War and remembrance
State’s centennial celebrations to honor all involved in World War I.
coldest and hardest fact about World War I’s impact on Arkansas, as our state begins marking the centennial of America’s decisive combat role in 1917-1918, is the number of Arkansans who died during the conflict.
That total is not absolutely certain. But among the 71,862 Arkansans listed in official records as having taken part in what wishful thinking called “the war to end all wars,” a reliable count tallies 2,183 deaths.
More men died from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and other illnesses than from action against the Germans in northern France before the triumphant armistice on Nov. 11, 1918. But the mortal toll, along with the 1,751 other Arkansans reported as wounded or injured, brought grief to families and friends in all 75 counties.
For Arkansans in general, the war declared by Congress on April 6, 1917, had less doleful impacts — including some positive ones economically. The pluses will be at the forefront, without ignoring the casualties, in a potpourri of events and exhibits responding to Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s centennial call. The aim is “to commemorate, preserve and honor the courage, sacrifice and valiant efforts of all Arkansans who served in World War I.”
The Arkansas World War I Centennial Commemoration will formally begin from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday on the lawn of the Old State House, 300 W. Markham St., Little Rock, with the governor expected to speak at 10:30 a.m. Living-history performers will portray American troops, known then as “Doughboys.” There will also be music at the free gathering.
In a preliminary event, a short ceremony at 4 p.m. Thursday will dedicate the new Broadway Bridge in honor of veterans from all U.S. conflicts. The site will be a parking lot near the North Little Rock end of the rebuilt span. The former bridge was dedicated only to World War I troops.
During Saturday’s festivities, an exhaustive and enlightening exhibit created by the Arkansas State
Archives (formerly the Arkansas History Commission) will be set up at the Old State House Museum. It is among a number of museum efforts focused on Arkansas’ role in the global war that eventually involved 32 countries and resulted in more than 11 million military deaths.
Titled “The Great War: Arkansas in World War I,” the traveling display covers events in the state as well as overseas battlefields on a dozen two-sided panels that stand 7 feet tall. Enriching the information is an array of photographs.
One panel, The Home Front, notes that “the war efforts created new jobs building military camps, working in factories and expanding agriculture. Yet at the same time, potential workers were sent off to war, leaving a void in the workforce filled by women and sometimes even foreigners.”
U.S. entry in the war “created a huge surge of patriotism, with rallies held across the state to raise money and supplies. … Propaganda posters displayed around towns encouraged citizens to buy War Savings Stamps, join the Army and conserve food for the soldiers. Children pledged their loyalty and put on patriotic plays at school. Families, wives and sweethearts eagerly awaited letters from loved ones in training camps and fighting overseas.”
In a dark side of this patriotism, “German Americans faced prejudice and persecution during the war, as their neighbors questioned their loyalty to the U.S. … Some Lutheran and Catholic congregations began worshipping in English rather than in German.
“A few isolated incidents of violence toward German Americans occurred in Arkansas. Local government officials tried to destroy Subiaco Abbey’s radio in 1917 in case the monks were receiving German government messages. Pastor Roering of the Lutheran Church was driven from his house and threatened by gunmen in 1918 in Lutherville in Johnson County.”
The U.S. military was racially segregated, as another panel reports: “Although 18,322 African Americans from Arkansas served in the war, few of them saw the front line. … Due to racial prejudices prevalent at the time, most African Americans served in segregated units devoted to labor efforts rather than combat. Some African American soldiers went into combat with French troops, who often treated them with more respect than white American soldiers.”
Under the heading “Arkansas’ Heroes,” it is reported that “three Arkansas natives received the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, for risking their lives during World War I.” All three were awarded posthumously, to Eureka Springs-born Marcellus Chiles, who also received the Distinguished Service Cross; to John Pruitt of Newton County, twice a Medal of Honor winner; and to Franklin county native Oscar Miller, who also received the Bronze Star.
A state park in northeast Arkansas is named for another heroic doughboy, Mississippi County native Herman Davis, who died in 1923, five years after falling victim to a German poison-gas attack. Gen. John J. Pershing listed Davis fourth on a list of the greatest heroes of World War I, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
“The Great War: Arkansas in World War I” will travel to Randolph County Heritage Museum in Pocahontas, April 20-22; Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives in Washington, April 26-May 6; Hot Spring County Historical Society in Malvern, May 9-16; Jacksonville Museum of Military History, May 23-June 10; and additional locations statewide through January.
