Wasserman, Richard A. The War to End All Wars

New Jersey’s Role in World War I

During World War I, New Jersey played a significant role in arms production, provided the necessary infrastructure for training and mobilizing troops, and supplied a portion of the soldiers needed for overseas deployment. Without the support of New Jersey's industry, the United States' war effort might have failed. New Jersey's contributions ranged from artillery shells (Amatol) and fuses (Bloomfield) to grenades (Lyndhurst), gun carriages (Singer), aircraft engines (Duesenberg), Handley Page bombers (Elizabeth), and shipbuilding (New York Shipbuilding and ELCO). Over 140,000 New Jersey residents served in the war, and the state hosted 38 military bases at the end of the war, including Camp Dix. The troops from New Jersey included National Guard units that were activated and assigned to the 29th Division, training at Camp McClellan, Alabama, and National Army conscripts assigned to the 78th Division, also training at Camp Dix. Units of the 29th and 78th Infantry Divisions stationed in New Jersey fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Women in New Jersey were also trained to serve in the Army Signal Corps. At the same time, women from the state volunteered with relief organizations such as the Red Cross and raised funds for the war effort. In the postwar years, over 160 monuments were erected throughout New Jersey to commemorate the war dead and honor World War I veterans, including several of E. M. Viquesney's famous "Spirit of the American Doughboy" statues. Mothers and widows from New Jersey made pilgrimages in the 1930s as part of the "Gold Star Mothers and Widows" pilgrimage to battlefields and cemeteries in France, such as the American Cemetery Maas-Argonne, and to Brookwood Cemetery in Great Britain to visit the graves of their loved ones. This book will reveal, for the first time, the full extent of New Jersey's crucial role in America's war effort during World War I and will shed light on prominent figures and their connections to New Jersey, such as Dr. Fred Albee, the father of bone transplantation; Cecil Dorrian, the first American female war correspondent in World War I; Amabel Roberts, the first American nurse from New Jersey to die in France during the war; and Lillian Marx, who danced and sang at wartime fundraisers in Newark.