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185 19 Pilgrims’ Progress on May 6, 1930, the ss America prepared to steam out of Hoboken, New Jersey, with 231 women onboard, all guests of the U.s. government . The Ziegfeld chorus girls had sent a large wreath in honor of the mothers’ departure, and airplanes flew overhead dropping poppies onto the decks below, where each woman stood holding a bouquet of forgetme -nots. The pilgrims wore tiny stars of real gold and waved little U.s. flags as they listened to the War Department’s parting message telling them to “Go, not in sorrow but in pride.”1 With band and drum corps playing to hundreds of friends and relatives lining the flag-bedecked pier, the inaugural party embarked on its long-awaited voyage to europe. This was the first of an eventual twenty vessels dispatched that summer to transport mothers and widows to American cemeteries in France, Belgium , and Great Britain. Previously, only Gold star Mothers (GsM) with sufficient means were able to travel to France, and many did so as members of auxiliaries to veterans’ organizations such as the American Legion.2 Collectively, the women received increased public recognition, but perhaps more significantly , they provided one another with companionship, support, and comfort. But, as auxiliary members, the women received no organizational voting rights, nor could they hold office. Gradually, clusters of women began to form larger groups such as the American War Mothers and the Gold star Association, organized in March 1920. As distinct from the GsM, this latter, more expansive group included next of kin, comrades , and friends of those killed in war.3 By June 1928, a group of Washington , DC, mothers had created their own organization, known as the American Gold star Mothers, inc. They opened membership on a local level but ultimately became the largest and most politically powerful GsM group in the nation.4 Although some media attention accompanied the latter Gold star pilgrimages , publicity focused primarily on the earliest voyage in May 1930, 186 Pilgrims’ Progress and then the final sailing in september 1933; the intervening period drew scant public notice. Unlike the American Legion pilgrimages three years before, the journey of the mothers and widows triggered no such benevolent imitations from other governments abroad. in 1919, Australia’s grieving war mothers were also honored with a star badge for each son or brother who died, but the government denied their request for a subsidized pilgrimage, despite numerous appeals.5 Motherhood had attained a prized status among Australians during the war, when public displays of grief were considered a weakness to be resisted. But, as Joy Damousi explains, the “eulogy of the ‘sacrificial’ mother did not endure in the collective memory.”6 stoicism did not prevent a markedly dissimilar lack of political recognition for Australian women from that enjoyed by their American counterparts. When their requests for a subsidized pilgrimage went unheeded, women pursued other avenues of meaningful remembrance as an outlet for their grief.7 The gates at Woolloomooloo in sydney, for instance, became a “substitute ” commemorative site where women gathered to memorialize their dead. There, where they had previously waved their sons and husbands off to battle, bereaved widows and mothers dressed in mourning clothes, gathered each Anzac Day to lay their wreaths and weep. These “Gates of remembrance,” as they became known, served as a place for collective ritual in the absence of a grave or monument.8 By contrast, it would be difficult to imagine American women gathering at the docks in Hoboken (the embarkation point for U.s. servicemen) to mourn their dead in this manner . That is not to suggest that American women felt any less grief over their losses, but unlike their counterparts in Australia, they enjoyed a political advantage. Although mothers in both nations desired a pilgrimage, American women were more successful in their appeals. As organized interests in a wealthy democratic society, they possessed the power to influence such decisions—particularly in a nation where motherhood held the moral high ground. Moreover, there was no need for American women to improvise, since the U.s. government honored mothers’ sacrifices by returning their dead home. According to David Lloyd, the First World War served as a passage to nationhood for both Canada and Australia. each of these young countries suffered approximately the same number of losses and served throughout the entire war in similar battles, and yet in the war’s aftermath, the Australians chose a form of commemoration that emphasized the...

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