A dramatic high relief bronze sculpture titled, A Soldier’s Journey, by sculptor Sabin Howard commemorates the first World War One monument in Washington DC.

Last Friday night as evening fell on the busy streets of Washington DC, The WWI Centennial Commission and Doughboy Foundation unveiled a new 58-foot long bronze WWI memorial of thirty-eight individually carved figures. In an illumination ceremony of military fanfare and ballots played by the US Army Band, visiting dignitaries shared in heartfelt speeches of remembrance, as the newest city monument was officially turned over to Washington’s Department of Parks.

Featured centerpiece of the newly constructed John Pershing Plaza was sculptor Sabin Howard’s colossal work, A Soldier’s Journey. He presented to attending guests a captivating visual essay of opposites; contrasting a young girl to men physically engaged in war, and the customary stillness of a park water pool to a sculptured turbulence of battle charging infantry men in arms.

Tranquil Tree Lined Setting

The awarded WWI architectural park proposal, was notable in the selection of Joseph Weishaar,  an intern – not yet licensed architect, who at the age of twenty-five had little work experience. To support his planned construction and land development, the firm of GWWO Architects in Baltimore was hired to oversee the project. It was of interest to the WWI Commission that Weishaar’s drawing specification stipulated a traditional ‘figurative monument,’ in lieu of modern conceptual art. With the initial plan settled, the collaborative of architects, artist and land developer worked towards a new balanced park design of open court areas, fountain and sculpture focal point.

The design team’s program also introduced new structural elements of two ten-foot engraved granite information walls and a belvedere to quickly read over lower level stepped seating, walkway, sculpture and reflecting pools. Bermed earth with foliage, that now surrounds the plaza perimeter acts as an effective sound barrier to busy Washington streets. Near the berm, but  secluded to the opposite side of the bronze presentation, stands the Peace Fountain. Its wall of gently falling water passes behind raised brass text of a quoted excerpt from the poem “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak,” by Archibald MacLeish, which begins;

• • • “…They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.
      They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done…
      They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
      They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.”

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Sabin Howard described his WWI monument titled, A Soldier Journey, as a personal service dedicated to the military but for the public. His ability to meet the design prospectus put forth by the Centennial Commission proposal was a sobering task, ” …to create a visual tribute for the 4.7 million enlisted service members and over 116,000 who gave their lives.”  Howard chose to represent the whole, by distilling his design into just one man’s war experience. Displayed across a monumental 58-foot length bronze work he created 38 life-size figures, grouped into five panels of sequenced events.

On Friday Howard’s war memorial met with much success, so that now throughout the day the high-relief figures become animated in direct sunlight that casts shadows and movement across the long surface. Its first panel features a civilian’s recruitment and swift departure to awaiting fellow infantry in the midst of battle. Following through the scenes, each physical action and weary face is filled with drama, absent of heroic symbolism or embellishment. His storyline comes to an end at the final panel in a silent victory, that’s marked by a young girl reading her father’s discharge papers.

Through creative design, Sabin Howard managed to fully acknowledge the severity of war, offering no role or solution, yet owning some bit of the crisis. Woven throughout the sculptured gestures and expressions of his 38 bronze figures, Sabin makes clear that lives were disrupted, men were lost, and many left homes without the assurance of or plan for safety.

       “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”                                                                                            – President Ronald Reagan