World War I Memorial Museum

Answer to the question in the preceding blog: Smokey Mountains National Park. Over two million visitor come and enjoy its beauty each year. Many folk ride the Blue Ridge Moutain Parkway to get down the the Smokeys, a road that spans close to 500 miles and has a total of zero traffic signals. I will do a future blog concerning our time there, but first I need to do more catch up on our travels, so stay tuned.

Panoramic view of downtown Kansas City from the World War I Memorial Museum

My former work with the State of Colorado allowed me to travel to conferences and meeting a couple of times a year. I would suppose that in my tenure with the State I traveled to Washington D.C. eight times. Most of those times, after the conference and before the later plane departure I would try to pick up one Smithsonian Museum. That way I could cover many over a longer period of time.

Well, what I saw in Kansas City, Missouri rivals the Smithsonian. The City boasts the only World War I memorial museum in the country. World War I was the war that my paternal grandfather fought in as a private. He was stationed in France.

Estimates are that there were a total of 65 million soldiers, 9 million military deaths and a total of 35 million casualties overall involving 36 countries. The United States sent two million soldiers and suffered around 116,000 dead. And yet, this is mostly a forgotten war since WWII overshadowed it in scope and bloodshed.
One museum employee told me that WWII is really just part two of the Great War, as it was known.

I wanted to attend this museum to educate myself and to more fully understand what brought about the conflict and what the aftermath did to lead up to WWII. Their displays, explanations of the history of the war were very interesting. I realized that I need to read a lot more about this conflict to help me understand the underpinnings of WWII.

This was a war of the trenches. Many a soldier on both sides of the conflict died of disease and the elements. I know little of my own grandfather's role in this conflict. I suspect he, as a private, served his time in the trenches, but during times away from the frontline he visited various sites in the french Alps and Paris. I know this from some postcards and souvenirs held in family trust that I got a chance to review and photograph earlier in the season.

Someone viewing tiles of veterans fallen.

There was a room set aside toward the end of the museum self-tour for those who wanted to study more of the history of this terrible war. Perhaps it also allowed a time for reflection...

A picture of my grandpa, taken in France. He served with the 8th Infantry, 8th Division. Through some internet search just this evening I discovered that by the time the 8th was trained and deployed to France, the war was over! He was one of the lucky ones. The picture was taken in 1918. His unit was disbanded in 1919.

I like this picture also taken at the museum when I was at the top of the tower looking down over 250 feet. You can tell it is Autumn by the leaves in the pool of water.

My next blog entry will take us from Kansas City heading further into Missouri and Tennessee to National Military Park at the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War.

If you would like to personally communicate with me shoot me an email at 2horsesoutback@gmail.com and feel free to share the blogspot with others if you find it to be interesting. Until next time...