archives was about. so when i came here as a volunteer i was asked if i wanted to work on a conservation project for record group 120, which is the records of the combat units of the american expeditionary forces. since i had no frame of reference i said yes. so that got me into looking at these records that first of all i was astonished to understand that i was handling records that go back to world war i. and so that alone was very interesting and entertaining. but as we went along, one of the things that i found out in looking through the records was that the records start at the division level and work down to brigade level and then regiment level. and in the regiment level we were going through some of the files, we came across something called field messages. and as i was looking at these, i realized that these field messages were being written by men who were out in the field. some of them were intelligence officers who were probably no further from the german lines than i am to the next desk in this room. and they were concealed and they were listening to the germans and watching the germans and reporting all of this back to the regimental headquarters. well, i was hooked. then world war i became real for me and i was very interested in it. it was like a fever for those of us who were working on that group of records. we all became interested and we started reading books and buying books and one of the books that someone bought was about world war i artists. i'd never heard of anything like that, and neither had most of the people in that group. he brought the book in and looked at it and we said this is really good. and we found out the photographs of these pieces of artwork were here at the archives. man, that's really cool. so we came up here and looked at them. but that was the end of it until we also found out the american museum of the smithsonian, american museum of history, has a collection of these. they don't have the entire collection but they have a nice-size collection of this artwork. and so many of us trundled out to washington, d.c. to the museum where the curators were very, very kind and very, very knowledgeable and showed us many pieces of this original artwork, which was just stunning. and so by the time we got back he was going to look at the photographs and i was going to write about it. and that's how it started out. and it ended up that one of the people who was working very closely with me as many volunteers do had other things that he wanted to work on. and kind of left in the middle of this project so it was me. but that's okay. i was very interested in it, and except for one little stamball carried on fairly well. so the stumble was i had actually so much material to work with for this one artist because of the way i went about it. that it took me a long, long time to get through it. and by the time i finished and the article, the blog was posted, i was breathlessly waiting for responses from the public, saying yes, no, tell me that you like it, tell me that you hate it, tell me anything. and there was nothing. there was just no response at all. and kind of at that point i said, well, why am i doing this? and you know, a few weeks later i said i committed to doing this, i am going to finish it. and then i found out that they were keeping statistics about how many people were viewing the blogs and i was astonished to find out how many people actually read that blog. when the united states declared war on germany, they had to organize the entire army and it came under general blackjack pershing. and one of the things that he desired, and desired as in instructed, was artists to go over and to record the battles. and he wanted this for two purposes. one was to record, make a recorded history through artwork. but the other reason was for a little bit of propaganda. he wanted to be able to send artwork back to the united states that would ensure that the american public was in favor of the war because they weren't necessarily going into the war and it could also be used to entice young men to join the army. so with that being said, they went and looked at some artists and they actually had sort of a -- not a contest perhaps but they were looking around at artists who were magazine and picture book artists because they felt that that would be the kind of artist most able to capture the battle scenes. and so they found these eight artists and with very little training they were sent off -- military training, that is. they were sent off to france. armed mostly with their sketch pads and their pencils and easels. they didn't have anything in the way of munitions. but one of the things that they had to abide by was the rule that they had to send their artwork back to headquarters. the american expeditionary force headquarters. and at that point it was all photographed before it was ever shipped back to the united states. and only after it was photographed did it actually leave france. army signal corps is where the photographers were assigned, and they took thousands of pictures. from all kinds of activities and all kinds of different objects. there were pictures of ships, pictures of guns, pictures of men in the trenches. just all kinds of pictures. balloons. if there was anything to do with the war, including even just storage spaces, they photographed it. so they were actually both artists and photographers that went on this. and there's actually a very interesting photograph of a photographer standing in a trench with water up to his knees, which is fairly typical of the trenches, with his tripod and his camera attached to the tripod. so as i said, most of these artists had their background in magazine artwork. so they ended up with albert duncan, dawn, harding, morgan, hoto smith, and townsend. those were the artists that were sent over. they were as different human beings as you can imagine. pehoto was a very small, slightly built man. and his opposite would have been dunn, big harvey dunn because he was a big strapping man. and one of the things he did that was slightly different from all the other artists was to spend a little bit of time in the trenches. i'm not trying to tell you that he spent a month there. but he certainly went in for a few days. and while the other artists certainly were familiar with the trenches and may have set foot in them, they didn't stay the period of time that mr. dunn did. this is a piece of artwork of the leviathan. and the leviathan has this interesting history to it because it was actually a german ship called the vaterland that had been interred in new york and was actually sitting