IN THEIR

OWN WORDS

AMERICA BEFORE THE GREAT WAR

Clay and gravel roads, wooden sidewalks, kerosene lamps (later gas), and the simplest sanitary arrangements represented [American] civilization. It was not surprising... to see a sign painted in large letters on the side of a store where there were public baths, which read, " WHY MESS UP THE KITCHEN. BATHS FIFTEEN CENTS." The important facility in a village was the livery stable... The village was equipped with few conveniences... Each morning the grocery-man sent his wagon from house to house taking orders. In two or three hours the same wagon would return with the goods.

Capt. Geo. Van Horn Moseley, Fifth Artillery Brigade
Unpublished memoir

The Country was a lot different before the First World War... More farm boys, and more folks who hadn't learned English yet... Their families had just arrived here.

Pvt. Al Furrer, Ammunition Train, 4th Division
1989 Interview

When I was a little boy about ten years old, my father went to Europe to visit his aged mother in Germany ... After that I used to dream of an ocean voyage to Europe and particularly Germany ... Little did I then think that "My First Journey" to Europe would be with a gun in my hands on a mission to kill my German cousins. ... I can think of no better starting point than August 9th, the second Sunday in August 1914. The previous week the war had fully exploded in Europe. We are in church, a little chapel... in North Philadelphia... the people who composed our little congregation, hard working, honest, God-fearing. The older generation had, almost all, been born in Europe, the younger generation in the United States. All were American citizens, every one of them...

Sergeant Maximilian Boll, 79th Division
Unpublished manuscript, FIRST JOURNEY

AT FIRST AMERICANS ARE NOT ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT JOINING THE FRAY

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier...

Popular Song, 1915

BUT AMERICANS ARE DRAWN BY EVENTS TO RESENT GERMAN MILITARISM; SOME JOIN THE ALLIES, OTHERS PREPARE FOR AMERICAN SERVICE

May 19, 1915...The affair of the Lusitania has gone through me again and again. I feel as if I could not just go ahead as I have since the war started, making plans for my own advancement, or my own families welfare... Thousands of men have given their lives to the end that Germany is not already in a position to destroy every woman, baby, and law of God, which interferes with [their] affairs... if I could go to this war as a citizen of the world, I would pray to be allowed.

Lt. Edwin Abbey, 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles,
American KIA April 1917, Letter

I have a rendezvous with death at some disputed barricade... on some scarred slope of battered hill... at midnight in some flaming town... and I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Cpl. Alan Seeger, French Foreign Legion
Poem, RENDEZVOUS (abridged)

Since I was under-age [and had been discovered], I was assigned to work at a lumber mill near the Swiss border where we made duckboards. They put me to work as sort of an apprentice mule skinner. Mules are smarter than horses and a lot of people too. I had to learn to think like a mule to get those animals to do anything.

Frank Arnald, Canadian Forestry Corps
1991 Conversation

On September 13, 1991, as a representative of the Great War Society, Frank Arnald was given the honor of relighting the flame at the Tomb of France's Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

AFTER THE LUSITANIA AMERICANS ALSO BECOME MORE INVOLVED IN US MILITARY OPERATIONS

Before the war I had been a teacher and worked our little ranch in Colorado after graduating from college. Then Pancho Villa raided our border and there was a call for volunteers. I was appointed an officer during our time guarding the border. Afterwards, I passed the tests for a commission in the regular army. When war was declared, I was part of the first group sent to France. I arrived right after General Pershing and left right before he sailed home.

Lt. Ralph Smith, Colorado National Guard, later 4th Division AEF
1989 Interview

WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and

That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.