In Englewood, America's World War I monument gets its crowning touch

The worst thing, for any commander, is to lose a soldier.

Even if the soldier is 6 feet, 8 inches tall, 300 pounds, and made of clay.

"I feel sick, but I've got to lead the team," said master sculptor Sabin Howard, who on Monday had to undergo an ordeal he's already been through several times. One of his sculptures was being moved.

A plasteline clay figure, of a shellshocked soldier, was hoisted off its mounting by a small, hand-operated crane.

Then, as Howard supervised — and held his breath — assistants Charlie Mostow (himself a sculptor), Amari Stephen, Matthew Todorov and Ricky Zambrano (all artists' models) gently, gently maneuvered the piece into place as part of what will be a 58-foot-long, 10-foot high tableau, with 38 figures.

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"A Soldier's Journey," it's called — America's World War I monument, set to be unveiled in Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., in May 2024.

One false move, and the clay figure he's spent 1,500 hours sculpting in his Englewood studio could crack. For a sculptor, that's a disaster equivalent to Gallipoli, or the Somme.

"I'm going into battle," Howard said. "It's a critical moment. If I lose a sculpture, it's a tragedy."

Never surrender

How went the day? Victory — this time.

"Hold it," said Mostow, as the team fitted the soldier figure into place among a grouping of other figures that included a screaming soldier pinioned in the arms of a nurse, and two buddies arm in arm trudging through the mire.

As the team jockeyed the figure into his position, Howard's wife, Traci L. Slatton, an author and filmmaker, and producer Kathleen Glynn captured it all on camera for a documentary they are titling "Heroic: Sabin Howard sculpts the National World War I Memorial."

"Good, no damage," Mostow said, as the figure was clamped into place.

This particular grouping of eight figures is, in some ways, the core of the monument. Howard and a handful of assistants have been working on the project nonstop, in their South Van Brunt Street studio, for three years. Ultimately, the figures will be cast in bronze, in the U.K., before being shipped and reassembled in Washington.

But the scene they set up Monday is critical. "The cost of war," it's called.

It's the climax of a story that Howard is telling in sculpture — very much in the manner of a movie. From left to right, the figures in the frieze show a solider leaving his family to go to war, undergoing a succession of dramatic experiences, and then returning to his family at the end.

But in between, there are some harrowing episodes. And the monument's emotional center of gravity is a scene showing the full agony of soldiers on the battlefield.

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The figure they hoisted in place Monday is that of a shellshocked soldier, staring directly at the viewer, numbed by the horror, amid other soldiers in agonized postures. The grouping comes about two-thirds of the way through the narrative.

"In a story, you always have the massively dramatic moment at about the ¾ mark," Howard said.

A hero's journey

This scene was central to Howard's challenge as an artist.

Unusual in this day and age, Howard has devoted himself to the heroic in sculpture — consciously doing figurative art in the mold of Michelangelo and the other Renaissance masters.

But World War I was precisely the moment, in history, when the old heroic ideas of men and war went out the window. The horrors of mechanized battle, the tanks and bombs and mangled limbs — and all for what? — gave the West an advanced case of cynicism from which it's never recovered.

Howard's challenge is to avoid sugarcoating the horrors of war — while at the same time conveying the idea that humans, at their best, can still be a noble species. Even that shellshocked soldier.

"I didn't make him a victim," Howard said. "I wanted him to be heroic."

A huge aid to this — both in spirit and in solid information — are the handful of actual veterans Howard has recruited as models and advisers.

For instance, there is Zambrano — an Afghanistan veteran whom Howard chose, as a model, for his heroic physique (he's a trainer at a gym) but who turned out to be a fount of useful information. Because in some ways, every soldier's story, from ancient Troy to modern Iraq, is the same. "We walked similar footsteps, but just different time frames," Zambrano said.

It was from Zambrano that Howard learned how to create a convincing image of shell shock. "What I learned from Ricky is that in a shell shock experience, you freeze in your head and your body is still moving," Howard said. "Because you're trained to move in combat, to go forward.

"That's why I worked with vets. I needed to be taught."

Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to his insightful reports about how you spend your leisure time, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com

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This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: A moment of suspense, in Englewood, for America's new World War I monument