Talk:American Expeditionary Forces

message: What exactly is the point of this section?  It seems like a thinly veiled attempt to suggest the AEF was incompetent.  Casualty figures should simply be merged into the main text.  75.141.222.91 (talk) 05:31, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Casualties section

message: To biased in favour of US contribution. The AEF did not become combat ready until Oct 1918. The war had already been won by Australian and Canadian forces, British and French troops by then. August 8th saw the capitulation of the German's at the Battler of Amiens. The US essentially performed mop up. The German's had asked for an armistice on Oct 5 1918 and the German Armys still had teeth but was always going to lose once the Hindenburg Line was breached early October (with some US troops in support). The US lost a lot of soldiers due to inexperience and disease.
:::"The war had already been won by Australian and Canadian forces, British and French troops by then."
:::This is nationalist nonsense. The Allies were extremely anxious for the arrival of large numbers of U.S. troops, especially with the Spring Offensive of 1918 and the immediate and imminent threat to Paris. No, the AEF did not win the war "single-handedly," and no one with any sense has ever claimed they did. Nevertheless, if the U.S. had stayed out of the War, there's every chance that Germany would have won. They certainly were not already defeated. --Michael K SmithTalk  17:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The AEF was combat ready months earlier. The Germans had run out of offensive plans and were unable to mount any major attacks after their spring losses. The point is that the German leadership realized their position was hopeless when the Allies were adding 10,000 new American soldiers every day (and Germany could not replace its losses.) Furthermore the French were reenergized and were willing to fight again after their mutinies because with the Americans there, they knew victory was certain. It makes a lot of difference in history if you feel certain of victory or defeat.Rjensen 03:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I accept your point. The Americans were bringing in huge numbers of forces which would replenish the Allies. Battlewise the Americans did not contribute as much as they did by force of numbers, i.e. as a potential military force. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the only significant battle that the AEF conducted on its own. The point I was trying to make was that this was very late in the war. The Germans had been smashed earlier in the year with only minor US support. But yes the prospect of millions of US soldiers arriving did accelerate the end of the war. The key battles of 1917/1918 that turned the war though were done by the British/French and significantly ANZACS and Canadians. Whenever the history of WWI is written it comes across that the US singlehandedly is credited with winning the war. The words "10,000 a day in summer 1918 was the decisive factor in restoring the advantage to the Allies" diminishes the importance of the actual battles that were fought.Roonz123 04:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The battles are well covered. The battles were not the reason for german surrender--the reason was total loss of confidence: They knew they would lose. It was not a stab in the back by politicians in Berlin, it was colonels and generals at the front who could see for themselves that total defeat was a matter of weeks/months, with zero chance of any turnaround. That is the war was lost, and the sooner they asked for terms the better terms they would get. Rjensen 05:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I have a copy of Pershing's memiors for the AEF my Experiences in The World War, which is a blow-by-blow history of the whole experience. The whole article needs to be re-written because it has way too much POV and opinion, and too little fact.
SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 14:01, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pershing is hardly an unbiased source for U.S. participation in the War, and there are plenty of critics of many of his attitudes and actions, especially when it came to trench warfare and artillery. There are any number of books written by men farther down in the ranks during and after the war, though (naturally) they also include a good deal of pro-Allied propaganda. You should broaden your reading. --Michael K SmithTalk  17:40, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Pershing's Memior

message: I have proposed merging A.E.F. into this article. I would have been bold and done it myself, but I don't know enough about the topic and it appears the newer A.E.F. article contains information that is not here or is inconsistent. If it is to be merged it should be by an editor who knows more about this than I do. Agent 86 16:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of [[A.E.F.]] 

message: Anyone have a source for total number of American troops serving in Europe? I think it would add to the article to have this. CAVincent 09:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total number of troops 

message: It seems a bit ridiculous to split the history up into 14 parts... and even though three or four of those parts are already done, they're WAY too long. Can't this be trimmed considerably? 75.175.177.150 (talk) 23:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uhm... 14 parts? 

