Whilst the United States Marine Corps should be treated with some suspicion when it comes to their interpretation of their own history, Joseph P Alexander is nonetheless a reasonably credible source on USMC matters, thus the training received by Doughboys once in-theatre.

As American forces began to arrive in graduating numbers, they inevitably were assigned to the French sectors, meaning these forces were the ones that provided training (and as it also occurred, some types of armaments).

In this the newly arrived Americans were largely unfortunate as large numbers of soldiers were drilled in tactics two years old... In late 1917/early 1918 this meant the French instructions were based on the pre-war doctrine of elan or fighting spirit, with doughboys firmly instructed to keep formation and walk towards the enemy at a brisk walk ala 1915/1916 style.

Whilst Alexander is quick to point out that US Marines quickly abandoned such antiquated tactics, it should be noted that whilst many US Army soldiers also recieved such training, Americans had been in theatre since well before Operation Michael and in instances where they had trained with and even went into action with British Dominion levies, especially in relation to training/fighting alongside tanks, their initial performance was markedly better than the initial experiences of forces that had been French-trained.

Whilst Richard Holmes much maligns some aspects of the British "bullring training" at Etaples, the argument can easily be made that had US training been more widely facilitated by the British, who had been fighting offensively throughout 1917 to keep the Germans from finding out about and exploiting the famous French mutinies of the same year, they likely would've received more up to date training. The flipside to this of course is that such facilitation was likely not possible...

Britain was undergoing a significant manpower shortage at that point and desperately needed every man at the front, whereas there were far more French soldiers on hand to train fresh American arrivals as France was not effectively doing much more on their front than hold the line.

As with any conflict, the best training is generally actual experience, once the Americans started to gain combat experience they became increasingly effective.

This is something I was very intrigued by listening to Dan Carlin's podcast, the military reaction on the changing aspect of warfare presented by the Great War. How too did other nations fare?

What exactly had been predicted to be the consequences of mass combat and modern weapons on the older military styles? Planners had seen the build up of manpower and machine guns before the war. How had they thought they would be used. We've all seen depictions of the shock and carnage of the weapons on the desolate fronts - but what had they imagined would have happened and why? Who was proven right? When exactly did training regimes and commands reappraise their war philosophies?

Technology changed so fast in the inter war period, many were obviously blindsided by the initial hostilities, but what actions were taken to learn from the mistakes of the first world war?