Unveiling DC's Newest Memorial
Photo courtesy of the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission - ww1cc.org.
WASHINGTON – Beneath a pastel sky on Friday, September 13th, 105 years after the last guns of the Great War fell silent, 13 years after Frank Buckles, the nation’s final surviving WWI veteran, passed away, and nearly six years after breaking ground, America has finally dedicated a national memorial to honor the veterans and the fallen of the First World War.
Situated in Pershing Park, a mere 150 yards southeast of the White House, the legacies of the 4.8 million Americans who served in World War I are now commemorated with a completed memorial, illuminated for the first time last Friday.
Pershing Park, named for General of the Armies John “Black Jack” Pershing, occupies the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street since 1981. Still, it competed with another World War I Memorial further south.
The DC War Memorial, Photo courtesy of MrTinMD on Flickr.com.
The DC War Memorial, not far from the MLK Jr. Memorial, is the only non-national memorial on the National Mall and stands in honor of the 27,000 WWI service members from the District of Columbia since 1931. Until now, it was the only official World War I memorial in the city.
“This memorial ensures that this nation will never forget”
While in a central hub of pedestrian traffic, in past years Pershing Park received few intentional visitors. It features a statue of General Pershing, the man responsible for guaranteeing Americans in the First World War fought under their own flag, standing alert in front of two granite maps of his campaigns in Europe. Binoculars in hand, he surveys the park. A small reflecting pool occupies the middle of the park. Before last Friday, on the far end from Pershing, a veil hid the construction of the expanded memorial’s centerpiece, a 60-foot-long, 38-figure, 20-ton bronze relief entitled “A Soldier’s Journey,” sculpted by Italian-American artist Sabin Howard.
Sabin Howard’s “A Soldier’s Journey” covered before completion, Photo courtesy of Thuan Vo on Pexels.com.
Spirits were high on Friday, as the US Army Band “Pershing’s Own” sounded the famous World War I tune “Over There” as donors, onlookers, and the press attended the inaugural “illumination” of the relief. Some present wore period-specific clothing, indicating they were members of the Doughboy Foundation—a group committed to preserving and protecting the memory of the American doughboys (a nickname for American WWI soldiers).
As the ceremony began, Edwin L. Fountain, the former Vice Chairman of the WWI Centennial Commission, explained how, in 2014, the Commission had four goals for the new memorial: “First and foremost, to give WWI an emotional resonance, that has for too long been absent in our country.” Second, the committee wanted a memorial “neither too somber nor too triumphal.” Fountain described wanting a memorial “with a dignity and grandeur equal to that of the other war memorials in the nation’s capital.” Finally, Fountain outlined the desire to “integrate and harmonize” the new memorial into a “living, breathing urban park.” Speaking to a crowd in front of the soon-to-be dedicated bronze relief, Fountain proudly stated that not only had they accomplished those four goals, but in doing so, accomplished three more: First, he asserts that Sculptor “Sabin Howard created a sculptural image of uncommon emotional power that speaks in common to veterans of all wars.” Next, continued Fountain, “By honoring veterans from 100 years ago, we tell those who serve today that 100 years from now, they, too, will be remembered.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Fountain claimed, “We have created a war memorial embedded with a call to peace.”
“Sabin Howard created a sculptural image of uncommon emotional power that speaks in common to veterans of all wars”
Sabin Howard’s proposal, “A Soldier’s Journey,” competed against over 360 other entries aiming to capture the essence of the war, but Howard’s stood out. Howard was raised in both New York City and Torino, Italy, and grew up inspired by the great Italian sculptors of the Renaissance. In Howard’s words the legacy of the Renaissance Masters, “…are the lineage played forward to create excellence in this memorial, and I know they are watching tonight.”
Howard, once a cabinet maker’s apprentice in Philadelphia, threw away all he knew to brave the unknown. “I can’t continue doing this,” he thought minutes before he quit to pursue art school. Howard, who admittedly didn’t even know what a portfolio was, threw himself into the pursuit of art and, 90 days later, was accepted into the Philadelphia School of Arts. “I’m a prime example of the American Dream,” he claimed. A man who, forty-two years ago, couldn’t draw now stood at “the beginning of the American Cultural Renaissance.”
