An American Doughboy - Still Standing....for now.

Road trips are an excellent way to discover new things.  But there are disadvantages too.  When just "passing through" you sometimes have to get your photos on a day when conditions are not ideal.  As for instance with this interesting monument adjacent to the "Janesville 99" memorial we visited last time.

It is a World War I monument, and actually the dark, swirling clouds above do a decent job of bringing to mind the smoke and hellfire of trench warfare.  The Doughboy is standing defiant, rifle in one hand, grenade held high in the other.  The detail work is very nice, notice the little touches such as the barbed wire near his feet.

I learned that this was one of a large series of such statues from the 1920s and 30s.  Here's another image of one taken by someone blessed with better equipment, eye and weather conditions.

When I got up on tiptoes to photograph the leggings and barbed wire I noticed this plaque, a helpful clue to the history of these sculptures.

As it happens there already exists a website and a related Facebook group dedicated to the history of these "Spirit of the American Doughboy" memorials as created* by an interesting character named Ernest Moore Viquesney.  In brief, these were commercially produced in the decades after The Great War, and found considerable favor as memorials that were generally placed in public spaces with the support of, and in honor of, American WW I veterans.  Approximately 140 are known to exist, although some have not survived the passage of time and perhaps a few are yet to be found in some dusty corner of a storage building.

The majority of known Doughboys, approximately 120, are made of thin sheets of bronze welded together.  Thus they are much lighter and more damage prone than what an equivalent solid bronze statue would be.  Of course this made them far more affordable, and Viquesney was very much of mercantile inclinations.  At least three were done in stone.  And in 1934 due to the economic hard times of the Depression, a version made of cheaper zinc was marketed.  At only $700 each he continued to sell a few although in dwindling numbers as the shadows of a new war grew and as memories of the last one perhaps faded.  Production ended in 1942, at a time when there was likely no extra metal of any kind available.

I do recommend the site linked above.  It is encyclopedic and a fine example of what dedicated amateur historians can accomplish.  It is in its own way a memorial to a time when a scholarly pride in our nation's accomplishments was much in evidence.

The Doughboy Monuments are mostly still in place.  But over the years a dozen or so have suffered vandalism and a few have vanished altogether.  The vandals have been a mixed lot.  The statues are not nearly as sturdy as they look, and not a few drunkards have been very sure they could swing from an arm or from that extended rifle.  A few have been more systematically savaged by people with obscure political motives or by illicit metal scrappers.  Some of the latter have been badly disappointed by the zinc composition and the thin plating of the later versions.  

But what of today?  Is there much left of that "scholarly pride" in our past these days?  Alas I fear not.  

We've had considerable unrest in recent weeks.  Peaceful protests have mutated into something uglier.  Statues commemorating Confederate leaders have been targeted widely, and with at least some logic.  From there it takes so little to throw the ropes and start pulling down figures with ambiguous status.  Columbus, Jefferson.....even The Great Emancipator himself.  And when no convenient target can be brought down by the jeering mob, well, any statue will do.  At least three Doughboys have been damaged since the Floyd protests began in May of 2020.  

Here is the best documented and perhaps saddest example.  Birmingham Alabama, May 31st.  A mob attacks the Confederate Obelisk in a public park.  It proves too sturdy for their engineering abilities, which are likely as rudimentary as other aspects of their education.  

No problem.  Here's another statue.  Let's Mess It Up.

Immediately thereafter both the Confederate Obelisk and the Doughboy were taken down by the City of Birmingham, whose Mayor had actually participated in the protests although not in the defacement of the monuments.

That the Obelisk should go is palatable.  There are mechanisms by which such decisions can be deliberated and done in a proper fashion.  No doubt there are on the one side firebrands who would advocate immediate dynamiting and stubborn obstructionists who would like to continue to enshrine aspects of our history that are no longer considered noble and good.  Our society always functions best when Progress and Conservation can meet, often uneasily, and compromise.

But the Doughboy was just a target of convenience.

I consider World War One to be our last idealistic war.  We took up arms for others, in a conflict that did not directly impact our nation's security.  We fought for the subjugated and abused citizens of Belgium.  We fought for Freedom of the Seas.  We fought because small nations should not be ground under the heel of mighty empires.  Try as I can to appreciate the peculiar mind set of our modern Visigoths I can't see much racism involved in it.  In fact we joined an alliance where black and asian colonial troops were fighting and dying for Ideals, while looking ahead to the eventual freedom that always seems to result when brave men prove they are the equal of their nominal "masters".

The Birmingham Doughboy is now safe somewhere and supposedly will be cleaned up, repaired and restored to his pedestal.  I hope you'll forgive me if the cynicism of these ignorant times has given me doubts as to whether that will in fact ever happen.

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* I will by convention give Viquesney credit for these statues, but the true story of the artists and craftsmen involved is complex and best addressed by the Viquesney website.  I again recommend it.