An American Soldier’s Journey Home

On November 11, one hundred years after the last shot was fired in The Great War, Douglas Taurel will perform his new play, “An American Soldier’s Journey Home,” at the Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson St., at 4 pm. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Seating is limited. Reservations can be made from the link below.

Taurel is an actor and creator of the acclaimed solo show, “The American Soldier.” The new play was commissioned by the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, and performed at the Library of Congress on Veterans Day and Memorial Day in 2017 to commemorate the centennial of World War I.

Veterans Day, which celebrates the service of all U.S. veterans, is observed on the anniversary of the WWI Armistice, which was signed on November 11, 1918. 

Taurel’s play is based on the life of Irving Greenwald, a soldier who served in World War I in the 308th Infantry Regiment, who was part of the Lost Battalion. His diary is preserved by the Library of Congress Veterans History Project and is part of the Library’s exhibition, “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I.” This play is being presented in conjunction with the Hoboken Museum’s exhibit, “World War I Centennial, 1917-2017: Heaven, Hell or Hoboken.”

An excerpt: 

“I stand with bated breath waiting for the explosion of the shell. I imagine the toll of injury and death it takes. The cost of it. The futility of it. The war will never be won on the field of battle. Why not end it all and spare men and women.”

– Irving Greenwald

Greenwald wrote his entries in the tiniest of handwriting, eloquently relating his experiences in training, in combat, and in the hospital after he was wounded in October 1918. The diary is the only diary that has ever been digitized, having been type written by his granddaughter who is the daughter of his only child Cecile. 

The Lost Battalion were five hundred American infantrymen cut off from their regiment and surrounded by Germans during six days of fighting in the Argonne Forest. Roughly 197 were killed, 150 were missing or taken prisoner before the 194 remaining men were rescued.  The battalion suffered incredible hardships. 

[Photos by Helene McGuire Photographie]