Reporting on the Doughboys

Having sifted through literally thousands of items, editors Dubbs and Kelley have selected over 50 newspaper and magazine articles that illustrate America’s role in the Great War. The selections come from a broad range of publications, big city and small town newspapers, popular periodical, the black press, and so forth.

These articles have been groups into eleven chapters, each covering a particular aspect or period of the war. So we find chapters titles “Mobilization”, “Learning to Fight”, “American Firsts”, “At Sea”, “In the Air”, “In the Trenches”, “Wounded Warriors”, “Battles”, “Heroes”, and so on.

Some of the items are quite long, such as the moving account of the sinking of the troop ship Tuscania, or a profile of Alvin York, both from The Saturday Evening Post. Others are short, such as the thoughtful piece on America’s lack of readiness from The Literary Digest, “In the War but Not Ready for It”.

Most of the articles cover the men and women who lived the war, black and white, from generals to privates to “Hello Girls”, taking them from recruitment and training into the war zone, and then home for the victory parades.