Chapter 19
Section 2

•	First step after declaring war was to prepare: only 200,000 men in service with little experience, weaponry and a meager air corps.
•	After weeks of debate, Selective Service Act instituted in May 1917. 24 million men would be registered, 3 million would be drafted and 2 million would actually reach Europe before the end of the war. Most were foreign born or young adults without high school.
•	Training lasted 9 months with imaginary weapons due to shortages. Women were only accepted for noncombat positions, and African Americans were segregated.
•	All-black 369th Infantry Regiment became first Americans to win French Croix de Guerre.


•	Second step was to ensure safe transport of supplies and troops overseas.
•	Shipyard workers excluded from draft to increase fleet production, and others were urged to help the workers in various ways for even better production. Fabrication, or using premade parts and assembling them, increased rate of construction. Civilian ships were converted to warships.
•	Admiral William S. Sims began the convoy system, where warships would surround and protect merchant vessels. Losses to submarines were cut in half.
•	The US lay down 230 mile barrier of mines to keep German submarines out of the Atlantic. By 1918, submarine losses were minimal, and only 100 Americans were ever killed by submarine attacks. Germany finds it difficult to continue U-boat warfare.
•	General John J. Pershing commanded American Expeditionary Force (AEF), with enthusiastic and fresh soldiers nicknamed “doughboys” by Allies due to their white belts.
•	Pershing insisted that the American troops not be used as replacements and called for aggressive warfare.
•	American troops arrived in time to stop a fresh German attack on France after Russia withdrew from the war (due to its revolution) in May.
•	June, Americans stopped German attacks at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood.
•	July-August, Americans helped win Second Battle of Marne.
•	September, the AEF attacked Germans in Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. About 50,000 Americans died with about 300,000 casualties in total, but the Central Powers were losing.
•	Alvin York, a conscientious objector (person opposing war on moral grounds) is drafted and becomes a war hero after capturing 130 Germans and killing 6 with only 6 allies.


•	New weapons, such as long-range artillery shells, machine guns, zeppelins and poison gas took deadly tolls on life.
o	2 French divisions were casualties of poison gas in the Battle of Ypres in April 1915.
•	Airplanes and tanks started mechanized warfare. The British began to use tanks to smash through barbed wire and pave the way for infantry.
•	Early airplanes were only used for scouting. Dogfights were actually pilots using their pistols to shoot at each other; mounted machine guns were blocked by the propellers for a long time. In 1918, the British had built up a newer bombing force of 22,000 planes.
•	Trenches were ridden in disease (dysentery from polluted water), stench (poison gas and rotting bodies), fatigue (shell shock, or complete emotional collapse) and trench foot, caused by constantly wet feet becoming numb and rotting before requiring amputation.


•	November 1918, sailors and marines of Germany refused to set out to sea. Before long, soldiers and workers everywhere in Germany organized a rebellion and collapsed the government. The Kaiser fled and left a German republic in Berlin in November 9th.
•	“At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, in the eleventh month,” Germany agreed to an armistice, or cease-fire. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire surrender days later.
•	In the four years of the war, 26 million died, half of who were civilians. 20 million were wounded and 10 million became refugees.
•	Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, famous American pilot, saw cheering at the end of the war.