The Stars and Stripes

Articles from The Stars and Stripes

Sam Brown Belts: Two Short Notices (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Aside from barb wire, poison gas, machine guns and trenches, the untested American officer corps had one other alien item to contend with: the Sam Brown Belt. Worn by all the officers in the allied armies and widely recognized as the premiere emblem of authority along the front lines, many American officers were of mixed minds concerning this military fashion accessory.

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Captured Hitlerjugend (Stars & Stripes, 1944)

Among the thousands of German POWs captured during the Normandy campaign was this 17 year-old alumnus of the Hitler Jugend program who is the subject in the attached column. The editors at The Stars and Stripes were dumbfounded to discover how thoroughly he had been brainwashed – to prove the point, they printed their interview with the teen.


Q. If Germany wins the war, will you punish the United States?


A. We want living space.

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The Battle at Cantigny (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The battle of Cantigny (May 28 – 31, 1918) was America’s first division sized engagement during the First World War; George Marshall would later opine that the objective was of no strategic importance and of small tactical value. General Pershing was hellbent on eradicating from the popular memory any mention of the A.E.F.’s poor performance at Seicheprey some weeks earlier, and Cantigny was as good a battleground in which to do it as any. Assessing the battle two weeks after the Armistice, Pershing’s yes men at the Stars & Stripes wrote:

But at Cantigny it had been taught to the world the significant lesson that the American soldier was fully equal to the soldier of any other nation on the field of battle.


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


Click here to read a STARS & STRIPES article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I…

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How the ‘Stars & Stripes’ Operated (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Written during the closing days of the paper’s existence, the reporting journalist could not emphasize enough how lousy the paper was with enlisted men serving in the most important positions. You will come away with a good amount of knowledge concerning the manner in which THE STARS & STRIPES crew addressed their daily duties and still made it to the presses on time. Surprising is the high number of experienced newspapermen who wrote for the paper during the paper’s short existence.


Click here to read World War II articles from YANK MAGAZINE.

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Origin of the Word ‘Doughboy’ (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

A few historians tend to believe that the sobriquet Doughboy had it’s origins in the 1846 – 48 war with Mexico (a perversion of the Spanish word ‘adobe’), but the attached article makes a different reference, dating the term to the American army’s period in the Philippines. An effort was also made to explain the term Buck Private.


Click here if you would like to read an article about the Doughboy training camps.

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The Battle of Henry Johnson (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The courageous acts of white soldiers were not so easily demeaned in other STARS & STRIPES features as were the heroics performed by Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts in this piece from the Spring of 1918. For those who have, through the years, read the history of the New York 369th Regiment of Infantry this article will leave you a little sadder for the racial stereotyping and cheekiness so clearly enjoyed by the journalist and his editors.


On June 2, 2015 Henry Johnson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony.

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Tested in War: the Wrist Watch Becomes Fashionable (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The following must have been some sort of creative writing project for one of the many bored World War One Doughboys, however it clearly spells out how the necessities of modern war demanded that the wrist watch no longer be thought of as a piece of jewelry adorned only by fops and fems and evolved into a useful tool for soldiers on the field and men with masculine responsibilities. The column makes it quite clear that prior to the Great War, a good many wrist watch enthusiasts would have had their noses broken if they had worn the ‘gimmick’ into certain neighborhoods.

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Had Germany Really Deployed Women Soldiers? (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This paragraph was lifted from a longer article regarding the battle-savvy Native Americans of World War One and it supports the claims made in 1918 by a number of anonymous allied POW’s who reported seeing female soldiers in German machine gun crews toward the close of the war. The article appeared after the Armistice and this was a time when The Stars and Stripes editors were most likely to abstain from printing patriotic hooey.


If you would like to read another article about women combatants in W.W. II, click here.

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