Chambersburg WWI 'Doughboy' gets a face lift

By Jim Hook
via the Public Opinion web site

The Doughboy statue at the intersection of Lincoln Way East and Queen Street in Chambersburg, PA will soon get a facelift. The statue sits in the area also known as the "East Point."(Photo: Markell DeLoatch, Public Opinion)CHAMBERSBURG – One hundred fifty guardsmen camped at Wolf Lake this week 100 years ago.

They had answered the call to fight in the Great War, known later as World War I.

In less than a year Company C of the 8th Pennsylvania Infantry would lose soldiers for whom local veterans’ clubs are named. Before the “war to end all wars” was over, 116,000 members of the U.S. military would die. Nearly 100 of them were from the Chambersburg area.

The townspeople honored their war dead in 1923 with a plaque of 86 names and a Doughboy statue at the East Point of Lincoln Way East.

This week a preservationist is cleaning and sealing the bronze statue.

“The statute has been there a while,” said Eugene Hough, a field restoration specialist with Saving Hallowed Ground. “It’s extremely important that the monuments stand to tell the story of the past and to keep an open dialogue. We drive by them very quickly and don’t realize what they are.”

Hough, who often dresses in a WWI uniform, also is bringing a giant American flag for a ceremony on Friday afternoon to honor the soldiers and citizens who served in the Great War.

He said he hopes to reach students and veterans with the preservation work.

“We don’t have WWI veterans alive anymore,” he said. “It was a horrific engagement. There’s a lot to learn from it.”

About 10 million soldiers from all counties died in the global conflict (1914-18). The first modern war is recognized for machine guns, armored tanks, biplanes, mustard gas, “shell shock” and the stalemate of trench warfare.

Read the entire article on the Public Opinion web site here.

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