Learn About the Americans of WW I with these Old Stars and Stripes Newspaper Articles. Get All Your WW I Articles from The Stars and Stripes.
Best known for his 1913 poem, Trees, Joyce Kilmer (1886 – 1918) served as a Sergeant in the 69th Infantry Regiment (Forty Second Division). On July 30, 1918, he took a German bullet in the head and was buried not far from where he fell.
This short piece reported of the despoiling of that grave by his fellow Americans.
The 36th Division has a little corner by itself in the general field covered by the A.E.F. It was not brought into either of the American major operation or into any American sector. Off by itself, under French command, it came into line in Champagne… Theses troops came bang into the middle of the hardest fighting, without any quiet sector preliminaries, and without a relatively easy initiation like St. Mihiel.
An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s 90th Infantry Division during World War One. We have also provided a review of A History of the 90th Division by Major George Wythe (which the reviewer didn’t especially care for but nonetheless provides a colorful account of the division’s history in France).
An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s Seventy-Eighth Division in the First World War
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Although the unit arrived rather late, it saw a great deal of combat.
On the afternoon of December 8, 1918, the troops of the Third American Army entered Koblenz. This was the goal of the occupation. The Yankees had reached the Rhine.
Probably never in all its stressful history did enemy troops enter it so in quite the matter-of-fact manner which marked the American entry last Sunday. There was no band. There were no colors. ‘We’re just going in sort of casual like,’ one of our generals had said the day before, and he was right.
An explanation from the official newspaper of the A.E.F. as to how the First World War American fighter pilots were credited for their victories in the war against Germany.
The following article must have been penned as a result of some sort of creative writing project for one of the many bored World War One Doughboys waiting for the boat home. The article spells out how the necessities of modern war demanded that the wrist watch no longer be thought of as a piece of jewelery adorned only by fops and fems and evolved into a useful tool for soldiers on the field. The column makes clear that prior the Great War, any man who dared to accessorize themselves with a watch was immediately suspect and likely to have their noses broken.
The T-shirt also had a military origin. Click here to read the article
Three notices appeared in the fall of 1918 announcing changes in design for three items issued to American troops: the 1918 combat knife, a.k.a. ‘the Knuckle-Duster, the mess kit and the canteen. Interestingly, the notice pertaining to the canteen states that Doughboys had been carrying both French canteens and American canteens by the end of the war.
Click here to read magazine articles from the Second World War.
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.
When the Doughboys began arriving in France the infantry and artillery were kept in the rear areas and taught the necessities of World War One trench warfare. This was not the case with engineering units of the A.E.F. who were dubbed noncombatants and dispatched hither and yon to attend to those duties deemed appropriate for men with such training. The U.S. Sixth Regiment of Engineers were rebuilding roads on the Somme when the German army came across no-man’s land on March 21, 1918 (a.k.a. Kaiserschlacht: the Kaiser’s battle) and they were quickly ordered to go in support of a nearby British regiment. These engineers were the first Americans to come under German fire and their story is told here by Private E.P. Broadstreet, who was there.
The experiences of the 108th Engineers (Thirty-Third Division) during the Argonne campaign is also told in this article.
Another first-hand account of that day can be read in an interview that appears in this book: Make the Kaiser Dance