at hoboken when the united states declared war. well, it was a huge cruise ship. so the united states decided that it would be a perfect vessel for transporting american troops to france. so that's what it was used for. this one is by william -- or by bill ailworth. he liked to be called bill. i have a picture, i have this artwork. mines were used quite often with the idea that they could go under the enemy, dig under the enemy, and plant the explosive and just blow the enemy away. and some of these mine craters, i've actually been to france and i've seen at least one of these mine craters. even today, almost 100 years later, these things are huge. and they did an immense amount of destruction. but unfortunately from the allies' point of view, it probably didn't have the effect on the germans that they thought because the germans were very smart and they were very well placed. so what we have is a record of some of the immense destruction that was done in world war i. so here we have another piece of artwork by pehoto. and i like his because it's a completely different viewpoint. i would call it more art for art's sake than for actually recording the war. you can see he's inside a ruined building. he's actually sitting inside a ruined building. and he's looking at all -- it's like looking into a cave and seeing at the far side of the cave there's this ray of light coming through. and i just thought, you know, the messages that in the midst of all this ruin there is still some light. when i was doing the articles, the blogs, i wanted to make sure that we got some artwork that had the enlisted men in it because they were the ones who actually fought and they were the ones, there wh there wasn't any food they're the ones who didn't eat. when there wasn't water, they didn't get anything to drink. and that happened quite often, perhaps more often than people are aware of. there's a story about the 42nd division marching from their training grounds in france to the trenches. and on the way because it was in the middle of winter, it was in february, the kitchens couldn't keep up. so when they got to their pif wac sites there was no food. so it's not atypical. it had happened quite a bit that the army was ahead of where the food was and it took a while for the food to get to them. so i wanted to make sure that we have some artwork that concentrated on what was going on with the enlisted men. this shows the men lining up at the kitchen to get their food. this is a sketch that was done by morgan. and i like this one very much because it is american medical staff tending german prisoners of war. i just like the fact that even when there's war and there's all this opportunity for hatred and there was a lot of that that people are treated decently. at least sometimes. one of the objects i had in doing these blogs was to show the modernization of war. so world war i saw the introduction of airplanes as a means of bombing people and observation. but it was also the introduction of tanks thanks to the british. and the british and the french had tanks. the americans had none because it was too hard to transport. so when we used tanks, we used mainly the ones that were built by the french. and so in this picture by townsend you can see that there's a tank being attended to by a couple of enlisted men. what they're trying to do is put camouflage over it because of course they wanted to make sure it was hidden by the enemy, who also had airplanes and balloons to observe what was going on and they wanted to make sure that there was a very big investment in these tanks and they were trying to protect their investment. as well as have it ready for the next offense. in that same vein this is a piece of a sketch that was done by townsend of an airplane, and you have men here who are along the wing and the tail, trying to get the plane ready for an alert. there are some things i find either ironic or just plain tragic in some of the artwork. what we have here, this is by dunn. and this is a cemetery. and in the cemetery machine guns have been set up to mow the enemy down. it just seems to me that that's rather tragic. when harvey dunn and indeed when the american forces came to france, some of them landed in 1917, late 1917. but most of the army became active in france in 1918. so a lot of these pictures were drawn during the time from about april through the end of the war and because it was the army of occupation there were some that were even done after the end of the war. you will see there are some pictures of the american forces entering germany. but this one is by one of my favorite artists, and this is by harvey dunn. when he first came over, he drew this image of an enlisted man. or actually this is the machine gunner. and you might think that this machine gunner looks a lot like superman because of his square jaw and his broad shoulders and his narrow waist. it was very idealized. but harvey dunn himself was very, very passionate, and this is how he saw the war. and this is how he saw the men. this is another sketch by harvey dunn showing street fighting. and you can see it's kind of grisly and certainly has a very favorable image of the americans as fighters. one of the things that i did when i was writing the blog about harvey dunn was to go back to the textual records because the men of the 36th division very shortly after the war was over were asked to write down their personal war experiences, which they did. and some of them it ran the gamut from you made me write this, i did, and i'm paraphrasing, to we came, we saw, we beat the germans to things that were four and five pages long, very detailed descriptions of the battle. but when i put the blog together, there's a couple that i thought were very indicative of the grisliness of war. so i'd just like to read two of them to you now. this first one was written by an unknown soldier in company l of the 141st infantry. he says, "after a few hours hiking i was soon on the battlefield. the first sight i saw was a german skull. a stick was stuck in the ground and his head was hung over top of it. a camel cigarette was in his mouth and his old steel helmet was lying by the side of the stick. which is a rather startling introduction to war. and the second one was written by william loffey who was a cook with company b of the 132nd machine gun battalion. he wrote, "i met a constant stream of german prisoners and wounded american soldiers all going to the rear. one mp whom i was walking with had three german officers as prisoners, one captain and two lieutenants. we had not gone far until a rolling kitchen as the