“AND A FEW MARINES”
Eye-witness Account of the Belleau Wood Action in the Marne Salient
Beginning June 6th, 1918
It has been insisted that more than their share of glory was bestowed
upon the Marines for their work at Château-Thierry, other units of
the A.E.F. being entitled to share the honors of those terrible but
wonderful days when the barbarians were stopped. That is of course
true, for the battle generally described as Château-Thierry had to do
with a region, not merely a town, and it was in Belleau Wood and at
Bouresches that the Marines fought so splendidly and so successfully to
save Paris. Honors conferred in the early and censored dispatches have
since been more properly distributed, and the various divisions—the 1st
and 2d, the 3d, the 26th and the 42d—engaged at different points and
at different times, have had the just recognition of the honors due
them. But the distribution has not in any degree diminished the proud
record of the Marines in maintaining the place of honor to which they
were assigned June 6th. A very voluminous and authoritative account of
the 6th Regiment, 2d Division, and its service in France was written by
its commander, Brig. Gen. A. W. Catlin under the title _With the Help
of God and a Few Marines_. In that volume one may find the authentic
details of the heroic exploits of the Marines. But we are now concerned
only with the incidents and events that caused the French to change
the name of Belleau Wood (Bois de Belleau) to “Bois de la Brigade de
Marine.”
The first spring drive of the Germans began March 21, 1918. It swept
across the Somme and over the plains of Picardy irresistibly. Foch
seemed unable to check the advance and there was consternation among
the Allied nations, and the men in the trenches were anxious and
restless. The enemy were sweeping everything before them. “With forty
divisions, including some 400,000 of their best troops, and with
the greatest auxiliary force of tanks, machine guns and poison gas
projectiles ever mobilized,” says Gen. Catlin, “they rolled on for
thirty miles in spite of enormous losses, advancing at the rate of six
or eight miles a day, capturing men and guns by the wholesale, and
occupying 650 square miles of territory. There were simply not enough
French and British to stop them. The Allies resisted heroically, but
they were forced to yield to the unanswerable argument of superior
weight. And where was the American aid that the French people had been
building their failing hopes upon?
“Held at Rheims and west of Soissons, the Germans thrust a U-shaped
salient clear down to the Marne, its rounded apex resting on a
contracted six-mile front between Château-Thierry and Dormans, but
thirty-five scant miles from Paris.
“Then the harried soldiers of France arose in their might for a last
grim stand. The name of the Marne was a rallying cry for them. ‘They
shall not,’ they muttered between gritted teeth; and they did not pass.”
Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French on the Marne at
Château-Thierry was the 3rd Division of Regular troops who had
arrived on May 31st in the nick of time in support of the French. On
this occasion the 7th Machine Gun Battalion defended the bridge at
Château-Thierry with the greatest heroism, suffering very heavy losses,
and to them especially belongs the credit of checking the enemy’s
attempt to cross the river.
To the northwest of the town lay Belleau Wood, a natural fortress which
was full of Germans. Although the enemy had been checked in the attempt
to cross the Marne, his position in Belleau Wood was a very strong one,
constituting an excellent point of vantage for a sudden thrust against
the Allied line along the river. Foch now decided to call upon American
troops and the Marines of the 2nd Division were ordered up and sent
into the line to capture Belleau Wood.