Allie grew up watching his father run the Army museum at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for about 25 years. Now, the junior Allie is preparing his own Army museum for its first top-to-bottom renovation.

Founded in 1905, the Rock Island Arsenal Museum in Illinois is the Army’s second oldest — and it will soon receive its first complete renovation in more than 80 years.

A part of the 30-museum Army Museum Enterprise, the mission of Rock Island Arsenal has remained telling the story of the Arsenal as it relates to its impact on greater service — and the community.

“Our mission was not to tell the whole Army story, or to tell the history of all small arms,” Allie, the museum’s director, told Military Times during a private showing of the renovation process. “[The mission is] to tell the history of the arsenal, through its people, through its commands, through the things it’s made.

“While we still tell a very Army story, we also we tell that all through the lens of Rock Islanders.”

The Rock Island Arsenal hosts a number of important commands for the service. First U.S. Army, the oldest and longest established field Army, is located on the island. Army Joint Munitions Command, responsible for “logistics sustainment, readiness and acquisition support” of ammunition, is also headquartered there, along with Army Sustainment Command and a branch of Army Contracting Command, according to the Rock Island Arsenal website.

Sitting in the middle of the Mississippi River, the Arsenal is located at the only point where the river flows East to West. That very place — the upper Mississippi River — is where the museum’s storytelling begins, with the mapping of the region by Zebulon Pike. Pike would eventually be captured by Spanish soldiers in the American Southwest, but not before gaining enough notoriety to have Pike’s Peak in Colorado named in his honor.

From the initial founding of Fort Armstrong on the Arsenal’s location to the Blackhawk War, the exhibits unfold in a horseshoe shape in the limestone building that hosts the museum. Through the early centuries of the Rock Island Arsenal to the present day, the museum has touched on the important people, weapons and stories that took place in the community.

But one of the museum’s major efforts, Allie said, is to highlight the sheer amount of capabilities the arsenal has produced and distributed to the service over the years. In fact, all of the service’s 30 museums house at least one weapon or product made at the Rock Island Arsenal.

“I think that’s really telling in a lot of ways, just the global reach that we have had and the impact on the warfighter that this community has had,” Allie said.

Today, as the Army in particular suffers from a recruiting crisis, Allie believes museums offer one way to positively influence the perception of possible recruits — and children who might be interacting with the military for the first time.

“Recruiting is a big thing right now, and for many people, this is the first contact they’re going to have with with their country’s military,” Allie said. “We need to make sure it’s a positive experience, and we need to show them all the ways that they can serve.”

Some of the inspiration for the museum’s renovation was particularly special for Allie — considering his relation to those providing input.

While planning out renovations, Allie considered how children like his own — 5-year-old Walker and 3-year-old Weston — would experience a museum differently than other age groups.

As such, hands-on exhibits rather than small placards of information were taken into account during planning, Allie said. The museum will have significant hands-on sections, along with enlarged photos from the museum’s extensive photograph archive.

“Having kids and being able to know how they understand things, how they see the world … some kids are very tactile,” Allie said. “Some kids are very visual, and certainly within this space, it hits on all of those different aspects.”

Johnson yelled out for Roberts to run back to their command and alert them of the attack, but Roberts was struck by a grenade blast injuring his hip and arm. Incapable of moving, Roberts laid down in their trench and proceeded to hand Johnson grenades as the American soldiers attempted to stall the incoming German troops.

Despite being shot multiple times in his upper body, Johnson continued to throw grenades until he ran out. He then picked up his French Labelle rifle, and while being shot again in the side, Johnson returned fire until a reload attempt using an American cartridge jammed his rifle.

Left with nothing except his broken body, an empty rifle and an M-1909 Bolo knife as the Germans descended upon the them, Johnson started swinging his rifle like a club, holding off the German soldiers until the buttstock of his rifle splintered.

Johnson, thoroughly overwhelmed after taking a crushing blow to the head, saw two German soldiers attempting to carry Roberts back to their side. As being taken prisoner was considered worse than death, Johnson chased after his fellow soldier, unsheathing his knife and stabbing one of the German soldiers in the head. The 5-foot-4, 130-pound man then turned and continued fighting off the German soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, disemboweling another enemy troop in the process, until the sound of French and American re-enforcements forced the German raiding party to flee from Johnson and Roberts.

According to a New York National Guard report from the war, Johnson had “killed one German with rifle fire, knocked one down with clubbed rifle, killed two with bolo, killed one with grenade, and, it is believed, wounded others,” despite being wounded 21 times in the process.

Orders were given the next day to award Johnson, then-nicknamed “Black Death,” and Roberts the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor.

