nothin On Green, It’ll Be WWI All Over Again | New Haven Independent

On Green, It’ll Be WWI All Over Again

Paul Bass Photo

William MacMullen with grandfather’s WWI helmet.

The only monument ever allowed to be constructed on the Green is the flagpole moument listing the names of the 261 New Haveners who died in battles called Meuse-Argonne, Somme, and Chateau-Thierry.

Each one of their names will be read later this year as New Haven marks the centennial of World War One and American and New Haven participation in it through a rededication of the flagpole monument.

Bill MacMullen, the architect for capital projects for the city government, brought that news, along with his Doughboy grandfather Thomas’s original World War One helmet to the studios of WNHH 103.5 FM to preview the rededication during an episode of the Dateline New Haven” program. MacMullen is helping to organize the Oct. 12 – 14 rededication events.

MacMullen is an avid history buff, collector, history reenactor, and member of the United States World War One Centennial Commisison. He said that the reputed war to end all wars” has shaped the world, along with the New Haven, we live in today.

Globally, he cited the post-armistice creation of a place called Saudi Arabia and another place called Palestine, where the British victors, having kicked out the the defeated Ottoman Turks, permitted some Jewish immigration.

The original Renault tank.

In New Haven, huge numbers of rifles and other arms were produced for our soldiers and those of our allies, kick-starting new industries. The war also led to large community gardens in cities to permit crops and other food stuffs to feed the troops and the, by 1917, nearly starving English and French troops and populations.

That’s why, MacMullen said, it behooves us to know the past — not only for appreciation but as guidance for the future

The whole thing [the war] was a mistake,” he said, citing the crazy patchwork of alliances that lethally drew in nation after nation, and finally pulled in the United States.

Two hundred sixty-one New Haveners were among the 116,516 U.S. soldiers who died. Another 200,000 soldiers were wounded. The casualty rate was far greater than in World War Two, and all within only 17 months of war spanning 1917 to the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice.

How did MacMullen, a navy veteran, and Yale 1972 ROTC grad, become involved in the rededication project?

I was a lecturer at the WW1 National Symposium. The year I spoke was in 2016 in Norfolk, Virginia, at the MacArthur Museum. That talk on Naval Affairs caught the notice of the National Commission on the Commemoration, and they asked me to be involved and plan events in Connecticut, especially, in New Haven. When I showed the mayor the letter I received from the National Commission, she wrote me a letter asking to plan and coordinate events for New Haven,” MacMullen said.

The rest is, as they say, history.”

In addition to the rededication during the Oct. 12 – 14 weekend that MacMullen has helped plan, complete with an encampment of reenactor members of the 26th Infantry Division, with MacMullen in charge of the artillery, he also called attention to the following area events in the run-up:

• On April 8 at 3 p.m. the Criterion Theater will premiere Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero. A computer animated movie, with settings on the Yale campus, it follows a real historical dog, who was adopted by soldier with the 26th Infantry Division — the Yankee Division” — training at the Yale Bowl. The little terrier became a hero, MacMullen said, and even captured a terrified German soldier, whom Stubby dragged toward his own lines.

A genuine surviving Renault tank, from 1917 is going to be positioned at the theater entrance. It’s about the size of my Hyundai,” said MacMullen.

• On the weekend of Sept. 21 – 23, MacMullen will be among re-enactors camping out and digging samples of World War One trenches in Hamden.

Throughout, MacMullen said, he will be in standard uniform and wearing his grandfather’s helmet.

Click on the Facebook Live video or the audio file below for the full interview with William MacMullen on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven.”

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