Due to their lack of combat experience, most of America’s army could not be thrown directly into the front line. But they were a promise of ultimate victory and a strategic cushion against the possibility of a German breakthrough. On the Italian front a single American regiment was deployed, in a purely propagandistic role. Its three battalions of 1,000 strapping young men from Ohio were moved rapidly from town to town, parading in changing uniforms so as to create the impression of tens of thousands of reinforcements.21
