Writing in 1921 former German General Staff officer Lt. Col. Herman von Giehrl recalled the evaluation of the Americans in combat he had held in the summer of 1918:

The military significance of the Americans lay not only in their numbers but, more than anything else, in their unused nervous force. The troops were conspicuous for their absolute freshness, their physical and hence their moral superiority, and a certain ignorance of, and, therefore, and indifference to danger. Training technique, attacking power, and real fighting value, on the other hand, were less in evidence.

On July 18, 1918 the Allies with American troops in the forefront shifted from the Defensive to the Strategic Offensive. Going on the attack the shortcomings of AEF recollected by Col. Giehrl would start to magnify.

Limited Transportation and Bad Roads Hampered the AEF

German

U.S.

The 35th Division on the Attack the Second Day of the Argonne Offensive

…American doctrine was based on the 1917 Field Service Regulations, which were hardly revised from the prewar 1911 version. The manual specified that the attack should be conducted under the conditions of fire superiority , with advance achieved by infantry rushes. Fire superiority was to be gained by accurate rifle fire. For the Americans, the bane of Western Front attackers--the machine gun--was viewed as a "weapon of emergency". . .To be sure, artillery would assist the infantry, but the soul of an American assault was the rifleman. General Hunter Liggett, observed in April 1918 that he could find no definitive U.S. instructions on open warfare. There was little doubt that all the U.S. officers talked about it, but when one attempted to find precise doctrine for its execution, the existing literature was a bit thin. Liggett made his concern known to Pershing's headquarters, and action was eventually taken. New Doctrine was published--after the war was over. US Infantry and Artillery Became Better Coordinated In the Last Stages of the Argonne Offensive …There was no question that the individual American soldier [in the Great War] fought, and fought well. But the types of attacks they were conducting were extremely costly. Their leaders appeared to have no concern for losses. The American assault was little more than a human wave into the face of German machine guns, a weapon that the Americans treated with contempt. Their doctrine favored the rifle, yet except for a few highly skilled marksmen their use of that weapon appeared to be little different than that of their European counterparts. They insisted on huge, divisions, perhaps because the knew they did not have the officers to direct a larger number of more reasonably sized units. However, [after the slow down in the Argonne ] they were in the process of reducing the size of these organizations. Pershing was also eliminating some of his more inept general. And, most important, they were attacking. Losses or not, the Americans kept coming on.