This paragraph was lifted from a longer article concerning the battle-savvy Native Americans of World War One and it supports the claims made in 1918 by a number of nameless allied POW's who reported seeing female soldiers in German machine gun crews toward the close of W.W I. There is solid documentation pertaining to the women who served in the Serb, Russian and French armies but very little as to the German ladies who did the same. The article appeared after the Armistice and this was a time when "The Stars and Stripes" editors were most likely to abstain from printing patriotic falsehoods.
If you would like to read another article about women combatants in W.W. II, click here. Click here to read additional articles about the rolls women played during W.W. I. Attached is a history article concerning the various organizations that made up the French Colonial Army in Africa:
"Before and during the World War, all the different races serving in the French Army were excellently officered by subalterns and non-coms born in North Africa, but of European ancestry: by sons of immigrated colonists of French, Spanish and Italian extraction."
"The late Marshal Lyautey used to say of these sons of European settlers: 'Their knowledge of the ways of the natives is priceless, because they have assimilated it from childhood. In the native regiments, they constitute a human concrete, which keeps together men of antagonistic races and beliefs'
It has been said that when the U.S. Army's senior staff officers had learned of the great victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, "Those head-line hunting bastards!" When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army's success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army. Click here to read an article about the American snipers in W.W. I France.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
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This printable page from an R.O.T.C. manual concerns the American military efforts in World War I.
Attached is a useful summation in three paragraphs of the Aisne-Marne offensive. The reader will learn which American and French units participated, the dates on which the battle raged and the German defense strategy. "The battle had numerous and far reaching results. It eliminated the German threat to Paris, upset Ludendorff's cherished plan to attack the British again in Flanders, gave the Allies important rail communications, demonstrated beyond further doubt the effectiveness of American troops on the offensive, firmly established Allied unity of command..." This article written by Edwin A. Goewey and illustrated by C. Leroy Baldridge (1889 - 1977) reported on how America's "granite youth" was chiseled into fighting trim at the Long Island training camps at Upton and Mineola. Reference is made to the contributions made by Father Francis Duffy and Major-General J. Franklin Bell. Click here to read about the AEF officer training at Plattsburg, New York. Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War. Numbered among the many Monday-morning-quarterbacks who appeared in print throughout much of the Twenties and Thirties were the old horse soldiers of yore, bemoaning the fact that industrial warfare had deprived their kind of the glory that was their birthright. This was not the case on the Eastern Front, where Imperial Russian generals had seen fit to launch as many as 400 cavalry charges - while American troopers were ordered to dismount (along with most other cavalry units in the West) and suffer postings with the Service of Supply, among other assorted indignities.
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