Over There—the Great War to End All Wars A Hundred Years Ago 1917-1918

Bill Cohn, Trinity College Visiting Professor of History and American Studies, continues his analysis of the impact of the “war to end all wars” through the letters of his father from the battlefield, and his mother’s journals on the home front. Bill’s father to be, a buck private in the 308th Ohio Combat Engineers in World War I, participated in the three major U.S. offensives in 1918 as a loyal American patriot who was committed to the successful outcome of the war and the cause for which he was fighting. He recorded all of his movements during his time in France and Germany in his diary and his hopes about the war’s outcome and what he went through in his many letters to his sweetheart, Bill’s mother to be at home in Ohio. Excerpts from those many letters will convey to you something of the nature of that war as his father reported it. Bill’s mother’s anxious and worried thoughts about her sweetheart and the war over there are recorded daily in her own diary about the war over here.