History Commons^™

The Development Of Uniforms And Equipment In Trench Warfare From 1914-1918, Katherine M. Tyson

CAFE Symposium 2023

The First World War was one of incessant destruction, but the birth of a new modernized era with an abundance of technological advancements. These advancements ranged from the introduction of the first ever tank, to the individual details that soldiers changed on their uniforms. The uniform is also a vehicle to express a soldier’s memories and experiences, preserving their story.

The Great War And The Digital Humanities: Creating A Project And Building A Team, Ian A. Isherwood, Amy E. Lucadamo, R.C. Miessler

History Faculty Publications

Using the framework of The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs: A Digital History, this workshop will give guidance for team-building and project management, provide examples of Digital Humanities tools and methods that can be used with First World War collections, and outline pedagogical uses for digital history in the classroom.

The First World War Letters Of H.J.C. Peirs: A Digital History, Ian A. Isherwood, Amy E. Lucadamo, R.C. Miessler

History Faculty Publications

This poster provides a high-level overview of The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs: A Digital History project, giving information on its creation, the collection of letters, how it has used digital mapping, and its use in the classroom.

Ms-238: Prisoner Of War Letters From World Wars I And Ii, Kelly A. Murphy

All Finding Aids

This collection consists of various correspondence between POWs and their families, including 86 letters, 174 postcards, and about eight package slips during both world wars. Most of this correspondence was authored by the prisoners and sent to their families from camps in Europe, although it contains some correspondence from camps in Asia and Africa. The collection also contains correspondence from prisoners in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, and from interned civilians in France and Germany. Because these letters were the main way to contact family members, most of the POW correspondence contain thoughts of homesickness and loneliness along with updates …

Thirty Two Days In The Argonne Offensive, Grover C. Maus

Adams County History

It is manifestly impossible for one man, without access to official records, to write anything like a comprehensive history of the great Meuse-Argonne conflict. So no attempt will be made to write a history, but simply to describe some events, experiences, feelings, and hardships from the standpoint of a personal observer in the hope that they will provide to be typical of the experiences of the average Adams County boy who book part in that battle. [excerpt]

Bringing To Life The Grandfather I Never Knew, Valerie J. Young

Adams County History

My grandfather, Chester Allen Bower, was born in New Oxford, Pennsylvania on August 30, 1894 and died near there in Hanover on December 30, 1939. He was my mother's father, and she was just 12 years old when he died. I never had the chance to meet him.

Chester served in the Great War in the U.S. Army's 79th Division, which took part in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive from September to November 1918. This Offensive was the largest military operation ever undertaken by the U.S. Army at that time and its success led, in part, to the end of the war. …

Ms-232: Edward A Frederick Papers, Joy Zanghi

All Finding Aids

This collection is a small collection mostly comprised of postcards written by Edward A. Frederick to his family. The postcards follow Frederick from his training with the Aero Squadron in San Antonio Texas at Kelly Field to his service overseas in the UK and France. The collection also contains photographs, a newspaper clipping, and a ring and pins from the US Aero Squadron. Overall, the postcards and the collection as a whole do not provide much insight or detail about the life of a soldier during WWI.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe …

From The Trenches: Cross-Campus Digital History Collaboration, Amy E. Lucadamo, Ian A. Isherwood, R.C. Miessler, Jenna Fleming, Meghan E. O'Donnell

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In September 2015, our team launched The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs (www.jackpeirs.org), a digital history initiative built on collaboration between faculty, students, and library staff. The project is founded on amazing primary source material, but with limited financial support and little dedicated staff time. We leveraged the creativity and hard work of our team members to build a website that is maintained by students and enhanced whenever possible with features and commentary from faculty and staff. Members of #TeamPeirs discussed the evolution of the project, the nature of our collaboration, and the intersection of audiences …

Neurasthenia, Robert Graves, And Poetic Therapy In The Great War, Juliette E. Sebock

Student Publications

Though Robert Graves is remembered primarily for his memoir, Good-bye to All That, his First World War poetry is equally relevant. Comparably to the more famous writings of Sassoon and Owen, Graves' war poems depict the trauma of the trenches, marked by his repressed neurasthenia (colloquially, shell-shock), and foreshadow his later remarkable poetic talents.

