But World War I was once much more in the foreground of our American pageantry. In my early childhood I still remember the World War veterans of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina marching proudly in a parade less than forty years after America entered the war, which made them then younger than the Vietnam veterans of today. The heroic World War I experience of our then previous president, Artillery Captain Harry S. Truman was cited as a cause for his feisty presidency. The great American World War II generals Douglas MacArthur and George Patton had demonstrated how to wage 20th Century war through their combat experience in World War I.
World War I participants who turned to literature to explain an experience the world had not before seen included Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and James M. Cain. Hemingway, Dos Passos and Cain and other American writers like them had to explain in their books rather bleak news, that the whole world was capable of going insane at once.
But that was doubly true of the defeated Germans. Four combat veterans on the German side who clearly showed signs of insanity at the end of the war were 26-year-old fighter pilot Hermann Goering, 25-year-old Air Corps Lieutenant Rudolph Hess, 32-year-old Army Captain Ernst Roehm and 30-year-old Private First Class Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, the mentally ill from the German side soon took over Germany to make their form of insanity the culture of their times.
This September a paperback version of the Houghton-Mifflin hardcover “The War to End All Wars” by Russell Freedom is due to debut, in which the massive human toll of World War I will be presented in moving words and ghostly photography. This book makes clear that if World War II had never followed, it would be the Americans who fought in World War I who would now be known as “The Greatest Generation.”
An earlier book on World War I by Frank Freidel, “Over There,” published by McGraw-Hill has already cast the American contribution in that war in practically protean dimensions. One big difference that American marines made in World War I was their contrast to European troops who in trench warfare dug back-up trenches. The American marines refused to dig any sanctuaries that would lend them safety in retreat. In his book, Freidel details how the American Marine trenches on the front lines were made to be held without any retreating option.
At the end of the day, the United States and France came out of World War II the most brittle of allies. But in World War One, America and France were the closest of all friends.
It was the French that gave the American doughboys a home away from home in World War I. Many of the American troops lived in French houses that were the homes of French young men who had fallen in the war years before the Americans arrived. The bereaved French parents would act like they were adopting the young American troops as surrogates for their fallen sons. It was this familial billeting of American soldiers in France that gave American doughboys from 1917 to 1919 a home-field advantage away from home.
Still, World War I was a monstrous war with unprecedented millions of soldiers and civilians killed. No one expected or thought that there could be anything left of the world to regroup and stage a war that was more then ten times more monstrous, ten times more hateful, ten times more insane and ten times more destructive. But when World War II exploded into existence only twenty years after the World War I armistice, it overshadowed and even hid World War I under the flow of its bloodshed.
Hidden also were historical cause-and-effects of the two wars. Surely by the American doughboys going off to France to fight German aggression in World War I, they made it easier for the American military to do it even more massively a quarter of a century later. American generals like MacArthur and Patton used their World War I experiences as military prep schooling for the cataclysmic World War II experience.
But it was also World War I that gave America a sense of its own patriotism that had been inert since the divisions of the Civil War. In American songwriter named George M. Cohan defined this patriotism just in time for the doughboys to be shipped to Europe in 1917.
Rum-tum-tumming
Of these doughboys, Cohan wrote: “Over there, over there. Send the word, send the word over THERE. That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. The drums rum-tum-tumming EVERYWHERE.”
Before 1917, the American flag was hardly ever flown in Europe. To most Europeans, America was then like another planet in another galaxy. But suddenly, in 1917, the American flag was all over Europe.
Of this American flag, Cohan wrote: “You’re a grand old flag. You’re a high-flying flag, and forever in peace may you WAVE. You’re the emblem OF the land I LOVE, the home of the free and the BRAVE.”
You want patriotism for July 4? Buy or order the 1942 movie about Cohan’s life, starring Jimmy Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” In the movie as in his life, Cohan squeaked with American patriotism. Of himself, he wrote: “I’m the kid that’s all the CANDY. I’m a Yankee Doodle DANDY. I’m glad I AM. So’s UNCLE SAM.”
Wait, there’s more. “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. A Yankee Doodle, do or die. A real life nephew of of my Uncle Sam’s, born on the 4th of July.” Indeed, Cohan’s family reported he was born July 4, 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island.
For this July 4, Santa Clarita has scheduled many events. The Parade – which has been taking place in Old Town Newhall since 1932 – will begin at around 9 am in Newhall and end in Valencia, with the usual crowd of about 25,000 – 35,000 of parade watchers expected. The annual festive July 4 Trophy Ceremony will take place in El Trocadero Restaurant at around 12:30 pm. The fireworks show at the Westfield Valencia Town center starts at 9:15 pm and the Fireworks Spectacular in Stevenson Ranch will begin at 9:05 pm.
There will be a lot of happiness around, as there always is on July 4, but it is the nature of happiness to come and go like the ground hog. But beginning in World War I, something happened that left America with a brightness and a sense of purpose that proved even stronger than happiness. That was a new American patriotism that stuck around even when happiness came and went.
Chris Sharp – Commentary
Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. He has recently published a new book titled “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California.” His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.