American Soldiers on a French Battlefield, 1918 As the United States asserted its power on the world stage, American soldiers found themselves fighting on foreign battlefields. This 1918 photograph shows a few of the 1 million U.S. soldiers who joined French and British troops fighting on the brutal Western Front to defeat Germany in the Great War. Over 26,000 American soldiers lost their lives on the battlefield during World War I, and 95,000 were wounded. Library of Congress.