Sources from the Great War


As many of you already know 2017 marks the hundredth year since the United States entered into World War I. As a way to commemorate this anniversary the Library of Congress Online Exhibit published a variety of primary source documents originating during the Great War. I chose two pictures to show you that occurred during the Meuse-Argonne battle. The Battle of Meuse-Argonne was responsible for the Allies shift to victory during the Great War, in a series of offensive attacks brought by the combined French and U.S forces, as they pushed their way through the German Army defenses. From the start of the battle on September 26, 1918, until the end of the war a total of 26,277 Americans died resulting in the deadliest battle in U.S history.

My favorite account in the online exhibit was that of Irving Greenwald, a first class soldier in the U.S. Army who kept a journal explaining his experiences while in the Meuse-Argonne Battle. In his writings Greenwald spoke on a variety of topics from the meals he eat, to descriptions of combat attacks, and the emotional testimonies he had written on missing his wife and daughter. As the entries in his journal progressed his hand writing got smaller which is conclusive if he thought he was going to run out of pages on his journal. On October 1918 Greenwald and his battalion was in the middle of a brutal combat located in the Argonne Forest when they suddenly became cornered in a ravine surrounded by their enemies. They spent a week trapped until they were finally rescued where they were then instantly named the “Lost Battalion”.


Meuse-Argonne.jpg


Norvel Preston Clotfelter. Company A, 334th Machine Gun Battalion, 90th Division, November, 1918. Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (148.00.00). https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/world-war-i-american-experiences/online-exhibition/over-there/meuse-argonne/irving-greenwald/ . Lasted accessed 12 June 2017.
  

Another document worth mentioning was the journal of Hillie Franz, a Texan by birth with German ancestry who found a German ledger and used it as his personal diary. The Library of Congress website explained that Franz did not have formal education so he would write phonetically by the sound of words. Despite this fact however, Franz journal includes insightful information on first hand accounts during the Great War.



Hillie John Franz, Company L, 34 Infantry Regiment, 7th Division. Wartime diary May 27, 1918 to June 25, 1919.Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress  (147.00.00)


Despite the fact that the United States did not intervene the war until 1917, yet still suffered massive amounts of loss says a lot about the scale of this war. The journals of Irving Greenwald, and Hillie Franz provides first hand accounts of the harshness the war brought, however I would argue that it also demonstrates the humanitarian characteristics of soldiers during the Great War. Hillie Franz did not know the proper way to write yet still chose to write anyways. Irving Greenwald did not want to run out of space so he chose to write smaller (extremely smaller). Writing during this time displays a humanitarian characteristics people don’t expect to find during a time like this.

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