Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.
The combining of machine gun and motorcycle was an entirely Canadian concept that made an appearance early in the war. It is highly likely that the vehicles never got their baptism of fire:
an interesting adaptation of the motorcycle to military uses has been made by employing it as a light artillery vehicle…the accompanying photograph shows a machine gun mounted on a sidecar chassis.
An interesting profile of General Pershing by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Marquis James (1891 – 1955):
• Ever hear about the time the C-in-C saluted a French cow?
• Did you know he had the right to put ‘Attorney at Law’ after his name?
• That he was given eight hours extra guard duty for a breach of discipline at West Point?
• Do you know why he was chosen to command the A.E.F.?
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.
Attached are some of moving observations penned by the Editor of The Independent, Hamilton Holt (1871 – 1951) when he toured Seicheprey, Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, St Mihiel and the Argonne battle fields — which were the five battlefields where General Pershing chose to launch operations in the European war against Imperial Germany. There is one winsome photograph of the Aisne-Marne Cemetery as it appeared shortly after the conflict.
Within a year Holt would change his mind about the war as well as the treaty signed at Versailles.
On February 5, 1918 the Cunard passenger liner, Tuscania (having been pressed into service as a troop ship) was sent to the bottom of the sea by a German U-boat; well over one thousand, five hundred Doughboys from various units were drowned, as were her British crew which was numbered over three hundred. On the first anniversary a survivor of the attack wrote to the editors of the Stars and Stripes.
In one of the first issues of the Stars & Stripes, it was decided to mark the historic occasion of the American arrival on the World War One front line with the always reliable baseball comparison. Printed beneath a headline that clearly implied that the war itself was actually the World Series sat one of the worst poems to ever appear on the front page of any newspaper:
The Boches claim the Umpire is a sidin’ with their nine,
But we are not the boobs to fall for such a phony line;
We know the game is fair and square, decision on the level;
The only boost the Kaiser gets is from his pal the Devil…
Much has been written on the unique relationship that has existed between African-Americans and the city of Paris
History’s ancient example of camouflage, the Trojan horse, has a modern twist in this illustrated article. The journalist reported that at some undated point earlier in the war the French had a chance to set a mock horse-carcass between the opposing trenches and use it as an observation post.
By the early Thirties the anointed of Europe realized that there would be no economic recovery for the continent if Germany was not a part of it. With this in mind, a delegation convened in Lausanne, Switzerland where it was decided by representatives from France, Britain and Germany that the reparation payments imposed upon the defeated countries by the Treaty of Versailles would be suspended. Hitler’s followers were of the mind that Germany should not have signed the agreement unless the war-guilt clause was removed from the Versailles Treaty. This article addresses the general political climate in Germany as 1932 came to a close.
The alarming rise in shipping losses due to the increased presence of German submarines (as foretold in the Zimmermann telegram) had made the American population sit up and take notice in a way that the war had never done before. The attached four notices were printed on the front pages of an Atlanta paper one month prior to the U.S. Congress’ declaration of war; each one pertains to military recruiting or the need for military equipment.
The widening of hostilities also served to outrage the Latin American republics: Guatemala would soon break off all relations with Germany and Brazil would declare war in October of that year.
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
Printed during the seventh month of the First World War, this is a collection of assorted musings that first appeared in The London Times involving what was known for sure regarding the subject of German zeppelins. In an attempt to understand the true speed, range and fuel capacity of a zeppelin, the author refers to a number of previous voyages that the airships were known to have made during the pre-war years. Concerns regarding the amount of ammunition that could have been carried is also mentioned.
In the conflict which some still persist in calling the Great War, though it was great only in size, there was so much jumble and muddle and half-hearted experiment and so little visible military skill and ingenuity that a far-seeing and keen-thinking British colonel has declared that if the nations of the earth will only use their brains, the inevitable next war will show combat so transformed and reformed that the struggle of 1914 – 1918 will seem, by comparison, little more than a clash ‘between barbaric hordes…’
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
Information released from the British Admiralty concerning the number of British merchant and fishing vessels lost to German U-boat attacks during the first seven months of the war. The article names eight non-military ships sunk during March 1915. In addition, the Admiralty also stated the total number of British merchant and fishing vessels lost through German naval attacks from the start of the war through March 10, 1915.
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
Read this article and you will soon get a sense of what busy bees they must have been over at the United States Department of War within that year and a half following the close of World War One. General Amos A. Fries and the lads attached to the Chemical Warfare Service had been applying much cranium power to all matters involving mustard gas, tear gas, Lewisite and White Phosphorus. Much of the post-war dollar was devoted to making ships impervious to gas attacks, masks and uniforms suited to withstand nerve agents and offensive aircraft capable of deploying chemical bombs.
As to the effectiveness of phosphorous and thermit against machine-gun nests, there is no recorded instance where our gas troops failed to silence German machine-gun nests once they were located…In the next war, no matter how soon it may occur, a deadly composition called Lewisite will be used with far more devastating effect than that of mustard gas.
Having examined the collected data from the First World War, scientists and soldiers alike were drawing surprising conclusions as to the inefficiency of chemical agents in warfare. No doubt, it was articles such as this that lead to the decision not to use gas in the Second World War:
Poisonous gas as used in warfare is ‘a blessing, not a curse,’ and makes for the future security and peace of the world’, declares J.E. Mills, of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service
…Theoretically one ton of mustard gas could kill 45,000,000 men. Actually one ton of mustard gas as used at the front caused about twenty-nine casualties, of which one died.
An article about J.B.S. Haldane (1892 – 1964), formerly a British combatant of the Great War who became a chemist (and pioneer geneticist) during the inter-war years studying not merely the effectiveness of poison gas but the question as to whether the weapon was more humane than bullets and artillery shells:
The future lies with poisonous smoke made from arsenic compounds and with mustard gas. Of the latter, he says, it kills one man for every forty it puts out of action, whereas, shells kill one for every three.
His musings concerning atomic energy are referred to as are some of his quack-theories regarding the effects of gas warfare on people with dark skin.
The International Commission of Jurists of the World Court under the Presidency of Professor John Bassett Moore of Columbia University, New York, drew up at The Hague new ‘rules of warfare’… Chief among the rules for aircraft in warfare are provisions against bombing private property not of a military character and against attacking non-combatants.
We find ourselves preparing for the next war when the ink is hardly dry on the still unratified Treaty of Peace.
These were the thoughts of the Japanese rulers who were terribly surprised to find that they had quickly become the subject of much attention by their former allies, the Americans and the Commonwealth powers following the close of the First World War.
