Photographs of "1914 & Other Poems" by Rupert Brooke, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image, is of the inside of the book with a faint illustration of a man's profile, the second image the see-through brown piece of paper is turned over to cover the illustration but to reveal the title of the book. Although Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) died before ever seeing battle, he was renowned for his war sonnets. W.B. Yeats noted that Brooke was “handsomest young man of England,” a fact that may account for some of his fame. Educated at Cambridge, he became a thespian, scholar, and soldier. Brooke, commissioned in the Royal Navy, never got to see battle. He died in 1915 at sea from sepsis. An eerie photograph portrait of the author’s profile, dated 1913, appears opposite the title page in this edition. Following the title page with publisher information and the typical copyright statement, we encounter a brief biographical note listing Brooke’s education and war time experience. His five war sonnets, titled “1914,” became notable for their romantic and patriotic view of the war. As a young man, Brooke wrote poems and published in anthologies and periodicals; his first volume of poetry, …

Photographs of 36th National Guard Private's wool jacket from World War I, held by UNT Special Collections. This jacket was worn by George N. Rucker who was stationed at Camp Travis in San Antonio, Texas, during World War I. The first image shows an arrowhead patch with the "T" in the center represents the 36th infantry division of the Texas Army National Guard, which was made up of Texans and Oklahomans. The silver chevron patch lower on the sleeve represents stateside service of at least six months. A second silver chevron patch would have been added for an additional six months served, so we can tell that Rucker only served between six and eleven months. The red chevron near the shoulder represents honorable discharge. Image 2, front of wool jacket with two pockets on the top and bottom of each side and five buttons along the middle.

Photograph of 4th Liberty Loan "Honor Roll" poster from World War I, held by UNT Special Collections. The poster has an illustration of a red framed flag at the top with four blue stripes down the middle. The words "Help our town win this flag" are in dark blue at the top. Under the flag is the title "4th Liberty Loan" in red. The bottom half of the poster has four columns of numbered lines numbering 1-100.

Photograph of the cover of "American Soldier Ballads" by F.B. Camp, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark yellow in color with the title at the top in red lettering.Under the title is an illustration of soldiers sitting or standing around a fire. This edition of Patriotic Toasts was published in 1917 by Forbes and Company in Chicago. Each page has a lithographic decorative blue border surrounding the printed text, and the dense cardboard cover contains a stoic depiction of Uncle Sam carrying an American flag, reinforcing the book’s self-proclaimed patriotism. The author, Fred Emerson Brooks, a popular 19th century poet, wrote several books of “toasts” – short poems likely meant to be read aloud in social gatherings. A notice in the back of this volume advertises Brooks’s other publications, including the comically titled Cream Toasts and Buttered Toasts, with a series of quotes from major newspapers attesting to Brooks’s sparkling wit. The collection of poems in this book captures the vigor of the American spirit at the time of its entry into World War I. Poems such as “Old Glory” and “Liberty’s Banner” are dense with the nationalist rhetoric that would eventually lose much of its appeal …

Photograph of the cover of "Any Soldier to His Son" by George Willis, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is grey, with the spine being darker. The title is in a silver frame on the top right, the lettering also in silver. In 1919, a collection of poems titled Any Soldier to His Son, authored by George Willis, was published by George Allen & Unwin LTD out of London. Although there is not much readily available biographical information on Willis, it is known that he was a soldier in the British army during World War I. The book itself is small, with an olive green cover designed by C.R.W. Nevinson but otherwise lacking illustrations other than the ornate publisher’s insignia on the title page. There is also no dedication or foreword, leaving the reader with little direction on how to read the book. However, the book concludes with a one-page advertisement for three other books of war poetry also published by George Allen & Unwin, including A Gallipoli Diary by Major Graham Gillam, another first-hand account of battle. Any Soldier to His Son contains eighteen poems, ranging in length but written primarily in rhyming couplets. Notable titles include “Any …

Photographs of artillery shell casings from World War I, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image shows the brown rusted bullets from the bottom, one is closed and the other one hollow. Image 2, bullet laying down. The bullet is long and thin.

