The National World War I Memorial is finally completed

As the sun sets on Friday, September 13, the First World War Centennial Commission and the Doughboy Foundation officially unveil “A Soldier’s Journey,” a 25-ton bronze centerpiece for the World War I Memorial in Pershing Park. “First Illumination Ceremony” will commemorate this special evening, which also marks the 164th anniversary of the birth of General John J. Pershing, for whom the park is named during World War I. The project has been in the works for more than a decade.

The main site, located at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza, opened to the public in 2021. Architect Joe Weishaar designed the three-acre space after winning a national design competition organized by the World War I Centennial Commission in 2016. Construction of the memorial transformed the dilapidated park into a revitalized community space with a reflecting water feature. However, it lacked its central art installation.

Unlike other memorials in Washington, D.C. to 20th-century wars, the latest addition is not on the National Mall. The Memorial Works Act of 1984 has made it difficult to build on the historic grounds, but Edwin Fountain, a former vice chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission, sees the new location as an advantage. In addition to providing more space, Fountain says the location at the “junction” between the Mall and the rest of the city could be an opportunity to open up Washington, D.C.’s commemorative landscape.

“We like to think we’re doing a service by building a memorial that’s not on the National Mall. A lot of people want to build memorials in Washington, and everyone wants it on the Mall,” Fountain says. “We hope to show that it’s possible to build a well-attended memorial further out in Washington state.”

In 2008, while working as a lawyer in Washington, Fountain co-founded the World War I Memorial Foundation. This group of volunteers led an effort to restore the 1931 memorial. District of Columbia War Memorialwhich commemorated local lives lost in the Great War. While working on this project, he realized that the conflict of World War I was not adequately represented in Washington. There were major memorials for World War II, Vietnam and Korea, but nothing for World War I.

“We unintentionally sent the message that World War I was less important,” Fountain says. “But World War I was arguably the most significant event of the 20th century. It led directly or indirectly to the wars we commemorate on the Mall.”

The foundation began planning to erect an official tribute to World War I in 2008. When Congress created the World War I Centennial Commission in 2013, Fountain was finally able to push the monument across the finish line as vice chairman.

After 16 years of fundraising, legal hurdles and construction, “A Soldier’s Journey” marks the final piece of the puzzle for the long-awaited tribute. True to its name, the 60-foot-long relief evokes an archetypal “hero’s journey,” in which a man in uniform leaves his family to serve in the Great War, witnesses the horrors of battle alongside his fellow soldiers and returns home. American sculptor Sabin Howard designed the massive structure, which was transported to Washington this week after a years-long forging process in England. It features 38 human sculptures, many of them resembling the veterans who modeled for Howard.

If you look closely, Fountain says those numbers reveal a number of stories that reflect “the diverse breadth of American involvement in the war effort,” including indigenous, African-American and immigrant soldiers who signed up to fight overseas, even as they faced their own battles for civil liberties at home.

Despite its heroic appearance, the people behind the memorial have no intention of glorifying war. Throughout the quadriptych, one can read the dark idea that even the soldiers who returned home were forever changed by the war. The final panel, titled “Return,” even shows the titular soldier’s daughter looking into her father’s helmet. She sees it as a dire premonition of what is to come: “The War to End All Wars” was nothing more.

Fountain hopes the memorial will offer visitors a space for contemplation with an overarching message of peace. To prove his peaceful thesis, Fountain points to the back of the bronze statue, where there is an inscription from Archibald MacLeish’s poem “The Young Dead Soldiers Speak Not.” The last line reads: “We were young, they say. We are dead. Remember us.”

The lighting ceremony will begin at 7:15 p.m. on Friday, September 13. Other activities Throughout the opening weekend, the memorial will be commemorated, including live reenactments and the presence of historic First World War vehicles.