1918

Articles from 1918

The Well-Born Officer (Vanity Fair, 1918)

For it’s October issue, the editors of VANITY FAIR magazine stepped up to the plate and did their bit with this splendid review of all the finest uniform apparel that New York City offered it’s silk stocking officers. The article is nicely illustrated with photographs of a double-breasted mackinaw coat, two officer blouses (one of a wool-silk blend), a classic silk knit service tie as well as a very fine trench boot.


New From Amazon: Doughboys on the Great War:
How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experiencestyle=border:none

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The Fifth Avenue Soldier (Advertisement, 1918)

The haberdashers of the Franklin Simon Company of Fifth Avenue, New York City, simply must not have been reading the many news reports regarding the horrors of industrial warfare. Indeed, their concept of coping with such carnage involved offering such sale items as silk handkerchiefs, cashmere socks and a dashing bathrobe for tooling around the barracks.

Click here to see what Brooks Brothers was selling During World War One.

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The First Automotive Brake Lights (Popular Mechanics, 1918)

Many dented fenders later, the first signal indicators show up. This article makes clear that both the Brake light and the turning signal indicator are both the same color (red) but they are an improvement on what was sporadically used in a few circles: the Illuminated Glove (a fingerless mit intended for the left-hand that was supposedly easier to see when making stop or turning gestures).

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The Recycling of Doughboy Uniforms (Stars and Stripes, 1918)

In 1918 the U.S. Army Service of Supply instituted a salvaging unit near the French city of Tours which employed hundreds of French women and a number of idle Sammies in order to eradicate Army waste. It was there that the millions of discarded uniform elements were re-fashioned into other useful items:

At Tours they evolved a hospital slipper with a sole made from a torn and discarded campaign hat and an upper of O.D cloth cut from anywhere. It was such a good slipper, and easy to make that St. Pierre-des-Corps soon reached quantity production on it.

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Behind the Scenes at the Doughboy Training Camps (Leslie’s Weekly, 1918)

This article written by Edwin A. Goewey and illustrated by C. Leroy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) reported on how America’s granite youth was chiseled into fighting trim at the Long Island training camps at Upton and Mineola. Reference is made to the contributions made by Father Francis Duffy and Major-General J. Franklin Bell.

Click here to read about the AEF officer training at Plattsburg, New York.

Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.

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Manhattan Servant Problems (Vanity Fair, 1918)

The attached cartoon depicted one of the unintended consequences of German aggression during the First World War: the creation of what was known as the servant problem. It should be understood that the difficulty in question caused no particular hardship for those who were supposed to be the servants; they were simply delighted to vacate the collective domiciles of Mr. & Mrs. Got-Rocks in order to pull down a living wage in a nice, cozy smoke-spewing armament factory some place – leaving their former employers to fix their own meals and diaper junior.


Click here to read about the New York fashions of 1916.

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Patriotic Verse by Gertrude Stein (Vanity Fair, 1918)

When you stop to think of patriotic poetry, Gertrude Steinstyle=border:none (1874-1946) is not one of the word-smiths whose name comes to mind. Yet she, too, applied her talents to the genre after having labored many moons as an ambulance driver in France on behalf of the American Fund for the French Wounded. She had joined this group in 1916 and in 1922 was awarded the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française for all her good work. This poem, in praise of the U.S. Army, appeared in a 1918 VANITY FAIR.

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