A century later, America’s entry into the ‘Great War’ remembered

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A century after the United States joined its allies in the muddy trenches of Europe in a war unlike one the world had endured before, a Kansas City ceremony Thursday morning recalled the tragedy and heroism of the time.

Under clear skies and chilled air, a crowd gathered at the National World War I Museum and Memorial to mark the sacrifices, military and civilian, of a now-gone generation.

Dignitaries from 30-some nations joined Americans at the foot of the Liberty Memorial amid period music and military pomp and circumstance. Cannons fired. Music played. Military re-enactors gathered in period dress.

Descendants came, too. Helen Patton, whose grandfather George S. Patton led a tank squadron through France in World War I, was there. So were descendants of Gen. John Pershing and of Sgt. Alvin York.

“Today, we honor a generation of Americans no longer among us physically, but we can all sense their presence … a century later,” said Charles E. Schmidt, the national commander of the American Legion. “Their success in the Great War … laid a foundation not only for the American military, but for America itself.”

A century after April 6, 1917, the Kansas City gathering observed the world’s introduction to the carnage of modern warfare fought with tanks, from the air, with mustard gas and the devastating power of machine guns. Soldiers began the war on horseback and ended it in armored vehicles.

“They would become the parents of the greatest generation,” said Rob Dalessandro, the chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission. “World War I marked the true beginning of the American century.”

It came with dramatic changes in technology, medicine and society, he said, and marked the rise of U.S. influence around the globe.

“We still live in the long shadow of World War I in every aspect of our lives,” he told the crowd.

The European war began in 1914 but the U.S. did not enter the conflict until 1917 after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and continued to sink American merchant ships. The infusion of American forces on the side of France and the United Kingdom tipped the balance in favor of the Allies and against Germany. The war on the Western Front, and America’s participation, ended on Nov. 11, 1918.

More than 9 million people were lost to combat, some 116,000 of them Americans.