More than one in every ten soldiers during the war contracted venereal disease during World War I, .
Which inspired elaborate official efforts to prevent infection and to treat it when it occurred?.
The American Expeditionary Force was the most diverse fighting force the United States had ever assembled. For the first time, women were allowed, to enlist in the military. Over ten thousand women enlisted in the navy and a few hundred women enlisted in the marines. Nearly 400,000 black soldiers enlisted in or were drafted into the army and navy as well. The marines would not allow blacks to join them. Most of the blacks preformed relatively menial tasks on military bases in the United States; more than 50,000 went overseas to France. African American soldiers served in segregated, all-black units under white commanders and even in Europe, most of them were assigned to noncombat duty. Having assembled this first genuinely national army the War Department permitted the American Psychological Association to study it. The psychologists gave thousands of soldiers "IQ" tests of "Intelligence Quotient" test. Many of the soldiers who took this test classified as "morons". In reality, most of them were simply people who had not had much access to education. The engagement of these forces in combat was intense but brief. In the first months after entering the war, the United States had its biggest impact on the seas. Not until the spring of 1918 were significant, numbers of troops were available for battle. Eight months later, the war was over. The experience of American troops during World War I was very different from those of other nations, which had already been fighting for nearly four years by the time the U.S. forces arrived in significant numbers. British, French, German, and other troops had by then spent years living in the vast networks of trenches that had been dug into the French countryside.
