Reserve officers from Arkansas hail vets of WWI

100 years marked by events, papers

Wearing World War I uniforms, a group of men re-enact the Battle of Verdun in eastern France. Two Arkansas veterans will join hundreds of volunteers gathered in Verdun to help mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the war.
Wearing World War I uniforms, a group of men re-enact the Battle of Verdun in eastern France. Two Arkansas veterans will join hundreds of volunteers gathered in Verdun to help mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the war.

It's been 100 years since World War I.

In France, volunteers read the names of soldiers aloud and placed candles by their graves Sunday, honoring the 26,000 Americans who died in the Muese-Argonne offensive, which helped bring an end to the war. Despite the rain and strong winds, the people gathered for the ceremony in the Muese-Argonne cemetery, the largest American cemetery in Europe.

The celebration is one of many events around the world commemorating World War I.

The U.S. sent two Army Reserve officers, both based in Arkansas, to World War I centennial events in France.

The officers, Col. Daniel Hershkowitz and Command Sgt. Maj. James Hopkins, left for Verdun, France, on Sept. 18 and will return Tuesday. They are members of the 90th Sustainment Brigade, which was founded during World War I as the 90th Infantry Division, and are representing their group at the ceremonies.

"The big thing is to never forget some of these historic battles that took place in the name of freedom," Hershkowitz said.

Both U.S. Sen. John Boozman's maternal and paternal grandfathers fought in the war, as did his great uncle. His maternal grandfather was gassed and later died of complications from exposure.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies located in the Arkansas Studies Institute recorded 71,862 Arkansas soldiers who served in the war; of those, 2,183 died. But as an indirect result of war, approximately 7,000 Arkansans died of the flu in 1918.

"It really is something that had an impact on Arkansas," Boozman said.

Men in WWI-era military uniforms take part in a remembrance ceremony Sunday at Meuse-Argonne cemetery in northeastern France. As ceremonies are held around the world to mark the 100th anniversary of the war’s end, two Arkansas-based U.S. Army Reserve officers have been sent to France for centennial events.
Men in WWI-era military uniforms take part in a remembrance ceremony Sunday at Meuse-Argonne cemetery in northeastern France. As ceremonies are held around the world to mark the 100th anniversary of the war’s end, two Arkansas-based U.S. Army Reserve officers have been sent to France for centennial events.

Former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker's father, also named Jim Guy Tucker, fought in World War I. Although his father told his children few war stories, he kept a diary and wrote family members often. The younger Tucker donated his father's diary and letters to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

"This country is very poor now," the elder Tucker wrote in a letter about France, one of the locations where he served abroad. "There is hardly any men around. The women are doing all kinds of work from cleaning the streets to working in the stores. However, the country is very beautiful. There is first a number of old homes and castles as well as an old prison."

Henry Charles Godt, a Fort Smith World War I nurse, also served abroad.

"It's pretty cold here and rains here on an average of every two or three hours after which the sun comes out and dries everything again in a little while," Godt wrote about France in a letter given to the Butler Center.

Tucker never wrote letters to his family about the fighting he endured, which included being gassed -- something that, along with cigarette smoking, led to his death by lung cancer in the '60s, his son said. But Tucker did record information about his battles in his diary.

"Had very hard fight coming out of woods," Tucker wrote in October of 1918. "Many machine gunners. Many killed. But we came out just the same. I was on the right flank. Lost many men."

Godt saw the devastation of the war while tending to patients of the 1918-19 flu epidemic, which killed many Arkansans. The physicians did not know how to treat their patients for the flu, so they gave them whiskey in the hopes of curing them.

"That's all they gave them, and they just died like flies," Godt said in an interview preserved by the Butler Center.

In September 1918, months before peace, Godt wrote to his sweetheart and future wife Colene Willis, "Sure wish I could be with you this evening dear and hope it won't be long until I'll be hearing from you as I certainly am missing your dear letters and felt lost without them."

On Nov. 10, 1918, Tucker wrote "Big rumors of Armistice. Don't believe it. Don't look like it here."

Fortunately, despite Tucker's predictions, the next day peace came to Europe.

"Great news," Tucker wrote Nov. 11, 1918. "Armistice on. All fighting stopped."

Tucker hadn't slept in three days.

After the Allies and Germany signed the Armistice ending the fighting, Tucker celebrated Thanksgiving and wrote his mother filled with thanks regarding the war's end.

"I am thankful that I have you for a mother, first of all," Tucker wrote. "Then there is the fact that the war is over, and there will be no more good boys killed and their mothers left to grieve and that those good people of France and Belgium are released from the hold of the German."

While abroad, Tucker served in multiple nations and began learning several languages, including German and French.

"Certainly hope that the peace treaty is signed soon as I do not think there will be any chance of us starting home until then, and I am very anxious to go back," Tucker also wrote on Thanksgiving of 1918, months before the June 1919 signing of the Treaty of Versailles. "I would not take anything for my trip over here, but I have seen enough. I would like to see the United States now. But nevertheless, I have probably seen some countries that I would have never seen, if this war had not been. I have seen Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Germany."

The last page of Tucker's diary was Jan. 1, 1919, and he wrote that he did not have any New Year's resolutions.

Hershkowitz said he's attending the centennial ceremonies in Verdun because of the Americans, like Godt and Tucker, who served in the war.

Fifteen countries were involved in the war, and 8.5 million of their soldiers died, according to the Butler Center. Hopkins looks at the celebration as a way to learn about World War I, originally called the Great War, and teach what he learns to his brigade back home, honoring the generation who sacrificed its young men for freedom, he said.

In Arkansas, the state's World War I Centennial Commemoration Committee has planned events for the 100-year anniversary of the conflict. On Nov. 11, the group will host the Bells of Peace. Participants will ring bells 11 times at 11 a.m. in honor of those who died.

World War I began after a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary had just annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina -- the impetus for the assassination.

Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, and the rest of Europe joined the war based on alliances.

America entered the war after Germany broke its deal to stop unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean and attempted to persuade Mexico to align with Germany against the United States. Warning of opposition to the war, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime punishable by a fine or jail time to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the U.S. government or the military during wartime. The law was repealed in 1920.

World War I shaped much of the 20th century and 21st century, breaking up European empires and redrawing the world's map, said Jonathan Casey, the director of archives and the Edward Jones Research Center at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo. Many nations gained independence after the war, and after fighting for freedom abroad, black Americans found a renewed drive to pursue civil rights.

"People felt empowered to get more political rights," Casey said.

The tensions remaining from World War I boiled over into World War II and even as late as the '90s into the Bosnian Crisis, Casey said. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia, beginning a four-year civil war that eventually led to the attempted genocide of Bosnian Muslims.

Former Gov. Tucker warns world leaders today to think back to tensions that caused World War I, encouraging them to work together and obstain from alienating each other.

"That history affects us all," Tucker said.

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.

Metro on 09/24/2018

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