WW1 Centennial News: Episode #48 - Thanksgiving reflections | Tank Warfare at Cambrai | Intro to Commissioner Zoe Dunning | Yurok Native American Doughboys | 1914 Memoire | Much more...

Highlights

Thanksgiving reflections from 1917 @ | 01:15

Tank warfare in the battle of Cambrai - Mike Shuster @ | 11:35

Introducing WW1 Centennial Commissioner Zoe Dunning @ | 15:55

Ceremonial Coin Strike at Philly mint @ | 16:15

Trench Coat and Wristwatch - Speaking WW1 @ | 17:20

100C / 100M project in Springfield, MA @ | 19:55

WWrite Blog article by WW1CC intern Sarah Biegelsen @ | 25:15

Yurok Native Americans in WW1 - Chag Lowry & Rahsan Ekedal @ | 26:15

Memoire - An adventure in 1914 - Christopher Kelly @ | 32:00

DH4 WW1 Aircraft restoration progresses @ | 37:50

The Buzz - Katherine Akey @ | 38:30

Image Credit: A work-in-progress image of a Yurok Native Army soldier drawn by Rahsan Ekedal for the upcoming Graphic Novel "Soldiers Unknown" by Chag Lowry

----more----

Opening

Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration.

Today is November 29th, 2017. Our guests this week include:

Mike Shuster from the great war project blog,   

Jacqueline Farrow and Eddie Boulrice [bowl-reece] from the Godfrey Triangle Restoration Committee, in Springfield, Massachusetts

Graphic novel team Chag (ChAIg) Lowry and Rahsan [Ruh-SAN] Ekedal [ek-uh-dhal]

Author and historian Christopher Kelly

And Katherine Akey the shows line producer and the commissions social media director...

WW1 Centennial News is brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show.

[MUSIC]

Preface

It is sometimes difficult in our media overloaded, multi-faceted, social and general media inundated world --- not be cynical - but in 1917 many people genuinely believed that they were answering a higher calling.

That makes Thanksgiving 1917,  100 years ago this past week an interesting moment of reflection for millions of Americans both within our nation and those who find themselves “over there”.

We are going look at this -  plus a series of other stories that occur as the American Military finds itself on the precipice of major battle action.

So let’s jump into our wayback machine and see what was happening 100 years ago this week in the War that Changed the World.

World War One THEN

100 Year Ago This Week

[MUSIC TRANSITION]

Thanksgiving 1917 - at home, President Wilson uses the Official Bulletin - the government’s daily war gazette published by George Creel the head of America’s propaganda machine - to get a short statement from each member  of his cabinet -

[SOUND EFFECT]

Dateline, November 28, 1917

The masthead of the Official Bulletin reads:

Cheering Thanksgiving Messages to Americans at Home

And Fighting Forces Abroad From the President’s Cabinet Are in This Issue

It starts with an excerpt from President Wilson’s Thanksgiving Proclamation!

On this day of the revelation of our duty not only to defend our own rights as a nation but to defend also the rights of free men throughout the world, we are filled with the resolution and spirit of united action.

We should especially thank God that in such circumstances, in the midst of the greatest enterprise the spirits of men have ever entered upon, we have, if we but observe a reasonable and practicable economy, abundance with which to supply the needs of those associated with us as well as our own.—

From Robert Lansing - Secretary of State

If we measured our national blessings by the materialistic standard of physical comfort and prosperity, which has been in recent years so potent in our thought as a people, the observance of Thanksgiving Day this year might seem almost a mockery, for we are engaged in the most destructive and terrible war of all times. But a new conception of national blessings has come to the American people, a conception in which the spiritual is exalted above the material, in which the life of t