Since I started speaking and writing about what was first called the Great War, I have tried to do so in the voice of a soldier. I have tried to honor the memory of World War I veterans in a dignified way, in the same way that I remember those I served with in Korea in 1952 and 1953. Some in all our wars have failed to deserve much honor and some were not very high class, admirable or successful individuals but I respect the sacrifices and service of them all. The men and women who raised their hands to volunteer in dangerous situations, even those who simply did their duty, are special. They helped this country remain free.
Following is a list of commemorations and events -- both in America and abroad -- honoring the Alabama Rainbow Soldiers.
Union Station, Montgomery, AL: On August 28, 2017, about 2,000 citizens from all over the state gathered at Montgomery’s historic Union Station. They observed the centennial of the departure on August 28, 1917, of the 167th United States Infantry Regiment for war in France a century earlier.
This event opened with a stirring flyover of fighter planes of the 187th Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard. They represented the Alabama tradition of fine fighting qualities. Since then, the 187th has been chosen to receive the F-35, our nation’s most advanced and sophisticated fighter plane, a glaring homage to these qualities.
To commemorate the Alabama soldiers and the Rainbow Division and keep their memory present at the heart of our state capital, a larger than life size bronze casting of two Rainbow Soldiers was dedicated and given to the city of Montgomery. The art, created by the world-famous sculptor James Butler, R.A., depicts an Alabama soldier holding in his arms the nearly naked dead body of a comrade. This was the second casting of the sculpture. Its twin had been erected in 2011 on the battlefield at Croix Rouge Farm in France. That battle on July 26, 1918 took more lives of Alabama soldiers than any since Little Round Top at Gettysburg.
The destination of the eight trains and 3,677 Alabamians leaving Union Station in 1917 was Camp Mills, NY. There they joined units from 25 other states and the District of Columbia to form the Rainbow Division. It was in the newly established training camp at Camp Mills that the 167th received some officers from Plattsburg and other Officers Training Schools and its first enlisted replacements from throughout the country.
Camp Mills, New York: On August 17, 2017, a plaque was dedicated at Rainbow Plaza in Garden City, N.Y. to commemorate the 42nd Division at Camp Mills in 1917. Presented by the Rainbow Veterans Memorial Foundation, many of its members attended along with MG Steven Ferrari, commanding the present division, and past living former commanders of the Rainbow Division, now the New York National Guard.
Among replacements joining the Alabama regiment were such men as Private Thomas S. Neibaur from Idaho. He, along with Corporal Sidney Manning of Alabama, became two of the five Congressional Medal of Honor holders in the Rainbow Division in World War I.
Others bringing diversity to the regiment included Native American Second Lieutenant Dick Bland Breeding from Oklahoma and Private Chauncey Eagle Horn from North Dakota. Both were killed in action with the 167th at Croix Rouge Farm. Breeding was decorated posthumously with the Distinguished Service Cross for service on May 12, 1918; Eagle Horn was the first person from South Dakota to die in World War I and the first Indian to receive the Croix de Guerre from France for bravery.
Greenville, Alabama: On the 100th anniversary of the battle of Croix Rouge Farm, July 28, 2018, the Fort Dale Chapter of the DAR in Greenville dedicated a marker to its WWI soldiers on the wall at the Railroad Station. It has a descriptive narrative and the names of all Butler County soldiers Killed in Action in World War I, the dates of death and names of battles. Research for the plaque was by Barbara Middleton, Annie Crenshaw and Barbara Taylor of the Butler County Historical and Genealogical Association. Arrangements were made by Gerald Johnson, a Greenville member of the Alabama World War I Centennial Committee.
Oise-Aisne, France: On July 28, 2018, a day-long centennial observation was held in France to commemorate the Second Battle of the Marne. American legacy units who served in the WWI Rainbow Division and other National Guard Divisions attended the ceremony at the Oise-Aisne American cemetery in Seringes-et-Nesles. It was presided over by General Joseph L. Lengyel, the 28th Chief of the National Guard Bureau. Over a hundred American soldiers carrying unit colors, the colors of their states and our national colors with battle streamers from the Aisne-Marne offensive stood at attention. The colors of Alabama and the 167th regiment flew over the tombs of their fallen comrades who gave their life 100 years ago to liberate the soil of France. Thousands attended the event.
