Combat veteran, Legionnaire featured in World War I Memorial sculpture

Joe Winslow walked into Sabin Howard’s Englewood, N.J., studio ready for anything.

Invited to pose for “A Soldier’s Journey” – the massive 58-foot-long, 38-figure bronze relief that is the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial, to be unveiled Friday – the retired Marine Corps major didn’t know which part he’d be playing.

The sculptor did. He had Winslow in mind for the “pieta” of the composition, depicting a chaplain lifting a wounded soldier off the ground with the help of another soldier.

For Winslow, who fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah, the role felt exactly right.

“I thought it was a really great choice,” he says. “As officers, it’s our job to gather the Marines around us and take care of them and help them move forward and get them where they need to be, either for the mission or themselves personally. That’s what I did for 23 years in the Marines, so this resonated with me.”

A member of American Legion Post 22 in Luray, Va., Winslow enlisted in 1986. He spent five years in the artillery and on security guard duty in Frankfurt, Germany. Then he got out and returned to college full time, studying architecture and fine art. Still, Winslow says, “I hadn’t quite scratched that itch with the Marine Corps,” and he went to Officer Candidates School in the summer.

After graduation, he went back in as a lieutenant and did another four or five years on active duty. He got out again when the work wasn’t satisfying, and decided he’d go to the reserves and retire there.

Then 9/11 happened.

“I knew for a fact that my life was going to change,” Winslow says. “Someone I knew was with the (Marine Corps) History and Museums Division, and also the (combat) art program. On a lark, I gave him a call and said, ‘I want to come back in. I want to deploy, and I’d like to do it with you guys as a historian and artist.’ After some back and forth, that’s exactly what they did. They mobilized me.”

Winslow deployed to Iraq in 2004 as part of Operation Phantom Fury, also called the Second Battle of Fallujah. For 14 years, he had just wanted to get to some kind of engagement, “to do what as a kid I’d seen Marines do in movies: going to foreign climes, hunting down the enemy, blowing stuff up,” he says. “The camaraderie, the excitement, the glory – that’s really what I was looking for. And by God, I got it in spades.”

He had three jobs: collect oral histories from Marines who’d been in battle, do illustrations for the Marine Corps Combat Art Program, and gather battle artifacts. Attached to an infantry unit, Winslow carried “a rifle in one hand and a sketch pad in the other.”

Within hours or even minutes of Marines engaging the enemy, Winslow would be sitting in a jeep or building or bombed-out position, asking them to tell him – in their words – what happened, why it happened and why it was important. In all, he did some 300 interviews over five and a half months.

He recorded stories of bravery and innovation, grit and determination. But for all those, he also heard stories of regret, fear, sadness, second-guessing – “the full spectrum of the human condition,” he says.

In those moments, Winslow became something of a chaplain figure.

“I had Marines talking to me about really personal things – good things, bad things, uplifting things, horrible things. I felt like a confessor to those guys. When you tell people that what they’re saying is not going anywhere, that it’s not going to be published or anything, they will unload a lot on you – a whole lot.”

He gained a new perspective on what it means to be a Marine in battle, its effects on a person, and the young men and women who raise their hands to take the oath. 

“These 17-, 18-, 19-year-old kids don’t understand the depth of this commitment they’re making to their country, but they’re going to do it anyway,” he says. “Some do understand it, and they still do it. They’re making those split-second decisions to kick in a door or clear a room or run down a hallway that’s completely dark and obscure, but they’re going to do it anyway, because they know it’s the right thing to do, and it’s something they’re trained to do.

“You realize the immense amount of dedication and faith these young people have. We say we understand it. But it’s more concrete, more substantive, than you’d imagine. It’s not a platitude. These things are practiced and believed by America’s young people. They do it and they live it. I’m calling them the next next Greatest Generation.”

Winslow pushes back against the “broken veteran” narrative. It took years to process everything he saw and heard in Iraq, but he wouldn’t trade that deployment, calling combat “every high and every low. It’s everything you ever wanted and everything you never wanted, all at once.”

Fallujah deeply affected him, in bad ways and good, he adds. “I was in the middle of it. I was stepping over the dead bodies. I was catching the action.” But it made Winslow grateful for all he has – for being alive, period. It also strengthened his faith. “I had to call on that on innumerable occasions in a way most people never will. You know, the old foxhole thing.”

An accomplished artist himself, Winslow met Howard in 2022, when the sculptor and his wife, Traci, hosted a reception for veterans at their studio. Conversation turned to Winslow’s time in the Marine Corps and his experiences in Iraq.

A few weeks later, he received an email asking if he’d pose as a doughboy in “A Soldier’s Journey” – one of six modern combat veterans used as models. Their facial expressions and body language were what Howard sought to capture. 

In Winslow’s view, the sculptor more than succeeded. 

“They’re beautiful,” he says of the figures, which include a daughter handing her father a helmet, a wife grasping his hand as he joins his brothers in arms, men charging into combat, nurses helping the injured, a shell-shocked soldier, and finally, troops returning with flag held high.

What each one is thinking and feeling is seen on their face and in their posture. The horrors, the heartbreak, the heroism of war – it’s all there.

“To convey those emotions and concepts through art is fantastically difficult,” he says. “That’s why what Sabin’s done is so epic. I realized that right off the bat and was like, ‘This guy’s amazing. If he wants me to stand on my head in the corner, I’ll do it.’ I want to watch him. I want to listen to him. I just want to soak up as much as I can.”

Winslow was familiar with “A Soldier’s Journey” and knew Howard had the talent to deliver the enormous sculpture on the tightest of timetables.

Even so, looking around the studio, he was amazed at how much was happening, and quickly.

“He is a beast,” Winslow says. “He is in it. He is focused. There was no messing around. It was game on from the start.”

The opportunity to contribute to one of America’s most sacred works of art came as Winslow is returning to his own roots as an artist and sculptor.

For 20 years, he’s focused more on design work for government agencies, “doing something that I know people need and I can charge for,” he says. His clients have included the White House, the National Cathedral, the U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and the National Guard Bureau.

Now, though, he’s going back to art for which he truly has a passion: bronze reliefs and sculptures that honor heroes or depict great deeds in battle. 

“That’s really what I’m most proud of now, being able to combine my technical skills, experience in combat and artistic vision with some of these things that are memorializing young men and women,” he says. “It’s a calling for me. It really is.”

That’s why the timing of being asked to be part of the sculptural heart of the National World War I Memorial feels like a sort of “cosmic serendipity,” he says.

“It’s a tremendous honor. Even when I see myself up there, I can’t believe it. I’m still in awe of it. It’s humbling.”

See a gallery of Winslow’s artwork here.