After Pearl Harbor, there was an interval of thirty months—a long time in the context of a seventy-one-month war—before America’s military and industrial mobilisation translated into large armies deployed on European battlefields, though U.S. air and maritime power impacted sooner. Most of the soldiers who later fought in northwest Europe enjoyed the luxury—and endured the boredom—of more than two years’ training before being committed to action: the majority of U.S. formations did not see their first battlefield until 1944.
