The literature and culture of World War I in the United States – hidden in plain sight
Bennecke Square or Memorial Square is located in the heart of the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut, next to the dining hall where students eat.
The white Beaux-Arts colonnade surrounding the square includes the name of the World War I battles in which the American Expeditionary Force participated, now forgotten by most Americans.
The monument beneath these names, erected by alumni in 1926-1927, bears the inscription: "In memory of the Yale people, who remained faithful to the Yale tradition and gave their lives for freedom not to disappear from the earth." ”
From 1914 to 1918, the then-all-male Ivy League universities were somehow commemorating the contributions of students to the conflict:
Brown's Soldiers' Memorial Gate in 1921, Cornell's War Sites and Memorials in 1931, Memorial Chapel at Harvard University in 1932, Princeton's Pershing Hall Monument in 1930, and Princeton's practice of placing bronze stars on the windowsills of victims' dormitories from 1920 onwards continued until the Vietnam War.
Not just universities, there are countless other World War I statues and memorials across the United States.
Most of these memorials were built in the 1920s and early 1930s and are found throughout most cities in the United States, throughout the landscape.
Designated and renamed the National World War I Memorial and Museum in 2004, Liberty Memorial originally opened in Kansas City in 1926 thanks to the efforts of the Freedom Memorial Society.
The association raised more than $2.5 million in ten days in 1919 in honor of a Kansas citizen who had served.
Five years later, on November 11, 1931, President Herbert Hoover opened the District of Columbia War Memorial on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C., for nearly 500 citizens of the District of Columbia who had lost their lives in the war.
Like the Freedom Memorial that combines a trendy Beaux-Arts style and an Egyptian Revival style, the War of Independence Memorial was built as a domed Romanesque temple with Doric columns.
Of course, there are also original, unique memorials that borrow from older architectural forms.
The most beloved is the simulated Stonehenge monument made of reinforced concrete, built by millionaire Sam Hill in Mary Hill in rural Washington to commemorate soldiers in Crekita County, Washington, who died in the war.
Purportedly the first memorial to World War I in the United States, it was commissioned in 1918 but was not completed until 1929, much later than many other monuments.
Traces of war have also been found in many other places. Countless war memorials were built in the 20s and 30s.
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum opened in 1921 and opened in June 1923 as a memorial to Los Angeles veterans who served in the war.
Unlike other monumental buildings, it was designed in a modern art nouveau style, although it included a Romanesque colonnade.
Soldier Field, the neoclassical-style home of the Chicago Bears, opened in 1919 and opened in 1924 as the Municipal Grant Park Stadium, before being renamed Soldier Field on Armistice Day in 1925 to honor American soldiers who died in battle.
In the area around Los Angeles National Cemetery, roads include Thierry Castle Avenue, Marne Avenue, St. Michir Avenue, and Bellowood Avenue, showcasing the legacy of the war's rear, even far from the Western Front like Los Angeles.
Then there are the smaller local memorials. The Spirit of American Dough, designed by the EMViquesney Company and copyrighted to its first edition in 1920, is a particularly interesting example of a commemorative culture meeting a culture of mass production and consumption.
In the sculpture, the dough boy in no man's land holds a rifle with a fixed bayonet and a grenade in his other hand, deliberately echoing the pose of the Statue of Liberty.
The first was placed at Furman University in South Carolina in June 1921, and the last was erected in 1943 as their popularity waned during the Great Depression.
5 Currently, 135 original or alternative replicas are still on public display in town halls, courts, parks, cemeteries and other places.
Earl Goldsmith argues that "some believe that, with the exception of the Statue of Liberty, Vickersny's replica of Dough Boy has received more viewership in the United States than any sculpture".
This memorial extended into the homes of the American people, and the statues were turned into small domestic versions that the public could buy, including figurines, lamps, plaques and candlesticks, different materials and different prices. There are also monuments to individuals associated with the war.
As they pass another statue of Mr. George Cohen in Times Square, they also fail to realize that Mr. George Cohen is the composer of more than 300 of the most beautiful songs on Broadway,
He is also the author of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating earworms: the most famous American World War I song "Out There," which most of them hummed at some point in their lives.
Why start with monuments? From urban centers to the most remote rural areas, memorials can be found across the United States, offering a useful metaphor for World War I's place in American cultural memory: ubiquitous, but largely unnoticed, hidden from plain sight.
The effects of war, like the culture it produced, remain deeply rooted in everyday American life, but forgotten or ignored.
Steven Trout argues that World War I "was hardly forgotten in the United States between the two world wars."
However, those who petitioned, designed, erected, and opened these monuments—writers, artists, sculptors, songwriters, musicians, and others who incorporated cultural forms into warfare—did not expect that war would quickly fade into cultural memory.
Bibliography:
World War I and the American Experience
