Public History Commons^™

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 …

The Knights Of The Front: Medieval History’S Influence On Great War Propaganda, Haley E. Claxton

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Spanning a number of academic areas, “Knights of the Front: Medieval History’s Influence on Great War Propaganda” focuses on the emergence of medieval imagery in the First World War propaganda. Examining several specific uses of medieval symbolism in propaganda posters from both Central and Allied powers, the article provides insight into the narrative of war, both politically and culturally constructed. The paper begins with an overview of the psychology behind visual persuasion and the history behind Europe’s cultural affinity for “chivalry,” then continues into specific case studies of period propaganda posters that hold not only themes of military glory and …

“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 …

Ms-103: Jes Jerry Jessen World War I Letters, Kate Boeree

All Finding Aids

This collection contains 109 letters written by Jes Jerry Jessen addressed to his family in Spokane, WA, including his mother and father, his brothers George and Ralph, his sister Helen (“La La”) and his aunt Molly between June 6th, 1917 and June 22nd, 1919. These letters follow him through his training in Vancouver, Washington; Charlotte, North Carolina; France; and Germany, where his correspondence ends.

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 about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. …

Ms-048: World War I Service Questionnaires, Keith R. Swaney

All Finding Aids

After the conclusion of the First World War, two distinct entities at Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College—Professor S. N. Hagen and the Phi Delta Theta fraternity— endeavored to document and commemorate the experiences of the college’s graduates in the First World War.

The first section contains the Phi Delta Theta questionnaires, which the fraternity sent to its alumni to record their participation in the field or on the home front. As the questionnaires note, the historian of the Pennsylvania College chapter wished to use this information in a publication to be entitled the “Karux.”

The second section contains questionnaires that Hagen, a …