A version of the exhibit, with added original artifacts and posters from the Arkansas State Archives, will be shown April 14-Aug. 16 at Historic Arkansas Museum, 200 E. Third St., Little Rock.
At the State Archives, One Capitol Mall, Little Rock, a companion exhibit titled “On the Fields and in the Trenches: Relics of the First World War” includes weaponry, medical equipment, medals, photographs, a uniform and military helmets. It runs through 2017.
Two sizable military facilities were established in central Arkansas during the war. Eberts Field near Lonoke trained more than 1,000 cadets to fly the biplanes of the era. Camp Pike (now Camp Robinson) in North Little Rock served as training base for thousands of new Army soldiers.
Exhibits at Camp Robinson’s Arkansas National Guard Museum give a lively sense of the training process. As one posting describes, “soldiers slept on the top floor of their buildings, about 100 per building. The mess hall, supply room and offices were on the first floor. The soldiers slept on straw mattresses. Weather permitting, the cots and mattresses were moved outside daily and the floors scrubbed. The straw in the mattresses was changed each week.”
Camp Pike’s value to the local economy is suggested by the quantity of supplies ordered by the base’s quartermaster over a three-month period: 6,000 tons of hay, 4,400 tons of oats, 1,450 tons of straw, 2,500 tons of blacksmith’s coal, 2,500 tons of ice, 1,000 tons of fresh beef. The hay and oats were for the 3,800 horses and mules on the post.
A remarkable work of art, almost lost to decay but later restored, is one highlight of the National Guard Museum’s collection. It is a set of stylized battlefield murals painted around 1940 by a selftaught artist from St. Louis named Joe Jones. U.S. troops are vanquishing Germans in the scenes, while an oversize portrait of commanding Gen. John J. Pershing looks on.
A display of posters at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, 503 E. Ninth St., Little Rock, provides colorful insights into World War I propaganda themes. As Director Stephan McAteer explains, the posters were collected in 1917-1918 by a teenage Little Rock boy.
After the collector died in 1992, “the posters came into our possession almost by accident. They were part of an estate sale and were almost lost to the trash heap. For 12 years, we could do nothing more than preserve them. Then, starting in 2011, donations allowed us to begin a conservation process. Now they make up the centerpiece of our World War I gallery,” McAteer says.
A typical poster seeks contributions to the war effort with the message: “Boys and girls! You can help your Uncle Sam win the war. Save your quarters. Buy war savings bonds.” Another shows a woman in work clothes holding an artillery shell in one hand and a biplane in the other. Its message: “For every fighter, a woman worker. Care for her through the YWCA.”
In Northwest Arkansas, Rogers Historical Museum is focusing on the war’s impact on Benton County with “On Fields Far Away: Our Community During the Great War.” The exhibit’s main character is Vera Key, born at War Eagle in 1893. She went to France in 1918 with the Army Nurse Corps and returned to Arkansas in 1920 with a detailed diary and cache of photographs she had taken. It will remain open through 2017.
Other exhibits and events are being encouraged by this year’s Arkansas Heritage Month, scheduled each May by the Department of Arkansas Heritage. The 2017 theme is “A State of War: Arkansas Remembers World War I.” Local organizers are asked to think about ways that the war affected their town or region and sponsor a program that would “help people of today” understand the conflict’s significance.
One local exhibit already in place, at the Museum of American History in downtown Cabot, has as its centerpiece a patriotic quilt sewn by women of Lonoke County in 1918. It is embroidered with the names of some 60 Lonoke County men who were serving in the armed forces. Bearing the slogan “Where Old Glory leads, we will follow,” the quilt was a raffle prize, at 25 cents per ticket, to raise money for the war effort.
The Great War’s largest impact on Arkansans, according to Mike Polston, director of the Museum of American History in Cabot, was to the common soldier — and not only those who lost their lives.
Many of the 70,000-plus “had never before been more than a few miles from home,” Polston says. “They’d never been on a boat bigger than a flat-bottom on a river or a pond, or never met anyone from another state or another country. They saw and experienced things that they never would have without going to the war in Europe. Still after all they experienced, most came home to Arkansas and lived out the rest of their lives in their home state.”