College training camps and the officers

As of October 10, 1918, New Hampshire College housed both a vocational division and a collegiate division of the Students' Army Training Corps.  The school newspaper was converted to contain solely military news (which was easy enough, since nearly all college courses were now "war courses").  Still, both the college students and the vocational men managed complain about the army in the paper.  For instance, when the army/college issued an article on the necessity of giving up college "freedoms" like fraternities and sports out of respect for the men doing their duty in the service, the students posted their own article  about how men in the service (i.e they themselves) would actually love to have sports to boost their morale.  When some patriotic person placed a message about the shortage of weekend passes being a necessity for the good of all, the vocational men placed their own ad mocking each other about about the silly excuses they used to try to obtain such passes.

Here are a couple short jokes about the students' new relationships with wartime courses and college training from the October 12 issues of TNH.

College newspaper humor: April 1918

                                                    

Here are a couple jokes from the April 27, 1918 edition of The New Hampshire newspaper, which was published by New Hampshire College (now the University of New Hampshire).  The newspaper didn't have a specific humor section; instead, jokes were spread throughout the paper.  I assume they were used to fill any empty space in the print.

I particularly like the first one because, as a knitter, I'm pretty sure I've accidentally hit a few people.  I imagine this girl was knitting something for the Red Cross - in fact, just before the war's end, the college actually began drafting female students for Red Cross work.

However, it's also nice to see people making fun of English grammar throughout history.

Students' Army Training Corps, you hopeless borps

As a history major conducting independent research on WWI propaganda and training camps, I read a lot of newspapers, yearbooks, and soldiers' poetry.  In my second summer of researching, I have a newfound respect for these men's sense of humor.  They composed parodies of popular songs, wrote poetry, and drew comics, and invented jokes.  They made fun of professors, college life, the Spanish flu, commanding officers, guns that wouldn't shoot, the army's lack of horses, and, most of the time, each other.  After coming across so many parodies and various instances of wartime wit, I decided to start this blog to share some of them. 

Here is an anonymous poem, "Nevermorps," satirizing the Student Army Training Corps (the War Department program that converted American universities to Army training camps).  I love how the author can lightheartedly make fun of army food and poker while still being obviously critical of the "imposter" program. 

Enjoy! :D