BY HOLLY FISHER
Staff  Writer, UAS Whalesong

In 1917 to 1918, American soldiers flooded the battlefields of Europe, propping up the sagging Allied lines, and challenging the exhausted Central Powers. The United States had gone from dormant to full mobilization, and transition to total war conditions in less than a year. This rapid development far outstripped what had been thought possible. Germany had hinged its unrestricted U-Boat warfare on the belief that the U.S. would require a long time to mobilize. German High Command thought they could sufficiently devastate shipping lines, and exhaust Allied supplies long before the North American troops could mobilize. With the expected delay, the Germans also planned to set up enough disruptions in cross-Atlantic travel to prevent the troop carriers from making it across the ocean.

The U.S. smashed all expectations. The first troops landed in France on June 25, less than three months after declaring war. Though this first wave of soldiers was just a small volunteer force, it was a tiny sampling of what was to come. By mid-1918, U.S. troops were arriving in France and England at a rate of some 10,000 a day. The inexperienced but enthusiastic American troops were assigned to battle-wearied Allied deployments across the front. They propped up weak points in the lines, bulked out forces preparing for forward offensives, and filled in cracks that had been growing larger in the tired troops. This led to some strange and unfortunate happenings, as troops went from quiet America to the war torn moonscape of the Western Front with little preparation.

One of these events was the case of the Lost Battalion. Continue reading “A Time to Remember: The Lost Battalion”