World War One

Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.

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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The Military Police in France (American Legion Weekly, 1923)

A genuinely funny reminiscence written by an anonymous Doughboy recalling his days as an M.P. in war-torn France during the First World War:

Now that it is all over I wonder what did I gain from my experiences as an M.P. in the great Army of Newton Baker’s Best?…Watching the dawn coming rosily up over snow-clad barracks roofs and rows of tents; informing careless privates, sergeants, lieutenants and even majors to ‘button that there button’; listening to the dull bang-slamming of artillery barrages on crossroads; jotting down the names of high-spirited young men found in cafés at the wrong hours -such things aren’t of much lasting value.


Click here to read an article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I – and the M.P.s in particular…

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A British Tommy to the Mother of his Victim (True Stories of the Great War, 1918)

One of the most moving letters included in the the 1918 book True Stories of the Great War
was the pair that we have attached herein: a British soldier, heartily sickened by war, composed a letter to the mother of the German he had killed, pleading for her forgiveness. The mother wrote back and her response was unpredictable.
This exchange was first published in a Geneva newspaper.


Click here to read about compassion on the battlefield.

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Theodore Roosevelt on the Subject of Disarmament Treaties (Review of Reviews, 1910)

Before there were diplomatic treaties between super powers on thermo-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, there was the age of the Dreadnought: how many battleships should a country have? This article concerns the views of a Norwegian statesman named Erik Vullum (1850 – 1916) and his admiration for former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt and his understanding of armament arbitration agreements between the major European powers prior to the First World War.

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The Crown Prince: Saber Rattler (Current Literature, 1912)

The son and heir of the German Kaiser, Crown Prince Wilhelm III (1882 – 1951) was known well throughout the pre-war era for demonstrating his dislike of the German Government’s peaceful policies and especially for his belligerent, anti-British remarks, which caused tremendous embarrassment to the Imperial German Chancellor, while giving no end of pleasure to the hot-heads of Berlin.

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America’s First Shot (Various Sources, 1917 – 1937)

The three articles attached herein were printed five years apart and collectively recall three different events by three different arms of the American military, each claiming to have fired the opening salvo that served notice to Kaiser Bill and his boys that the U.S.A. meant business:


• The first article chuckles at the Army for insisting that the First Division fired the premiere shot on October 23, 1917 in the Luneville sector of the French front;


• The second article recalls the U.S. Merchant Marine freighter MONGOLIA that sank a German U-Boat on April 19, 1917 while cruising off the coast of England.


• following up with the absolute earliest date of American aggression being April 6, 1917 – the same day that Congress declared war – when Marine Corporal Michael Chockie fired his 1903 Springfield across the bow of the German merchant raider S.M.S COMORAN on the island of Guam.

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