Americans Face the Horror of a Modern European War for the First Time When America entered World War I in April 1917, state National Guard units had never planned to mobilize for this kind of war, and the men who made up the hometown companies of each regiment never imagined that they would be asked to fight in what was then the most savage war in human history--they were innocents being thrown into a horrendous European conflagration.
Made up of companies from ten Ohio towns, .