“The action was all in the hands of the platoon officers. Success or
failure rested on their shoulders. It is not the general who wins such
a battle as that, but the captain, the sergeant, the private.
“It has been called an exaggerated riot, that desperate conflict in the
wood. It was hand-to-hand fighting from the first, and those Germans,
hating cold steel as they do, soon learned what American muscle and
determination are like. From tree to tree fought our Marines, from rock
to rock, like the wild Indians of their native land. It is the sort of
fighting the Marine has always gloried in. And in that fighting they
beat the Germans on two points—initiative and daring, and accuracy
of rifle fire. They picked the German gunners out of the trees like
squirrels, and in innumerable fierce onslaughts that took place at the
machine gun nests the Marines always struck the first blow and it
was usually a knock-out. It was a wild, tempestuous, rough-and-tumble
scrap, with no quarter asked or given. Rifles grew hot from constant
firing and bayonets reeked with German gore. It was man to man, there
in the dark recesses of the woods, with no gallery to cheer the
gladiators, and it was the best man that won.
“The thick woods made the fighting a matter of constant ambuscades
and nerve-racking surprises, but the Marines tore on. With Sibley at
their head nothing could stop them. Machine gun nests whose crews held
out formed little islands in the welter about which the Marine flood
swept, eventually to engulf them. Some of the Germans turned and fled,
abandoning their guns; others waited till caught in the rear and then
threw up their hands and surrendered; some waited in huddled groups in
the ravines till the gleaming-eyed devil dogs should leap upon them;
some stuck to their guns till an American bullet or an American bayonet
laid them low. One by one the guns were silenced or were turned in the
opposite direction.
“They started in at 5 o’clock. At 6:45 the report was sent to
headquarters that the machine gun fire at the lower end of the woods
had been practically silenced. At 7:30 German prisoners began to come
in.
“Night fell with the fighting still going on and only the flash of
shooting to see by. But at 9 o’clock word came from Sibley by runner
that he had got through and had attained the first objective, the
eastern edge of the wood. In four hours he and his men had passed clear
through the lower quarter of Belleau Wood, traversing nearly a mile,
and had cleaned things up as they went. And only 500 of them started; I
hesitate to mention the number that finished.
“At 10 o’clock reinforcements were sent in with orders to consolidate
the position.”