Show words tell of A E F in world war washington it will take from to words not to mention many maps and sketches to tell the story of the american expeditionary forces in the world war army historians 20 years afterward are still working on the records of our units overseas in 1917 and 1918 large as the total output of their efforts will be it will fall short of the number of words in the operations volumes of the civil war which contain about words publication of the civil war records was not completed until 1902 from the millions of A E F records on file in the archives of the adjutant general about have been selected as having some permanent historical value the final evaluation and cata logging of these papers is now going forward each officer of the historical section of the war college is assigned to one or more divisions it takes him about one year to review the operations papers of a combat division after his work has been completed for all A E F units it will thereafter be easy to extract from the papers those dealing with any particular military operation such as the campaign at st mihiel these will be supplemented by the pertinent papers of the british or french headquarters and by an examination of the official records of german army units |