The American Legion Weekly

Articles from The American Legion Weekly

11/11 with the U.S. First Division (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

A 1919 article that recalled the U.S. Army’s First Division Armistice Day assault in the Bois de Romaigne:


The First Division was a pretty tired outfit. It had seen eleven months of almost continuous fighting…Rumors were around that there was going to be an armistice, but few listened and none believed. We had been bunked before.

The artillery fire increased and the machine guns rattled. You were on outpost and you fired your rifle, just fired it at nothing in particular. Everybody was doing it. The din increased until 11 o’clock, it ended with a crash that startled you. Fini la Guerre?

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Stars and Stripes Folds it’s Tent (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

An article by The American Legion Weekly correspondent Rex Lapham about the last issue (until the next war) of The Stars and Stripes. The article recorded many sentimental remarks, words of praise and seldom heard facts about the history of the Doughboy newspaper.

If the paper found it’s way across, as it surely did, into the hands of the German intelligence officers – if that’s what they could be called – it must have given them something to ponder about. How could they have reported anything favorable to the ears of the German high command after having perused this defiant and determined manifestation of Doughboy psychology?

Click here to read how the newspaper was staffed and managed in 1918 Paris.

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‘The Woman Who Took A Soldier’s Job” (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

Two years ago when the men began to drop out of the industrial world at the call to the colors their women associates gradually slipped into their places, and in the majority of cases effectively filled them… Those men have now nearly all come back to claim their old, or better jobs. What of the girl, then, in the soldier’s job? What is she going to do?

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Blitzkrieg: In the Words of Nazi Officers (American Legion Weekly, 1940)

An article by military historian and biographer Fairfax Downey (1894 – 1990) concerning the unique manner of mechanized warfare that the Germans had introduced to the world during the opening weeks of the Second World War:

Thunder rumbles, lightening flashes and strikes. Incredibly swiftly it is over. So, compared to the campaigns of the First World War, was the German Blitzkrieg, rumbling, flashing and striking down Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. How did it work? What made it click?

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With the French as Their Army Collapsed (American Legion Weekly, 1940)

Attached is an article by the noted war correspondent Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) who observed the French and British as they attempted to hold-off the Nazi juggernaut of 1940. In this article, Palmer referred a great deal to walking this same ground with the American Army during the 1914 – 1918 war just twenty-one years earlier; he found the French to be confident of a decisive victory. The column is complemented by this 1940 article which reported on the wonders of Blitzkrieg and the fall of France.


Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.

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U.S. Cemeteries: A Flag for Every Grave (American Legion Weekly, 1920)

An article that appeared in an American veterans magazine concerning the pageantry that would mark the Memorial Day of 1920 at each of the primary A.E.F. cemeteries in France.

More than 127,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines gave up their lives during the war…Total battle deaths in the A.E.F. killed in action and died of wounds were 50,329 including casualties in the Siberian force. Deaths from disease including the A.E.F. and men in the home cantonments, were 58,837…No American field of honor will be without it’s Memorial Day ceremony, no American grave without its flag and its flowers…

An interesting article that was written at a time it was believed that the A.E.F. cemeteries were going to be closed and the interred repatriated. There is a photograph of an early prototype headstone that was later rejected in favor of a stone cross; references are made to Suresnes Cemetery in Paris.

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Carrier Pigeons of the US Army Signal Corps (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

Illustrated with images of maimed and disfigured carrier pigeons, this article is filled with interesting lore of the battles waged by the ‘feathered aviators’ of the 1914 – 1918 war. You will read about how the pigeons were often dyed black so as to be mistaken for crows; how they were used at sea and at Verdun and that spies relied upon them.

During the course of World War II the U.s Army signal Corps deployed more than 50,000 pigeons.


It was said that the carrier pigeons of W.W. II were ten percent stronger.

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