New Mexico Military Museum commemorates an overshadowed WWI

Santa Fe New Mexican, May 27, 2018

By Robert Nott

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, the great war, the war that would ensure democracy around the world.

But in some ways, World War I has become the forgotten war, one that is fading away in the shadow of better-known and memorialized conflicts such as World War II, the Vietnam War and current strife in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Santa Fe, some 100 years after America entered World War I, the New Mexico National Guard Museum is honoring the period with an interactive exhibit designed to inspire people to learn more about the reasons behind the war, the men who fought it and the political, cultural and military impact it had.

The World War I Museum Exhibit opened Saturday and will run for two years.

The opening ties in with the recent formation of the New Mexico World War I Centennial Commission, which will host events around the state to showcase New Mexico’s role in the war.

U.S. Army Capt. Gabriel Peterman, who oversees the museum, said that when he taught history in the public schools he was only given one or two days to run through the complex, complicated story of World War I — which started with the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

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