The American Legion Weekly – Old Magazine Articles

Deporting the Reds
(American Legion Weekly, 1920)

In this 1920 American Legion Weekly article the mojo of the Red Scare (1917 to 1920) is fully intact and beautifully encapsulated by W.L. Whittlesey who condemned the U.S. Government for ever having allowed large numbers of socialist immigrants to enter the country and spread their discontent throughout the fruited plane. On the other hand, the writer was grateful that the government was finally tending to the matter of deporting them in large numbers and doing so with every means available.

Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women
(American Legion Weekly, 1924)

Four and a half years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O’Donnell reported that there were as many as 25,000 women who had run-afoul of the law in an effort to earn a quick buck working for bootleggers:

They range in age from six to sixty. They are recruited from all ranks and stations of life – from the slums of New York’s lower East Side, exclusive homes of California, the pine clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington… Women in the bootleg game are becoming a great problem to law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents, state troopers and city police – gallant gentlemen all – hesitate to embarrass women by stopping their cars to inquire if they are carrying hooch. The bootleggers and smugglers are aware of this fact and take advantage of it.

Verily, so numerous were these lush lassies – the Federal Government saw fit to construct a prison compound in which to incarcerate them; you can read about that here…

America’s First Brush With Multiculturalism
(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

Like many Americans in the Twenties, the journalist who penned the attached article was totally irked by the concept of an American territory – bound for statehood – having a majority Asian population. He wrote at a time when the nation was deeply concerned about assimilating America’s immigrants and his indignation can clearly be sensed.

America’s First Brush With Multiculturalism
(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

America’s First Brush With Multiculturalism

(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

TRENCH RAID!
(The American Legion Weekly, 1922)

This is an eyewitness account of the very first trench raid to have been suffered by the U.S. Army in France; like most first time engagements in American military history, it didn’t go well and resulted in three dead, five wounded, and eleven Americans taken as prisoner. Historians have recorded this event to have taken place on the morning of November 3, 1917, but this participant stated that it all began at

3:00 a.m. on November 2, after a forty-five minute artillery barrage was followed by the hasty arrival of 240 German soldiers, two wearing American uniforms, jumped into their trench and began making quick work out of the Americans within.

The U.S. Army would not launch their own trench raid for another four months.

Return To Chateau Thierry
(The American Legion Weekly, 1923)

In 1923, a seasoned war reporter returned to the battleground of Chateau Thierry and walk the old turf where so many had died.

Touring The Trenches
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)

Written in a playful spirit, an anonymous Doughboy tells the tale of his return to the old trench lines in order to conduct tours of the A.E.F. battlefields for that morbid class of souls we know call death tourists.

A second article on trench tours of the Twenties can be read here

How Canada’s Veterans are Fairing
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)

Second only to the part played by Canada on the battlefields of Europe is the magnificent spirit in which the dominion has dealt with the returned soldier and with the fallen soldier and his dependents. From the time the war ended to the present, Canada has led the rest of the world in looking after ex-service men.

When the men of the Dominion returned from Europe they originally got three months’ post-discharge pay at their discharge rank. On second thought this was changed early in 1919 to a war gratuity basis, as follows: For one year’s overseas service or more, four months’ pay and allowances; for three years’ service or more, six months’ pay and allowances. From these amounts deducted any sum paid out under the post-discharge system which had earlier prevailed. The men who had seen service in Canada only were not forgotten and received checks for one month’s pay and allowances for each complete year of service in the army.

Crack of Doom for the Draft Dodgers
(American Legion Weekly, 1920)

Doomsday looms just over the horizon for the draft deserters. That wily gentleman who hid behind a tree and chuckled as his neighbor shouldered a gun and marched off to battle is soon to have that chuckle mopped off his face. He will find that no tree vegetates enough to cover from shame the miserable carcass of his manhood…According to the latest reports, 173,911 is the maximum number of draft registrants chargeable with willful desertion.

11/11 with the U.S. First Division
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

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?

That Night in Paris
(American Legion Weekly, 1924)

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.

Where Were You When You Heard of The Armistice?
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)

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.

Stars and Stripes Folds it’s Tent
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

An article by The American Legion Weekly correspondent Rex Lapham about the last issue (until the next war) of The Stars and Stripes. The article recorded many sentimental remarks, words of praise and seldom heard facts about the history of the Doughboy newspaper.

If the paper found it’s way across, as it surely did, into the hands of the German intelligence officers – if that’s what they could be called – it must have given them something to ponder about. How could they have reported anything favorable to the ears of the German high command after having perused this defiant and determined manifestation of Doughboy psychology?

Click here to read how the newspaper was staffed and managed in 1918 Paris.

‘The Woman Who Took A Soldier’s Job”
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

Two years ago when the men began to drop out of the industrial world at the call to the colors their women associates gradually slipped into their places, and in the majority of cases effectively filled them… Those men have now nearly all come back to claim their old, or better jobs. What of the girl, then, in the soldier’s job? What is she going to do?

Blitzkrieg: In the Words of Nazi Officers
(American Legion Weekly, 1940)

An article by military historian and biographer Fairfax Downey (1894 – 1990) concerning the unique manner of mechanized warfare that the Germans had introduced to the world during the opening weeks of the Second World War:

Thunder rumbles, lightening flashes and strikes. Incredibly swiftly it is over. So, compared to the campaigns of the First World War, was the German Blitzkrieg, rumbling, flashing and striking down Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. How did it work? What made it click?

Edward VIII: A Regular Guy
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

George V’s son is a regular. He has the ‘bonhomie’of a Broadway John, smokes all the time, admires a pretty face with an open affection, is bored by Beethoven, is a disciple of American jazz, and he hates to get up early in the morning.

With the French as Their Army Collapsed
(American Legion Weekly, 1940)

Attached is an article by the noted war correspondent Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) who observed the French and British as they attempted to hold-off the Nazi juggernaut of 1940. In this article, Palmer referred a great deal to walking this same ground with the American Army during the 1914 – 1918 war just twenty-one years earlier; he found the French to be confident of a decisive victory. The column is complemented by this 1940 article which reported on the wonders of Blitzkrieg and the fall of France.

Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.