Also published as: The moving picture boys on French battlefields.

Release date is 2025-11-08

Aaron Adrignola, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"The movie boys under Uncle Sam" by Victor Appleton is a juvenile adventure novel written in the early 20th century. It follows young cameramen Blake Stewart and Joe Duncan, with their assistant Charlie “Mac” Anderson, as they film World War I action for the U.S. War Department right at the front. Expect derring-do, wartime tech from tanks to planes, and behind-the-scenes movie craft set against patriotic, high-stakes exploits.

The opening of the story plunges the trio into a raging artillery duel and a hill assault, where Blake and Joe rescue a wounded doughboy before a delayed mine blast buries Blake—only for Joe and Charlie to dig him out and save both him and their precious film. They develop the footage, then tour a camouflage camp with Lt. Baker, witnessing astonishing deceptions: a rolling “forest” curtain, a fake dead horse used for scouting, and tree-bark snipers. A night air raid bombs a marked Red Cross hospital; the boys record the rescue chaos, see a German bomber forced down, and watch officers restrain a furious crowd from lynching the captured crew. Soon they film tanks smashing wire and pillboxes, narrowly escape encirclement by ducking inside a friendly tank, and later witness an air duel where an American downs a Fokker, the German bailing out by parachute only to be captured by the boys. This opening stretch closes as their old film company arrives at the front, including Mr. Hadley, actresses Miss Lee and Miss Shay, and the lugubrious comedian Christopher Cutler “C. C.” Piper. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Garden City: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1919