After that ceremony at the ABMC cemetery, a World War I Fair took place in the nearby town of Fère-en-Tardenois. It had been 80% destroyed during the war before being liberated by the 42nd Division. It showed gratitude 100 years later and thanked its liberators there in an extraordinary display of the bonds uniting France and our country. Since 2012 the town has owned the 42nd Division memorial located at the battle site four miles south of it and maintains it beautifully. Crowds gathered at the Rainbow Memorial on the afternoon of July 28, 2018 to participate in a ceremony involving French and American military, French veterans, children and citizens. It was followed by a jazz concert.
That night, France had its own commemoration of the Second Battle of the Marne for all troops under French command. A huge pyrotechnics show took place at the Phantoms, the powerful work of art to commemorate the Second Battle of the Marne. An impressive work by world renowned French sculptor Paul Landowski, best known for the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, was inaugurated in the 1930’s, in the presence of General J. J. Pershing, it towers over some of France best agricultural land.
Meuse-Argonne, France: The most spectacular centennial event outside the United States started on September 23, 2018. It was at the Meuse Argonne Cemetery of the American Battle Monuments Commission, its largest cemetery in Europe; about three miles from the site of Côte de Châtillon, the famous hill where the 167th Infantry from Alabama and the 168th Infantry from Iowa shared equal honors for a great victory of the 84th Brigade on October 16, 1918. The brigade was commanded in battle by Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur.
Ninety four members of the 167th Infantry, three hundred and seventy members of the 42nd Division and one hundred and nine Alabamians are buried in that hallowed ground.
The ceremony, the official US WW I Centennial Commemoration of the Meuse Argonne Offensive, was preceded and followed by reading aloud names of the 14,246 American soldiers buried on 130.5 acres. General photos were shown in jumbo size. The reading continued around the clock for approximately 35 hours, day and night. A project of the American Battle Monuments Commission, it began in mid- afternoon with placing and lighting candles on every grave. Band music accompanied the arrival of the Official Party. Posting the colors was followed by the Superintendent’s welcome and remarks from the Mistress of Ceremonies, before two passes of flyovers by American war planes, and speeches by officials of France, the United States and the U.S. Military. Wreathes were laid, National Anthems were sung and the Official Party departed. Teams of volunteers lighted candles until evening when names continued to be read in the dark with the recitation of individual soldiers’ stories.
This huge event was followed by visits to the French National Office of Forestry Trail, a major memorial project of the French government. Spread over a large part of the battlefields of the Argonne, it takes several forms. Beginning with an orientation table in the village of Cornay, it overlooks the whole Meuse Argonne region and allows one to grasp the full extent of the battles encountered by the Americans facing impregnable defenses held by German troops.
It is a forest plantation of 1,700 sequoia and red oaks, with the red oaks forming the figure 1 in the coat of arms of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division. Damien Georges, an employee of the French Forestry Office conceived the project and has received full international support for it. The 1,700 trees are symbolic of 1st Division men who died in these forests. The trees were planted two years ago by French High School students. They are still small but will grow. The shape of the plantation can be seen from the air and the Office of French Forestry has placed 6 foot tall markers on it with the names and units of the 75 soldiers of the 1st Division whose bodies have not been recovered. The French have named this the “Foret Linceul”, the “Shroud Forest”. This name came from the foresters working in these woods who feel the presence of those men whose bodies were never found.
TALKS, BOOKS AND CONFERENCES
Dr. Ruth Truss of Montevallo University might have been the first Alabama scholar to write about the 167th in the modern era when she did so in her 1992 dissertation.
Ten years ago, Troy University first celebrated the Centennial of World War I in a conference led by Dr. Martin Oliff in 2008. It later sponsored campus wide events at its main campus in Troy and on Montgomery, Dothan and Phenix City campuses. Participants were Dr.Margaret Gnoinska and David White. Dr. Oliff edited a book of scholarly articles called The Great War in the Heart of Dixie. He was de-facto leader of Troy participation in 24 events in 24 venues throughout the state during the Centennial.
The next program on Alabama in WWI was organized for students and faculty at the University of South Alabama in November 2014 by Dr. Steve Trout, Chairman of the English Department.
The WWI Centennial was strongly supported by the Archives and History Department of the State of Alabama and its director, Steve Murray. The State of Alabama Archives, the first to be established in the country, is housed in a majestic building erected as a World War I Memorial. It has a robust collection of artifacts from the war with well-established provenance. Its best examples are on display, curated by Graham Neeley, and are backed up by correspondence and records from the Gold Star Mothers collection. Many of the WW I records are digitized and, at the time of writing, most of its collection of service records can be accessed on the internet.
