Four Reporters Killed (Stars and Stripes, 1919)
This short column appeared three months after the war listing the names of the paper’s staff who were killed while in the course of getting the news.
1919
Articles from 1919
The American Military Cemeteries in France (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)
France has given three fields of honor at Romagne, Thiacort and at Beaumont.
This short notice from an American military newspaper reported that four percent of the American dead were considered unidentifiable.
Woman Aviator Seeks Mail Job (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)
Katherine Stinson (1891-1977) wants to carry letters up to Third Army. By the time Stinson (a.k.a. the Flying Schoolgirl) had applied for the job of carying the mail to the occupying forces in post-war Germany, she already had the distinction of being the fourth American woman to earn a pilot’s license and the first woman to ever deliver air-mail for the U.S. Post Office. She didn’t get the job…
German Admiral Von Tirpitz Condemned (Review of Reviews, 1919)
One year after the First World War reached it’s bloody conclusion, Admiral German Grand Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz (1849 – 1930) was in a frenzy writing his wartime memoir in order that it arrive at the printing presses before his critics could do the same. One of his most devoted detractor was a naval advocate named Captain Persius who had been riding Tirpitz as early as 1914 for failing to fully grasp the benefits of the U-boat. In 1919 Captain Persius took it upon himself to widely distribute a pamphlet titled, How Tirpitz Ruined the German Fleet, which was reviewed in this article.
Tirpitz never realized the power of the submarine… Tirpitz was building Dreadnoughts when he should have been concentrating on submarines, and what is worse was building them with less displacement than the British, less strongly armed and of lower speed.
In 1920 the representatives from the victorious nations who convened at Versailles demanded that Kaiser Wilhelm, Admiral Tirpitz and an assortment of other big shots be handed over for trial – click here to read about it.
The Suitability of the First One Million Draftees (Current Opinion, 1919)
Additional data regarding the 1917 Draft and how the first one million inductees measured-up physically:
The first adequate physical survey in half a century was made possible when the Selective Service system brought before medical examiners some ten million men. Of the 2,510,000 men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one 730,000 (29 percent) were rejected on physical grounds.
We found it interesting to learn two facts from this article; the first being that the highest number of acceptable draftees were from the countryside and the second involved the malady of flat feet -which effected one out of every five American men at that time.
French Artillery Pieces (Almanach Hachette, 1919)
Assorted black and white illustrations depicting an variety of French artillery pieces from the years 1916 and 1917; among them is a railway gun, Obusier de 520
Click here to learn about the timing fuses designed for W.W. I shrapnel shells.
The German Anti-Tank Rifle (Almanach Hechette, 1919)
As a response to the drastic increase in French and British tank production, German industry manufactured a powerful (if cumbersome) anti-tank rifle in early 1918. The weapon fired a 13mm armor-piercing bullet but it’s heavy recoil made the weapon difficult to operate. The Abris Museum in Albert, France has one of these currently on display.
American Snipers in France (Literary Digest, 1919)
This article listed the skills required to survive as a sniper in W.W. I France:
One extremely important rule was that he should swab the muzzle of his rifle after every shot, to make sure that no moisture had collected there. One tiny drop of water would, upon the rifle’s discharge, send up a puff of steam that would reveal him to his carefully watching enemies.
To see a diagram of the American W.W. I sniper rifle, click here.
