 This Army presents The Big Picture, an official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. From Seoul, Korea to the office of the Secretary of the United States Army in Washington, D.C., may be just a day's journey by air. But for these Korean war orphans, it is literally a chance in a century. It might also be the high point of the American soldier's journalistic journey since 1860, through the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Korean War. This is the story of that journey, or the story of the Stars and Stripes. December 2, 1959, two top winners in the Stars and Stripes News Boy Contest in Korea were received by Secretary of the Army Wilbur M. Brocker in the Pentagon. These two boys are among the ten favorite Lil Tigers elected by American soldiers in an election with no less fanfare than a heated American political campaign. While the Korean hills are colder than the Cold War, the soldiers' hearts are warmed by the beaming boys delivering the Stars and Stripes. When a G.I. calls Hello Tiger, his enthusiasm to see his paper is an echo reverberating through a hundred years. November 9, 1861, a three-column four-page paper appeared in Bloomfield, Missouri, published by four Union soldiers, all enlisted men with that gentlemanly rank known as private. Although this first issue was also the last, they hardly knew that they'd chosen an enduring name and established an equally enduring tradition, a soldier's newspaper by soldiers. During the Civil War, three other editions of the Stars and Stripes appeared short-lived and unrelated, but they were all written and edited by the men themselves. In the war to save the Union, the feeling of a man in battle was honestly reflected in his paper. During Hancock's charge at Fredericksburg, for long distance the slope was swept by such a hurricane of death that we thought every step would be our last. And I'm willing to say for one that I was pretty badly scared. Whatever may be said about getting used to it, old soldiers secretly dread a battle equally with new ones. But the most difficult thing to stand up under is the suspense while waiting, as we waited in Fredericksburg, grown up in a line of battle on the edge of the field, watching the columns file past us and disappear in a cloud of smoke. At such a time there comes a latent sustenance from within us, which no man anticipates who has not been in such a place before, which most men pass through without knowing anything about. One came half a century later. This time America was fighting a foreign war, physically and psychologically unprepared. The Yanks were over there, but their units were scattered all over France. They were going through endless drills, drudgeries and waiting. They wanted to know what for, what's happening and what's going to happen. These strangers in a strange land needed a voice. They got it. For the first time in military annals and journalistic history, a full-sized official army newspaper was born, blessed by none other than the chief himself. The paper, written by the men in the service, would speak the thoughts of the new American army and the American people from whom the army has been drawn. It is your paper, good luck to it, signed John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief American Expeditionary Forces. The birth of this extraordinary newspaper is a story in itself. To tell this story, we have invited the famed radio news commentator, Mr. H. R. Borkage. Mr. Borkage was a staff member of the World War I stars and stripes. Today, in addition to broadcasting and lecturing, he's an associate editor of the Army Navy Air Force Register. I suppose there were a thousand men in the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1917 who thought the soldiers ought to have a newspaper of their own. The veteran war correspondent, then-major, Frederick Palmer, chief press censor and very close friend of Pershing, was one of them. In December of 1917, he was sent to Washington by Pershing to plead that the American Army be kept together rather than using the troops as replacements as the Allies were demanding. Palmer suggested to President Wilson that the President's real power was in the sincerity of the men in the trenches who looked to him as the world leader and the arbiter of a new era in which the horror they were enduring would not have to be endured again. Thus, the grand illusion was formed. This was to be the war to end all wars. But it needed a newspaper to bolster the faith of the men in the cause for which they were fighting and, most of all, faith in themselves. Second Lieutenant Guy T. Wisnisky, a former newspaper executive and a man of real action, was recruited by Palmer to show his American enterprise ingenuity and resourcefulness. These two knew that their heads would bump right against the world of military security every day, yet they had to tell as much as the dough boys wanted to know. Wisnisky could count his blessings, no paper, no plant, no staff, not to say the means of circulation and distribution. All that he got was reluctant permission to go ahead from headquarters and 25,000 francs, then worth about $5,000. The staff was quickly assembled. Wisnisky summoned Private Hudson Hawley, ex-jail record in New York's son and Lieutenant Charles P. Cushing, U.S. Marines and an ex-collier's man as the editor and Lieutenant William K. Michael, also U.S. Marine Corps, as the business manager. Now the hunt was on for newsprint and a plan. Finally Lord