"Enemy airmen successfully bombed one of our supply trains" Official report

A scene such as this helps us to realize how disease and pestilence would naturally follow in the wake of an army unless the sanitary corps is sufficiently strong to clear the ground from day to day. Where this could not be done whole regions would become foul with putrefying flesh, both human and animal, poisoning air and water. Even when every possible precaution is taken a great number of deaths from disease in the army and among the civilian population in the regions affected can be traced to infections coming from such cases as this view indicates. The aeroplane played an increasingly important part during the war. While it was most valuable for making observations it also accomplished much by striking at the source of supply behind the lines. The aeroplane was able to detect and destroy ammunition depots. provision stores and supply trains enroute to the front line. American air squadrons played important roles in the battles of Chateau-Thierry, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne. They brought down in combat 755 enemy planes, while their own losses of planes numbered only 357. At the close of the war there were 4,307 trained American flying officers in France, and 2,698 planes had been sent to the front for the use of American squadrons. So rapid was the de struction of aircraft at the front, however, not only in battle but from accidental and other causes, that the date of the armistice found only 1,100 planes in the zone of the advance. divided into 45 squadrons