Meuse-Argonne

[renrich]

Am reading a book where the author states that the Meuse-Argonne battle in 1918 is the largest and costliest battle the US Army has ever engaged in. The battle lasted for around 45 days and the US had huge casualties. One thing that really struck me was that in the first 4 days of the battle the US suffered around 26000 casualties. The weapons used then by the enemy were aircraft, massive amounts of artillery, gas, thousands of MGs and small arms and the enemy was heavily entrenched with field fortifications dating back for several years. After reading that I reflected that at Sharpsburg(Antietam) in 1862, during the States War, there were more than 23000 casualties in one day, with only puny artillery and small arms involved. Gives an idea of how terrible our home grown war was. Anyway, this author is very uncomplimentary of Pershing and his understanding of tactics during WW1.

[Bigxiko]

that war was terrible
and the tactic of sending thousands of men walking in the mud and having to pass through farped wire with enemys pointing them MG and rifles
were simply unhuman
still... it was mostly the only thing they could