Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.
Sergeant Alvin York (1887 – 1964) of the 328th Infantry Regiment, Eighty-Second Division, was one of the great heroes of the First World War. The attached four page article recalled those deeds as well as his glorious trip to New York City where he was luxuriated at the Waldorf Astoria and feted by the swells of Gotham.
Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:
The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.
Read on…
Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…
Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:
The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.
Read on…
Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…
Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:
The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.
Read on…
Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…
Old Dame Nature abhors war as much as we do. When the troops left the battlefields, she covered them over with stuble, poppies and weeds… There were no trenches and certainly no shell holes… Two years have passed and now the battlefields are harvest lands once more.
A similar article about touring the old trench line can be read here.
A very moving column from the front page of the November 15, 1918 Stars and Stripes describing the joyous pandemonium that characterized the city of Paris when World War I came to a close:
And all Paris laughed the laugh of happy children after a day’s glad play. And the next day, and the next night, Paris sallied forth to romp and play again.
Click here to read about the W.W. II liberation of Paris.
In 1923, a seasoned war reporter returned to the battleground of Chateau Thierry and walk the old turf where so many had died.
The attached remembrance of sniping on the Western Front was written by Major H. Hesketh-Pritchard, D.S.O, M.C. (author of Sniping in France 1914-18) and recalls the development and changes of sharp-shooting on both sides during the war. Pritchard broke down the scouting and sniper involvement on the Western Front into four phases:
Phase I (1914 – 1915): German snipers weigh heavily on Allied soldiers (Clear German advantage)
Phase II (1915 – 1916): British sniping organized (Advantage even)
Phase III (1916 – 1918): British sniper program takes off (Slight British Advantage)
Phase IV (1918 through to the Armistice): Allied Offensive takes effect (Snipers began scouting)
This piece was penned by an anonymous expatriate, a former American soldier of the Great War who went into some detail comparing life in 1920s Paris to the life he knew in America, and he is quite funny about it. He described a Paris that Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald didn’t talk about.
Back in America I sincerely thought that my hometown had the worst telephone system in the world. This was a colossal error…
Click here to read about the fall of Paris…
Written during the closing weeks of the war, this Vanity Fair article was penned by a rather sly, witty scribe who was astounded to find that those areas closest to the front, yet just outside the entrances to the reserve trenches, were jam-packed with all manner of civilian tourist groups (ie. The American Woman’s Bouillon Cube Fund, The Overseas Committee of the New and Enlarged Encyclopedia, The National Mushroom Association of the United States); an exercise in creative writing? You tell us.
Despite its almost unanimous vows testified to by countless rounded phrases in trenches and billets, a good share of the A.E.F. is returning to France. It is almost chasing its own tail in the effort to get back, for it was only a few weeks ago that newspapers everywhere said that the last of the A.E.F. was home. And before the rear guard of the A.E.F. was aboard boats headed westward, the vanguard of the returning A.E.F. was pouring back into France through every port.
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
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.
In April, 1917, the call went out to artists of all ages that their talents were badly needed to create new and different sorts of posters that would rally the American masses to the colors. One of the first to answer the call was the celebrated illustrator James Montgomery Flagg; his first effort was the memorable I Want You poster, immediately raised the standards which other artists would have to acknowledge. It was reported that George Creel, the President’s appointee for all matters involving such undertakings in the mass-media, hosted a dinner for American illustrators; the evening ended with much clapping and cheering and the next day, one can assume, the poster campaign began in earnest.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
Communist uprisings in Germany are blamed on Moscow by a practically unanimous Berlin press, and some newspapers flatly accuse the Russian official representative in Berlin, a Mr. Kopp, and his staff, of being the instigators of these disturbances, and so demand their expulsion.
To-day was a great day in London. The Guards’ Division was inspected by the King at Buckingham Palace and had a triumphant march to welcome them home…East End and West End rubbed shoulders to-day and showed the same respect for each other that not so long ago they had shown in the trenches.
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
An eye-witness account of the construction of the American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in Romagne, France:
They are now gathering up the bodies of the 26,000 American boys who were killed on the Argonne-Meuse battlefield, and are burying them in a great cemetery at Romagne, a little town in the heart of the region where the fighting took place. Here and there all over the battlefield are stakes, each marking the grave of an American soldier who was buried where he fell.
In one of the office buildings a large force of clerks is keeping the records of the dead; no banking firm could be more careful of its accounts than are these clerks…and their superiors of their registration of graves.
The military influence on feminine fashion predates the conflict of 1914-1918 by a long shot and the evidence of this is undeniable. These 1918 fashion illustrations show the influence that the war was having on American designers during the final year of W.W. I.
Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…
To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…
Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.
