Stars and Stripes

Origins

This military newspaper was first published during the American Civil War, the initial issue produced when Union soldiers of three Illinois regiments set up camp in Bloomfield, Missouri, in November 1861. Upon finding the local newspaper offices abandoned, four ex-newspaper writers decided to print a one-page newspaper for their regiments, relating the troops' daily activities. They named it Stars and Stripes but ceased publication when the Union forces continued their advance a few days [Page 1341]later. The Department of Defense has officially recognized Bloomfield as the birthplace of the paper, and the Stars and Stripes Museum and Library is located there.

The World War I version first appeared in February 1918 in Paris. It was produced weekly by an all-military staff to provide information to the doughboys of the American Expeditionary Force. At its peak, it had eight pages and claimed more than a half-million readers. It relied upon the improvisation of its staff, many of whom became famous and influential members of postwar American media (editor Harold Ross, for example, returned home to found The New Yorker magazine). The Stars and Stripes ceased publication after the war ended in November 1918.

In April 1942 in a London print shop, a small group of servicemen founded a four-page weekly version of Stars and Stripes for American soldiers in Britain; the new version quickly grew into an eight-page daily newspaper. It was graced by the work of talented young journalists such as Andy Rooney, Steve Kroft, Louis Rukeyser; author Shel Silverstein; and cartoonists Vernon Grant and Bill Mauldin. The latter's famous “Willie and Joe” cartoons laid the foundation for his later work, which garnered two Pulitzer Prizes. Eventually, several editions were published simultaneously in the European theater, some printed very close to the fighting fronts in order to get the latest information to the most troops. At one time, there were as many as 25 publishing locations in operation in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Hawaii. Throughout the war, Stars and Stripes had a friend and protector in General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who issued a “hands-off” policy and defended the paper against protests by others. By V-J Day, August 15, 1945, circulation had risen to a million readers.

When World War II ended, the paper was instructed by the Department of Defense to continue to publish as long as U.S. troops remained abroad. As wartime enlisted staff were demobilized, the newspaper built an experienced staff of full-time civilian journalists, augmented by a small contingent of military journalists and photographers. The paper's reporters joined the troops in the field throughout the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. During the 1991 fighting in Iraq, the paper established a Middle East bureau for reporting the war, as circulation of Stars and Stripes nearly doubled within weeks. During the early 2000s Iraq war, reporters from the paper were embedded with military units in Kuwait and Iraq, as well as on Navy ships in the region. Staffers are still reporting from those countries, and thousands of copies of the paper are being printed daily in Iraq and Afghanistan for distribution.

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