“My eyes were on what Sibley’s men were doing, and I only knew in a
general way what was happening to the battalion of the 5th. But Floyd
Gibbons, the correspondent of the Chicago _Tribune_, was with Berry and
saw it all. He was, in fact, seriously wounded himself, and has lost an
eye as a result. Gibbons says that the platoons started in good order
and advanced steadily into the field between clumps of woods. It was
flat country with no protection of any sort except the bending wheat.
The enemy opened up at once and it seemed, he says, as if the air were
full of red-hot nails. The losses were terrific. Men fell on every hand
there in the open, leaving great gaps in the line. Berry was wounded in
the arm, but pressed on with the blood running down his sleeve.
“Into a veritable hell of hissing bullets, into that death-dealing
torrent, with heads bent as though facing a March gale, the shattered
lines of Marines pushed on. The headed wheat bowed and waved in that
metal cloudburst like meadow grass in a summer breeze. The advancing
lines wavered, and the voice of a Sergeant was heard above the uproar:
“‘Come on, you —— — ——! Do you want to live forever?’
“The ripping fire grew hotter. The machine guns at the edge of the
woods were now a bare hundred yards away, and the enemy gunners could
scarcely miss their targets. It was more than flesh and blood could
stand. Our men were forced to throw themselves flat on the ground or
be annihilated, and there they remained in that terrible hail till
darkness made it possible for them to withdraw to their original
position.
“Berry’s men did not win that first encounter in the attack on Belleau
Wood, but it was not their fault. Never did men advance more gallantly
in the face of certain death; never did men deserve greater honor for
valor.
“Sibley, meanwhile, was having better luck. I watched his men go in
and it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed.
The battalion pivoted on its right, the left sweeping across the open
ground in four waves, as steadily and correctly as though on parade.
There were two companies of them, deployed in four skirmish lines,
the men placed five yards apart and the waves fifteen to twenty yards
behind each other.
“I say they went in as if on parade, and that is literally true. There
was no yell and wild rush, but a deliberate forward march, with the
lines at right dress. They walked at the regulation pace, because a man
is of little use in a hand-to-hand bayonet struggle after a hundred
yards dash. My hands were clenched and all my muscles taut as I
watched that cool, intrepid, masterful defiance of the German spite.
And still there was no sign of wavering or breaking.