Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1920 — LIKE THE KNIGHTS OF OLD [ARTICLE]

LIKE THE KNIGHTS OF OLD

Plans Were Going Forward to Cloth* Our Doughboys, Fighting ths Hun in France. Plans that American war armor artists were perfecting to make the Yankee doughboy in France more uncomfortable, miserable, and safer were nipped In the bud by the sudden armistice, according to the Home Sector, the ex-soldiers’ magazine conducted by the former editorial council, of the Stam and Stripes. The armor'artists of the engineering division of the ordnance department were working on a portable fortress that could stop a machine-gun bullet at 150 yards and a doughboy life-preserver, worn around the body for use in attack, that would have made the combat soldier in France look like a cross between Sir Galahad on parade and Casey of Harvard streaking across the Yale goal Une for a touchdown. The Home Sector says: "The records of A. E. F. hospitals show that seven or eight of every ten wounded soldiers were lacerated by fragments of shell and other missiles which even thin armor plate would have kept out. “We in this country started to work on the theory that It was possible to produce body armor which would not be difficult to carry and which would resist the Impact of a machine-gun bullet at fairly close range. “There was developed by the engineering division of the ordnance departmeht a body defense. Including a light front and body plates, weighing altogether only nine and one-half pounds. The plates were lined with sponge rubber. One lot of 5,000 were manufactured and sent abroad for experiment. There was also developed, manufactured and sent over to France for test a heavy breast plate with thigh guards, weighing twenty-seven pounds, capable of stopping machinegun bullets at 150 yards. The Yank did not take kindly to the idea of body armor. Or it might more aptly be said that the Yank did not take kindly to the Idea of still warfare* “Tell It to the tanks,” he shouted when asked how he liked his proposed winter suit