The Monument
The National WWI Memorial and the Harlem Hellfighters: How Rory Clarke Became the Man in Bronze.
As covered by WTOP News (John Domen, Sept 20, 2024).
“The monument came first, the film came out of it, the program brings both into the room.”
"Bring the Monument to your audience. The program runs 60 minutes—screening, the making of the memorial, conversation, and Q&A. $1,100 single session · $1,900 full day—Based in Manhattan, New York. No travel fee within 50 miles."
The Memorial
The National World War I Memorial stands in Pershing Park, on Pennsylvania Avenue, a short walk from the White House. It is the last of the major war memorials to be built in the capital — dedicated more than a century after the armistice, to a war that had never had a national monument of its own in Washington.
At its center is “A Soldier's Journey”, a bronze sculpture by Sabin Howard: 38 figures across 58 feet, following a single soldier from the moment he leaves home through the fighting and back again. The sculpture was unveiled on September 13, 2024, after nearly a decade of design, modeling, casting, and installation.
Among those 38 figures are the Harlem Hellfighters — the soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment.
A century later, Black soldiers get the recognition they never got after World War I.
WTOP News covers Rory Clarke at the WWI Memorial in Washington, DC
How Rory Clarke Became the Model
In 2016 Rory was catering events at the World Trade Center when Paul, a friend on the same crew, told him a sculptor was casting models for the National WWI Memorial. Paul had already sat for the studio and thought he had the build for it. Rory went in for a session at Sabin Howard's studio in the South Bronx and was scanned. Eight years later the figures were unveiled in Washington.
In the sessions, Rory held each position as an actor, not a form - a soldier at a specific moment, feeling something specific. He was scanned that way. Then he worked with Howard on what would survive into bronze: where the weight sat, the angle of the rifle, the expression. Rory Clarke modeled multiple figures. Here’s one of them.
This figure has him carrying other soldiers forward. “That one was pride, belonging, brotherhood,” he says. “It was just humanity”.
The Film & From Bronze to the Classroom
“The monument came first, the film came out of it, the program brings both into the room.”
Rory was scanned and sculpted into a national monument. Then he built RAC23, a film company that scans and preserves history for classrooms. Henry Johnson is a short film written and directed by Rory Clarke, who also stars as Sgt. Henry Johnson. It covers the night of May 14–15, 1918, and the homecoming. Completed 2025. The film exists in five cuts — 5, 10, 15, 20 and 28 minutes—so the program fits a single class period, a lunchtime library slot, or a full evening.
"Bring the Monument to your audience. The program runs 60 minutes—screening, the making of the memorial, conversation, and Q&A. $1,100 single session · $1,900 full day—Based in Manhattan, New York. No travel fee within 50 miles."
The 369th Infantry began as the 15th New York National Guard, a Black regiment raised in Harlem. When the American Expeditionary Forces would not put them into the line alongside white units, they were attached to the French Army and fought under French command — 191 days in the trenches, longer than any other American regiment, and they never gave up a foot of ground or lost a man to capture.
On the night of May 14–15, 1918, Private Henry Johnson was on sentry duty in the Argonne when a German raiding party attacked his post. Wounded, out of ammunition, and with his fellow sentry down, he fought on with his rifle butt and a bolo knife until the raiders withdrew. He carried twenty one wounds home. France awarded him the Croix de Guerre with palm. His own country took 97 years: the Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously in 2015.
The regiment marched up Fifth Avenue to a hero's welcome in February 1919, and then went home to a country that had not changed. That is why a Hellfighter's figure in a national memorial matters. For a century, the memorial to these men was the parade. Now it is bronze, in the capital, permanently.
RAC23 is a film company that scans and preserves history for classrooms. “The monument came first, the film came out of it, the program brings both into the room.”
"Bring the Monument to your audience. The program runs 60 minutes—screening, the making of the memorial, conversation, and Q&A. $1,100 single session · $1,900 full day—Based in Manhattan, New York. No travel fee within 50 miles."