Adams County In The Great War, Jonathan Tracey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

The First World War has generally faded from American memory, and is generally considered to have not cost the United States much. Although the country did not experience the total destruction that Europe endured, even small towns such as Gettysburg paid a cost, and the sacrifices made one hundred years ago should not be forgotten. First off is a brief summary of Adams County in the war, sourced primarily from Paul Foulk and Percy Eichelberger’s “Adams County in the World War.” Foulk and Eichelberger were students of Gettysburg College (then Pennsylvania College) and returned from service in the war and …

The Conflicting Conflict: Memorialization And Memory Of The Great War, Danielle E. Jones

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

July 1st through 3rd, 2013 marked the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. There were an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 visitors to the national park, including as many as 10,000 reenactors. The Civil War sesquicentennial was commemorated from the very beginning, and ended with a reenactment in Appomattox that saw over 6,000 people visit to re-live the end of the American Civil War. On April 9th, bells across the nation, including at Gettysburg College, tolled for 4 minutes to honor the four years the war raged on. Plans were started for the anniversary almost a decade in advance and …

The Great War Then And Now: Reflections On America’S Declaration Of War, Thomas S. Potter

Student Publications

This short essay explores the many impacts of the 1917 U.S. entry to World War I on the author's hometown of Pennington, NJ, and the reaction of its residents at the time.

Bodies In Conflict: From Gettysburg To Iraq, Laura E. Bergin

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The exhibition Bodies in Conflict: From Gettysburg to Iraq not only conveys an ambitious geographic and historical range, but also reflects the sensitivity, ambition, and thoughtfulness of its curator, Laura Bergin ’17. In examining how the human figure is represented in prints and photographs of modern war and political conflict, Laura considers how journalistic photographs, artistic interpretations, and other visual documentation of conflict and its aftermath compare between wars and across historical periods. Specific objects include a print and photographs from the Civil War, propaganda posters from World Wars I and II, photographs and a protest poster from the Vietnam …

Remembering The Somme: This Watershed Battle Of World War I Still Echoes With Honor, Sacrifice And Horror 100 Years Later, Ian A. Isherwood

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

The Western Front was a cacophonous mixture of men and material. Airplanes buzzed slowly above the thousands of miles of zigzagged trenches carved into the chalky soil. Motorized lorries stalled, started and then plodded behind the lines, bringing up shells, water, tinned beef, bullets and soldier’s rum, etc., everything needed to sustain the armies astride the Somme. [excerpt]

On The Fields Of Glory: A Student’S Reflections On Gettysburg, The Western Front, And Normandy, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

I’m very fortunate to have had no shortage of opportunities to get out into the field and put my classroom learning into practice. I am especially lucky to have twice had the opportunity to travel to Europe. Two years ago, I went with my first-year seminar to explore the Western Front of World War I in France and Belgium. This year, I travelled with The Eisenhower Institute to tour the towns and beaches of Normandy where the Allies launched their invasion of Hitler’s Europe during World War II. Having experienced these notable sites of military history, and having taken a …

“Two Wars And The Long Twentieth Century:” A Response, Bryan G. Caswell, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University and renowned historian of the American Civil War, authored an article in the New Yorker recently entitled “Two Wars and the Long Twentieth Century.” Taken primarily from her remarks in the Rede Lecture delivered at the University of Cambridge earlier in 2015, Faust’s article takes advantage of the proximity of the anniversaries of the First World War and the American Civil War to advocate for a dialogue of greater continuity between the two conflicts. [excerpt]

A Useable Past: First World War Training Camps On Civil War Battlefields, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When visitors flock to America’s National Parks, the battlefields from the American Civil War are perennially popular. Every summer, thousands come to walk over the serene fields and forests where men suffered unimaginable carnage. These sites have become sacred in the American psyche, places to remember and honor the dead, educate the public, or engage in quiet personal reflection. The rolling plains, dense forests and impressive mountains of Civil War battlefields inspire awe and reverence for what author Robert Penn Warren tagged America’s only “felt history.” [excerpt]

100 Years Ago Today: Challenging The Christmas Truce, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

This holiday season, I made a resolution for myself: DO NOT publicly complain about the rampage of Christmas Truce ridiculousness that is about to hit Great War commemoration efforts. But, resolutions are made for breaking anyways so, when my “100 Years Ago Today” coverage of the Gettysburg Times offered up some challenging material, I couldn’t resist. [excerpt]

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2015

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Learning The Fighting Game: Black Americans And The First World War, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and …

Soldiers Past And Future: The Civil War And Great War Meet In Gettysburg, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Gettysburg, a town already so intimately acquainted with war, was the scene of particularly interesting historical encounters. The still too present memory of the Civil War impacted the way Gettysburgians viewed the Great War. Many veterans of the Civil War were still alive, although very old, and it was not uncommon for The Gettysburg Times to run headlines about the death of a prominent Civil War veteran right alongside coverage of the war raging in Europe. [excerpt]

