American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

With the invasion of North Africa (Operation TORCH), the U.S. Army in late 1942 began a European ground offen- sive that it would sustain almost without pause until Italy collapsed and Germany was finally defeated. For the next two-and- one-half years, more than a million Americans would fight in lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea and close to 4 million on the European continent, exclusive of Italy, in the largest commitment to battle the U.S. Army had ever made. Alongside these Americans marched British, Canadian, French, and other Allied troops in history's greatest demonstration of coalition warfare; on another front, massed Soviet armies contributed enormously to the victory. In company with these allies, after a shaky start in North Africa, the U.S. Army came of age. Taking advantage of its strengths in mobility, artillery firepower, and close air support and forcing its way back onto a continent from which the Axis had driven the Allies four years before, American ground forc- es did their part to defeat the most vaunted military machine in the world at the time.