Exhibit: The First World War
Professor Ed Klekowski's exhibit of WWI artifacts recently found in France is now on display in the Learning Commons of the Du Bois Library.
The exhibit includes artifacts found in the St. Mihiel Salient and the Argonne in France, where the forests are still littered with relics from the war years. It is illegal to dig for artifacts in France, but they can be collected if on the surface, as these were.
The artifacts range from a canteen to bullets, shells, and a sword bayonet, among other items. Professor Klekowski uses the artifacts to help tell the stories of two films he has in production - Yankees Fight the Kaiser and Model T's to Glory: 1914-1917. Both films have strong New England stories, based primarily on Massachusetts connections.
Professor Klekowski’s previous documentary films include: Under Quabbin: The Search for the Lost Towns; The Great Flood of 1936: The Connecticut River Story; and Dynamite, Whiskey and Wood: The Connecticut River Log Drives 1870-1915.
Ed Klekowski joined the UMass Amherst faculty as an assistant professor of Biology in 1968 and retired in 2005. Ed has explored the unchartered depths of the Connecticut River, the Quabbin Reservoir, and Lake Pleasant. Ed led the first group of divers ever to go under Quabbin in search of the remains of four towns permanently erased from the Swift River Valley to make way for the reservoir 60 years ago.