1918

Three notices appeared in the fall of 1918 announcing changes in design for three items issued to American troops: the 1918 combat knife, a.k.a. ‘the Knuckle-Duster, the mess kit and the canteen. Interestingly, the notice pertaining to the canteen states that Doughboys had been carrying both French canteens and American canteens by the end of the war.

Click here to read magazine articles from the Second World War.

If there was any mascot who best represented the staff of the old Stars and Stripes, it would have been their primary cartoonist (even though he was a Marine), Abian Wallgren; who went by the name, Wally.

This cartoon was from his on-going series, Helpful Hints

The American poet Carl Sandburg once wrote words to the effect that Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work – a very soldierly description it was, too. That said, an anonymous Journalist from The Stars and Stripes examined the casual lingo muttered by the Doughboys in France and surmised that a

universal slang in this man’s army is as hard to find as universal peace in this man’s world.

Perhaps it was all due to the fact that we weren’t in that war long enough to make it our own.