Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.
Attached is a cartoon that was created during the third year of the First World War by a British cartoonist who feared that women have, through the years, been loosing their feminine mojo – that charming thing that truly separates them from the males of the species.
A Woman War Worker Cartoon (NY Times 1917) Read More »
Eighteen years after the last shot was fired in World War I, Americans collectively wondered, as they began to think about all the empty chairs that were setting at so many family dinner tables, Do the French care about all that we sacrificed? Do they still remember that we were there? In response to this question, an American veteran who remained behind in France, submitted the attached article to The American Legion Monthly and answered with a resounding Yes on all six pages:
…I can assure you that the real France, the France of a thousand and one villages in which we were billeted; the France of Lorraine peasants, of Picardy craftsmen, of Burgundy winegrowers – remembers, with gratitude, the A.E.F. and its contribution to the Allied victory.
The article is accompanied by eight photographs of assembled Frenchmen decorating American grave sites.
Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.
American W.W. I Cemeteries and French Gratitude (American Legion Monthly, 1936) Read More »
A Congressional committee of investigation has recently been treated to a scathing arraignment of the General Staff because military operations on the front of the Second Army were continued up to the hour of the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918. Members of the operations Section of the Staff, particularly the chief, Brigadier General Fox Conner, have been accused of slaughtering men on the last day of the war in order to satisfy their personal ambitions.
The Armistice Day Offensive (The Home Sector, 1920) Read More »
A 1919 article that recalled the U.S. Army’s First Division Armistice Day assault in the Bois de Romaigne:
The First Division was a pretty tired outfit. It had seen eleven months of almost continuous fighting…Rumors were around that there was going to be an armistice, but few listened and none believed. We had been bunked before.
The artillery fire increased and the machine guns rattled. You were on outpost and you fired your rifle, just fired it at nothing in particular. Everybody was doing it. The din increased until 11 o’clock, it ended with a crash that startled you. Fini la Guerre?
11/11 with the U.S. First Division (American Legion Weekly, 1919) Read More »
Whether or not this story is true or not, it’s a wonderful ride – written in the idiom of the American trench-dwellers of the time. It’s awfully funny.
That Night in Paris (American Legion Weekly, 1924) Read More »
By the time this column was read by the American Doughboys, the truce was old news and this STARS AND STRIPES article makes for an interesting read as it imparts much of the November, 1918 excitement that filled the streets of Paris when the news of the Armistice hit the previously gloomy boulevards. This front-page article makes clear that many of the rumors pertaining to the German collapse could not be verified, yet affirms reports concerning the revolution in Germany, it’s food shortages and the Kaiser’s exile to Holland.
The News of the Armistice (The Stars and Stripes, 1918) Read More »
In the attached 1945 article an anonymous YANK MAGAZINE correspondent describes for his young readers how the last World War ended; the widely reported misinformation of a premature armistice treaty that was reported as being signed on November 7, 1918 – the retraction, and the subsequent announcement of the genuine armistice being signed four days later. General John J. Pershing recalled the scene in Paris:
It looked as though the whole population had gone out of their minds. The city turned into pandemonium. The streets and boulevards were packed with people singing and wearing all sorts of odd costumes. The crowds were doing the most clownish things. One could hardly hear his own voice, it was such bedlam.
Click here to read another article describing the Armistice Day celebrations in 1918 Paris.
Click here to read an explanation as to what was understood about the truce of November 11, 1918.
The Wrong Armistice Day (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »
To mark the 1921 anniversary of Armistice Day, the editors put the word out to all their readers that they wanted to hear from them concerning where they were and what they were doing when they first heard that la guerre was fini – they received many answers, from both veterans and civilians alike.
Where Were You When You Heard of The Armistice? (American Legion Weekly, 1921) Read More »
A printable piece from a 1945 COLLIER’S MAGAZINE outlining how Sergeant Edward F. Younger (died August 6, 1942) selected which of the four unidentified Doughboys set before him would be interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery.
How the W.W. I Unknown Soldier was Selected (Collier’s Magazine, 1945) Read More »
Here is a segment from a longer article published in 1951 by an anonymous American woman who wished to be known to her readers only as a women who had grown up with the Century (born in 1900). In this column she insisted that it was the First World War that served as the proving ground where American women showed that they were just as capable as their brothers – and thus deserving of a voice in government.
W.W. I and American Women (Pageant Magazine, 1951) Read More »
