“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.