I was in Green-Wood Cemetery on Sunday when I came across the headstone of Franklin P. Updike. These WW1 headstones are much rarer than the ubiquitous Civil War markers one sees so often in old garden cemeteries. For one thing, there were fewer American deaths in the First World War than there were during the Rebellion. what’s more, a significant portion of doughboys were interred overseas where they were killed.

Updike, I later learned, lived in Brooklyn Heights and enlisted in the Army a month after the U.S. entered the Great War.

Updike is somewhat unusual in that he died during the war and was brought home. Note that the headstone was ordered in April 1942, just as the U.S. was entering the Second World War.

The young private was a wagoner, that is he tended horses and carts. This was a dangerous task; the enemy understood the importance of the enemy’s transport and so did everything to neutralize–kill–it. In his Memoirs George Marshall wrote of the wagoners in his division that at certain periods “the most dangerous duty probably fell to the Quartermaster Sergeants and teamsters who went forward each night.”

The people of St. Ann’s Church held a service for Updike at Thanksgiving 1918. The war had been over for two weeks by this time. This announcement and the one below are from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

This afternoon on my lunch break I went to the Heights and took this photo of St. Ann’s as it is today.

The people of Brooklyn did not forget Updike. Alas I don’t believe it still exists today but they named the local American Legion Post after him. This was in January 1924, ninety year ago this year.

A few weeks back I mentioned the the passing of Ike Skelton, the recently appointed chairman of the World War One Centennial Commission. To the best of my knowledge, a new chairperson has not yet been selected. In separate but related news, I did note earlier this week that a Director of Strategic Engagement has been appointed at the National World War One Museum in Kansas City. This is significant because the two institutions seem to be working closely together, which makes good sense.

The Great War centennial is something I am going to focus on here on the blog and elsewhere. For one thing, it will tie neatly into my Interp at Governors Island and the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace. I see from the small announcement I came across that the World War One Museum intends to focus on the war in its entirety, from 1914 all the way through the peace process. I hope the Commission does the same thing, though they seem to be leaning more to concentrating on the American angle.

(drawing/Cyrus Leroy Baldridge)

This week marks the 99th anniversaries of the start of the Great War, the series of events that, one-by-one, led tragically and inevitably  to mobilization and the great catastrophe that was 1914-1918. By 4 August 1914 most of the primary players had issued their declarations of war and their armies were now moving across Europe. I mentioned to a friend last week that the WW1 Centennial Commission in Kansas City has just about put its entire advisory body into place. I shuddered, though, when noting that the few remaining positions are going to various “celebrities.” Is it just me, or is having, say, George Clooney giving advice on how we should remember WW1 a bad idea? Hopefully, they will re-think that.

Food will win the war – You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it – Wheat is needed for the allies – waste nothing

I am currently half way through David Laskin’s The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War. WW1 was a frequent topic in my Interpretation at Ellis Island for obvious reasons. One of the lesser known stories of the war was the Black Tom affair of 30 July 1916, in which German saboteurs set of an explosion on a wharf in Jersey City that could be heard as far as Philadelphia. Beyond that serious event, there were a number of issues pertaining to race, nationality, and allegiance that made for discussion. It is a story that has special meaning for me.; members of my own family had just emigrated to the United States in the years before the war and soon found themselves in the trenches. It is a part of my family history I am just now learning about. Laskin’s book examines the war from the perspective of twelve men who had recently come to the United States from Europe and soon found themselves wearing an American uniform in the American Expeditionary Force. Laskin examines the myriad issues–cultural, linguistic, religious, political–these men had to face, often with mixed results. It is a complicated story and, ultimately, a fundamentally American one. I hope these are some of the conversations we have in the next few years.

(image/1917 poster by Charles Edward Chambers, in Yiddish; Library of Congress)