A Visit To The National World War One Museum

Author:  Jim Zabek

The “War To End All Wars” often seems forgotten in the United States, even more than the Korean War.  Most Americans are aware it happened: there has to be a World War One, because we talk about World War Two all the time, right?  For many it’s just not an easy conflict to understand:

·         Its origins are complicated

·         The end of the war is often condemned as simply a pause before continuing the fighting in World War Two

·         The “good guys” and “bad guys” are confusing (Japan and Italy were on our side that time)

·         The Russians quit the war, almost inexplicably as things were starting to look up

To military historians, however, all you have to say is “Archduke Ferdinand” and zing!  We know where the story is headed: trench warfare, the Red Baron, the Treaty of Versailles and all of a sudden it’s Poland and 1939. Most readers of this article can connect those dots in our sleep.

To non-historians World War One isn’t one of those conflicts that lends itself to easily digested sound bites.  It’s the kind of material your history teacher would make you write an essay on – multiple choice simply won’t cut it. It is into this mess of historical confusion and apathy that I plunged my extended family on a day trip to the National World War One Museum.

Kansas City, Missouri is not the most likely of places for the National World War One Museum.  Although it is centrally located, it lacks the national draw of being a capital like Washington, DC, the tourist kitsch of New York or Boston, and it lacks the historical connection (the origin of the famous Higgins Boats used on D-Day) that the World War Two Museum enjoys. 

It does, however, possess one overriding factor: its memorial was dedicated in 1921 under the eyes of many of the generals who conducted the war.  I am not certain, but it must be one of the oldest and largest memorials to the war in the United States.  For that reason alone, I suspect it was a shoe-in for dedication of the American museum.

The Motley Crew

This trip was a side trip for us.  My family was staying near Kansas City for a wedding.  I managed to convince my father-in-law, two nephews, and my two children to come with me.  My father-in-law spent some time in the Navy, and while history isn’t his thing, he’d never been to this museum and it was something he was looking forward to seeing.  My eldest daughter is getting ready to make her 6^th grade field trip to the World War Two Museum this year, and we both felt it appropriate to kick of the upcoming year by bookending the start with a trip to the World War One museum.  My youngest nephew was interested in seeing “all the guns and stuff” at the museum.  His 16 year old athlete-brother was convinced, I think, by his grandfather.  And finally, my youngest daughter was tagging along because that’s where the action was that day.  Fair enough.

We roll down the road and eventually found it above Union Station in downtown KC.  It has been several years since I last visited the museum, and in those years it has greatly expanded.  I’m not sure where the endowment came from, but it went from being a nice memorial on a hill with two small buildings as a museum to being a large underground museum with the memorial above it…I was excited.  Chatting with friends in the Education Department at the World War Two Museum (where I am a sometimes docent) I had heard nothing but praise for the World War One museum.  For me, at least, this was a treat.

Upon entering we bought tickets for the exhibits and the memorial.  Heading for the starting point, we found ourselves walking over a glass and steel bridge across a field of poppies.  As we crossed the bridge, the introductory film was just about to kick off.  It is twelve minutes in length and does a fine job of explaining the complex factors which led up to the outbreak of war.  I don’t think my kids really got all of it, nor the younger nephew.  My father-in-law enjoyed it, and the elder nephew seemed right at home: it was the kind of film he was used to sleeping through in the class that comes before lunch.  The room was dark and cool.  I’m sure he was comfortable.

Following that movie the museum is broken down into three major areas.  The first is focused on the years 1914 to 1917.  The second is a huge diorama and movie screen introducing the experience of American soldiers as they entered the war.  The third section covers the years America entered the war, 1917 through 1919 and sets the stage for the history that follows. 

As we began our tour, I kicked into docent-mode and began to try to interpret some of the artifacts in the museum for everyone in the group.  Frankly, this was difficult.  Part of being a docent at a museum is spending time wandering its halls, learning its stories, and then formulating a tour upon which to help share them with others.  Since I knew next to nothing about what was in the museum, it was tough to make much of it personal.  Fortunately, right away a volunteer at the museum jumped in and started helping out.  Larry (I didn’t get his last name) was great.  He normally works in another area, helping to interpret the art in the museum.  But he knew plenty, and hooked me up with other volunteers who knew more about other areas of the museum. 

 Let me stop right now and just say this: if you’re at one of these museums, don’t hesitate to approach a volunteer and ask them to help explain what’s around you. They are almost always there to help in some way, and wouldn’t be there if they didn’t want to share.  If you can persuade one to give you a tour – even a short one, it’s well worth the effort.  Larry was great and kept coming back and showing us different aspects of the artifacts. He shared stories about some of the things we were seeing.  Then, after his tour was over and while we were taking a break for lunch, we saw him in the café and he shared more.  It was a great trip.

I’ll share a couple of examples.  First, we ran across a French field gun.  The story behind it is that its recoil mechanism was so refined that you could place a glass of wine on it, fire, and the glass would still be there.  Furthermore, its inner workings were a state secret – to the point where soldiers would be shot for treason if they were found breaking it down without an officer present.  It was these kinds of policies that led to the rebellion in the French army in 1915.

The infamous French secret.

