On a battlefield dominated by the British and Commonwealth experience of the First World War,

we find in Flanders the roots of American soldiers who fought here in 1918.

What was their story and what can we find of them today?

The United States of America formally entered the Great War in April of 1917,

and the American Expeditionary Force, the AEF, was formed.

A huge amount of manpower was conscripted and sent overseas. By the end of the war, more than 2 million Americans served with the AEF in Europe, a massive significant contribution

to the manpower on the Western Front in the final phase of the Great War. American willingness and enthusiasm almost

to participate in the conflict was great. Many Americans had felt unhappy that America had not entered the war earlier,

and quite a lot had already crossed the border to Canada and joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Some had come across to Paris and joined the French Foreign Legion and Americans living in Britain.

Many of those had also joined the British Army.

But with the formation of the AEF, a military force recruited and trained and dispatched from America to take parts in the fighting on the

Western Front in its final moments was a significant turn in the war and contributed greatly

to the outcome of victory in the final battles of 1918 and it was a victory achieved at some cost more than 60,000 combat dead

largely in those last six weeks of the conflict and when you look at that final phase you can

see commanders like Sir Douglas Haig the commander of the British Expeditionary Force,

looking at the future with a prospect of a war continuing on into 1919,

what he feared that the four years, the four titanic years of conflict for Britain and its

empire might be overshadowed by American troops who would almost certainly take the leading role in that.

But that wasn't to be.

An armistice was secured and the war on the Western Front

came to an end on the 11th November 1918.

...