During the Great War Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) was writing for the U.S. Army newspaper The Stars & Stripes, and in that position he saw a great deal of the war: the destroyed villages, ravaged farmland, flattened industries. In the attached 1920 article Woollcott reported that the war-torn provinces of France looked much the same, two years after the Armistice. He was surprised at the glacial speed with which France was making the urgent repairs, and in this article he presented a sort-of Doughboy’s-eye-view of post-war France.
In the years to come Woollcott would go on to become a prominent player in 1930s American journalism and radio broadcasting. His books included such titles as Mrs. Fiske (1917), Shouts and Murmers (1922), Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play (1923), Enchanted Aisles (1924) and The Story of Irving Berlin (1925) among others.
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