Baltis

I have been enjoying some WW1 documentaries this morning. I notice they always tell the story of Pershing holding the American forces back until they could fight as a consolidated army. The French and British were desperate for fresh troops and constantly lobbied for the Americans to fill their ranks. I have never seen this presented as a mistake or anything short of brilliant. However, was it really? Could the tide have been turned quicker or things just made a bit easier if Pershing had been more flexible.

Kevinmeath

The British wanted America simply to be a 'manpower pool' new recruits just placed into British regiments. That way there would be no mass inexperienced army but fresh full units very quickly, on one level it makes sense but in reality can you imagine any country in the world let alone the USA allowing it to be used simply as a pool men for a foreign country!

More realistically was (think it was the French) the idea to intergrate ,at least initially, American units into British and French formations to form an Allied army until such a time as they became experienced enough to form an American one. Pershing wanted a purely American force , now this slowed down the arrival of the US forces but not fatal so I think.

Did it result in highr American casualties?

pugsville

Having read a bit about this recently, the US forces suffered from inexperience, lack of staff planning, support problems, and having their own ideas about how the war should be fought. Any new hastily improvised army would have suffered from most of these problems, working with other allied forces would have reduced the learning curve a little not much.

Almost All the US heavy equipment, tanks, artillery, machine guns, aircraft were supplied by the French and British. (The US was in the process of manufacturing this stuff and while a lot was ready, the critical shortage of shipping meant the US Army came almost totally without heavy weapons) .

Berryjims

well said kevinmeath