Students At War: Percy Eichelberger, Class Of 1921, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

As a resident of Adams County, Eichelberger spent his childhood growing up in the Gettysburg area. When war came in 1917, 23 year old Eichelberger enlisted with the 4th Infantry, stationed at a training camp on the Gettysburg battlefield for the summer. [excerpt]

A Time To Remember U.S. Rise As A World Power, Ian A. Isherwood

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

This summer marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. In the United States, the war has been long eclipsed by the other great conflicts straddling it - the Civil War and Second World War - and as a result has been unfairly pushed to the margins in our national memory.

My hope is that the First World War's centennial, starting this summer and ending in 2018, will be an opportunity for Americans to break out of our intellectual isolationism and discover again a conflict that not only transformed world history, but also America's place within it. …

“To Fly Is More Fascinating Than To Read About Flying”: British R.F.C. Memoirs Of The First World War, 1918-1939, Ian A. Isherwood

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

Literature concerning aerial warfare was a new genre created by the First World War. With manned flight in its infancy, there were no significant novels or memoirs of pilots in combat before 1914. It was apparent to British publishers during the war that the new technology afforded a unique perspective on the battlefield, one that was practically made for an expanding literary marketplace. As such former Royal Flying Corps pilots created a new type of war book, one written by authors self-described as “Knights in the Air”, a literary mythology carefully constructed by pilots and publishers and propagated in the …

Adams County History 2014

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Growing Up In The Trenches: Fritz Draper Hurd And The Great War, S. Marianne Johnson

Adams County History

On February 18, 1919, Second Lieutenant Fritz Draper Hurd supervised recreational activities for the men of the 103rd Field Artillery. The men breathed easy; they tossed a football and even engaged in a little gallows humor with a “gas mask race,” at last finding a use for the once fearsome yet no longer needed device. The Great War was over, and the men of the 103rd Field Artillery were content to lob footballs instead of shells as they awaited their discharge papers. [excerpt]

Ms-155: Lt. Francis M. Tompkins World War One Scrapbooks, Amy E. Lucadamo

All Finding Aids

Francis M. Tompkins created three scrapbooks with images and materials that he collected during his service in WWI from 1917-1920. Most of the images are official army photographs printed on postcard stock. They are labeled on the image and sometimes dated. Additionally, Tompkins provides detailed descriptions of the locations, battles, individuals, and views pictured in the photographs. He describes the movements of the 305th Engineers and the tasks they performed in each location, often building bridges to allow for the movement of soldiers and equipment.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide …

Ms-153: The Fritz Draper Hurd ’16 Papers, Amy E. Lucadamo, Danielle Jones

All Finding Aids

This collection consists primarily of materials produced by F.D. Hurd himself. The collection includes a memoir draft, photographs of his college experiences, diaries from his college and war time, and various artifacts and memorabilia from Hurd’s time in the military. The collection focuses heavily on Hurd’s college activities and his war service. While the collection does not provide much official information on Hurd’s military service and Gettysburg College experience, it does contain extensive anecdotal information from Hurd’s diaries and remembrances, dictated to his son in the 1970s. There is also a significant amount of information about his time in medical …

Ms-147: Lieutenant Andrew R. Kane Letters, Amy E. Lucadamo

All Finding Aids

This collection is made up of 28 letters sent to Andrew R. Kane of Philadelphia, PA from May 31-July 15, 1918 while he was serving with the 112th Infantry, Company C in France. They were sent by the women in his family: his mother, two sisters, his sister-in-law, and girlfriend. His younger sister, Frances, and girlfriend, Marie wrote most often. Letters reference family and friends in Philadelphia, their pride in Andrew’s service, and their worries about his safety. They express patriotic and religious sentiments. Letters from Andrew’s mother, Mary, contain the most spelling and grammatical errors and letters from his …

Ms-148: John Alexander Kinnear Wwi Letters, Dori L. Gorczyca

All Finding Aids

The letters of John Alexander Kinnear consist of 7 postcards and 92 letters which were written by Kinnear to his family living near Lexington Virginia. The letters range in dates from November of 1916 (before Kinnear joined the service) to May of 1919 (after he arrived home from Europe). The letters are mainly addressed to his mother, Mrs. J. J. L. Kinnear, but there are some that are addressed to his father and siblings.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information …