During the July 4th weekend, Nettie, Parker and I went to Kansas City. Among our activities, including witnessing the musical Hamilton, we also visited the World War I Museum and Memorial. It was, for the most part an excellent museum with attributes such as simulated trenches, shell blasted holes and a deep collection of military hardware and uniforms.
In my judgement, the absolute highlight of the museum was the introductory film about the root causes of World War I. The film itself pointed out how obscure the causes for the war were. Most of us are aware that the spark initiating the war was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. If you’re like me the first reaction to that fact is: What?!?! There were actually a confluence of causes, many of which seem to still exist today including great disparities in wealth and national boundaries eroding in light of cultural differences across populations…
Deeper into the museum there was another film located in this very interesting “simulated battlefield” theater which spoke to the war itself and elaborated on the forms of conflict, particularly trench warfare. The film ends with the briefest mention of U.S. involvement in the war, which I found to be unsettling. This was an American museum was it not? The museum staff were unapologetic about the film’s short shrift treatment of General Pershing and the AEF (American Expeditionary Force), suggesting somewhat evasively that it was controversial.
So, I picked up a nice used copy of Yokelson’s Forty-Seven Days off of Amazon to dig deeper and, so far, it’s an excellent read. In short, Pershing and the AEF, at great cost to American lives, broke the trench war stalemate and helped, in large part, to end the war. The controversy the museum staff alluded to had to do with the unequal treatment of African-American soldiers. The preponderance of American soldiers who fought on the front lines were white; however, there were some black soldiers who fought under the leadership of the French, but most worked behind the battle lines helping with logistics.