World War One

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

The Case for Leonard Wood (Vanity Fair, 1918)

Major General Leonard Wood (1860 – 1927) served as the U.S. Army Chief of Staff between the years 1910 through 1914 and was relieved of that office by President Wilson, who was unnerved by his wariness concerning America’s inability to wage a modern war. Having alienated the president and other prominent generals in Washington, he continued on this path by launching the Preparedness Movement a year later in which he established four volunteer army training camps across the country.
Wood’s admirer’s were legion, and this article opines that his finely tuned military mind was not being put to proper use:

General Wood has committed the sin of having been right from the very start. He has always been right. He has been right when Washington has been wrong. It is upon the heads of the entire pacifist crew who sold their shriveled souls and their country’s safety to the devil of German propaganda, that is falling the blame for the blood of those who are dying on the hills of Picardy and the plains of Flanders.

The Case for Leonard Wood (Vanity Fair, 1918) Read More »

The Battle of Belleau Wood in Retropspect (Literary Digest, 1927)

Nine years after he commanded the U.S. Fourth Corps during World War One, Major General Joseph T. Dickman (1857 – 1928) reconsidered the necessity of fighting for that ground in his memoir, The Great Crusadestyle=border:none, and concluded that:

Belleau Wood was a glorious, but an unnecessary sacrifice…It was magnificent fighting, but not modern war.

The battle was fought by the U.S. Marines attached to the Second Division, which was under the command of General Dickman. If you would like to read a small piece regarding the war record of the U.S. Fourth Corps in France, click here.

The Battle of Belleau Wood in Retropspect (Literary Digest, 1927) Read More »

Behind the Scenes at the Doughboy Training Camps (Leslie’s Weekly, 1918)

This article written by Edwin A. Goewey and illustrated by C. Leroy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) reported on how America’s granite youth was chiseled into fighting trim at the Long Island training camps at Upton and Mineola. Reference is made to the contributions made by Father Francis Duffy and Major-General J. Franklin Bell.

Click here to read about the AEF officer training at Plattsburg, New York.

Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.

Behind the Scenes at the Doughboy Training Camps (Leslie’s Weekly, 1918) Read More »

A Tribute to Philip Gibbs: War – Correspondent (The Literary Digest, 1917)

Two articles from 1917 heaped praise upon the laureled cranium of the British war correspondent Philip Gibbs (1877 – 1962). Having written diligently for the readers of the DAILY MAIL and DAILY CHRONICLE, who were also anticipating his book THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME (1917), Gibbs was admitted to the VANITY FAIR Hall of Fame (for whatever that was worth at the time):

He has been able to bring the wide, modern, romantic outlook to bear in his survey and analysis of fighting and the conditions of fighting…He is a war-correspondent of a ‘new dispensation’, giving ‘not a realistic or a melodramatic vision of war, but a naturalistic vision’.


At the close of hostilities in 1918, Philip Gibbs was filled with disgust concerning his cooperation with the censors and would begin writing NOW IT CAN BE TOLD (1920), in which he angrily names the bunglers in command and admits that he wrote lies all through the war.

A Tribute to Philip Gibbs: War – Correspondent (The Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »

Siegfried Sassoon Reviewed (Touchstone Magazine, 1920)

American poet Marguerite Wilkinson(1883 — 1928) was very impressed with the World War I poetry of Sigfried Sassoon, MC (1886 – 1967); in this three page review she lucidly explained why Sassoon’s voice was different from all the other wartime versifiers and illustrated her point by quoting liberally from his two earlier volumes, The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter Attack (1918):

Such wisdom is the shining power of Sigfried Sassoon. To read it is to come face to face with indelible memories of unspeakable anguish. No palliatives are offered. The truth about warfare is told, as Mr. Sassoon understands it, with vigor and in sight…It is told by a man, a soldier, who will never forget this Calvary of the youth of our generation.

Siegfried Sassoon Reviewed (Touchstone Magazine, 1920) Read More »

Poets in Their Glory: Dead (Literary Digest, 1917)

This 1917 article listed the known body count of dead poets who were rotting away in no-man’s land. A number of the scribes are unknown in our era; among the prominent names are Alan Seeger, Julian Grenfel and Rupert Brooke.


Printed in a popular U.S. magazine, it appeared on the newsstands the same week that Wilfred Owen, the most well known of World War I poets, was discharged from Craiglockhart Hospital, where he first resolved to write poetry about his experiences in the war.

Poets in Their Glory: Dead (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »