By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, July 22, 2015 – Members of the U.S. World War I
Centennial Commission met yesterday with members of Congress to bolster support
for commemorating the war through education and enduring observance of
Americans’ sacrifices that shaped the modern world.
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, three-time Purple Heart
recipient and the commission’s senior advisor for development, noted that while
some 2.5 million veterans served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the armed
forces have a much longer, storied journey and a seminal role in American
history.
“This nation is primarily [one] of business, human rights,
families and religious groups,” the retired general said. “But at the end of
the day, the only reason it persists after 200-plus years is the armed forces.
[They] were created before the country existed.”
Core Project
The commission’s core project is to establish and manage the
design, competition, selection and construction process for the World War I
Memorial in the nation’s capital, with a goal to break ground on Veterans Day
2017 and hold the official dedication in 2018.
“Many decades have passed since the guns fell silent,” said
retired Army Col. Robert J. Dalessandro, the commission’s chairman and the host
for yesterday’s event. “The parades and the memorials have become a dim memory
in many cases -- and before long, the doughboys themselves and the folks back
home became a forgotten generation of Americans.”
In some cases, Dalessandro said, World War I service members’
lives were sold cheaply, and their notions of idealism became seemingly quaint
by today’s standards. “But they bridged the gap between the Gilded Era and the
Jazz Age,” he said. “They watched the fall of empires in bewildered awe, and
they dreadfully witnessed the rise of communism, of fascism, of Nazism, while
birthing that Greatest Generation.”
With a father who fought in Italy and uncles who fought in
the Battle of the Bulge and Java Sea during World War II, McCaffrey
acknowledged the rightful respect for their generation. But he urged current
veterans to remember that America emerged as a world power in World War I.
U.S. Service Members Ended World War I
“A lot of times you read in history that [U.S. troops] came
in at the tail end of the war and won it due to a psychological factor,”
McCaffrey said. “It wasn’t psychological. This ended the war -- the American
engagement -- and brought tremendous power to the U.S. Marines, soldiers and
sailors.
McCaffrey estimated the memorial would cost between $20
million and $25 million.
Congress created the World War I Centennial Commission in
2013 and gave it permission to use appropriated funds, but the commission was
never provided with an appropriation.
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