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Posted on 06/26/2005 4:15:17 PM PDT by kellynla
During World War I, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops land in France at the port of Saint Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of German submarines, but by the time the Americans had lined up to take their first salute on French soil, an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. However, the "Doughboys," as the British referred to the green American troops, were untrained, ill-equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front.
One of U.S. General John J. Pershing's first duties as commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to set up training camps in France and establish communication and supply networks. Four months later, on October 21, the first Americans entered combat when units from the U.S. Army's First Division were assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France. Each American unit was attached to a corresponding French unit. Two days later, Corporal Robert Bralet of the Sixth Artillery became the first U.S. soldier to fire a shot in the war when he discharged a French 75mm gun into a German trench a half mile away. On November 2, Corporal James Gresham and privates Thomas Enright and Merle Hay of the 16th Infantry became the first American soldiers to die when Germans raided their trenches near Bathelemont, France.
After four years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and more than 50,000 of these men had lost their lives.
"The Yanks are coming"
Coming to rescue "Old Europe" from another fine mess they made.
no WW2?
no Soviet Union?
no Hitler?
Sometimes it's best to sit and watch........
If we had not been there, things would have turned out a lot worse than they did.
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I'll disagree with that one. The Czar abdicated a couple of weeks before the US entered the war. Germany probably would have unleashed Lenin on the disorganized Russians in April, 1917 even if the US had not entered the war a few days earlier.
Indeed, lack of US interevention in WWI would have benefited Lenin, as it would have meant that the Anglo American forces would not have been available to support the Whites against the Reds.
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