The battle over which existing monument, one in D.C. or one in Kansas City, will become the official national World War I memorial moved to Capitol Hill this week as both sides made informal cases on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
There are two bills now before the Senate to dedicate a national World War I memorial ahead of the Great War’s centennial. The question is not if there will be a monument, but where the monument will be.
One measure, introduced this week, would rededicate the District of Columbia War Memorial, located between the Korean and World War II memorials on the National Mall, to honor the 126,000 doughboys who fought and died in the war, not just D.C.’s 499 dead. Additional elements, like sculptures, would be constructed to give the monument a national feel.
The four major wars of the 20th century should be recognized on the Mall, said Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
“Yet no national monument has yet been created to honor those who served in World War I,” he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “As our nation prepares to celebrate the centennial of World War I, it is time for that to change by creating the National and D.C. World War I Memorial.”
A second bill offered earlier this year by the Senate’s Missouri delegation would designate the 217-foot Liberty Memorial in Kansas City the nation’s official monument to World War I dead. The Liberty Memorial was dedicated in 1926, five years before the D.C. memorial.
“We want to make sure that as we look back and honor the veterans of World War I, we recognize that this was the first, the best and the most outstanding memorial to the veterans of World War I,” Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., told his colleagues.
The House of Representatives has before it two virtually identical bills to the pair in the Senate. None of the legislation has emerged from committee.
The House and Senate bills backing a D.C. memorial are named for 108-year-old Frank Buckles of West Virginia, the last U.S. World War I veteran still alive. The Senate bill was introduced by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and co-sponsored by Rockefeller and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.
Rededicating the District of Columbia memorial “will help us remember a war that I think is not really appropriately remembered in our own history — the importance of it, the incredible carnage that took place, the way it changed the face of the civilized world,” Webb said.