message: At this juncture, I ask for all to please consider and execute with great editorial patience ( except for formating and the obvious spelling errors), the volume and comprehnsivenes of the data currently being added and updated, as a direct primary research source.
*(AMF-1) Edith M. Faulstich/Fisher, The Siberian Sojourn, March 22, 1974, This work went uncopy written was mailed to our direct family members and the families of the AEF Vets she corresponded with after her death in September 1972.  This is an otherwise unpublished, uncirculated work also has a book two, which is in a hand type written format (which I have one copy of)  Specific AEF references realtive to her specific cited work will be noted first with (AMF-#).Where there is an obvious reference in the text, a foot note has not been added. The original unpublished work of Faulstich is in the personal pocession of Alice M. Fisher. 
[http://www.linkedin.com/in/unlimitedpr. Edith M. Faulstich/Fisher's personal AEF Siberian research records.diaries, photos were donated and are housed at Stanford University. 
: Who owns the copyright to this work? bd2412 T 05:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC}
My grandmother who wrote the book, but she died in 1972. The book does not have a copyright insertion on it, just a date in the preface she wrote/and a date with a family preface to her preface, and there is a later date in book two which my dead step grandfather wrote the preface with a date. Both have passed away.
:Unpublished works by authors who died any time after 1938 are covered by copyright until 70 years after the death of the author (that is, until 2042 in this case). If you are the owner of the copyright by will or by intestacy, then you can release the work into the public domain. Can you demonstrate that the copyright in this work passed to you or was conveyed to you? bd2412 T 20:10, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Research Work of Edith M. Faulstich/Fisher being added 

message: This articles does indeed describe the details of the United States Army in the AEF...but what about the Marines that also were in the AEF?  Perhaps they should also be recognized since many famous battles were won due to the support of the U.S. Marines, complementing the Army's missions.RekonDog (talk) 16:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: What about the Marines?

message: Just a heads-up that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is about to publish a new book by Richard Rubin -- The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War. The author began a project c.2002, interviewing as many centenarian WWI veterans as he could locate, and this book contains the results. Lots of interesting stuff, mostly from a grunt's-eye POV. --Michael K SmithTalk  17:46, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  New book for AEF editors to be aware of 

message: The first American personnel to go into action were actually medical units.  In the months leading up to the US entry to the war, medical schools and large hospitals were organizing "field hospitals" which included doctors, nurses, dentists, orderlies and other medical personnel, along with tents and equipment.  This made it possible for them to be rapidly absorbed into the US Army Medical Corps, and because of their state of readiness they were immediately sent to Europe.  I'll have to look for sources, as it's been nearly 30 years since I read most of them.
I'm not talking about the all-volunteer civilian American Field Service ambulance drivers, though they also were absorbed into the US Army.
RogerInPDX (talk) 18:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Medical units 

message: The article suggests that the AEF suffered almost as many casualties in essentially the last few months of 1918 (320,000) as the entire French army did throughout that year (330,000).  The latter statistic is frankly ridiculous -- throughout the entire war the French suffered more than 5.5 million casualties (excluding nearly 600,000 prisoners).  It seems absurd to suggest that in 1914-17 they averaged 1.3 million casualties per year, but miraculously in 1918 (a year of constant, heavy fighting) they brought that number down to only 330,000.  By way of comparison, a quick Google search suggests that in 1918 the British Empire suffered approximately 850,000 casualties, and the Germans suffered 1.6 million killed alone.
I intend to eliminate this statement from the article, but wanted to make sure no one objected first. Jrt989 (talk) 16:15, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  AEF casualties compared to French 1918 losses 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . Community Tech bot (talk) 16:22, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion 

message: Whole paragraphs containing specifics lack citation, at least one section appears to be entirely without citation. The entire "Logistics" section with three paragraphs has one cite at the end of the last paragraph. At the least each paragraph needs the sources that support the text. Where specific dates, numbers and details are given a source for those needs to be at least given for that part of the text. Palmeira (talk) 12:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation tag attached 

message: In the section Actions During WW1 it is said (para 2) that the battle of xxx in July 1918 is, "The first offensive action by AEF units serving under non-American command," yet in the preceding paragraph the same thing is said of the battles of xxx and xxx in May and June 1918. JulianRDWinter (talk) 11:34, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first offensive action by AEF