9781422280188

The National Guard, a special reserve element of the Army, grew to 400,000 members. During the war itself, the Army reached a total of 3,685,000 men, 75 percent of which were acquired through conscription under the Selective Service Act of 1917. The U.S. Army fought with distinction during World War I. The war also saw the creation of the Air Service, an aviation wing of the Army. It was the next world war that would make the U.S. Army the most powerful force on Earth. The United States entered World War II (1939–1945) in 1941, but it began preparations for war at the outset of hostilities in Europe. In 1939, much of the army’s equipment was obsolete, and an economic depression meant that there were only 380,000 soldiers available. In 1940, the government made emergency plans to increase the size of the Army to 8.8 million in the case of war. When the United States went to war, the Army actually reached 11 million personnel, 4 million being ground forces; the rest were split between the United States Army Air Force and the Army Service Forces. U.S. industry also rose to the challenge of war and began producing equipment in awesome numbers and of superior quality. Without the Army’s contribution, it is doubtful that Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan would have been defeated. Action on Omaha Beach On June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, as part of a massive invasion of German-occupied Europe. There were five main landing areas, code-named Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. It was at Omaha that the U.S. Army suffered a terrible slaughter. Omaha beach was six miles long and backed by cliffs 100 feet (33 m) high. The water and beach were heavily mined, and the German defenders were combat-hardened veterans. At 6:30 a.m. U.S. Army soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division and the 29th Division stormed ashore in assault boats into a hail of machine gun bullets and artillery fire; many were killed before they even stepped off the boats. Bodies soon littered the beach. Those who survived tried to find any cover they could. Finally, under the support of naval bombardment, the U.S. soldiers inched their way up the beach and stormed the cliffs. The German positions began to fall, and by nightfall, the U.S. Army had taken the beach. However, they suffered over 2,400 casualties, nearly half of the total Allied casualties suffered on D-Day.

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