The Library focuses on 34-year-old Army National Guard Capt. Harry S. Truman in launching a series of programs commemorating the centennial of the start of the First World War.

D. M. Giangreco, author of The Soldier from Independence: A Military History of Harry Truman, shows how, as a field artillery battery commander in World War I, Truman already was making hard decisions that he knew to be right. He once saved a neighboring infantry regiment from a surprise German attack, only to be rebuked by his regimental commander; intervention by Gen. John J. Pershing headed off a career-killing court martial.

Giangreco is a military historian and was an editor for Military Review at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

Co-presented by the Truman Library Institute and co-sponsored by the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial.

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