‘A Soldier’s Journey,’ the US’ First National World War I Memorial Sculpture, is Now Finished

The United States' first national World War I memorial has been completed at the Pangolin Foundry in Gloucestershire.

The bronze frieze, entitled A Soldier's Journey, commemorates the 116,000 US soldiers who died in the First World War. Over five scenes and with 38 human figures, it depicts an American everyman's response to the call of duty, his time on the Front, and his return home. In the final scene, he hands his helmet to his daughter-part of the generation who inherited a world forever changed by industrial warfare. Begun in 2016, the sculpture will be unveiled in September as the centerpiece of Washington DC's National World War I Memorial designed by architect Joseph Weishaar.

The thoroughly classical frieze is the work of sculptor Sabin Howard, who, when growing up, spent as much time in New York as he did in Italy. "I wanted to make something that was at the level of the Sistine Chapel and great works of art that were in the Italian Renaissance. I wanted to play forward that concept of sacred art at an epic level." Howard added: "It's a completely rebellious act. It's going back and using a traditional sacred art form to speak about the sacredness of humanity, this country, its citizens, and especially the soldiers who went overseas to protect the freedoms of the United States."

The immense effort of creating A Soldier's Journey involved dozens of actors-many of them veterans-who were shipped to a UK studio to pose under 160 cameras, wearing battle-worn uniforms. The images were then turned into foam and clay, which were then sent back to the US to be sculpted, and then back again to the UK to be cast in bronze.

"I'm hoping to make something that lets a kid...experience it like it's a movie in bronze," said Howard. "The scenes are changing. And the kid goes home and he's like, 'I got to see what World War I was all about.'" In another interview, he said: "The sculpture is to commemorate the...US soldiers who died in World War I, but it is also a universal story that...the veterans of Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam or Korea will see as their story. And I think this is something that has never been done before."