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Title: American troops during the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne

Description: American troops cleaning their kits in a brief respite before resuming the U.S. advance during the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne (AKA: Meuse River-Argonne Forest; Meuse-Argonne Offensive; September 26, 1918-November 11, 1918); Allied commander-in-chief, French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch (October 2, 1851-March 20, 1929) put in motion his plan to launch two all-out attacks against German forces on the Western Front in the form of two massive pincers with French and British armies attacking from the west and the U.S. First Army of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), commanded by U.S. General John J. Pershing (John Joseph Pershing; AKA: Black Jack; September 13, 1860-July 15, 1948) attacking from the south; French forces gained nine miles of territory in the first five days of the attack, while the Americans captured five miles of ground along the heights above the Meuse River, but met stiff German resistance in the Argonne Forest where they gained only two miles; the Americans fought fiercely through October as they slowly pushed German forces back and it was this fighting that created the legendary exploits of the Lost Battalion and the heroic feats of U.S. Army Sergeant Alvin C. York (Alvin Cullum York; December 13, 1887-September 2, 1964), who, on October 8, 1918, led a squad of Yanks in an attack on a German-held ridge, and where York, a sharpshooter from the eastern hills of Tennessee, shot and killed twenty-eight German soldiers, wiped out thirty-two German machine gun nests and, along with seven others, captured 132 German troops and for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; Pershing divided his forces into the First and Second U.S. armies and launched an even more savage attack on October 12, 1918, and, had moved the German armies back more than twenty miles by November 11, 1918, the day of the Armistice that ended World War I;

Category: World War I

Keywords: battlefields, battlegrounds, doughboys, First World War, The Great War, U.S. Army, U.S. infantrymen, U.S. soldiers, U.S. troops, War to End All Wars, World War I, WWI, Yanks.