Photograph of the cover of "Aurelia & Other Poems" by Robert Nichols, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is brown with a white label on the front with the title printed on it.

Photograph of the cover of "Backgrounds" by Grace Mary Golden, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale grey paper book contains the title and author at the top, the publishing info at the bottom. Most of the page is covered by an illustration of a woman watching a soldier rowing at sea with a dog next to her. All the wording and illustrations are in black.

Photographs of "The Bells of Peace" by John Galsworthy, held by UNT Special Collections. The brown paper cover is framed by a red line, the title in simple black print. Image 2, page titled "The Bells of Peace" with two paragraphs, the first letter of each a red L. Image 3, pages 3 and 3. They are both titled "The Bells of Peace" at the top. Each page has 2 paragraphs, the first letter of each big and red. The bottom of page 3 has the date June 1920.

Photograph of the cover of "The Bombing of Bruges" by Paul Bewsher, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale blue cover has the title at the top and author at the bottom, all imprinted in dark blue lettering.

Photographs of "Cease Firing: Fifty Poems of the New Peace," held by UNT Special Collections. The first image is the cover of "Cease Firing," blue/green color with the title imprinted in gold at the top in between three lines of gold. The second image is of the title page and frontispiece. The frontispiece is a black and white illustration with the words piece at the top made up of small birds. Image 3, poem titled "Peace Shall Live" expanding over two pages. At the very top of the left page it is titled "Cease Firing" and the top of the right page titled "Seek Peace and Pursue It."

Photographs of "Chicago Poems" by Carl Sandburg, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark green with the title and author in gold lettering at the top and the front framed by a gold line. Image 2, open book with the page on the right titled "Killers" and the left page blank. Image 3, pages 86 and 87. Page 87 contains a poem titled "Among the Red Guns."

Photograph of the cover of "The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke" by Rupert Brooke, held by UNT Special Collections. The simple black book has the title in a white box at the top, framed by an orange line. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was the son of a Rugby schoolmaster and attended school at Rugby and later at King’s College of Cambridge University. After completing his education, Brooke continued writing poetry and became one of the founders of the first anthology of Georgian Poetry. Now little studied, it was a dominant poetic movement of the time until it was supplanted by Imagism and the High Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. While not as experimental as the Modernists, the Georgian poets did look to free poetry from the ornate language of Victorian verse and employ in its place plain and concrete language. Along with the Georgian poets, Brooke also interacted with members of the influential Bloomsbury Group, which included such prominent writers as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. When war broke out, Brooke enlisted but never saw combat, instead dying of illness in March 1915 on his way to Gallipoli. Despite this, Brooke became a touchstone …

Photographs of "Counter-Attack: And Other Poems" by Siegfried Sassoon, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is worn and brown, with the title printed in brown ink on a label, the wording framed by brown lines. Image 2, with page 20 titled "How To Die" on the left and page 21 on the right titled "The Effect." This copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s collection of poems, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, is a 1919 reprinting of the original 1918 edition, published by E.P. Dutton and Company in New York. The binding is made of brown paper over boards, parts of which have begun to chip away. As a decorated officer known for his heroic, often perilous, actions on the battlefield, Sassoon wrote poems that vividly depict his experience in the trenches. Counter-Attack and The Old Huntsman (Sassoon’s first published collection of war poetry, referenced on the title page) mark the transition from his earlier, highly romanticized poetry, and would go on to solidify him as one of the era’s most influential poets. A thorough description of this transition in Sassoon’s work is given in the introduction by fellow soldier-poet and friend, Robert Nichols. The poems in this collection give the reader an …

Photograph of the cover of "Days of Destiny: War Poems at Home and Abroad" by R. Gorell Barnes, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is worn grey in cover with the title in a white box at the top, with the D's red and the box framed by a red line.

Photograph of the frontispiece/title page of "Easter at Ypres 1915" by W.S.S. Lyon, held by UNT Special Collections. The title page has the title at the top and publishing information at the bottom. The page on the left contains a black and white photo of the side profile of a young man in uniform.

