Photo Credit: U.S. Army
Soldiers of the 353rd Infantry near a church at Stenay, Meuse in France, wait for the end of hostilities. This photo was taken at 10:58 a.m., on November 11, 1918, two minutes before the armistice ending World War I went into effect.
The Meuse-Argonne Campaign that concluded that day was the greatest battle in which the U.S. Army ever fought. More than 1,250,000 American troops were involved in the 47-day campaign along an 83-mile section of France. The Meuse-Argonne Campaign began east of Verdun. First Army’s northward thrust paralleled the Meuse River. It drove forty-three German divisions back thirty miles across the most difficult and well-fortified terrain of the entire Western Front.
The Meuse-Argonne Campaign was the largest and bloodiest operation for the American Expeditionary Forces with 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded.