Direktlänk till inlägg 27 februari 2014
Autumn passed and Americans flocked to. Not a single troop ships were lost. Pershing came at last from Paris, set up headquarters and a large camp in the town of Chaumont, separated it from the surroundings and created a small efficient and exemplary USA.The new Army grew up in large camps around. By May President Wilson proclaimed conpulsory conscription. The French countryside northeast of Paris was alivened with gladsome, about the horrors of war ignorant young Americans with money in their pockets and everywhere in stations and in villages canteens and reading rooms were set up. They were accompanied by the YMCA leaders who made life bearable and served hot coffee on all platforms; stuff that the poor French soldiers had never experienced, and now got the part.
Everywhere Americans vitalized the front. Exhausted Frenchmen who were brought back met their replacements - well feed, mood healthy Americans who filled the bullet-riddled roads and the old horrible trenches. They were unassailed by war-weariness and fear and came in seemingly inexhaustible streams.
In June, they went through all the horrors of war concentrated in the battle for Belleau Forest, a coniferous and hardwood-jungle witin the Verdun area, that the Germans fortified during four years with hidden machine-guns and shooting positions. The Americans asked French about maps, but the maps were not French forte. They answered that they were perhaps in Paris.
- We'll go into the woods and see how it looks, said the American general.
They went in, they were chased out and they went back inside again. The losses were appalling: Casualties In Verdun class. Colonels were killed and generals came back wounded
A young American who came up to the front by that terrible forest remembered the first thing he saw of Americans at war. A soldier who had both of his hands shattered led a train of 800 wounded towards the military hospital, because he was the only one who had eyes to see. The man behind him had laid his hands on his shoulders, and followed by all the other gas-blind, all with their hands on the soldier before him, in an infinite line.
They took the Belleau wood, and from that day they just went forward, side by side with their allies. At time 11 am Nov. 11th ceased fire. It was over.
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