These twelve black and white photographs depicting the tennis Guru George Agutter, in full court attire, are accompanied by short, pithy instructions as to how the racquet should be held and the feet positioned in order to play the game as they did in 1918.
The American military personnel who are wounded while fighting the terrorists in both Iraq and Afghanistan are today the beneficiaries of a field hospital system that was developed long ago in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The mobile hospitals developed by the U.S. Army Medical Corps has evolved into a unique life-saving force that has not simply relied on a trained staff but also a fast and well-fueled transportation system. This Yank Magazine article will give the reader a good look at how the medics and doctors had to work during the second War to End All Wars:
A portable surgical hospital is a medical unit of four doctors and generally 32 enlisted men. They’re supposed to work directly behind the line of battle and patch up casualties so they can be removed to an evacuation hospital. Sometimes part of the portable hospital personnel have to be removed, too.
Whatever became of the conscientious objectors?
Some of the men who registered as ‘conchies’ with their local selective service boards have been deferred because they are working in essential jobs. About 6,890 conchies have been interned and assigned to Civilian Public Service camps in the States. A handful, just 47, live and work in camps on Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the only places outside the continental limits of the States where they may serve. By act of Congress, conscientious objectors may not be sent to foreign lands, but Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, although overseas, are territories of the U.S.
Click here to read about the British conscientious objectors of World War I.
To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.
Although the press questioned U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867 – 1950) as to why the Selective Service Department had been ordered to call-up an additional 100,000 men when it was agreed that the U.S. military was already over strengthened with the full participation of 7,700,000 personnel currently under arms, Stimson made it clear in this notice from the Far East Edition of YANK, that he had his reasons – and this article lists a number of them.
Click here to read about a W.W. II draft board.
To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.
Here are a few lines from The American Legion Weekly that reported to their disappointed veteran readership that the foreign-born men residing legally in the United States who were previously accused of shirking the 1917 draft were, in fact, absolved from service and thus free to swear the oath of citizenship, after having been slandered as draft dodgers and alien-slackers until the finer points of the selective service law was clarified.
By 1917 an visible anti-conscription movement had taken root throughout much of French Canada that was encouraged by the Quebec Archdiocese.
In 1944, many French Canadians would be doing the same thing…
This is a fiery editorial from a U.S. veteran’s magazine covering American law enforcement’s search for the 487,003 young men who resisted the draft of 1917-1918.
The War Department will take care of the actual deserters, the men who went into camp and then deserted. Such men are liable to prosecution at any time in their lives. The Department of Justice will get after the draft dodgers, who never answered the summons…
Only eight men are serving sentences as draft deserters in Federal penitentiaries, Mr. Taylor declares. ‘Yet, the number of men defying our country in its hour of need, was many times the number who deserted the Army after the Armistice.’ Thirty-nine men, he states, are still serving time for desertion from the Army, and the draft deserters are serving shorter average sentences than are the soldiers who took unauthorized leave of the service after the Armistice.
Few topics were as irksome to the editors of THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY than that of the draft dodger. This article appeared one year after the close of the war and presents all the facts about the deferment process and how many native-born American men had shirked their responsibility to kin and country.
In his illustrated five page reminiscence, former Communist refugee Ivan Pluhar (b. 1927), recalls those dreadful days following the end of the Second World War when it became clear to all the citizens of Czechoslovakia that their Soviet liberators would never leave their country. The article will clue you in as to what life was like during the earliest years of the occupation and how dissenters were treated throughout that period.
A Quick Read About Soviet-Enforced Atheism
Behind the Iron Curtain…
A list provided by the War Relocation Authority of the seven groups that maintained ties and created various social and educational activities for the interned Japanese-Americans spanning the years 1943 through 1945. The Y.W.C.A., the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross are just three of the seven organizations.
For years prior to W.W. II and the creation of the Japanese-American internment camps, the people of the United States had been steadily spoon fed hundreds articles detailing why they should be weary of the Japanese presence in North America; if you would like to read one that was printed as late as 1939, click here.
Ukrainian artist David Bruliuk (1882 – 1967) is warmly recalled by his friend and fellow artist, Moses Soyer (1899 –
Here is an account by a war correspondent who was a part of the Allied advance through Germany. He filed this chilling report about the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Nordhausen:
No one who saw the charnel house of Nordhausen ever will be able to forget the details of that horrible scene… The Yanks stood there stunned and silent,
Obergrupenfuehrer Albert Ganzenmüller (1905 – 1996) was responsible for running the German rail roads. This not only involved delivering troops and ordinance to the various fronts but also deporting Jews, Poles, Croats and Slovenes to assorted death camps:
Ganzenmüller’s special contribution to these migrations was his invention of the railroad-car gas chamber to exterminate Jews.
Up by bugle at 5:45 in subfreezing temperature. Breakfast – boiled oatmeal, French toast and syrup, toast, jam, coffee. At 7:30 began ‘psychological test’ for mental alertness (typical question: An orange is a broom, bat, flower, or fruit?). Received complete uniforms. Try-on period after lunch resulted in many misfits, much swapping and revival of old crack about there being only two sizes in the Army – too big and too small…
Lieutenant K. F. Brandes of the German Army was killed on October 24 [1944] on the right bank of the Dnieper. A diary was found on him. I have seen many diaries of German officers and soldiers… It was written by a clever and educated man. Brandes was a Fascist. He calls the conquest of Europe the ‘German Spring’. Like his colleagues he came to Russia for ‘lebensraum’… But as distinct from other Hitlerites, Brandes saw the limit of his dreams. He faithfully described the disintegration of the German Army, showed the meanness of the men who are still ruling Germany. I will cite the most interesting excerpts from his diary.
A thumbnail review of It’s a Wonderful Life written in the form of a favorable plot synopsis. Oddly, the film
The artist-editor-author-publisher of TOPOLSKI’S CHRONICLE, the London fortnightly, recently visited America. These are his drawings and comments on an American-Greek-god-sex-hero phenomenon:
But, however mystically chosen, why Elvis Presley? Because, I think, he possess very happily the godlike value of all-embracing popularity: he is vulgar, yet stylish in the ‘zoot’ manner – thus he appeals to both the sophisticated and the simple. And his manhood is above suspicion…
