new anthology is not intended to challenge the value of previous anthologies, the poets, or their work, but rather to supplement the familiar poetry of the war and to provide a richer understanding not only of war poetry, but of the war itself.

The most famous poems of the war are those written by British soldiers who fought in the trenches of the Western Front, writers such as Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, and Wilfred Owen. But some of the most haunting poems I discovered were written by Americans: the loneliness of John Allan Wyeth’s “The Transport,” written aboard a ship sailing for France by a soldier who served with the 33rd Division of the A.E.F.; the power of Mary Borden’s “Song of the Mud,” in which an American nurse describes “the vast liquid grave of our armies”; the tragedy of Gladys Cromwell’s “The Extra,” written by an American nurse volunteer who was overwhelmed by the trauma she witnessed in France and who took her own life; or the devotion expressed in John Hunter Wickersham’s “The Raindrops on Your Old Tin Hat,” the poem written by this Congressional Medal of Honor recipient the night before he led his men over the top at the Battle of St. Mihiel.

Read more: “Here is poetry’s abundance in the face of horror”

Researchers and descendants are working to dust off the stories of the Golden Fourteen.  

The Hidden History of First Black Women to Serve in WWI U.S. Navy 

By Giulia Heyward
via the Atlas Obscura web site

When Jerri Bell first wrote about the Golden Fourteen, their story only took up a sentence. These 14 Black women were the first to serve in the U.S. Navy, and Bell, a former naval officer and historian with the Veteran’s Writing Project, included them in a book about women’s contributions in every American war, co-written with a former Marine. But even after the book was published, Bell couldn’t get their story out of her head.

“It made me kind of mad,” Bell says. “Here are these women, and they were the first! But I think there was also a general attitude at the time that the accomplishments of women were not a big deal. Women were not going to brag.”

Bell was one of a few researchers who have been able to track down documents that acknowledge the lives and work of these Black women. She knew that during World War I, the Fourteen had somehow found employment in the muster roll unit of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., under officer John T. Risher. One was Risher’s sister-in-law and distant cousin, Armelda Hattie Greene.

The Golden Fourteen worked as yeomen and were tasked with handling administrative and clerical work. They had access to official military records, including the work assignments and locations of sailors. At the time, Black men who enlisted in the Navy could only work as messmen, stewards, or in the engine room, shoveling coal into the furnace. They performed menial labor and weren’t given opportunities to rise in rank.

Read more: The Hidden History of First Black Women to Serve in WWI U.S. Navy

Loudoun County’s World War I monument on the county courthouse grounds in Leesburg.

Supervisors Vote to Replace Segregated WWI Memorial Plaque 

By Renss Greene
via the loudounnow.com (VA) web site

A memorial in the courthouse square to Loudouners who died serving in World War I will be replaced with one that does not segregate those service members by race.

The plaque, on a stone monument, lists 30 names. Three of those are at the bottom of the plaque, separated by a line—the three Black people on the list, Pvts. Ernest Gilbert, Valentine B. Johnson and Samuel C. Thornton. The memorial was erected 1921, three years after the war, donated by the American Legion. It will be replaced with a new one with a similar design, but with all of the names listed together.

The push to replace the plaque is led by Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn). He previously contacted American Legion Post 34 to ask about replacing the plaque, receiving its support as well as a letter from the War Memorial Trust Committee that includes local veterans, members of American Legion Post 34, and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1177, which also endorsed the idea of simply listing all names on the plaque alphabetically.

They also suggested rededicating the memorial on its 100th anniversary next year.

Supervisors unanimously supported the change.

“Thank you, Supervisor Turner, for putting this up so that we can make the changes that are needed in our county, that we see that soldiers fought side by side for our country, and that we should not delineate the person because of their color or their race,” said Supervisor Sylvia R. Glass (D-Broad Run).

County Chair Phyllis J. Randall (D-At Large) said “all history should be told, all history should be learned, but not all history should be celebrated.”

“These people made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War, so how are we going to separate them not just in life, but separate them in death?” Randall said.

Read more: Supervisors Vote to Replace Segregated War Memorial Plaque

The 1919 Model E Packard Truck before (right) and after restoration by "Packard Dave" Lockard.

Confessions of a Sledge Hammer Antique Truck Restorer 

By Dave Lockard
via the baltimorepostexaminer.com (MD) web site

YORK SPRINGS, PA — As a fossil at the ‘seasoned’ age of 74 years, I must confess to my fellow hobbyists that I am not a vehicle restoration specialist. I have, however had many folks over the years provide me with Packard motor truck literature & complete many mechanical jobs/new manufacturing of parts projects that were way beyond my capability. Personally, I can only claim skills of appearing pathetically incompetent, pleading, begging and knowing only enough to be dangerous with engines to be able to have such wonderful friends that help me to bring back to life deceased commercial vehicles.

At the Hershey Fall Meet I have had numerous chance encounters with really knowledgeable experts (Matt, don’t get too swelled up with pride, OK?) with their commercial vehicles who put me to shame, so I must rely on my acid tongue/wise guy stupid comments that the public identifies as humor. Such was the case with my 1919 Packard truck. For 32 years on the day after the Hershey Fall Meet my friends along with the full support of my wife Joan, we held the ‘Packard Truck Organization’ meet that came to a screeching halt in 2018.

Over the years I got to know an elderly & true gentleman by the name of Charles White who for years lived just north of Philadelphia. Charles was a regular attendee at the PTO meet held at my home in York Springs, about a half hour above Gettysburg. Charles owned a fascinating original ex-Connecticut chemical fire truck chassis long after the body had been removed years ago — inheriting the Packard from his late father James, who purchased the Packard back in 1955. In the interim, following James passing, the Packard was stored in a south Philadelphia warehouse & home of the ‘Anthracite Battery Company’, was then taken south to Waverly, Florida Charles had residence. Sometime later Charles moved back north to South Carolina, his final residence.

The Packard remained in Florida where a local garage was supposed to begin restoration, however, that never happened. In early 2000 I had sold Charles a spare engine for his truck along with a spare transmission as his Packard truck did not run.

Moving forward to March 2008, I received a phone call from Charles who sadly,told me he had sold his White truck he had so coveted and now had to pass the Packard onto someone else. I explained to Charles that having seen pictures only of this original Packard truck that I knew several fellows who would be thrilled to buy the Packard (I cherish my solid capitalist business ethic of being a ‘Zero Commission Agent’). When asked, I constantly answer “I lose a little bit of money on every sale, but I always make it up in volume.” (Duh!) Charles emphatically told me not to contact anyone and he would get back to me shortly.

So, I waited.

Read more: Confessions of a Sledge Hammer Antique Truck Restorer