U.S. Troop Strength. March, 1918.

While reading the newspapers would have lead you to the opposite conclusion, and therefore no matter how attuned to the news you may have been, you wouldn't have known it, on this date in 1918 there were only four American divisions in France.

There were over 2,000,000 men in training, but only the 1st Division (Regular Army), the 2nd Division (Regular Army and Marines, under the command of a Marine Corps general), the 26th Division (National Guard) and the 42nd Division (National Guard) were standing as organized combat units in France.  The 41st Division was also in France, but it had already sustained casualties in the sinking of the SS Tuscania and was therefore assigned by Pershing as a Depot, i.e., replacement, unit stationed in Tours.

U.S. divisions were very large at the time, almost double the size they'd be during World War Two.  A full "square" division had over 27,000 men in it, compared to the approximate 15,000 of the World War Two "triangular" division.  And they had a smaller logistical train, so in terms of combat strength, they'd have been roughly equivalent to six or seven World War Two type divisions, although the evolution of the Army in the twenty some years between World War One and World War Two make that a very tenuous comparison (the WWII division was a markedly more lethal division).  All World War One American divisions were simply divisions as well, there were no "infantry" divisions. They were all infantry divisions.  Moreover, there was only one cavalry regiment, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, in France at the time.  While the Army had based the U.S. Division on the French "square" division, incorporating organic cavalry into each division, there was to have been independent cavalry regiments along the British pattern for breakthroughs in mobile warfare.  Indeed, Pershing didn't imagine the United States Army doing trench fighting at all.  Only part of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment was in France at the time, although it was one of the very first units to arrive in France.

That all means  there was only about 130,000 U.S. combat troops in Europe on March 20 (or 21), 1918.

Of course, the use of the word "only" is itself deceptive.  By the end of August (a critical time, as we will be seeing) over 500,000 U.S. combat troops would be in Europe.  That's roughtly equivalent to the number of US troops committed to the Korean War and the Vietnam War, but that number is deceptive in that comparison as 500,000 World War One era combat troops were in fact mostly combat troops, where as in later U.S. wars the logistical and support elements were always much larger than the combat contingent.

If you'd been reading the paper, you'd have been reading about the heroic actions of "Sammies", an unfortunate name that somebody tagged on to U.S. doughboys which showed up on the papers but which thankfully didn't survive as a nickname all that long.  It was taken from, of course, Uncle Sam, the nickname for the U.S. Government.  What wouldn't have been clear is that all those actions occurred in the context of small units being assigned to the front in British and French sectors just to be exposed to combat.  Pershing, famously, was not keen on deploying the U.S. Army until it was up to strength, in spite of French and British requests that he do so.  The Army in Europe was engaged in intense training at the time, and frankly it was still being outfitted as almost all the Army's heavy weapons had been left in the United States.  We'll be looking at that a bit later.

So, while the careful reader would have been in fear of a large German offensive, and probably relieved that the Germans simply couldn't disengage from Russia, that same reader wouldn't have known that only four American combat divisions, at this point in the war, were ready for action, assuming they were ready for action, and that some elements of the force that Pershing envisioned simply were not there, and never would be. U.S. strength in France would grow to be enormous in short order.

But it wasn't yet.