soldiers called an austrian 88 came along and all we could find of those german officers was one boot full of leg and one head. c'est la guerre as he said. i'm glad it will save me a walk. and the mp went back to the front. so after the americans saw battle, particularly sammy el and the nusar gun, they started capturing german prisoners. and i thought this picture drawn by duncan was kind of interesting and arresting in some ways because it's german prisoners being escorted by an american soldier through a town in france and it doesn't seem as if anybody really cares. the germans don't seem to be particularly anxious to be anywhere except where they are. the american soldier who's escorting them doesn't seem to be particularly intense about it. and the french people who you might think would have a different reaction to having the enemy right in their hometown, seem to be a bit indifferent themselves. so i just thought it was an interesting perspective on the whole prisoner of war thing. and i have to admit this is my favorite piece of artwork from world war i. this is by pehoto. to me this is almost like art for art's sake. you as the viewer are looking through an arch. of a ruined town. and what you're seeing is a very old, or at least old-looking french lady dressed in something that looks like it came out of the victorian era, kind of bent over, looking almost as if she's shuffling forward. and she's being passed by this young vigorous straight-standing man who is striding forward. so it's very much a composition of opposites. and you can look at this and say it's the result of four years of war against the confidence and the optimism of the american soldiers. if you want to go even further you can say well maybe this is even like the old world meets the new world because world war i marked a change in american status in the world as a power. and i wanted to end where i started which was with the same artist, bill ailward. this is a beautiful composition. it's also i think emblematic of war. what you see is freshly dug earth with a very simple wooden cross and a lone doughboy american soldier mourning the loss of a comrade in arms. what i found out after i started working here for a while is that there were records from world war ii and i had thought that i might find my father's unit because he was in the army air force. and there are a lot of records about the army air force. well, it turns out the way the air force kept records was that every single mission that was flown was recorded. there are things about whether the forecast, the actual weather, the amount of munition that's were spent, the bombs that were dropped, anything that happened on the plane and also most important to me all the names of the crew that flew. and the first time i saw my father's name with his crew i almost cried. it was that moving. in fact, i'm about to cry now. it was that moving to me. he flew on a lot of missions. and i have made sure that i copied -- made copies of all of those. that was bsh did y-- i wouldn't known that nlts i caunless i cas a volunteer and started working on world war i. i had no expectation of finding my fathers name. so it was a big emotional thing for me. we had talked earlier about the availability of photographs and there are certainly thousands of them here at the archives. and there are hundreds of photographs of the artwork that the artists did. the reason the artwork is important is because it photographs exactly what is there. there is no perspective on it, there is no emotion. when you have artwork, you get the man's -- he's bringing with him his experiences. he's seeing more than just that camera would see. and he brings all that. and it's very important to understand and to appreciate what is in the artwork itself. >> to see more world war i combat art and to learn more about the artists you can visit the archives blog, the unwritten record. saturday evening at 8:30 eastern on book tv author david horowitz outlines the priorities the white house should focus on. in his latest book "big agenda: president trump's plan to save america." >> my fear is of republicans going off all in their own directions. i'm worried about the congress. i'm worried about people who don't understand -- people in the republican leadership who don't understand the political battle. >> reporter: then sunday at 6:45 p.m. eastern harvard history professor david armitage provides a history of civil wars throughout the world in his book "civil wars: a history in ideas." >> civil war has something atrocious about it remarked the german political theorist karl schmidt. it's fraternal war because it's conducted within a common political unit and because both warring sides at the same time absolutely affirm and absolutely deny this common unit. >> go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. and i think a lot of these kids look at these huge ideas, you take twitter, you take uber, air bnb, and they seem like conversationally almost like a "seinfeld" episode, oh, if only we had this then this could happen. and they felt like oh, i could just do this like this. and it was so much harder. >> reporter: sunday night on "q&a," "wall street journal" staff reporter alexandra wolf looks at the world of start-ups in silicon valley and the young people who have ventured there with hopes of becoming the next big success story. in her book "this valley of the gods." >> a lot of them felt like -- it felt like the rush of hollywood actresses to l.a. and they end up being a waitress and they wait for their big day. but i feel like it's harder to be elon musk than tom cruise. so many of these companies, instagram, uber, the people running them didn't just have a lucky break. the stories were just years and years and years of coding sxernlging. they have qualifications that i can't even imagine. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." 100 years ago german, french, and british aircraft were battling for superiority in the skies over world war i trenches in northern france and belgium. next on american history tv u.s. army command and staff college history professor john curatola describes the technological and tactical race to dominate the skies. including germany's use of zeppelin airships to raid british cities. this 50-minute presentation was part of a two-day symposium hosted by the national world war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. i'd like to introduce our next speaker for the day. that is dr. john curatola. he is an associate professor of history at the united states army

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