GIs’ Blues, in Black and White

The soldiers, giddy with victory, were running wild, stealing hats and boots, even irons, as war trophies. The young sergeant at the head of G Company took them to task, in print:

“We should all remember that we have not started out to destroy a country, but to save one,” he wrote.

Then he laid out the terrible balancing act that is war: How to conquer a land without enraging its people. How to vanquish an enemy and yet win the hearts and minds of a wary public.

“We have forces that are ready and willing and sufficient to march forward and lay the whole [enemy territory] in ashes. But that is not our aim -- it is peace that we want and, in order to get it, we should not strive to make enemies on our road,” Sgt. Robert F. Stewart wrote.

Stewart was writing from here in 1861.

His editorial anchored the first edition of the Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper written for the enlisted man. Four issues were produced during the Civil War -- including one printed on stripped-off wallpaper because no newsprint could be found. The paper was revived for World War I and again for World War II. Since 1942, the Stars and Stripes has been published daily, filled with reports by, for and about the GI.

For all the high-tech razzle-dazzle of modern war, the story -- the way troops on the front line tell it -- has changed little in 142 years. War is still about courage and fear, about hope, doubt, pain and the longing for a decent meal. Over the years, troops speak in the same proud and horrified tones of their first forays into combat.

From a Civil War soldier in 1863: “We thought every step would be our last, and I am willing to say, for one, that I was pretty badly scared.”

From a soldier in Iraq in 2003: “We were all alone, and it felt like it.”

The Pentagon’s program of embedding journalists with troops in Iraq has made it possible for civilian media to give their audiences a GI’s view of this war, from the hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep to the adrenaline rush of a triumphant firefight. That has been the Stars and Stripes’ charter from the start.

“Our mission is to cover the soldiers while others cover the war,” publisher Thomas Kelsch said.

Voices of the Past

In the archives of the Stars and Stripes Museum here, in thick volumes bound in red and green cloth, the voices of those young recruits echo across the years.

Troops in World War I complain about false “gas attack” alarms, about clumsy protective gear. In World War II, they worry about comrades held by the enemy as prisoners of war. The Korean War brings photos of local children flocking, in friendship, to U.S. troops. In Vietnam, the Stars and Stripes hails the awe-inspiring precision of 2,000-pound, laser-guided “smart bombs.”

And every war brings articles about military rations: how much, how fresh, how good.

Or rather: not enough, turning rancid, tastes awful.

From a World War I article: “The meat, coffee and sugar rations for men engaged in hard manual labor will be increased 25%.”

From a story in the Stars and Stripes this month: “Friday was a good day for the Marines of Kilo Company. For one, it was the third day in a row that no one had shot at them.... And, perhaps most important of all, their rations returned to three meals-ready-to-eat a day.” The article went on to detail the importance of peanut M&Ms; for morale.

“The kinds of formations they fight in, the type of fire they face, might be different for a soldier in the Civil War versus what our troops are encountering in Baghdad today. But the experience of being a soldier hasn’t changed much,” said Mark Parillo, who teaches U.S. military history at Kansas State University.

From the Revolutionary War to Operation Iraqi Freedom, most troops have been not career warriors but citizen soldiers who came from civilian life and hope to return there, in one piece. So Parillo argues that it’s no surprise that they react similarly to the stress -- and the thrill -- of combat.

“It doesn’t change,” he said, “whether you’re talking about a guy from Indiana who volunteered to fight slavery in 1863 or a guy from East Los Angeles who enlisted in 2001 and is now over in Iraq.”

Stories From the Field

The Stars and Stripes captures that continuity in part because its reporters cover not the generals but the enlisted men and women: the supply clerks, the mechanics, the medics, the aircraft-carrier elevator operators.

A letter to the editor on July 26, 1918, for instance, praised the determination of support troops -- World War I’s version of former POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s unit -- who pushed their ammunition convoy to the front, through enemy fire. A World War II issue featured the plight of Pvt. Ramon Rodriguez, who snored so loudly that his buddies kicked him out of their tent.

In March, as conflict in Iraq loomed, a Stars and Stripes reporter wrote about a shortage of toilet paper in the temporary camps in Kuwait. Wives reading the story at a military base in Germany responded with such a barrage of care packages that one grateful sergeant joked: “We could TP Iraq if we wanted.”

