TEUFEL-HUNDEN
No branch of service in the American Army was so quick to achieve group
consciousness as the marines. To be sure, these soldiers of the sea had
a considerable tradition behind them before they came to France. The
world is never so peaceful that there is nothing for the marines to do.
Always there is some spot for them to land and put a situation into
hand. It is no fault of the marines that most of these brushes have been
little affairs, and they have found, as Mr. Kipling says, that "the
things that you learn from the yellow and brown will 'elp you a heap
with the white."
The Navy Department has always been careful to preserve the tradition of
the marines. The organization has never lacked for intelligent
publicity. "First to fight" was a slogan which brought many a recruit
into the corps. Even the dreary work of policing, which falls largely
to the marines, has been dramatized to a certain extent by that fine
swaggering couplet of their song:
"If the army or the navy ever gaze on heaven's scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded by United States marines."
The belief that the marines would make a distinctive mark in the great
World War was practically unanimous. Army officers couldn't deny it, war
correspondents hastened to proclaim it, and the Germans admitted it by
bestowing the name "Teufel-hunden" (devil-dogs) on the marines
immediately after their first engagement. The marines themselves were
second to no one in the consciousness of their own prowess.
"I understand," said a little marine just two days off the transport,
"that this Kaiser isn't afraid of the American Army so much, but that he
is afraid of the marines."
The boy didn't say whether one of his officers had told him that, but
his belief was passionate and complete. However, the marines did not
allow their high confidence to interfere in any way with their
preparations. They showed the same anxiety to make good on the
training-fields that they later displayed on the line. Their camp in the
American area was just a bit farther from the centre of things than that
of any other organization. Whenever there was a review or a special show
of any sort for a distinguished visitor, the marines had to march twelve
miles to attend. And after that it was twelve miles home again. But they
thrived on hard work. They shot, bayoneted, and bombed just a little
better than any other organization in the first division. Sometimes
individual marines would complain a little about the fact that they were
worked harder than any men in the division, but they always took care to
add that they had finished the construction of their practice-trench
system days before any of the others. When they mentioned the fact that
they had achieved this result by working in day and night shifts it was
never possible to tell whether they were airing a grievance or making a
boast. It is probable that they were something of the mind of Job, whose
boils were both a tribulation and a triumph.
There was no doubt as to the opinion of the marines when it seemed for a
time as if they might not get into the fighting. They did not go into
the trenches with the first division, but were broken up and sent to
various points for police duty. Of course they were bitterly
disappointed, but they merely policed a little harder, and it was a
severe winter for soldiers who went about with their overcoats
unbuttoned, or committed other breaches of military regulations.
Since the marines did hard work well, they were rewarded by more hard
work, and this was labor more to their taste. The reward came suddenly.
On May 30 a unit of marines was in a training-camp so far back of the
lines that it was impossible to hear the sound of the guns even when the
Germans turned everything loose for a big offensive. On that same day
the Germans reached the Marne east of Chateau-Thierry and began an
advance along the north bank toward the city. That night the marines
were ordered to the front.
They rode almost a hundred kilometres to get into the fight. It was late
afternoon when they reached a hill overlooking Chateau-Thierry. French
guns all about them were being fired up to their very limit or a little
beyond. The Germans were coming on. These marines had never been in a
battle before, with the exception of a few who had chased little brown
rebels in various brief encounters on small islands. They had never been
under shell fire. And this their first engagement was one of the biggest
in the greatest war in history. From the hill they could see houses fold
up and fields pucker under the pounding of big guns. The marines were
told that as soon as darkness came they would march into the town and
hold the bridges against the German Army, which was coming on. Somebody
asked a French officer some days later how these green troops had taken
their experience as they waited the word to go forward. "They were
concombres," said the Frenchman. Our word is cucumbers.
Finally, the order came for the advance. It was a dark night, but the
marines could see their way forward well enough. The German bombardment
had set fire to the railroad-station. The Americans kept in the shadows
as much as they could, but they danced around so much that it was
difficult. They placed their machine-guns here and there behind walls
and new barricades, so that they could enfilade the approaches to the
bridges and the streets on the opposite side of the river. One
lieutenant with twelve men and two guns took up a position across the
river. It was up to him to stand off the first rush.