Northcliff, owner of the London Times and the Daily Mail, offered the use of his Paris plan and the infant stars and stripes was really born and the place of birth was Paris. Soon it gathered an editorial staff literally star-studded. There was Harold Ross, Private, later founder and editor of the New Yorker magazine. Private John T. Winterich, author of Squads Right, which was an anthology of the best things from the stars and stripes. Sergeant Alexander Wolcott, the drama critic immortalized in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Lieutenant Grantland Rice, the famous sports writer and Captain Franklin P. Adams, later one of the wise men of information, please. This group of men carried out the paper's mission to express the uncommissioned viewpoint. This was illustrated by Private Abien A. Walgren, the most popular cartoonist of the AEF. Someone said war is about nine-tenths work and one-tenth fighting. That one-tenth came none too soon for the impatient stars and stripes reporters such as Charles Cushing. He wrote the first story about a front-line trench, telling how he attended two Washington's birthday parties the same evening. The long-anticipated German spring offensive came in March. In the following two months, the battles brought the fighting line near Paris. Alexander Wolcott immortalized a trench dog who adopted a young leather neck, followed him to the edge of the battle, and was waiting for him when he came back. By the time the last great German blow fell on July 15th, 1918, the Americans were able to help wrestle back the initiative after three days. This marked the beginning of the end of the war. On August 6th, a quarter million dough boys had done such a good job that the Paris-based stars and stripes men could no longer cover the front with a short ride. By September 12th, 1918, Wolcott reported the first blow struck by the First American Army, known to history as the San Miguel victory. And the feature story by Harold Ross about the first dough boy who escaped appeared on October 25th. Until the armistice, the final American offensive found the dough boys slogging through the southern stretches between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. On November 8th, 1918, the stars and stripes printed its longest editorial, the Post de Vomme, summarizing the significance of the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, which was slow, unspectacular, and received scant notice at that time. The words are eloquent, untarnished by time. Fighting over a most difficult terrain, opposed by so great a proportion of the German Army, the very flower of it, every foot of France that our dough boys reclaimed between the Meuse and the Argonne up to November 1st became ours only after fighting the intensity of which has not been surpassed during the entire four years of the war. Not only in intensity, but in sustained effort and number of men engaged, the battle we are waging is the greatest in the 142 years and more of American history. We have good reason to be proud of the fact that the Allied High Command selected American troops for the post of honor in the present grand offensive of the Western Front. Yet the story of World War I's stars and stripes would be incomplete without mentioning its humane campaign. It was a different kind of call to arms. Take as your mascot a French war orphan. While Private Leroy Baldrige editorialized with his pictures, the paper announced that besides doing a lot of things such as fighting, the AEF found time and Franks to adopt 3,444 French orphans of the war. All totaled, some 600,000 dough boys had contributed. As a footnote to World War I, the stars and stripes closed shop on its 71st issue. For the sake of old Lang Syne, what a sentiment. Yet how short the grand illusion lasted. 24 years later, the Yanks had to cross the Atlantic again to finish the unfinished business of World War I. The 14 points of Wilson had become the four freedoms of Roosevelt and the dough boys were now called G.I. Joe. April 18, 1942. The stars and stripes reappeared as an eight page weekly. It had a great tradition. General Marshall quoted General Pershing, stating that no official control was ever exercised over the matter which went into the stars and stripes. It always was entirely for and by the soldier. This policy, Marshall declared, is to govern the conduct of the new publication. A soldier's newspaper in these grave times is more than a morale venture. It is a symbol of the things we are fighting to preserve and spread in this threatened world. It represents the free thought and free expression of a free people. By November 2, 1942, it blossomed into a daily. Printed in the plants of the state London times, this young upstart dwarfed the time circulation in one and a half years. During the period of air war, this paper for the fighting men naturally concentrated on combat stories of the Allied air forces. While the desk men labored under the threat of bombing, some of the reporters took on wings to brave the flak filled sky all the way to Berlin in the bombers of the 8th United States Army Air Force, the RAF and the RCAF. Thus, throughout the war, the stars and stripes men went to combat, to captivity, and even into the lists headed, killed in action. To get today's paper into Joe's hands today, the stars and stripes published its many additions as close to the front lines as possible. One month after the invasion of North Africa in November 1942, the first Mediterranean