With the war underway, the Stars and Stripes used stories from Associated Press and other newspapers to cover the broad sweep of the conflict. Its own reporters continue to focus on the daily experience of the troops. So an account of surprisingly fierce resistance in southern Iraq early in the war did not dwell on the strategic implications. Instead, it focused on the mounting frustration in an Apache helicopter unit that had been grounded by enemy fire. The story began: “Fired up and patriotic, the soldiers of Task Force 11th Aviation hoped to kick Saddam’s butt in the war’s first week.”

“The paper is tailor-made for what your job is about. It’s like a trade magazine for the military,” said Steve Robinson, 40, a retired Army sergeant first class who begged his family to send him the Stars and Stripes during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Added Art Hotop, 59, a retired Army colonel: “It is a lifeline.”

The first issue of the Stars and Stripes -- four pages of bravado in blotched tintype -- was printed here in Bloomfield when Union soldiers stumbled upon an abandoned printing press after rousting the Confederates from this swampy corner of southeast Missouri.

Gen. John J. Pershing revived it in World War I to boost the spirits of his troops -- both by bringing them news and by giving them an outlet to express the glory and the hardship of military life. “I do not believe that any one factor could have done more to sustain the morale ... than Stars and Stripes,” he later said.

Since then, the paper has evolved into a thick tabloid distributed seven days a week to 60,000 American troops scattered across dozens of countries. It is not sold in the U.S.; instead, it’s billed as the “hometown paper” for personnel abroad, covering military bases around the world. The Stars and Stripes also offers extensive articles on American sports, movies and music, as well as a daily roundup of news from every state.

“It reminds the troops of everything they’re fighting for,” said Delilah Tayloe, curator of the museum, which displays uniforms, weapons and soldiers’ comments from every conflict that the Stars and Stripes has covered.

The Department of Defense funds one-third of the paper’s budget, or about $12 million a year. The rest comes from advertisements and subscriptions.

Over the years, military commanders have tried to censor the Stars and Stripes, though the paper is supposed to be independent. (Perhaps the most famous attempts at censorship were aimed at cartoons: Bill Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe” during World War II and Mort Walker’s “Beetle Bailey” just after the Korean War. Both comics featured scruffy, cynical, insubordinate GIs -- and both continued to be printed in the Stars and Stripes, though “Beetle Bailey” was pulled temporarily.)

To maintain its editorial independence, the Stars and Stripes has moved in recent years to a predominantly civilian staff. Of its 103 reporters and editors, only about a dozen are active-duty military.

But the civilians soon learn to see through a soldier’s eyes. Reporter Dave Josar, now based in Kuwait, said one of his favorite stories described how Marines guarding the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan -- exhausted and getting by on four hours of sleep a night -- longed for Butterfingers candy bars. The Marines were soon swamped by care packages.

Wartime Mission

It is in times of war that the Stars and Stripes takes on its most important mission.

Normally sold for 50 cents a copy, the newspaper has been distributed free on the battlefield since World War I, often providing the only source of information for troops desperate to know what was happening beyond their foxholes.

“By the time we’d get a copy, it would be tattered, torn and muddy, but it sure was good to see it,” said Dave Hart, 60, who served two tours of duty with the Navy in Vietnam.

“Most of us would read it from that little flag on the top of the front page all the way down to the last word on the last page,” said Bill Matthews, 75, a chief petty officer at Subic Bay in the Philippines in the 1960s.

Getting the news to the front line in Iraq has been a challenge.

Since the troop buildup in the Persian Gulf began months ago, the Stars and Stripes has been flying 11,000 copies of each day’s paper into Kuwait from Germany, where the European Edition is printed.

To move it into Iraq, the publisher relies on military supply convoys or, as he puts it, “the same people who deliver guns, food and water to the troops.” Handing out a daily newspaper -- complete with ads for custom tailors and “hassle-free” vacations -- isn’t a priority.

After weeks of negotiations, the Stars and Stripes opened a printing press in Kuwait City on Friday. Editorial Director David Mazzarella said he expects soon to establish a paper route that will get the Stars and Stripes in front of tens of thousands of U.S. troops across Iraq.

What they will read would sound familiar to any infantryman across the ages.

They will read of courage, resolve and pride. They will read of the excitement, the glory, of war. And they will read of a universal longing to get the job done quickly -- and get home safely.

From the first edition of the Stars and Stripes: “Even while laboring for the benefit of our fellow men, we should never forget that self-preservation is the first law of nature.”

From a soldier quoted this month: “I’m all about getting myself home.”