The Doughboy Comes to Chartres: Stars and Stripes and the Middle Ages

Summary

Of course, all wars are relics of the ancient eras; and Armies, with which wars are waged, must, to run true to form, retain many aspects of the medieval.

The following explores references to the Middle Ages in the American Expeditionary Force's (AEF) newspaper, Stars and Stripes. Recently digitized for the Library of Congress's website “American Memory,” it is a fresh source for exploring the medievalism of the Great War. From poems praising Joan of Arc to didactic articles on the history of the cities the doughboys were fighting – and dying – to liberate, Stars and Stripes chronicles a distinctively American encounter with the medieval “Old World.”

Stars and Stripes merits close reading by students of medievalism. It differs markedly from the elite texts examined by Paul Fussell and others since the 1970s. While Fussell's thesis that the war marked a cultural divide has been criticized in recent years, notably by Jay Winter, scholars have still focused their attention largely on England, not America. Stars and Stripes was self-consciously American; its pages also transmitted a variety of views, from official military reports to soldier's letters and poems. Unlike the poems and novels of the literati, this soldiers’ newspaper covers both elite and popular cultures. Both enrich our understanding of how the AEF, from its commanders to the doughboys, remembered the Middle Ages.

The American Middle Ages on the Eve of War

In early twentieth-century America, the Middle Ages were susceptible to any number of interpretations. American optimists had long found both the “Dark” and “Middle” Ages useful foils for contrasting old, decadent Europe with young and vigorous America. Others had followed romantics who encouraged medievalizing fashions in architecture and literature. Many considered the Middle Ages in racial terms, for example the “germ theory” explaining the origins of modern English and American governments in the dark forests inhabited by virile, freedom-loving Germans. Pessimists were drawn to Madison Grant, who warned that this American racial heritage, with its roots in both the medieval and ancient worlds, was now threatened:

We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century, and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America “an asylum for the oppressed,” are sweeping our nation towards a racial abyss.