Meuse–Argonne offensive

I also found the unmarked grave of a soldier from New Jersey, Corporal Franklin.

Aloysius Meade was killed on October 12, 1918 in the Meuse, Oregon.

He was buried in Holy Sepulchral Cemetery in East Orange.

I applied to the VA for a grave marker in his honor,

At Soissons, the AEF helped stop the German advance.

And then came the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

It was the largest battle in US military history.

Over one point two million American troops, forty-seven days of hell.

But when World War I broke out, the machines gave him a language he understood.

He became one of America's first tank officers, serving under John J. Pershing in France.

Patton was wounded in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and earned the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery.

The war ended before he could become what he wanted to be, legend, but the seeds were planted.

After a baptism of fire in the Vosges Mountains, the battery was present at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in mid-September, though saw no action.

In order to get into position for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which Pershing launched on the 26th of September, Captain Truman marched his battery under the cover of darkness for over 20 nights.

On one occasion, Truman saw an enemy battery getting into position within range and completely overwhelmed it with suppressing fire.

When Colonel Clemm threatened to court-martial him for firing into another division's sector, Truman challenged him to go ahead.

Let's get into it.

We are talking about the crucible of Exermont, which is part of the infamous Meuse-Argonne campaign.

And right out of the gate, this file throws us a massive curveball.

It really does.

Three regiments of the 93rd,

the 369th, 371st, and 372nd would all be assigned to the French army divisions that fought in the French 4th Army's September offensive in the Champagne region just west of the Meuse-Argonne.

Launched at the same time as the American-led Meuse-Argonne offensive next door, General Henri Guerreau's French Fourth Army's mission was to clear German forces out of the Champagne region back to the River Aisne.

West of the Argonne forest was where history would find the 369th, 371st, and 372nd regiments fighting, and combat was heavy and bloody.

The 369th was part of the French 161st Division, and the 371st and 372nd Regiments were part of the French 157th

But before we get into our modern living history with those shows, something kicked off this past week that you probably didn't know about.

It was the Battle of what, Tom? The Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

Yeah.

And so this was the, as I understand it, the final hurrah kind of of World War I.

And where Meuse-Argonne is going to become really important is people don't realize this.

You know, you'll ask them, well, what was the biggest battle the United States ever fought? And people say, you know, you get Gettysburg, the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa.

No, it's the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

So World War I.

Marwitz is sacked but then he's given the

Meuse-Argonne.

Yeah, well, he's sent to a quiet part of the front.

Which is about to become the American ordeal.

It works, and Wilson celebrates, so do the American newspapers.

It's not a true picture of the battlefield.

We'll turn to that next, when the Americans attack in the area known as the Meuse-Argonne.

and meet the Germans at their best.

Andrew D. Bruce, a native of Missouri and a graduate of Texas A&M in 1916, was commissioned an Army Second Lieutenant in June 1917.

His association with the Marine Corps goes back to World War I, when as a member of the 2nd Infantry Division's 5th Machine Gun Battalion, he participated in actions in France in the Troyon sector near Verdun, in the Aisne Defensive Operation near Château-Thierry, the Aisne-Marne Offensive at Sézanne, the fighting at St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive at Blanc Mont.

With the rest of the 2nd Division, he hiked into Germany to become part of the occupation force.

In the interwar period, he had a mix of staff, command, and school assignments.