The Stars and Stripes – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

The A.E.F. Tank Corps
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This article appeared some seven months after the war, and it presents an interesting account of the first American tank units that ever existed.

The preferred tank of the American Army of World War I was a light tank made by the French called a Renault. It had a crew of two, measured 13 feet (4 meters) in length and weighed 6.5 tons. The tank’s 35 hp. engine moved it along at a top speed of 6 miles per hour. This article outlines where the American tanks fought, which units they supported and who commanded them; some readers may be interested to know that reference is made to the First American Tank Brigade and the officer in charge: Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton (1885 – 1945).

During the course of the Meuse-Argonne battles, the tank units of the 1st Brigade had lost 3 officers and 16 enlisted men killed, and 21 officers and 131 enlisted men were wounded. These losses were suffered in 18 separate engagements…

Read about General Patton, Click here

Read other articles from 1919.

The A.E.F. Tank Corps
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Read about General Patton, Click here

Read other articles from 1919.

The A.E.F. Tank Corps
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Read about General Patton, Click here

Read other articles from 1919.

Doughboy Gripes
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Attached is a list of the twelve inconveniences that W.W. I American soldiers hated the most about their lives over there (well over 50% of them had to do with certain elements of their uniforms).

Yanks on the Marne: The Battle of Chateau-Thierry
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The American performance at the battle of Chateau-Thierry proved to General Foche that the Americans had the necessary stuff, and it was widely recognized that the Doughboys played the key roll in keeping the Germans out of Paris.

The attached STARS AND STRIPES article is extremely detailed as to the individual units (both French and American) that participated in rolling back the Germans along the Marne.

On June 4, the best information available indicated that the enemy was employing not less than 33 divisions, about 3000,000 men…But like the defenders of Verdun, the American machine gunners set their teeth and said, ‘They shall not pass.’

The 93rd Division
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

An account of the war-time activities of the four infantry regiments that made up the U.S. Ninety-Third Division (the 369th, 370th, 371st and the 372nd). Two of these regiments were awarded the coveted Croix de Guerre.

Read an article about racial integration in the U.S. Military

German Girls Captured as Machine Gunners
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This paragraph was lifted from a longer article concerning the battle-savvy Native Americans of World War One and it supports the claims made in 1918 by a number of nameless allied POW’s who reported seeing female soldiers in German machine gun crews toward the close of W.W I. There is solid documentation pertaining to the women who served in the Serb, Russian and French armies but very little as to the German ladies who did the same. The article appeared after the Armistice and this was a time when The Stars and Stripes editors were most likely to abstain from printing patriotic falsehoods.

If you would like to read another article about women combatants in W.W. II, click here.

Click here to read additional articles about the rolls women played during W.W. I.

Paris, 1918: La Guerre Fini!
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Yank and Aussie and Jock, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Pole, Checko-Slovak, Tommy, Indian, all from the newly arrived Brazilians to the wizened and and weather-beaten poilus wearing the seven brisques denoting four years in the furnace, knew no nationality, no difference of tongues or even of uniform.

Click here to read another article about the 1918 Armistice.

– from Amazon:

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

Milton Caniff: 1940s American Cartoonist

Attached is a profile of Milton Caniff (1907 – 1988), who is remembered as the creator of Terry and the Pirates (1934 – 1946), Mail Call (1942 – 1946) and Steve Canyon (1946 – 1988).

Click here to read an article by G.I. cartoonist Bill Maulden.

Dispatch from Operation Market Garden
(Stars and Stripes, 1944)

Five days into Operation Market Garden, this hastily written notice was dispatched by a Stars and Stripes reporter on assignment with the allied airborne forces in war-torn Holland.

Getting Around the Prohibition Laws
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

To be sure, there were complications with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. While American clergy debated with government concerning the issue of sacraments involving wine, one enterprising restaurateur took advantage of the fact that the law, as it was originally written, only involved alcoholic beverages and decided to offer an inebriate in the form of a jelly sandwich.

The 1918 New York Elections
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

By the time this short notice was seen on page one of THE STARS and STRIPES during the Spring of 1918, the political momentum was clearly on the side of the Prohibition advocates and the voters of many states had elected to go dry long before the Congress had decided to amend the Constitution. The 1918 election in New York between Wets and Drys was a close one and the eyes of the nation were watching. The headline read:

PROHIBITION RACE NOW NECK AND NECK: TWENTY NEW YORK CITIES DRY AND NINETEEN WET…

The deciding and unknown factor was the women of New York, who were permitted to vote in municipal elections.

Vichy Government Flees Paris
(The Stars and Stripes, 1944)

Published in the Stars & Stripes issue marked August 19, 1944 (the official date of the Paris liberation) was the attached notice concerning the hasty disappearance of the Nazi-collaborators who lorded over the French during the occupation:

Laval, Darnand and other Vichyites fled from Paris to Metz, according to a United Press report quoting a French resistance leader who reached the British front from Paris. The whereabouts of Marshal Petain were not known.

A Pat on the Back for the Doughboys
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

The attached Stars & Stripes article briefly summarizes the American efforts from Cantigny to the Armistice and serves as one big attaboy for the whole Doughboy army. The journalist anticipates John Mosiere’s World War One history, The Myth of the Great War, which opines that it was the high morale and seemingly endless supply lines of the A.E.F. that served as one of the most decisive factors in bringing the war to a close.

Stars & Stries could not have agreed more.

Ten years later a Frenchman writing for La Revue Mondiale would say essentially the same thing, click here to read that article.

Click here to read an article about life in a W.W. I German listening post…

Face Masks Will Fight Influenza
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The influenza of 1918 took a large bite out of the American Army, both at home and abroad. The military and civilian medical authorities were at a loss as to what actions should be taken to contain the disease, and as they paused to plan, thousands died. The attached article describes one step that provided some measure of success in the short term.

A more thorough article about Influenza can be read here.

Click here to read more about Influenza.

A Starbucks Cure for the 1918 Influenza
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Coffee has the ability to remedy some physical ailments, however this small article told the story of one U.S. Army Colonel who felt so helpless upon seeing so many sick army men come ashore in France suffering from such a terrible illness as influenza, and was moved to do the only thing that he could in his power to offer comfort: unlimited cups of hot coffee. How real was coffee as a preventative measure in the face of influenza? The good colonel was on to something – it wasn’t the java bean that made an impact, it was the heat: viruses die when exposed to high temperatures.

A more thorough article about Influenza can be read here.

Click here to read about the earliest use of face masks to combat airborne disease.

Censoring Letters and Looking for Spies
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Buried on page eight of a post-war issue of The Stars & Stripes was this column reporting on the wartime activities of the AEF censors in France – men assigned to not simply censor all outgoing mail from Europe, but to also chemically test each one for traces of invisible ink.

Click here to read an article the post office censorship duing the Second World War.

Doughboys and Social Disease
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

A short notice concerning the number of sexually diseased American World War I soldiers who were treated or segregated during the war and post-war periods.

What is missing from this report was an anecdote involving General John Pershing, who upon hearing that his army was being depleted by social disease, quickly called for the posting of Military Policemen at each bordello to discourage all further commerce. The immediate results of this action were pleasing to many in the American senior command however the next problem concerned the growing number of venereal cases within the ranks of the Military Police.