Army Newspaper Names

T HE LINGUISTIC inventiveness of the American soldier of the Second World War has been questioned by H. L. Mencken, who has declared that the soldier 'limited his argot to a series of derisive names for the things he had to do and endure. Neologisms, says Mencken, were few, and he may be right. In naming his newspaper, however, the American soldier exercised his imagination and was not bound by civilian convention. An exhaustive survey of the names of Army newspapers published during the past war, the absence of which is noted by Mencken in Supplement II,2 unquestionably would be an attestation of the baptizers' originality. Such a study is, unfortunately, well-nigh impossible. From 400 in 1942, the total number of newspapers published by American servicemen mushroomed to 3,269 in 1945. With the disbanding of the civilian Army and Navy, the number of service journals plummeted to 1,300 by August, 1947. The number is now even smaller. A complete list of names of Army newspapers published during the Second World War might have been compiled from mailing lists and review lists of Army and Camp Newspaper Services in New York City, were such files extant. They are not. Nonetheless, this article is based on a collection of more than one thousand names, culled from the GI Galley, 'house organ' of service newspaper editors, a personal file of service journals, and current mailing lists of the Armed Forces Press Service.3 Spurning conventional civilian newspaper names,4 Army editors chris

Media studies · Newspaper · Sociology · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Military History and Strategy · Military, Security, and Education Studies · History

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  Open Access•Gisela Silva Barbosa, Noemia Dayana Oliveira•Ponta de Lança Revista Eletrônica…•2024

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