edition began in Algiers under the direction of Colonel Egbert G. White. With the fortunes of the war, it grew into a chain across Africa. From the spring of 1943, some stripes popped up in Cairo, Oran, and Casablanca. It then jumped off to Palermo and Naples and Tunis. With the full support of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Mediterranean issues were among the most outstanding of all editions. Bill Mouldin's Willie and Joe expressed the foot soldier's view of the war, and his cartoons wrought laughter out of bitter truth. I can't get no lower, Willie. Me buttons is in the way. Together with Dick Wingert's sorrowful hero Hubert for the London edition, and George Baker's sad sack for the Yank Magazine, they live as the soldier's image even today. The enterprising stripes men probably outdid themselves in Rome. Five staffers dashed to the plant of Il Mesagero on the day of liberation and produced a paper that afternoon, headlined, We're in Rome. June 6th, 1944. D-Day. Ten days later, a Mimeographed Affair on a London printed banner established its speech head in Normandy. A glorious day of July 4th, without a roof over their heads, the editors of the Continental Edition crowed the stars and stripes first conceived in Paris during World War I is, with this edition, reborn in France. When the First Army breakthrough at Saint Lo sprang the Third Army loose for the dash across France, the edition advanced to Rome. Then, on August 26th, 1944, a skeleton stripes staff rushed into Paris with the liberating American troops to occupy the New York Herald Tribune's Paris building. Six days later, the first Paris issue rolled off the presses to reach a top circulation of 800,000 in late 1944 and to remain the center of this paper's activity on the continent until V.E. Day. Meantime, American forces invaded southern France. The stars and stripes appeared in Grenoble, Busson, Nice and Marseille. Yet it is the Strasbourg story which perhaps was the most celebrated of all. In early January 1945, American and French forces evacuated this city on the Rhine under threat of a German advance. Two staffers, Ed Clark and Vic Delaire, remained. Published a daily edition in English, French and German and virtually held the city for four days, averting a panicky exodus of the population. French forces provided the happy ending by reoccupying Strasbourg and decorating the heroes. At the same time, Stripesmen also started additions in Liège, Dijon and Nancy to keep up with the advancing armies. Probably the unsung heroes of the Stripes were the circulation men. They delivered the paper up front through fire, rubble and mud. After crossing the Rhine in March 1945, the first free paper in Germany since the rise of Hitler was set up for business in Fungstadt. May 8th, 1945, the last combat-born addition in Europe hit Altdorf streets the night the German armies surrendered. To sum up, we will hear from Mr. Herbert Mitgang of the New York Times. He was a correspondent and managing editor of several editions of the Mediterranean Stars and Stripes during World War II. While the World War I paper recalls sentiment and idealism, the World War II edition spelled professionalism. Some editions came out every day. Under the same masthead, 30 editions were published in various cities overseas in Europe and Africa and later the Pacific Islands and Asia with a combined circulation of millions. From the battlefront's soldier correspondence relayed news features, photographs and drawings. These were supplemented by news including color comics from the States. Although the World War II papers were professional, there was a basic desire for smallness. We tried to tell the little story within the big picture but we also covered the world's events. The forgotten riflemen or outfit, Bill Malden's Willys and Joes were our real news heroes. These men up front were commemorated in homes and letters, mostly their own, and stories. Our readers trusted us because it was an honest operation. But victory was not yet total. No one had forgotten that the war in the Pacific began in December 1941. But the Pacific Stars and Stripes was launched one week after V.E. Day. Stars and Stripes performing its task for the American troops remaining overseas. This Darmstadt plant services major troop centers in Europe and Africa and its distribution department carries magazines and papers published at home. Soldiers looking homeward probably never dreamed that another major conflict could come so soon, least of all in the mountains and mud of Korea. The banner of the United Nations commanded by General Douglas MacArthur with jet planes overhead but rifle in hand. This was an unfamiliar kind of war. Perhaps only to the veterans of the World War II Italian campaign did the terrain as familiar have real significance. The shooting stopped, but soldiers remained. For them, scattered over 5 million square miles of the Orient, this Tokyo Stars and Stripes plant is the headquarters for several Pacific Editions. Readers at isolated outposts, on the high seas, at island airstrips or in the hills of Korea, this is their hometown paper away from home. From war to war, the one thing which is universal, familiar, unchangeable is the American soldier who is not out to conquer the world, but always longing for home. Wherever a single GI is still away from his soil, his paper is there with him, bridging the gap between the temporary state of war, cold or hot, and the cherished tradition of peace.