As Sibley’s Men Advanced
“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.