WWI: Flashes of Action - Actualities of the World War ~ 1921 US Army (Patreon)

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'Date: ca. 1921

This film is silent.

Scope & Content: Reel 1, Gen. Pershing poses at Lucey, France. The liner Leviathan leaves Hoboken, N.J. Troops dance and stage boxing matches aboard the freighter Wilhelmina and the transport Tenadores. Guns aboard the destroyer Little are fired and depth charges are dropped from the destroyer Whipple. The Leviathan enters the harbor at Brest. 306th F.A. troops entrain for the front. 39th and 58th Inf. troops advance under artillery support near Montfaucon. 308th Inf. troops run through maneuvers at Gondrecourt. 16th Inf. troops advance behind tanks near Seicheprey. 110th Engrs. blow up barbed wire at Aux Bois. 35th Div. troops cross the destroyed defenses. Reel 2, 18th Inf. troops receive aid at Exermont. 139th Inf. troops man trenches near Verdun. 128th inf. snipers man posts at Michelbach, Germany. Troops throw hand grenades in training. 7th F.A. units fire gas shells into the enemy lines. Thiaucourt and Rambucourt are shelled by the Germans. A German observation plane crashes and the pilot is captured. 5th, 21st, and 130th F.A. guns are fired. Reel 3, the 103rd inf. "goes over the top" near Torcy. 305th and 306th Inf. units march toward Longueval. Pershing decorates 42nd Div. troops at Bagneux. A German plane is shot down by antiaircraft fire after setting an observation balloon afire. 6th F.A. batteries lay down a barrage near Exermont. 168th Inf. troops crawl into "no man's land." 7th F.A. guns fire near Beaumont. Reel 4, railroad and naval guns are fired behind the lines. 128th F.A. units fire French 75's. British tanks maneuver at Langres. 103rd F.A. guns shell an ammunition dump at Ostel. DH-4 airplanes are prepared for flights at Bergues and Clermont. 148th Aero Squadron planes fly in formation and bomb German lines at Essoudon. 5th, 149th, and 150th F.A. guns fire at German trenches illuminated by searchlights. Shows dead Germans and captured positions. 4th Inf. troops enter Bacharach, Germany. 105th F.A. troopsrejoice at Etraye, France, after receiving news of the Armistice.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Forces

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F. or AEF) was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I. The AEF was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing... The AEF helped the French Army on the Western Front during the Aisne Offensive (at the Battle of Château-Thierry and Battle of Belleau Wood) in the summer of 1918, and fought its major actions in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the latter part of 1918...

President Woodrow Wilson initially planned to give command of the AEF to Gen. Frederick Funston, but after Funston's sudden death, Wilson appointed Major General John J. Pershing in May 1917, and Pershing remained in command for the entire war...

The first American troops, who were often called "Doughboys", landed in Europe in June 1917. However the AEF did not participate at the front until October 21, 1917, when the 1st Division fired the first American shell of the war toward German lines, although they participated only on a small scale. A group of regular soldiers and the first American division to arrive in France, entered the trenches near Nancy, France, in Lorraine.

The AEF used French and British equipment. Particularly appreciated were the French canon de 75 modèle 1897, the canon de 155 C modèle 1917 Schneider, and the canon de 155mm GPF. American aviation units received the SPAD XIII and Nieuport 28 fighters, and the U.S. Army tank corps used French Renault FT light tanks. Pershing established facilities in France to train new arrivals with their new weapons. By the end of 1917, four divisions were deployed in a large training area near Verdun: the 1st Division, a regular army formation; the 26th Division, a National Guard division; the 2nd Division, a combination of regular troops and U.S. Marines; and the 42nd "Rainbow" Division, a National Guard division made up of soldiers from nearly every state in the United States. The fifth division, the 41st Division, was converted into a depot division near Tours...