World War One – Page 34 – Old Magazine Articles

The 1917 Draft
(U.S. Gov. 1931)

Attached is a small piece that explains how the draft of 1917 was conducted. Illustrated with three charts, this article provides the number of males in the U.S. at that time (54,000,000), how many had registered under the Selective Service Act (26,000,000), the percentage of the whole number who had never registered and how the onslaught of the influenza epidemic had effected the W.W. I draft.

In the fall of 1917 the first half million came rapidly. During the winter the accessions were relatively few, and those that did come in were largely used as replacements and for special services.

‘The Horrors of Peace”
(The Better Days, 1918)

Patriotic Verse by Gertrude Stein
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

When you stop to think of patriotic poetry, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is not one of the word-smiths whose name comes to mind. Yet she, too, applied her talents to the genre after having labored many moons as an ambulance driver in France on behalf of the American Fund for the French Wounded. She had joined this group in 1916 and in 1922 was awarded the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française for all her good work. This poem, in praise of the U.S. Army, appeared in a 1918 VANITY FAIR.

A German Sniper Captured
(What the Boys Did Over There, 1919)

Attached is a remembrance that was written by a Canadian infantryman who participated in the capture of a German sniper in Flanders:

We wasted no time on the return journey but hustled Fritz along at a brisk pace…Like most of his breed there was a wide ‘yellow streak’ in this baby-killer and he cried ‘Kamerad’ instantly. By the time the lieutenant had secured his prisoner’s rifle our barrage was falling and, under its protection, he began his march back with the prisoner, and met us before he had gone twenty-five yards…The prisoner expected to be killed at once and begged piteously for his life, saying ‘he had a wife and three children.’ One of the men replied that if he had his way he would make it a ‘widow and three orphans.’

British Snipers on the Western Front
(The English Review, 1920)

Written by Major E. Penberthy, former Commandant of the British Third Army Sniping School, this is an account of the training and organization of snipers as they functioned within the British Army at the time of the Great War.

In the early days of the war, when reports of German ‘sniping’ began to be published, it was commonly considered a ‘dirty’ method of fighting and as not ‘playing the game’.

Snipers and the Hague Convention
(The Spectator, 1914)

Two and a half months into the war, a devoted reader of THE SPECTATOR (and we are among them) responded to an earlier article concerning partisan sniping activity in occupied France and Belgium, wrote to the editors to point out that the Hague Convention (precursor to the Geneva Convention) condemned the practice of summary sniper executions. Mention is made of the fact that the occupying German forces
disregarded the law.

Sniper Scopes Compared
(Literary Digest, 1916)

By enlarge, this article is a mildly technical piece that compares the German sniper scopes used during W.W. I to those of the British; happily, the amusing part of this essay is contained in the opening paragraph in which a British Tommy returning from the front, is quoted as exclaiming:

German snipers are better shots than the English because their rifles have telescopic sights that are illuminated at night.

American Snipers in France
(Literary Digest, 1919)

This article listed the skills required to survive as a sniper in W.W. I France:

One extremely important rule was that he should swab the muzzle of his rifle after every shot, to make sure that no moisture had collected there. One tiny drop of water would, upon the rifle’s discharge, send up a puff of steam that would reveal him to his carefully watching enemies.

To see a diagram of the American W.W. I sniper rifle, click here.

The Springfield 1903 Rifles

W.W. I Gas Shells of the German Army
(Almanach Hachette, 1919)

It is often believed that the Germans were the first to use chemical weapons during the Great War, but historians like to point out that they were second to the French in this matter: in August of 1914, French infantry fired tear-gas grenades and in October, the Germans one-upped them with chemical artillery shells during the battle of Neuve Chapelle. However, the Germans are properly credited for being the first of the combatants to use chemical artillery with the most devastating effect. On April 22, 1915, the German Army hurled 520 gas shells at British and Canadian units in Belgium, killing five thousand and incapacitating ten thousand more. Following this historic incident, both sides began producing large amounts of gas shells and, of course, gas masks. The following is a black and white diagram depicting five different German gas artillery shells that were manufactured to be fired from a number of different guns of varying calibers.

The U.S. Fires Her First Mustard Gas Shell
(Observer, 1918)

A cartoon by Alban B. Butler illustrating the overwhelming sense of glee that overcame American 1st Division artillerymen of World War I when they were charged with the task of firing the very first mustard gas shells ever to be fired by U.S. forces:

For months Americans had suffered from repeated concentrations of German mustard gas without the chance to retaliate in kind.

(No date was given)

The Fleecing of Liberators
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

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.

Paris Furlough
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

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.

The Third Anniversary of Verdun
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

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.

U.S. Propaganda Pamphlets Dropped on the Hun
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

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?

Paris Furlough
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

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.

Paris Furlough
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

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.

American Ambulance Volunteers in the Service of France
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

A thumbnail history of the United States Army Ambulance Service, which first arrived in June of 1917.

All through the hard French fighting of 1917 the 6,000 American ambulance drivers kept steadily at work in every sector of the French front. It was not until March, 1918, that the first sections of the service found themselves helping in battles with the fighting regiments of their own Army.

Many of the volunteers were college men, such as the poet E.E. Cummings, who wrote an interesting account of his days as an ambulance driver during the war.

Four Reporters Killed
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This short column appeared three months after the war listing the names of the paper’s staff who were killed while in the course of getting the news.