Wisconsin Historical Society

Collecting Military Newspapers A Singular Enterprise Since 1847

An Air Force newspaper published out of Baghdad

Dateline, Saltillo, Mexico, April 14, 1847, in The Picket Guard: an American soldier in search of his horse strays "a mile or two" from his camp at Agua Nueva and is robbed and murdered by "some of the banditti that infest the mountains around us." Dateline, Baghdad International Airport, September 26, 2003, in The Scribe: "Comedian Drew Carey will be the headline performer during a United Services Organization show Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. at Hangar #1 (on the Army side of Baghdad International Airport)." Soldiers in two American wars separated by 156 years and half a globe record their experiences, mostly for the benefit of their fellow soldiers. Yet, because the Wisconsin Historical Society is the only institution in the world to have continuously collected military newspapers from its founding to the present day, American wartime experiences from the Mexican War to the current American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq will be documented for future generations. Indeed, both the Air Force and the Army stipulate that all military newspapers published under their command be sent to the Wisconsin Historical Society for permanent cataloging and storage.

"No other institution has amassed a collection such as this," says Jim Danky, the Society's newspapers and periodicals librarian, "and the collection's research dimensions are obvious. Researching the role of the military in history without using military newspapers would be as absurd as researching the history of American politics without newspapers."

While the Society's collecting of military newspapers and periodicals began in the nineteenth century, their uncertain publishing schedules and the frequent changes of locations and editors made the task of building a comprehensive collection particularly onerous. Until 1979 the number of American armed forces publications held by the Society probably numbered less than one hundred, according to Danky. Then, commencing in November of that year and continuing throughout the next decade, the Society began acquiring military newspapers from an ardent collector, Walter S. Dougherty of Florida. Dougherty began collecting military newspapers during World War II, eventually amassing one of the largest and most comprehensive collections ever assembled by an individual (and attracting the interest of the FBI). In an introduction to a published guide to the Dougherty collection, he writes, "GI journalism is noted for its inhibition but, in the broader sense, no other source can be found to portray the daily life of the GI in camp and on the fighting front where the reporting is so close to the action."

Colorful titles abound, from Shoot 'Em Down, the official newspaper of the Camp Stewart, Georgia, anti-aircraft training center in 1942, to The Windsock, the house organ of the Army Air Corps basic flying school at Bakersfield, California, the same year. And while the editorial content of such newspapers often centers on commonplace matters, Danky believes they capture, in a larger sense, the essence of a soldier's way of life during wartime. "The mundane existence of solders in training camps and foreign theaters of war — their hopes and anxieties, their social life, their viewpoints on foreign and domestic affairs — all are recorded in the pages of these ephemeral publications," says Danky. "They merit preservation and a larger audience than the one their words are meant for at the time of their writing."