The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the largest and deadliest battle in American history1. From 26 September 1918 until the Armistice on 11 November, more than a million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces2 under General John J. Pershing fought through the Argonne Forest and the heights along the Meuse, losing over 26,000 dead. Their advance toward the vital railway at Sedan helped force Germany to seek an end to the war.
In the autumn of 1918 the United States fought the biggest battle in its history. For 47 days more than a million American soldiers attacked through forests, ravines and fortified hills in northeastern France, and when the guns fell silent on 11 November they were still pushing forward.
America's army goes to war
The United States entered the First World War in April 1917 with a small army. By the autumn of 1918 General John J. Pershing commanded well over a million men in France, and he had insisted that they fight as an independent American army1 rather than be fed into French and British units.
The plan
As part of the great Allied offensive of autumn 1918, Pershing's First Army was given one of the hardest sectors on the Western Front: the ground between the Meuse river and the dense Argonne Forest, defended by belts of German trenches, wire and machine guns. The goal was the railway through Sedan that supplied much of the German army in France.
Into the Argonne
The attack opened on 26 September 1918.1 Inexperienced American divisions took the hill of Montfaucon but then stalled amid traffic jams1, rain and fierce resistance. Through October the fighting became a grinding struggle for every ridge and wood, and in mid October Hunter Liggett took over First Army as Pershing rose to command an army group1. In early November the reorganised Americans broke through and drove toward Sedan.
Heroes of the offensive
The battle produced some of the most famous episodes in American military history. The Lost Battalion, soldiers of the 77th Division cut off in the Argonne in early October, held out for days before being relieved3. On 8 October Corporal Alvin York helped silence German machine guns and capture 132 prisoners4, an action that later earned him the Medal of Honor.
Why the Meuse-Argonne mattered
The offensive cost over 26,000 American lives, more than any other battle in US history, and the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery at Romagne is the largest American military cemetery in Europe5. Together with the other Allied offensives that autumn it helped break the German army's will to fight, and showed that the United States had become a great military power.