In June 2015, the Alabama State Archives launched the Centennial Commemoration of WWI in Alabama, organized in collaboration with the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University. The symposium included international and national scholars talking about Alabama in the Great War.
Another symposium, organized by Professors Susan McCready and Dr. Steven Trout, took place at the Center for the Study of War and Memory, University of South Alabama, in March 2017. Focusing on France and the Memory of the Great War, it also attracted international and national scholars.
In August 2017, taking the opportunity of the presence in Montgomery of James Butler, the artist responsible for the Rainbow Memorial, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts offered a very well attended presentation entitled “A Conversation with the sculptor.”
In June 2017, the National Order of the Daughters of the American Revolution awarded me the DAR Medal of Honor, its highest decoration, at its Defense Night 2018 in our nation’s capital. This honor had been proposed by the Alabama chapter of the DAR and announced in March 2018 at its Patriotic Luncheon in Auburn featuring moving presentations on the history of Alabama in WWI.
On July 27, 2018, a delegation of historians from the state of Alabama, led by Dr. Ruth Truss of Montevallo University and Dr. Mark Wilson of Auburn, participated in a symposium at the great new WWI museum in Meaux, France. It was on the United States’ involvement in World War One. Topics include airpower in the Second Battle of the Marne, changes in women’s fashion during the era, and American remembrance of the war as well as presentation of several Alabamians who served in France during the war, including a nurse, a future novelist, an aviator, and an army captain who died at Sergy (Aisne). Presenters were Dr. Steven Trout, from the University of South Alabama, Dr. Bert Frandsen, from the U.S. Air War College; Dr. Jeff Jakeman from Auburn University; Pam King, Beth Hunter and Kaye Nail from the University of Alabama at Birmingham as well as Mortimer Jordan, III, a descendant of Dr. Mortimer Jordan, a medical doctor who served and died in WWI.
The symposium concluded with a presentation of a maquette of the Rainbow Division Memorial standing in France and in Alabama to the Musée de la Grande Guerre. It was made by Dr. Monique Seefried of the U. S. World War One Centennial Commission on behalf of the Croix Rouge Farm Memorial Foundation that she serves as President. The next day, all participants attended the US Commemorations of the Second Battle of the Marne.
For my own part, over the past three years, I have been conducting a traditional “Book Tour” for my book, Send the Alabamians. It is a documented account of the 167th Infantry published in two printings by the University of Alabama Press. More than 4,000 copies have been sold. The publisher calls it a “classic” and believes it will remain in print. At this time there have been more than 100 lectures based on the book. They have taken place in eighteen counties of Alabama, four states and two countries. There are 67 counties in Alabama so we have a way to go. Invitations to speak about the regiment continue to come as the centennial of the war resonates more with the young and the general public. The book has been translated into French and distributed in that country by a French publisher. Audiences in Alabama included every kind of civic and patriotic group, some of which are highly literate and knowledgeable about World War I and some not so much so. Many people have no knowledge of Alabama’s rich history in it. Descendants of non-combatant WW I American veterans usually knew little about their service and usually did not know their units. Descendants of veterans of the 167th quite often knew the companies in which their ancestors served and sometimes were knowledgeable of unit history. There was some evidence of recent reading of the World War I literature and some research, but not much.
Many people have worked to preserve and spread the story of Alabama in World War I. It once appeared to be vanishing from memory, but that did not happen. Too many Alabamians love our country and honor our history. This centennial has been far more than saying Grace over long dead veterans. For many, it has been a movement of sorts, a renewal of national, state and local pride in patriotic service. We hope to have touched the younger generations and kept those American values of service at the forefront of who we are. The memory of what was known as “the war to end all wars” should remain the call for peace Americans fought for then and stand for now.
Read more about the Alabama Rainbow Division in Alabama Heritage Issue 112, Spring 2014.
Nimrod T. Frazer was born in Montgomery in an Alabama family with a strong military tradition. His great-grandfather spent two years in an Union prison during the Civil War, and his father earned a Purple Heart in France in 1918. Following in their footsteps, Frazer signed up to serve his country and was sent to Korea. Serving as a tank platoon leader, he was awarded the Silver Star, and his unit received a Presidential Citation. Frazer attended Columbia University and received an MBA from Harvard University before engaging in a successful business career. A scholar of history, Frazer contributes regularly to local papers. A published author, he focuses on military matters. His latest work, Send the Alabamians: World War One Fighters in the Rainbow Division, is being published by the University of Alabama Press in May 2014. Service to his country and his community remain Frazer’s main focus. In 2009, he was inducted into the Alabama Business Hall of Fame.