From the World War I Centennial News Podcast
Commission News: Valor Medal Review Task Force, Part II
In March 29th's edition of the World War I Centennial News Podcast, Episode 116, host Theo Mayer spoke with Park University's Dr. Timothy Wescott and Ashlyn Weber, a history student, about their work with the Commission's Valor Medal Review Task Force. The following is a transcript of the interview, edited for clarity:
Theo Mayer: This week we want to introduce you to another one of our Valor Medal Task Force partners, the George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War at Park University, a private school in Parkville, Missouri. Joining us today to talk about their part of the program are Dr. Timothy Wescott, Associate Professor of History and the Director of the George S. Robb Centre.
Joining him is Ashlyn Weber, a hi
Dr. Timothy Wescott is the Director of Park University's George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great Warstory major at the University who's also working on the program. Both of you, welcome to the show.
Timothy Wescott: Thank you Theo, it's a pleasure to be with you today.
Ashlyn Weber: Thank you very much for having us.
Theo Mayer: So Tim, I'd like to start with you and ask you about the University's efforts on behalf of the Valor Medals Review Task Force. What role are you playing and what kind of activities you guys undertaking?
Timothy Wescott: Well the Centere is researching, we are drafting narratives and performing genealogical outreach with the actual descendants of the service members that we're researching.
Theo Mayer: About how many are there?
Timothy Wescott: Between the five groups that we are researching, which include Asian Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans, we are estimating that will probably be 125 to 150 actual individual service members that we will review within the focus of the task force.
Theo Mayer: So you're developing a profile for each one of them?
Park University is a private institution located in Parkville, MissouriTimothy Wescott: Yes, in collaboration with the undergraduate history majors here at Park University, we literally are creating a biographical sketch of each service member before we begin the process looking in detail at the Medal of Honor that we may possibly recommend for.
Theo Mayer: Ashlyn what year are you?
Ashlyn Weber: I'm a Junior with Parks public history program.
Theo Mayer: That’s wonderful. What kind of work are you doing for this? I guess you'd call it forensic research about African American veterans right?
Ashlyn Weber: So that's exactly what we're doing, we're collecting as much information we can get our hands on in order to write as accurate of a personal narrative for each man as possible. So, our Park team here of undergrads with the public and military history programs and coordinator Dr. Wescott, we all work together on a number of different fronts to create that larger narrative. One team member's focus is researching the individuals themselves. She creates kind of a general timeline of their lives that we kind of fill in as we continue on. Our other member, he's focused on military citations, engagements, and mapping. He gives us a heavily detailed report of how each veteran was involved within the situation. He was awarded the DSC or Croix de Guerre, we want to know all of the circumstances around events that they were involved in when they received those awards. Things like terrain, weather, the companies involved, even the location of the country they were in, we will know at some point. I do research on individuals like our first team member, but I primarily focus on confirming birth dates, death dates, and hometowns. Dr. Wescott and I also worked together in creating our databases that has all of these collections of information. Each man and their corresponding armed service number, any request for information that we send to the National Archives, the status of those requests, American Legion and or VFW post associations, and really any addresses or cities we have found connected to a veteran.
Theo Mayer: Now you threw out an acronym, DSC, which stands for Distinguished Service Cross. Is that how you're investigating it? Finding people who maybe got a Distinguished Service Cross but maybe should have gotten a Medal of Honor?
Ashlyn Weber: That's correct, all of these men were awarded a Distinguished Service Cross and Croix de Guerre so the question is whether or not they can be bumped up to Medal of Honor. 
George S. Robb, the Centre's namesake, graduated from Park University and won the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Great War
Theo Mayer: Ashlyn, as you're looking back at the history of these veterans, have you come across any specific stories that really stood out for you?
Ashlyn Weber: Well it's great you ask that, I don't want to single anybody out necessarily, but one of the interesting things that we've run into is, once the team comes together with all of this information for the finalized narrative, it's especially interesting to see how different each veteran's life was before and after their service. We have some doctors, we have some career military, we have one House of Representatives member from Illinois, and some regular guys who just went back to the farm, they went back to their hometown and stayed there. So anyone who does genealogy would know how satisfying it is to finally see the entire story and these narratives, especially for us that work on them week after week, day after day, hour after hour. It gives us a chance to write and tell every single man's story which is an opportunity many of those guys have never had before. And like Dr. Wescott mentioned, one of those ways they can be recognized and what's at the heart of its project is possibly being awarded the Medal of Honor for some of those heroic actions that they undertook. We don't want any of these men to be glazed over again and we want to give them as much attention as we can possibly give.
Theo Mayer: Tim, any closing thoughts?
Timothy Wescott: Theo, this project really focuses on hopefully writing some of our local and national history. Every community has a story and as a former military service member myself, these service members become like my band of brothers when I was in the military. We do want to tell these service members’ stories up to 100 years later.
Theo Mayer: Well thank you both for joining us today and for the work that you're doing.
Ashlyn Weber: Thank you very much for having us.
Timothy Wescott: Thank you Theo.
Theo Mayer: Dr. Timothy Wescott the Director of the George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War and Ashlyn Weber is a history student at Park University, which is a lead partner in the valor metals review task force initiative. We have links for you in the podcast notes to learn more.
Links:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/09/experts-review-whether-racism-robbed-wwi-troops-medal-honor.html
https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/world-war-i-medal-of-honor-review-urged-for-minority-servicemen/2018/10/10
https://www.facebook.com/parkuniversity/photos/a.10151868157907349/10156759996647349/?type=3&theater
https://www.park.edu/people/dr-timothy-westcott/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashlyn-weber-66a063120
http://gsr.park.edu
https://www.facebook.com/George-S-Robb-Centre-for-the-Study-of-the-Great-War-1133039406843201/