At another point in the museum we reached a section on the air war.  This might seem like an odd spot for the oldest weapon in the museum, but that was exactly what we were told.  After guessing about this or that, we were informed it was the darts in the far right corner.  These were direct descendants of those used by Romans, only in this case they were designed to be dropped into the trenches from airplanes. 

The darts on the right.

We don’t often think of World War One as a technological war, but that is how I see it: the forces and technologies of the Industrial Revolution were crashing headlong into the strategies and tactics that still held much of their practice from lessons learned in the century before.  It is during World War One that we find in play all of the “systems” of combined arms warfare seen today: air, artillery, infantry, armor. Yet that is the lesson I tried to impress on my small tour as we went through the museum.  I don’t know if I succeeded, but to my eyes, many of the artifacts I saw were not ancient, but rather state of the art for their day.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have known both a time when man could not fly, and then when, quite suddenly, he could.  It must have been marvelous.

Perhaps the biggest side effect of having such a motley crew moving through the museum was the difficulty in balancing a proper amount of time against the varied attention spans.  I could have spent the better part of the day in it wandering from exhibit to exhibit.  There were plenty of guns and uniforms to look at.  Lots of artillery pieces.  A plane hanging from the ceiling and a French Tank.  Honestly, I felt pushed through the museum.  But I’d bet others felt like they were dragging me behind them.  In speaking with one of the volunteers who is their artillery expert, he mentioned there was a Mauser anti-tank gun.  I kept looking for an artillery piece, but after giving up, and revisiting with him, it turns out it was a rifle, not a field gun.  Apparently it’s quite rare, and worth seeking out.  There are, of course, many insignia, and there’s an awesome multimedia area where people can interact with a number of exhibits.  There are booths where we sat and listened to period music of the day (such as: How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm (After They've Seen Paree) and Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag).  I tried to explain to my kids that the music we heard was a popular then as the music they listen to today, but I’m afraid it was a bit too far removed for them to be humming on the ride back home. 

I can’t say why, but one of the things that I fell in love with was a nurse’s uniform.  The color of a deep and rich purple, it almost looked deep blue or black, but as I gazed on it, I had to wonder how it must have looked at the time.  I had no visions of an angelic nurse wearing it, but simply wondered at its color – we don’t see uniforms like that today, yet its simplicity was such that it could be donned by a woman and she’d still seem fashionable a century after it was worn.  It is those moments that, for me, are the connections to the past that stay with me, and make a trip to a museum worthwhile. 

As our tour ended we made our way to the memorial.  One of the last things I noticed as we departed the museum was a chart showing the total numbers of American troops broken down by state.  And here another secret was revealed: Missouri ranked fourth on that list.  Perhaps that is why the museum is in Kansas City.  In 1921 to be the fourth largest contributor to a conflict so great and horrible, it must have been seen as a kind of coming of age for the citizens, some of whom must have still been alive from frontier and Civil War days.  America is not so old a nation that such significance was missed in the 1920s or today.  Certainly the memorial is unique.  It holds a commanding presence above the train station, that for half a century was near the heart of Kansas City.  No one could visit the city by train and not see or be impressed by the memorial.  Even today it is impressive, despite the fact that many skyscrapers dominate the skyline to the north.

The other aspect that struck me was my inability to interpret most of the objects in the museum.  Like the music that was so foreign to the ears of my children, many of the artifacts in the museum were starting to seem lost.  World War I was the first modern war in the sense that it had every aspect of warfare that we now recognize:  armor, infantry, artillery, air power.  And many of the technologies that we see today were in play at that time: the mechanics of artillery pieces are nearly identical to those employed in World War I.  At one point we ran across a submachine-gun that was used in clearing trenches – most readers will associate submachine-guns with World War Two, but they were invented and used during World War One. 

As the visitor roams the halls of the museum, it has a distinctly western focus.  According to one of the volunteers there, that fact wasn’t lost on the Russian Ambassador in a recent visit.  He apparently asked where the Russian exhibits were.  When he was told there were no Russian artifacts it was said he pulled out his cell phone and immediately requisitioned a shipment of Russian artifacts to be donated.  That shipment is expected to arrive quite soon, and it shouldn’t be long before a new perspective of World War One will be on display at the museum!

Stories Lost

As a docent for the World War Two museum, I often meet living veterans of World War Two.  Most of the volunteers have met more, and the vast majority have learned about the artifacts in the museum either first or second hand.  As I gazed at the objects in the World War One museum, I wondered how many stories had been lost because the museum, in its present glory, was founded so long after the passing of so many vets of the Great War. 

How much will future docents and volunteers not be able to share simply because they cannot know what is now unknowable?  That is a question I have no answers to.  Museums are a time capsule.  They allow us to reach back and know lives and actions of the past in ways that are equally familiar and strange.  My trip to the World War One Museum was great.  I wish I had been given more time to spend there, but I know I’ll make another trip again. 

One of the last things we did as we departed was to make the obligatory trip to the museum store.  I found a book on the Battle of Britain: it turns out that World War One set the precedent for an air war on Britain by the Germans that was simply repeated during the Second World War.  My kids got bears holding American flags (they can check the books out of my library when they get older).  I was sorely tempted to buy the Zeppelin-Staaken model in the store, but at $90 it’s the kind of model I want to work my painting skills up to rather than botch as a beginning aircraft modeler.  Plus having that on my “buy list” will give me an excuse to return to the museum in a couple of years!

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