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The Commonwealth and the Great War

Returning Home

The guns of the Western Front fell silent on November 11, 1918. The armistice marked a victory for the Allies, including the United States, and defeat for Germany. 

When asked after the war how his overseas experience affected him, Capt. Thomas Hardy of Farmville, Virginia, responded that he “learned to love America better and to hate war worse.” 

Those who returned home were fortunate to have lived through the horrors of war. Some veterans carried home physical evidence of their service. Many others suffered unseen psychological injuries for which there was much less understanding or treatment than today. They were welcomed by families also changed by their own wartime sacrifices. African American veterans who fought to “make the world safe for democracy” would continue the struggle for equal rights at home. 

This article was featured in the Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, Vol. 126, No. 1 in connection with the The Commonwealth and the Great War exhibition.

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Veterans parade in Richmond
The homecoming in 1919 of the Virginians who served in the 29th and 80th divisions was celebrated with two parades. Three plaster and wooden victory arches akin to the massive Arc de Triomphe that troops had marched through in Paris were erected on Richmond’s Broad Street. (Virginia Museum of History & Culture, 2001.230.1917.B)
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Walter Reed Hospital ward
Many soldiers returned to Virginia to find their communities racked by a deadly virus commonly called the “Spanish Flu.” By mid-October of 1918, 200,000 cases of flu were reported in the Commonwealth, and thousands were dead. Another 139,000 cases were reported in 1919 and claimed nearly 16,000 lives. This photograph shows patients set up in rows of beds on an open gallery in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., during the great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919. (Library of Congress)