Washington, D.C. (December 19, 2024): In this 1917 photo, American Soldiers crowd around as the Christmas mail arrives at Bruvans, France. (Credit: Army Center for Military History). They were part of the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops who landed at the port of Saint-Nazaire, France in May. By 1918, over a million American troops were stationed in France and more than half were serving on the front lines.
Our British allies didn’t think much of their U.S. comrades initially, referring to the Americans as “doughboys;” fat, untrained, ill-equipped, and not ready to fight. Even the French doubted the green G.I.s, insisting that each American unit be attached to a corresponding French one. Under the leadership of General John “Blackjack” Pershing, however, the American Expeditionary Force more than proved themselves in combat.
During the Battle of Belleau Wood, for example, the Germans had crept to within forty miles of Paris when the U.S. 2nd and 3rd Divisions took them on. The battle was known for its bloody, hand-to-hand combat by the Marines who fought day and night with no food or water. The Germans were thrown back and this was the closest they ever came to Paris.
In the end, it was America’s entrance into the war with a well-supplied and highly motivated force that turned the tide in the Allies’ favor. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and more than 50,000 of these men had lost their lives.
The Doughboys of 1917, like our deployed troops today, eagerly await the mail during the holidays. The USPS expects to deliver about 15 billion pieces of mail and 800 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day with 12.6 million pounds of mail heading overseas to military destinations.