Constable: U.S. entered World War I a century ago - how suburbs remember
One hundred years ago today, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of entering “the war to end all wars.” Had that war lived up to its optimistic slogan, we'd probably all be off work today to join in the “Still No Wars” holiday celebrations around the globe.
Instead, we're simply marking the 100th anniversary of our nation's entry into World War I, which, remarkably, has replaced the Vietnam War or Korea as our forgotten war, says Paul H. Herbert, a retired Army colonel and the executive director of the First Division Museum at Cantigny Park in Wheaton. So many of our wars are remembered with beautiful monuments in Washington, D.C., but not World War I. The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission hopes to have a monument in place by 2018.
Instead of ending war, “the opposite proved true,” says Herbert, who says World War I set the stage for World War II and the current tensions in nations such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The war had been raging since 1914 in Europe, but the United States didn't want to get involved. That changed at the start of 1917, when the Germans resumed submarine attacks on commercial and civilian ships and British intelligence produced the “Zimmermann telegram,” exposing a German plot to entice Mexico into attacking the United States as a way to keep U.S. forces out of Europe.
“The American public was highly energized about these two things,” Herbert says. On April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany, and on May 28, 1918, the U.S. First Division began a successful and important four-day attack in France.
“I don't think your average resident understands that Cantigny is the name of a little French village that was the site of the first time Americans fought for the survival of democracy in Europe,” Herbert says. In addition to Cantigny Park, a hero of that offensive is commemorated in Naperville.
“There is a little of World War I right under our noses,” Herbert says.
Naperville boasts the Judd Kendall VFW Post, the Judd Kendall Memorial Way and the Oliver Julian Kendall Elementary School, all named in honor of the 28-year-old son of a Naperville mayor, who was captured by the Germans days before the First Division's decisive attack.
Kendall, who was known as Judd, did not reveal the American war plans in spite of being tortured.
When his corpse was recovered, he was missing several teeth and his throat had been slit.
A World War I plaque in Crystal Lake honors William Chandler Peterson, who was killed on June 6, 1918, during the battle of Chateau-Thierry.
“There are a surprising number of World War I monuments around the country that people don't even associate with the war,” Herbert says.
Chicago's Pritzker Military Museum & Library, which offers live streaming of today's events at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, is offering grants to help towns across the nation restore World War I monuments.
Naperville's “The Spirit of the American Doughboy” statue, created in 1926 by artist E.M. Viquesney, had fallen into disrepair and the soldier's left hand holding a rifle was missing, until the city refurbished the statue in 2003.
The origin of the term “doughboy” to describe a U.S. soldier in that war is debatable. Deadlier for Americans than the Vietnam War or the Korean War, World War I saw 116,516 U.S. doughboys give their lives in the last six months of the war.
Without the Americans, it's “highly doubtful” that France and Britain could have achieved the victory, Herbert says.
“It clearly wasn't the war to end all wars, but it was the war to change the world,” Herbert says. “It certainly announced the advent of the United States as a major world power, and I think that's a good thing because the United States, for all its flaws, has been a force for good.
“That idea gave hope to hundreds of millions of people for a century.”