Photographs of "Echoes of France" by Amy Robbins Ware, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark blue with a rubricated title and illustration enclosed in a black-stamped frame. Image 2, inscription on inside of cover written in pencil. On the left page is a stamped design. This image in Echoes from France by Amy Robbins Ware, an American nurse in France during WWI, demonstrates the kind of tensions generated by the coexistence of photographs and text. Image 3, pages 40 and 41. The page on the left has a black and white photo of a woman in a dress and gas mask, the page on the right a poem titled "J'attends, C'est la Guerre." Although the book contains no photographs of abject gore, it does feature this photo of a woman with a gas mask as a haunting reminder of such horror and an effacement of the familiar, such that the woman now wears the large dark eyes and proboscis reminiscent of insect life. The text at the bottom works against the tone of estrangement by way of the domesticating rhetoric of “little tin derby” in the place of “helmet.” The diminutive qualifier is not supported by the …

This thesis examines the policies and procedures created during and after the First World War that provided the foundation for how the United States commemorated its war dead for the next century. Many of the techniques used in modern times date back to the Great War. However, one hundred years earlier, America possessed very few methods or even ideas about how to locate, identify, repatriate, and honor its military personnel that died during foreign conflicts. These ideas were not conceived in the halls of government buildings. On the contrary, concerned citizens originated many of the concepts later codified by the American government. This paper draws extensively upon archival documents, newspapers, and published primary sources to trace the history of America’s burial and repatriation policies, the Army Graves Registration Services, and how American dead came to permanently rest in military cemeteries on the continent of Europe. The unprecedented dilemma of over 80,000 American soldiers buried in France and surrounding countries at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 propelled the United States to solve many social, political, and military problems that arose over the final disposition of those remains. The solutions to those problems became the foundation for how …

Photographs of "Fifes and Drums: Poems of America at War," held by UNT Special Collections. The brown book cover has the title in dark blue in the top right corner in a white label, framed by a dark blue line. Image 2, title page. On the left page is a list of The Vigilante books inside a box, and on the right page is the title page with a small upside down triangle with the letter D in it.

Photographs of "Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time" by Katharine Tynan, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 1, the spine of the dark blue book with the title on a white label on the spine. Image 2, with the page to the left of it containing a box with the title of books also by Tynan.

Photographs of "The Flying Parliament" by Edwina S. Babcock, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is open to a dedication page, which is a note written in pen handwriting. The name Donald Thomas 1973 is at the top. On the top left side is the word "Poetry" written in pencil. The cover is red with an intricate gold design over most of the page, the title is in the middle of the cover in gold.

Photographs of "Forgotten Places" by Ian Mackenzie, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover of the book is grey, with the spine exposing some green paper. The front of the cover is framed by a black line, with the author and title at the top in black and the publishing information at the bottom. Image 2, "Peace" and "Desire," poems one pages 60 and 61. Image 3, frontispiece and title page. The frontispiece has a photo of a young man, with the name "Ian Mackenzie" signed under it.

Photograph of the cover of "Forward, March!" by Angela Morgan, held by UNT Special Collections. The dark red cover has the title at the top left corner, followed by a graphic of a hand holding a torch and the author. This all encased by a line, and all in gold lettering/lines.

Photographs of "Friends" by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is brownish paper, the title at the top, author in the middle and publishing info at the bottom all in black ink lettering. Image 2, the page on the left contains a list of books by the same author: Battle, Thoroughfarers, Borderlands, Fires, Daily Bread, Akra the Slave, and Stonefolds. The page on the right is "To the Memore of Rupert Brooke." Image 3, open book with page on the left blank, and the page on the right containing a small poem dated 23rd April, 2015. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was the son of a Rugby schoolmaster and attended school at Rugby and later at King’s College of Cambridge University. After completing his education, Brooke continued writing poetry and became one of the founders of the first anthology of Georgian Poetry. Now little studied, it was a dominant poetic movement of the time until it was supplanted by Imagism and the High Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. While not as experimental as the Modernists, the Georgian poets did look to free poetry from the ornate language of Victorian verse and employ …