As Howard spoke at the dedication of his completed work, he explained that “A Soldier’s Journey is about the everyman” and how this sculpture represents the American value of “the freedom to choose what we will do with the God-given gift of life.” As Howard put it, “Happiness is fleeting, but purpose is the reason we get out of bed every morning; it gives us a reason to proceed, and this is that story: A Soldier’s Journey.”
“Happiness is fleeting, but purpose is the reason we get out of bed every morning; it gives us a reason to proceed, and this is that story: A Soldier’s Journey”
The sculpture is striking, telling not only the story of an American soldier but also an American family. There are three main characters named The Father, The Mother, and The Daughter. On the far left side, the Soldier’s Journey begins; as his young daughter hands him his helmet, his solemn wife rests her hands on his shoulders. As the journey moves right, the Father is caught up in a tug-of-war as he joins a group of soldiers on the way to war, his wife reaching out to grab her husband for what could be a final time. In the center of the relief, Americans “explode” onto the battlefield, and Howard captures an interpretation of a moment in the Battle of Belleau Wood, in which Marine Corps Sergeant Dan Daley famously yelled to his men, “Come on, you sons-o'-bitches, do you want to live forever?”
Amidst the horrors of war, facing certain death, “Americans did charge into no man’s land.” The next scene of the relief captures that aforementioned horror, as nurses and soldiers alike tend to a wounded comrade. Howard, in his narration, recalled the words of Mary Borden, a Chicago heiress, who observed: “It is strange that men should be broken, and that they should be mended, just as you send your clothes to the laundry and mend them when they come back, we send our men to the trenches and mend them when they come back, and we send our men to war again and again, just as long as they can stand it; just until they are dead, and then we throw them into the ground.”
“He is there, but he is not there,” Howard said of the next figure, a portrayal of The Father, frozen in a thousand-yard stare. He exhibits signs of PTSD, then called shell shock. “These demons are now a part of him until his last breath,” Howard explained.
In the following section, victory. As the war concludes, a group of American soldiers parade across the battlefield, the American flag held high. Beneath the flag, a wounded soldier looks up at the flag, supported by his fellow brethren, including a soldier from the legendary 369th Harlem Hellfighters, an all-Black regiment of the then-segregated Army- the unit that saw more action than any other American regiment in the war.
The relief concludes with The Father returning home to his family, as Howard captures a moment between The Father and The Daughter. The Father hands back his helmet, battle-worn and upturned. “His gun is lowered to the ground; he is not the man that he was when he left home. There is an awkwardness and a silence- the family has been affected,” describes Howard of the conclusion of his work. “She accepts and holds the helmet in her outstretched arms in front of her… She is the next generation. She has just been handed World War II.”
“We have created a war memorial embedded with a call to peace”
Sabin Howard described working on “A Soldier’s Journey” as the “ultimate on-the-job training.” Howard had never undertaken such a big project at the time, and he spoke openly about how much he had learned throughout creating the memorial. Howard, though not a veteran himself, captured the essence of the effect of war on the face by using actual combat veterans as models for his sculpture. “I used Army Rangers, Marines, and Navy Seals; all of them have experienced the horrors of war. Their faces are on this bronze forever. They are in direct lineage to those young men and women that left our shores 106 years ago.” Says Howard.
“I looked to history and the past to create something that must be played forward- it is our history- and that is what unifies us and binds us together as a nation. This is the Hero’s Journey”
In his remarks, Jeffrey P. Reinbold, the Superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks Service, summarized the ultimate purpose of the sculpture when he said of the World War I Memorial that “With the unveiling of Sabin Howard’s ‘A Soldier’s Journey,’ this memorial comes to life in a way that few memorials could; The startling realism and epic scale of this sculpture serve as a testament to the courage and dedication of every soldier who has served and continues to serve. It captures the essence of their journey, the challenges they face, the strength they exhibit, the spirit that drives them forward, and those they left behind and fought to return home to.”
The ceremony concluded with an Army bugler sounding Aux Morts, The Last Post, and Taps before the reading of “The Young Dead Soldiers do not Speak,” a poem by WWI veteran Archibald MacLeish.
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.
The Doughboy Foundation has committed to play Taps at the National World War I Memorial every day at 5:00pm in perpetuity. The National World War I Memorial is open 24/7.