The ‘Harlem Hellfighters’

Johnson, who enlisted June 5, 1917, was the first soldier to gain fame for the 369th Infantry Regiment, later known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” a black infantry unit originally formed in 1913 as the New York Army National Guard’s 15th Infantry Regiment.

One of the few black combat units deployed during the first World War, the 369th was also one of the first Army regiments to have black officers leading an all-black enlisted corps.

But despite the courage shown by American soldiers of all races, American Expeditionary Forces under Gen. John Pershing still adhered to the societal segregation standards of the time. Because of this, black regiments were not typically placed alongside white units, and the 369th was consequently attached to the French Army, who held slightly-less discriminatory beliefs.

It was fighting alongside the French, however, that the Hellfighters proved their worth, fighting in the Champagne-Marne, Meuse Argonne, Champagne 1918 and Alsace 1918 campaigns.

The Harlem Hellfighters spent 191 days in front line trenches, spending more time in combat than any other American unit in World War 1.

As a unit, they were awarded a regimental French Croix de Guerre with Silver Star and Streamer embroidered Meuse-Argonne. Its members were awarded more than 170 individual French valor medals throughout the war, making them one of the most highly decorated American units from World War I.

Finally recognized

Despite returning home as “one of the five bravest American soldiers in the war” according to President Theodore Roosevelt, and being welcomed home to great fanfare in the 1919 New York City Victory Parade honoring the Harlem Hellfighters — led by the recently promoted sergeant — Johnson’s life quickly fell into disarray.

He had dozens of bullet and shrapnel wounds, and his left foot had been so severely injured that a metal plate and a few screws were all that held it together, none of which had been recorded in his discharge papers.

Because of this, Johnson was not only denied a Purple Heart but also a disability allowance. He died in 1929, destitute and alone after his injuries prevented him from holding down a job long enough to take care of his wife and her children.

After leaving with his mother as a child, Johnson’s late wife Edna’s son, Herman Johnson — himself a Tuskegee Airman — spent years believing that Henry Johnson had been buried alone and forgotten in a pauper’s graveyard in New York. But instead, the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs discovered in 2001 that Johnson had actually been buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in July, 1929.

“Learning my father was buried in this place of national honor can be described in just one word — joyful,” Herman Johnson said as he stood at his Henry’s grave in 2002. “I am simply joyful.”

Sgt. Henry Johnson had not only been buried with the honors owed him, but in 1996 he was awarded the Purple Heart that had been so erroneously denied him upon his return home. He was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002 following efforts spearheaded by Herman Johnson to get Henry’s heroism recognized.

And, in 2015, Sgt. Henry Johnson was finally posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by then-President Barack Obama for his actions that infamous night in France nearly 100 years prior.

“Women in the military have a high rate of unintended pregnancies, which is an issue both personally and with respect to the warfighting mission,” according to a study in the latest issue of Military Medicine. “Comprehensive education about and access to counseling for the full range of contraceptives have been identified as gaps in provision of the highest quality health care for servicewomen.”

In March 2021, the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USU), Defense Health Agency, and the University of California San Francisco developed a mobile application called “Decide + Be Ready,” which is meant to offer family planning options to servicewomen, to include everything from education to birth control.

However, despite its release and the fact that it is available for free to download on Apple and Android devices, “Obstacles to full implementation of Decide + Be Ready remain within the Military Health System,” according to the authors of the latest study.

“There are a lot of applications that help women record their cycles, when they’re fertile and not fertile, and this app is different,” said Col. Catherine Witkop, a retired Airman and professor of Preventive Medicine and Gynecologic Surgery & Obstetrics at USU in the March release. “This app provides a lot of information about contraception and helps patients identify their own preferences and which, if any, contraception they’re interested in using.”

Witkop and fellow authors utilized the study to create a roadmap to optimize the application and ensure servicewomen have access to the information they need to make the best decisions regarding their reproductive health.

The application is simple and rated for anyone ages 12 and older. After reading through a quick guide, the app takes you to a portal to create your own birth control profile.

It asks questions about your plans to have children, how effective you’d want your birth control to be at preventing pregnancy, and it has a rating system for types of birth control and what you’d like it to do for you medically.

For service members specifically, the app explains best birth control options for deployment like skipped periods and annual family planning, rather than month-to-month.

“The use of Decide + Be Ready can be a first step in ensuring that, at the very least, servicewomen are aware of all their options, educated about the characteristics of the methods, including their role in menstrual suppression, and can come to an understanding of their own preferences and values, which is critical if they are to act as active agents in a shared decision,” the study reads. “If shared decision-making is subsequently successfully carried out in a clinical encounter, the patient will be reassured that their preferences and values matter and that the choice of contraceptive method, barring any medical contraindications, can be their decision.”