18,000 Soldiers Formed a Human Statue of Liberty

From the ground at Camp Dodge, Iowa, the parade ground was a field packed with thousands of soldiers. From an 80 foot tower, the same field was the Statue of Liberty, torch raised.

A Week of Tape and Stakes

The picture was the work of Arthur Mole and John Thomas, Chicago commercial photographers who spent World War One traveling between military camps building what Mole called "living photographs." Mole and Thomas spent a week or more preparing each of these works, marking the design on the ground with tape and stakes so the shape would read correctly from one fixed point overhead.

18,000 Men in the Iowa Heat

The Library of Congress catalog title for the print reads "Human Statue of Liberty; 18,000 officers and men at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Ia.; Col. Wm. Newman, commanding; Col. Rush S. Wells, directing." Sources date the shoot to July or August 1918.

The men wore woolen uniforms. According to a July 3, 1986 story in the Fort Dodge Messenger, quoted by Snopes, many fainted as the temperature neared 105 degrees.

Twelve Thousand in the Flame

The original caption counted the men in each part of the figure: 12,000 in the flame of the torch, 2,800 in the torch, 1,200 in the right arm and only 2,000 in the body, head and the rest of the figure, a total of 18,000. The caption gave the torch and flame together as 980 feet long. Because the flame was farthest from the camera, it took the most men to look the right size.

The Public Domain Review, describing the same photograph, says the image needed "just 17 at the base but, more than half a mile away, 12,000 in the torch." The exact distances and the base count vary between accounts.

One of Thirty "Living Photographs"

Camp Dodge's Statue of Liberty was one of around thirty such images Mole and Thomas produced between 1915 and 1921, including a human Liberty Bell made from 25,000 men at Camp Dix, New Jersey. The Camp Dodge photograph was meant to promote the sale of war bonds but, according to Snopes, was never used for that purpose.

In November 2007 the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge told Radio Iowa it had received dozens of emails asking whether the image was altered. The museum said it is an authentic photograph and holds three original prints. The Library of Congress also holds a print.