Posters

“Teufel Hunden” translates to “Devil's Dogs” and was a popular nickname for the Marines and many U.S. newspaper headlines adopted it. Other nicknames that were used to describe Marines such as “Leatherneck” and “Jarhead” but these nicknames were not adopted in popular media. The term “Devil Dog” was so well-liked and embraced by the Marines that eventually an assault ship was named after it. This poster includes one of the earliest published usages of the term and helped spread its popularity.

Charles Buckles Falls, the illustrator who helped create this iconic poster for Marine recruitment, was a freelance artist from Indiana. Falls was a part of the Society of Illustrators during World War I and contributed to illustrating war propaganda posters for the Committee on Public Information’s Division of Pictorial Publicity throughout the war. Falls illustrated many posters during the war that helped promote military recruitment. This poster was created and reproduced as a lithographic print at the time of its distribution.

The poster is in near mint condition with no damage or fading that can be found. This is one of, if not the greatest example we have ever seen! No WWI collection is complete without this rare and iconic poster! Semper Fidelis Marines.

Devil Dog
We as Marines got our nickname Devil Dogs from “official” German reports which called the Marines at Belleau Wood Teufel Hunden. It has been said that this nickname came about from Marines being ordered to take a hill occupied by German forces while wearing gas masks as a precaution against German mustard gas. While the Marines fought their way up the hill, the heat caused them to sweat profusely, foam at the mouth and turned their eyes bloodshot, and at some points the hill was so steep it caused the Marines to climb up it on all fours. From the Germans' vantage point, they witnessed a pack of tenacious, growling figures wearing gas masks, with bloodshot eyes and mouth foam seeping from the sides, advancing up the hill, sometimes on all fours, killing everything in their way. As the legend goes, the German soldiers, upon seeing this spectacle, began to yell that they were being attacked by "dogs from hell."