nd they were excited to go. Over 130,000 people volunteered, but in the end over 4,000,000 Americans went. Theodore Roosevelt called the Great War "The Great Adventure." The first American soldiers to arrive in Europe were young and inexperienced. The French wanted to put them in the front line right away, but General Pershing insisted that he keep the US soldiers together as a unit and train them better before they fight. He was afraid that the French would use the inexperienced Americans as cannon fodder and let them absorb the first wave of an attack. After the US troops got into some battles they realized that war is everything but exciting and glorious. They were losing friends every day and living around constant death and destruction. The soldiers vowed that they would go home and tell the truth about war…if they made it home alive. They found no glory in war; all they found was pain and suffering. World War I was not worth the cost of over 8,000,000 lives. The whole war started over the greed and ignorance of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinan. The Kaiser made all of Europe nervous and that started them preparing for war, and once Franz Ferdinan was killed the war was on. The whole world got involved in a war that should have been fought between two countries. All because of a bunch of alliances that were meant to protect the countries of Europe....
