Tag: World War I
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Hazel–Working, Worrying, and Loving Her Family
We recently acquired a tiny collection of letters written by the men of the Philadelphia Ramsey family. In two generations, there were four veterans from two wars–William B. Ramsey, Jr. served in World War I and his sons (William, Pierce “Ted”, and John “Jack”) served in World War II. All the letters were written, at…
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From the Gales of War to a Life of Peace: H.A.L.H. Wade, Soldier and Interpreter
On 16 December 1888, Harry Amyas Leigh Herschel Wade (1873-1959) received a book from his housemaster at Harrow as “diligentiae praemium” [the reward of industry]. That industry would support Lieutenant-Colonel H.A.L.H. Wade in a career of both warfighting and peacemaking that spanned two World Wars and the rise and fall of the League of Nations.
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History in the Rough–100 years after the Armistice
100 years ago, in 1918, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the armistice was signed between Germany and the Allies, bringing World War I to an end. The war had gone on for four years resulting in around 40 million casualties (about 20 million dead and 20 million wounded). …
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McMaster’s War: Research into the Causes of World War I
While working on the papers of pioneering U.S. historian John Bach McMaster this past month, I found myself combing through a section of research material he used while writing about World War I: specifically, a series of documents produced during the lead-up to the American decision to join the side of the Triple Entente against…
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Beyond the human cost–World War I’s financial implications
When it comes to archival collections, I almost always fall in love because I am forced to look at something in an entirely new way … the Paul Schrecker collection of Austrian World War I ephemera is no exception. This collection documents a Viennese man’s experience on the home front during World War I. I…
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Survivors of War: Albert D. Hequembourg and his diary
Today on the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I, I would like to tell the story of Albert D. Hequembourg and his two-volume diary, both of whom happily survived his service overseas in Belgium and France in 1918. Hequembourg, a 1908 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental…
Unique at Penn 