Articles from The Stars and Stripes
Instructions as to how American insignia was to be worn on the trench coat as well as the officer’s raincoat. An additional notice can be read concerning the Army’s wish that all Doughboys maintain a good, soldierly appearance while not serving in the zone of advance.
Two paragraphs from THE STARS AND STRIPES explained the legal status extended to all those demobilized Doughboys who wore the highly coveted discharge chevron. The red wool chevron was worn (point down) on the left arm.
A post-Armistice Day feature article that reported on 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. Accompanying this history is a black and white illustration of the Division’s insignia.
A post-Armistice Day feature article that reported on 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. Accompanying this history is a black and white illustration of the Division’s insignia.
Appearing in The Stars and Stripes in mid-February of 1918 was this column about one of the newest disciplines to be introduced to the photographic section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps: the motion picture branch.
There is one movie-officer at present assigned to every division in the A.E.F.; one might call him the camera battery, if one wanted to get really military about it. Under him is a squad of expert photographers, some movie men, some ‘still’ snappers.
From the time when the sun finally decides that he might as well hobble up in the sky and do part of a day’s work, which isn’t often in this region, until the time that the aged, decrepit old solar luminary decides again, about the middle of the afternoon, that he’s done all he’s going to do while the calender is fixed the way it is, the camera battery is up and around taking pot-shots at everything in sight… They may be ‘covering’ a review, a series of field maneuvers ‘up front’ or merely Blank Company’s wash day at the village fountain. But always when the sun is shining, they are at it.
Click here to read a YANK MAGAZINE article about the Signal Corps films in the Second World War
Monday, June 2 [1919], was a holiday in the 2nd Division in the bridgehead on the Rhine. The anniversary of the battle of Chateau-Thierry was observed. It is just a year ago that infantry and Marines of the 2nd Division were thrown against the Boche on the Paris-Metz road near Chateau-Thierry, and from that moment on the Americans were in continual fighting until November 11.
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.
A STARS & STRIPES clipping from 1919 announcing to both Army and Marines that the era of the overseas cap had arrived and was not going away anytime soon:
The overseas cap, which has (not) protected its wearers from the rains of sunny France and the suns and snows and sleets all over the A.E.F., will be permitted to remain the official headgear of the returning troops after they get back to the States.
An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s Ninety-Second Infantry Division during World War One. It is highly likely that the attached description of the 92nd’s service record had been rewritten to suit the personal taste’s of the paper’s Jim Crow editors. Sadly, there are other examples of such biased editing at THE STARS and STRIPES.
After reading this small notice, one comes away with the sense that Pershing’s Doughboys were losing their edge by February, 1919…
When the Doughboys complained, they complained heavily about their uniforms; read about it here.
The writer who toiled over the attached STARS and STRIPES article worked very hard to convince his Doughboy readership that the latest piece of U.S. Army headgear was made on a scientific plan, terribly stylish and well-worth having around:
It has neither brim nor visor…It is better made than the old cap. It fits more neatly, looks more chic, adapts itself far more genteelly to the average Doughboy braincase.
To put it in a word, the new cap is natty. And the old cap was not even hatty.
By the time April of 1919 rolled around, it seemed to the Doughboys who were waiting for that boat to take them back to the good ol’ U.S. of A that their French allies had a short term memory and were terribly ungrateful for American sacrifices made on their behalf. Many post-Armistice letters written by the Doughboys were filled with snide comments about the high prices they were asked to pay for everyday merchandise, prices that seemed to be chosen just for them. Wisely, the Stars and Stripes editors chose not to take sides in this debate but ran this nifty little piece about the manner in which the Americans of 1782 treated their French allies during the American Revolution.
Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.
A cartoon by C. LeRoy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) which depicted the streets of Paris in a way that only the A.E.F. could have witnessed it. A Yank-heavy Place de l’Opera is overwhelmed by sight-seeing Doughboys (note the Y.M.C.A. patch on the tour guide) and loitering officers lounging about over-priced cafes. In the foreground stands a bewildered Doughboy, dumb-struck by the passing gaze of an appreciative Parisienne while a few steps away a four-gold-chevroned private gets reamed for failing to salute the single-chevron looey. The stage is shared by bickering cabees, melancholy widows, wandering sailors, unforgiving MPs and a hard-charging, over-weight uniformed woman.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.
1919 marked the third anniversary of the Battle of Verdun and the grounds were still littered with the dead, surrounded by a tons of equipment, lying in open fields pock-marked by thousands of high explosive shells:
Spring will come to France next month, but Spring will not come to the field of Verdun. Already the grass is green on the broad stretches of Champagne; in the Vosges the snow patches linger only in the stubborn shelter of rocks that bar the sun,; but there is no portent of resurrection in all the stretch of churned up gravel marking the line of forts that protect the citadel of the Meuse from the Northeast…the shell holes are filled with clear water, and between them course new born brooks, sublimating in crystal pools from which no man would dare drink.
The Doughboys were grateful to be issued European spiral-puttees in place of their canvas gaiters -which did them no good whatever in the dampness of Northern Europe; however, as the attached W.W. I photographs so clearly indicate (as does this cartoon by Walgren), not many Yanks were as proficient at wrapping them as the upper brass had hoped.
This is a swell read, written in that patois so reminiscent of those fast talking guys in 1930s Hollywood movies. One of the many reasons I find this era so interesting has to do with the fact that the war coincided with that mass-media phenomenon called advertising – and this article pertains exactly to that coincidence. This column was printed shortly after the war in order to let the Doughboys in on the existence of a particular group within the A.E.F. that was charged with the task of dumping propaganda leaflets all over the German trench lines:
Propaganda is nothing but a fancy war name for publicity and who knows the publicity game better than the Yanks?
Shortly after training in France began it was discovered that the leggings of the American Army were no match for the moisture of the French countryside and so puttees were issued for the whole A.E.F. – the attached notice ordered the entire U.S. Army to wear them in place of canvas leggings.
A cartoon by C. LeRoy Baldridge (1889 – 1977) which depicted the streets of Paris in a way that only the A.E.F. could have witnessed it. A Yank-heavy Place de l’Opera is overwhelmed by sight-seeing Doughboys (note the Y.M.C.A. patch on the tour guide) and loitering officers lounging about over-priced cafes. In the foreground stands a bewildered Doughboy, dumb-struck by the passing gaze of an appreciative Parisienne while a few steps away a four-gold-chevroned private gets reamed for failing to salute the single-chevron looey. The stage is shared by bickering cabees, melancholy widows, wandering sailors, unforgiving MPs and a hard-charging, over-weight uniformed woman.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.
