‘A Soldier’s Journey

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Robert Richardson

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‘A Soldier’s Journey’
The long-awaited centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial was unveiled Friday, a 25-ton, nearly 60-foot-long relief capturing the human toll of the war. Located just east of the White House in Pershing Park, the relief panel is the largest freestanding bronze sculpture in the Western Hemisphere.  The piece depicts more than three dozen figures used to tell the story of a single soldier, or “doughboy”—from leaving America for the war, witnessing death and destruction, and returning home. The sculptor, Sabin Howard, described the piece as emphasizing the process of being human as seen through the lens of war. Watch an interview with Howard and others discussing its creation here. Roughly 118,000 Americans died in the war, with more than 200,000 soldiers wounded (the global death toll is estimated to be as high as 22 million). Read about the decadelong effort to make the larger National World War I Memorial a reality. 

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