"It was like a moving picture battle. Tanks were crawling up along the muddy roads and khaki-colored figures could be seen moving about in ones and twos and fours along the edges of the woods and across the grassy plains...Overhead the shells were still screaming from our heavy artillery with a good deal of answering fire from the German batteries which caused most of our losses.” –Father Frances McDuffy, 165th Regiment of the US 42nd Infantry Division.
The Yanks Are Here! is a moderate complexity level game of the battle of Saint Mihiel. This was the first large scale offensive by the United States Army in WWI. General Pershing had insisted since he first arrived that US soldiers would only fight under the command of US leaders and as a unified force. The offensive of Saint Mihiel was first planned as two-part effort to first reduce the German held salient that threatened Verdun, and then take Metz to breakthrough the German fortified lines. Allied commanders, however, wanted the US Army to more directly support their offensive along the Aisne and Somme Rivers further north. Only four days of supplies and material were granted General Pershing for the Saint Mihiel offensive. Although the US First Army was successful in reducing the salient, the German Army was in the process of withdrawing anyways and were able to limit the American’s advance to just short of their newly established fortified line. It would be American’s Meuse-Argonne offensive in October that would result in a more decisive decision, but at a much higher cost in American lives.
Can you do as well or better than your historical counterpart?
—description from designer