The Stars and Stripes

Articles from The Stars and Stripes

The First Anniversary of Chateau-Thierry (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Monday, June 2 [1919], was a holiday in the 2nd Division in the bridgehead on the Rhine. The anniversary of the battle of Chateau-Thierry was observed. It is just a year ago that infantry and Marines of the 2nd Division were thrown against the Boche on the Paris-Metz road near Chateau-Thierry, and from that moment on the Americans were in continual fighting until November 11.

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The Battle of Chateau-Thierry (Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The American performance at the battle of Chateau-Thierry proved to General Foche that the Americans had the necessary stuff, and it was widely recognized that the Doughboys played the key roll in keeping the Germans out of Paris.


The attached STARS AND STRIPES article is extremely detailed as to the individual units (both French and American) that participated in rolling back the Germans along the Marne.

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The W.W. I Overseas Cap Will Remain (Stars and Stripes, 1919)

A STARS & STRIPES clipping from 1919 announcing to both Army and Marines that the era of the overseas cap had arrived and was not going away anytime soon:

The overseas cap, which has (not) protected its wearers from the rains of sunny France and the suns and snows and sleets all over the A.E.F., will be permitted to remain the official headgear of the returning troops after they get back to the States.

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An Abbreviated War Record of the 92nd Division (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s Ninety-Second Infantry Division during World War One. It is highly likely that the attached description of the 92nd’s service record had been rewritten to suit the personal taste’s of the paper’s Jim Crow editors. Sadly, there are other examples of such biased editing at THE STARS and STRIPES.

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Introducing the Overseas Cap (Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The writer who toiled over the attached STARS and STRIPES article worked very hard to convince his Doughboy readership that the latest piece of U.S. Army headgear was made on a scientific plan, terribly stylish and well-worth having around:

It has neither brim nor visor…It is better made than the old cap. It fits more neatly, looks more chic, adapts itself far more genteelly to the average Doughboy braincase.

To put it in a word, the new cap is natty. And the old cap was not even hatty.

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The Fleecing of Liberators (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

By the time April of 1919 rolled around, it seemed to the Doughboys who were waiting for that boat to take them back to the good ol’ U.S. of A that their French allies had a short term memory and were terribly ungrateful for American sacrifices made on their behalf. Many post-Armistice letters written by the Doughboys were filled with snide comments about the high prices they were asked to pay for everyday merchandise, prices that seemed to be chosen just for them. Wisely, the Stars and Stripes editors chose not to take sides in this debate but ran this nifty little piece about the manner in which the Americans of 1782 treated their French allies during the American Revolution.


Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.

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Paris Furlough (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

A cartoon by C. LeRoy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) which depicted the streets of Paris in a way that only the A.E.F. could have witnessed it. A Yank-heavy Place de l’Opera is overwhelmed by sight-seeing Doughboys (note the Y.M.C.A. patch on the tour guide) and loitering officers lounging about over-priced cafes. In the foreground stands a bewildered Doughboy, dumb-struck by the passing gaze of an appreciative Parisienne while a few steps away a four-gold-chevroned private gets reamed for failing to salute the single-chevron looey. The stage is shared by bickering cabees, melancholy widows, wandering sailors, unforgiving MPs and a hard-charging, over-weight uniformed woman.

Click here to read about W.W. I art.

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

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The Third Anniversary of Verdun (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

1919 marked the third anniversary of the Battle of Verdun and the grounds were still littered with the dead, surrounded by a tons of equipment, lying in open fields pock-marked by thousands of high explosive shells:

Spring will come to France next month, but Spring will not come to the field of Verdun. Already the grass is green on the broad stretches of Champagne; in the Vosges the snow patches linger only in the stubborn shelter of rocks that bar the sun,; but there is no portent of resurrection in all the stretch of churned up gravel marking the line of forts that protect the citadel of the Meuse from the Northeast…the shell holes are filled with clear water, and between them course new born brooks, sublimating in crystal pools from which no man would dare drink.

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