The shelling from the enemy guns was intensified during the night, but
the infantry had not yet reached the town. It was five o'clock of a
bright morning when the little advance post of the Americans saw the
Germans coming across the open field toward the river. They were
marching along carelessly in two columns and there were twelve men in
every line. One of the machine-guns swung her nose around a little and
the fight was on. At last the American was definitely in one of the
major engagements of the war. American machine-gunners were doing their
bit to block the advance on Paris. All day long the marines held the
Germans back with their machine-guns. And that night they beat back a
German mass attack when the Boches came on and on in waves, with men
locked arm in arm. They could hear them, for they sang as they rushed
forward, and the machine-gunners pumped their bullets into the spots
where the notes were loudest.
The next day the Americans were forced to give some ground when the
order came to retire, but they had been through, perhaps, the most
intensive two days of training which ever fell to the lot of green
troops.
The marines did not have to wait long for retaliation. Other units of
marines from other camps had been hurrying up to the front, and on June
6 an offensive was launched on a front of two and a half miles. The
first day's gain was two and three-sixteenth miles and 100 prisoners
were captured. This attack yielded all the important high ground
northwest of Chateau-Thierry. The marines did not rest with this gain.
They struck again at five o'clock in the afternoon, and by June 7 the
attack had grown to much greater proportions. Four villages, Vinly,
Veuilly-la-Poterie, Torcy, and Bouresches, fell into the hands of the
French and Americans. The thrust was pressed to a maximum depth of two
miles on a ten-mile front. More than 300 prisoners were captured by the
Americans. The attack was carried out under American command,
Major-General James G. Harbord being in charge of the operation.
As in the Cantigny offensive, the Americans worked with great speed, and
showed that they could make the rifle an effective weapon even under the
changed conditions of modern warfare. But though they were swift they
were not silent. They went over the top shouting like Indians, and they
kept up the noise as they went forward. The second attack was carried
out by the same men who had advanced in the morning. The early showing
had been so promising that it was decided to go on, particularly as the
Germans seemed to be somewhat shaken by the violence of the assault. In
this new sweep the marines took ground on either side of Belleau Wood.
They also captured the ravine south of Torcy. The Germans were not able
to organize an effective counter-attack immediately, for they had been
too much surprised by the thrust. Also the effective work of the
American artillery made it difficult for the Germans to bring up fresh
troops.
[Illustration: _Copyright by the Committee on Public Information._
U. S. Marines in readiness to march to the front.]
In the rough country over which the battle was fought there was
opportunity for the fight to disintegrate into the little eddies where
individual initiative counts for so much. In a fight near Le Thiolet,
Captain James O. Green, Jr., found himself cut off by the Germans. He
was accompanied by five privates. Back at regimental headquarters Green
had already been reported as killed or captured. He proved the need of
clerical revision, for he and his men fought their way back to the
American lines. At one point ten Germans tried to intercept him, but the
six Americans succeeded in killing or wounding every member of the enemy
party. A single marine who was taking back a prisoner ran into two
German officers and ten men. He fell upon them with rifle and bayonet
and disposed of both officers and several of the men. Then he made his
escape. Somebody told the marine when he got back to the American lines
that he certainly had been "in luck."
"Hell! no," said the fighting man; "they took my prisoner away from
me."
Still another marine was captured while dazed by a blow on the head. He
recovered in time to deal his captor a tremendous punch on the jaw, and
made his way back to the American lines. The favorite slogan of the
Americans was: "Each man get a German; don't let a German get you."
Early on June 8 the Germans launched a counter-attack against the
American position between Bouresches and Le Thiolet. This attack broke
down. The trenches which the Americans held were new and shallow, but
the troops were well supplied with machine-guns, and the German infantry
never got closer than within a couple of hundred yards of the position.
The marines were not yet content with their success. They took the
initiative again on June 10 and smashed into the German lines for about
two-thirds of a mile on a 600-yard front. In this attack two minenwerfer
were captured. The object of the attack was to clean out Belleau Wood.
The Germans retained only the northern fringe.
By this time the offensive had ceased to be wholly a marine affair. The
9th and 23d Regiments of infantry, comprising what is known as the
Syracuse Brigade, took up their positions on the right of the soldiers
of the sea. During the next few days the Germans made several violent
counter-attacks, but without success, and on June 26 the Americans
pushed their gains still further by a successful assault south of Torcy,
in which more than 250 Germans were captured. This victory gave
Pershing's men absolute command of the Bois de Belleau, which was the
strategic point for which the Germans had fought so hard.
It was after the Chateau-Thierry offensive that for the first time the
American Army won a place in the German official communique. Before that
they had been simply "the enemy," and once, upon the occasion of a
successful German raid, North American troops. But now Berlin unbent a
little and used the term "an American regiment." Germany was prepared to
admit that America was in the war. It is just possible that some of
their men who broke before the rush of the marines returned to give
headquarters the information.