* Fort Devens Museum to show WWI Yankee Division Film

On Saturday January 21^st at 1 PM, the Fort Devens Museum will host a program about the 26^th “Yankee” Division in World War 1. The centerpiece of the program will be screening of a tastefully compiled DVD, "Yanks Fight the Kaiser: A National Guard Division in WWI." The National Guard division is the 26th or Yankee Division, made up of men from New England, the first full American division and the first National Guard unit to fight in France in WWI, also the first unit to be decorated by a foreign power.

 The DVD features a great amount of filming of the YD in action as the division helped remove two German salients or substantial bulges in the line, each with German defenses extremely heavily built up, and push into the Ardennes Forest to fight even to the last half hour before armistice. Also shown are the monuments honoring American soldiers who fought in these battles and the restoration work in villages that the YD itself and private persons financed after the war. The DVD was produced by Ed and Libby Klekowski of Amherst.

To accompany this video, Museum President David King will give an introduction to the building of Camp Devens in 1917 and an overview of the training that was completed here during World War I. Some members of the Yankee Division trained at Camp Devens prior to leaving for France and the entire Division was demobilized at Camp Devens in 1919.  Yankee Division artifacts at the museum include uniforms, helmets with painted insignia, photographs, and a journal from a cook who was in the 104^th Infantry Regiment, 26^th Infantry Division.


Yankee Division felt banner from Camp Devens, WWI. 

                This program is free and open to the public. The Fort Devens Museum is located at 94 Jackson Road, Devens, MA and is open on this day, Saturday the 21st from 10 AM to 3 PM. For more information please call 978-772-1286 or email info@fortdevensmuseum.org