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Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.
During the closing months of the American presence in France, one element can be found in the majority of the letters written to loved ones at home:
The French aren’t treating us as nice.
In the war’s aftermath, writer Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) attempted to explain the situation to his readers; what follows were his observations.
An interesting editorial from World War I in which the writer (possibly W.E.B. Duboise) expressed that an African-American’s sense of patriotism in that era was based on the nation’s potential to be judicious and fair.
The article is a fine example illustrating the influence that George Creel and his Committee on Public Information had strong-arming the American magazine editors during the period of World War One.
By the time the U.S. Army had joined the war in 1917, they were far behind in the study of camouflage, but they did their best to catch up quickly. The American generals assigned the task camouflage to the Signal Corps, which began to cruise the ranks for artists and sculptors because of their natural abilities understand paint and scale (one of the more well-known W.W. I Signal Corps camofleurs was the painter Grant Wood: click here to read about him).
The attached article displays an illustration that clearly shows that the American Army had torn a page out of that well-worn play book written by the British Camouflage School in order to deploy papier-mache dummies along the front lines. There is no evidence or written word to indicate that it was actually done.
A former American prisoner of war recalled the American flag that he and his fellow prisoners had fashioned from Bull Durham and Lucky Strike bags the day they heard that the Germans had quit.
H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors of The Smart Set, surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of 1920s Europe, America is neither admired or liked very much:
…the English owe us money, the Germans smart under their defeat, the French lament that they are no longer able to rob and debauch our infantry.
British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862-1922) was quicker than most of his contemporaries when he recognized what was unfolding in Europe during the August of 1914, and uttered these prophetic words:
The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
The anonymous old wag who penned this opinion column came to understand Gray’s words; four years after the war he looked around and found that the world speeding by his window seemed untouched by the heavy handed Victorians. For this writer, the Victorian poet and writer Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888) represented the spirit of that age and it all seemed to come crashing down in 1922:
Granting that the son of Arnold of Rugby was more troubled over the decay of Christian dogma than we are, it should be remembered that the decay symbolized for him a fact of equal gravity to ourselves — the loss of a rational universe in which to be at home. But he never doubted how a new world was to be built — by justice and by reason, not by claptrap and myth.
An eyewitness account of the decoration ceremony that took place on a lawn of an unnamed French chateau in the Marne Valley on July 11, 1918. The ceremony was presided over by U.S. Army General James Harbord (1866 – 1947) and well over 100 Marines of the U.S. Second Division were cited for their deeds in the fighting North-West of Chateau-Thierry.
The battle of Cantigny (May 28 – 31, 1918) was America’s first division sized engagement during the First World War; George Marshall would later opine that the objective was of no strategic importance and of small tactical value. General Pershing was hellbent on eradicating from the popular memory any mention of the A.E.F.’s poor performance at Seicheprey some weeks earlier, and Cantigny was as good a battleground in which to do it as any. Assessing the battle two weeks after the Armistice, Pershing’s yes men at the Stars & Stripes wrote:
But at Cantigny it had been taught to the world the significant lesson that the American soldier was fully equal to the soldier of any other nation on the field of battle.
Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.
Click here to read a STARS & STRIPES article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I…
Sergeant Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) wrote this article so that his New York readers (whom he had not addressed since signing on with the Doughboys) would know the key roll Corporal Harold Ross (1892 – 1951) played as Managing Editor at the Paris offices of The Stars & Stripes. Anyone who glances at those now brittle, beige pages understands how sympathetic the The Stars & Stripes and their readers were to the many thousands of French children orphaned by the war; Woollcott makes it clear that it was Harold Ross who was behind the A.E.F. charities that brought needed relief to those urchins.
It seems certain that no man in the A.E.F. had a greater influence on it’s thought and spirit…The men who worked with him on The Stars & Stripes considered him the salt of the earth.
To read another W.W. I article by Alexander Woocott, click here.
Written during the closing days of the paper’s existence, the reporting journalist could not emphasize enough how lousy the paper was with enlisted men serving in the most important positions. You will come away with a good amount of knowledge concerning the manner in which THE STARS & STRIPES crew addressed their daily duties and still made it to the presses on time. Surprising is the high number of experienced newspapermen who wrote for the paper during the paper’s short existence.
Click here to read World War II articles from YANK MAGAZINE.
A few historians tend to believe that the sobriquet Doughboy had it’s origins in the 1846 – 48 war with Mexico (a perversion of the Spanish word ‘adobe’), but the attached article makes a different reference, dating the term to the American army’s period in the Philippines. An effort was also made to explain the term Buck Private.
Click here if you would like to read an article about the Doughboy training camps.
The courageous acts of white soldiers were not so easily demeaned in other STARS & STRIPES features as were the heroics performed by Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts in this piece from the Spring of 1918. For those who have, through the years, read the history of the New York 369th Regiment of Infantry this article will leave you a little sadder for the racial stereotyping and cheekiness so clearly enjoyed by the journalist and his editors.
On June 2, 2015 Henry Johnson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony.
A two page history of the 32nd Division and their struggle to eradicate the bulge in the Marne battle line that resulted in the liberation of Fismette and Fismes.
A genuinely funny reminiscence written by an anonymous Doughboy recalling his days as an M.P. in war-torn France during the First World War:
Now that it is all over I wonder what did I gain from my experiences as an M.P. in the great Army of Newton Baker’s Best?…Watching the dawn coming rosily up over snow-clad barracks roofs and rows of tents; informing careless privates, sergeants, lieutenants and even majors to ‘button that there button’; listening to the dull bang-slamming of artillery barrages on crossroads; jotting down the names of high-spirited young men found in cafés at the wrong hours -such things aren’t of much lasting value.
Click here to read an article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I – and the M.P.s in particular…
One of the most moving letters included in the the 1918 book True Stories of the Great War
was the pair that we have attached herein: a British soldier, heartily sickened by war, composed a letter to the mother of the German he had killed, pleading for her forgiveness. The mother wrote back and her response was unpredictable.
This exchange was first published in a Geneva newspaper.
Click here to read about compassion on the battlefield.
Before there were diplomatic treaties between super powers on thermo-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, there was the age of the Dreadnought: how many battleships should a country have? This article concerns the views of a Norwegian statesman named Erik Vullum (1850 – 1916) and his admiration for former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt and his understanding of armament arbitration agreements between the major European powers prior to the First World War.
This small piece from THE SPECTATOR magazine concerned the 1912 budget increase mandated by the Imperial German Defense Bills which called for a growth of the German army and navy. The expansion of the fleet was to include eight battleships and nine cruisers of various sizes and provide for further additions later. The German Army was to be furnished with two additional army corps.
The son and heir of the German Kaiser, Crown Prince Wilhelm III (1882 – 1951) was known well throughout the pre-war era for demonstrating his dislike of the German Government’s peaceful policies and especially for his belligerent, anti-British remarks, which caused tremendous embarrassment to the Imperial German Chancellor, while giving no end of pleasure to the hot-heads of Berlin.
