National World War I Museum

Stop two in my Kansas City adventure was the National World War I Museum. This museum is something locals have a lot of pride in and I was told by several people this was not to be missed. The museum itself is subterranean and co-located/under the Liberty Memorial. Parking is abundant and the museum itself is easy enough to find. Going down into the museum, it needs to be noted that there are heavy metal doors, albeit clearly marked, and that leads you in. The museum pulls at heartstrings early with a field of artificial poppies, and a docent will tell you each of the 9,000 poppies represents 1,000 warfighters lost. An introductory film filled me in on the years leading up to the war. This film does a great job telling many sides of the story, and is necessary unless you're a World War I historian. The exhibits are broken up into two parts with another film in the middle. The first exhibit starts where the film ended: European powers have all started playing the blame game and everyone is getting on their best traditional uniforms and heading to the battlefield. There were impressive exhibits logically put together, including more of the flamboyant uniforms before the war really got started, and other items that were useful in the trenches. Most striking was the trench that ran through this whole part of the exhibit. Each portion of the trench was a little different and produced an interesting view of trench warfare. Of course there was tons of ephemera in the display cases that were all over the exhibit on this side, and I would say my favorite thing was a "Hate Belt". Several different countries' soldiers had them, and they were basically belts that they picked off medals of killed soldiers and put on their belts. The exhibit did not fail to ignore the prisoner of war factor, nor the medical care factor and I thought that was great. Outside of the trench, the other thing that was very well done was the way the curators presented the information graphically. Their uses of numbers and representation truly made some of the information understood. The second part of the museum starts when the United States entered the war. It's highly comprehensive, and there again, is a lot of stuff in it. While the museum did a good job of hitting a lot of relevant points, I felt that it concentrated on three things: new ways of treating the wounded, the war at home, and equipping the warfighters. A few display cases touch on the new technology to World War I and the new standards of care that sent a lot of fighters home whereas they would have perished in the past. The war at home covers the US personality of the war being "Over there" to having true respect for many playing their part. Taking care of and respecting the war dead are covered (as well as families rights for assistance after losing a son, brother, husband, or father) in a way that as a viewer, I respected this was something the US hadn't dealt with in large amounts before. Some mothers just wanted to stand in the place that their son was killed, and private organizations with the blessing of the State Department helped that happened. Finally, there were several walls about how the US started the daunting task of equipping so many soldiers in such a short period of time, and how they decided was most important for soldiers to have on them. The people that told me this museum was not to be missed were spot on. It was a unique perspective on a war that is overshadowed by a bigger second war. I highly recommend it for any visit to the Kansas City area.