If war is boredom punctuated by moments of terror, the weeks in Chicago definitely represented the boredom side of that notion. Interminable drilling and packing up, and on his mind...

The final call to all officers and men was issued on June 1, 1917, to report at the Municipal Pier in Chicago for active service, to begin basic training and...

On April 24, 1917, shortly after the US declared war on Germany, former French Prime Minister René Viviani arrived in the US as head of a commission to solicit US...

During the first two years of the war in Europe, President Wilson had carefully avoided making any commitments on behalf of the United States. He was careful, even, to avoid...

I’m getting ahead of my story. In fact we need to go back a few years. In 1887 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway began to build a 350-mile...

At the beginning of August 1914 the world was suddenly and unexpectedly at war. The establishment of alliances and mutual protection agreements in Europe in the preceding decades had been...

This blog is about a man, a railroad, and a war. It is the history, one hundred years later, of EP Dudley’s experience in the 13th Engineers (Railway) during the...