Following the United States' entry into World War I from 1917 to 1918, more than 100,000 Georgians were involved in the war effort, and the state suffered over 1,000 casualties. The rural community of Berrien County experienced an extraordinarily high rate of loss, particularly in the 1918 sinking of the troopship HMS Otranto, the greatest maritime disaster of the war. In response to President Woodrow Wilson's call to honor those who died, Berrien County commissioned the first Doughboy statue sculpted by Americus, Georgia, resident Ernest Moore Viquesney. Completed in 1921, it was unveiled in 1923 after the community raised the funds to acquire and install it, and its design, known as "The Spirit of the American Doughboy," was replicated across the country to memorialize soldiers lost during World War I.