The United States’ entry into World War I on April 6, 1917 marked the end of a long period of military non-intervention, resulting in a scramble to recruit men to fill the ranks of America’s army and navy before engaging the enemy in Europe. After a national volunteer recruitment drive only attracted a fraction…
Tag: wwi
April 20: Green Connecticut Troops Fight Germany’s Best at WWI Battle of Seicheprey
On this day in 1918, a division full of new Connecticut recruits encountered their first taste of modern warfare in a small village in northeastern France, repelling a regiment of elite German troops and holding the front lines against all odds. The US 26th Infantry Division, nicknamed the Yankee Division because all of its…
April 7: Hartford Residents Gather to Show Support for WWI
On this day in 1917, citizens of Hartford gathered in the streets for a “mass patriotic meeting” to show their support for America’s formal entry into World War I. Even though the Great War had been raging in Europe for three years, the United States had been reluctant to officially join the fight against…
November 11: Connecticut’s Last World War I Casualty
For many countries around the world, November 11 is known as Armistice Day in honor of the truce that marked the end of hostilities on the Western Front between German and Allied forces, enacted on November 11, 1918. While a lasting peace was not formally established until the Treaty of Versailles was signed in…
October 27: Corporal Timothy Ahearn’s Bravery Memorialized in Bronze
Born in 1898 to Irish immigrants living in New Haven, Timothy Francis Ahearn was still a teenager when he enlisted in the 102d Infantry Division — famously known as the Yankee Division owing to the New England origins of most of its men — and was deployed overseas to fight the Germans during World…
June 19: Connecticut Troops Patrol the Mexican Border
In June 1916, while the horrors of the Great War in Europe remained an ocean away, President Woodrow Wilson anticipated a more immediate threat along the United States’ border with Mexico. Earlier that year, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa had led a deadly raid into New Mexico that left an American town destroyed. After months…
June 5: “Registration Day” for the Great War
The United States’ entry into World War I on April 6, 1917 marked the end of a long period of military non-intervention, resulting in a scramble to recruit men to fill the ranks of America’s army and navy before engaging the enemy in Europe. After a national volunteer recruitment drive only attracted a fraction…