''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' by Floyd Phillips Gibbons (smart books to read .txt) 📕

on which rode grey-haired grandfathers and grandmothers. This pitiful procession was moving toward the rear driving before it flocks of geese and herds of cattle. On the other side of the road war, grim war, moved in the opposite direction.

The Second Division was bound for the line to the northwest of Château-Thierry. On June 1st, the 6th Marines relieved the French on the support lines. The sector of the 6th Regiment joined on the left the sector held by two battalions of the 5th. The line on the right was held by the French. On June 2nd, the hard-pressed French line, weak and weary from continual rear guard actions, over a hard fighting period of almost a week, fell back by prearranged plan and passed through the support positions which we held. To fill gaps between units, the Marines extended their brigade sector to between twelve and fourteen kilometres. As the French withdrew to the rear, hard pressed by the enemy, the Marines held the new first line.

The regimental headquarters of the 6th was located in a stone farmhouse at a cross-roads called La Voie Châtel, situated between the villages of Champillon and Lucy-le-Bocage. There was clear observation from that point toward the north. At five o'clock in the afternoon on that day of clear visibility, the Germans renewed their attacks from the north and northeast toward a position called Hill 165, which was defended by the 5th Regiment.

The Germans advanced in two solid columns across a field of golden wheat. More than half of the two columns had left the cover of the trees and were moving in perfect order across the field when the shrapnel fire from the American artillery in the rear got range on the target. Burst after burst of white smoke suddenly appeared in the air over the column, and under each burst the ground was marked with a circle of German dead. It was not barrage fire: it was individual firing against two individual moving targets and its success spoke well for the training which that brigade of American artillery had received.

French aviators from above directed the fire of our guns, and from high in the air signalled down their "bravos" in congratulation on the excellent work. At the same time, the machine gunners of the 5th covered the ravines and wooded clumps with a hot fire to prevent small bodies of the enemy from infiltrating through our lines. The French marvelled at the deliberateness and accuracy of our riflemen.

The Germans, unaware that a change had taken place in the personnel that faced them, reeled back demoralised and unable to understand how such a sudden show of resistance had been presented by the weakened French troops which they had been driving before them for a week. The enemy's advance had been made openly and confidently in the mistaken flush of victory. Their triumphant advances of the previous week had more than supported the statements of the German officers, who had told their men that they were on the road to Paris—the end of the war and peace. It was in this mood of victory that the enemy encountered the Marines' stone wall and reeled back in surprise.

That engagement, in addition to lowering the enemy morale, deprived them of their offensive spirit and placed them on the defensive. The next few days were spent in advancing small strong points and the strengthening of positions. In broad daylight one group of Marines rushed a German machine gun pit in the open, killed or wounded every man in the crew, disabled the gun and got back to their lines in safety.

It was at five o'clock on the bright afternoon of June 6th that the United States Marines began to carve their way into history in the battle of the Bois de Belleau. Major General Harbord, former Chief of Staff to General Pershing, was in command of the Marine brigade. Orders were received for a general advance on the brigade front. The main objectives were the eastern edge of the Bois de Belleau and the towns of Bussiares, Torcy and Bouresches.

Owing to the difficulty of liaison in the thickets of the wood, and because of the almost impossible task of directing it in conjunction with the advancing lines, the artillery preparation for the attack was necessarily brief. At five o'clock to the dot the Marines moved out from the woods in perfect order, and started across the wheat fields in four long waves. It was a beautiful sight, these men of ours going across those flat fields toward the tree clusters beyond from which the Germans poured a murderous machine gun fire.

The woods were impregnated with nests of machine guns, but our advance proved irresistible. Many of our men fell, but those that survived pushed on through the woods, bayoneting right and left and firing as they charged. So sweeping was the advance that in some places small isolated units of our men found themselves with Germans both before and behind them.

The enemy put up a stubborn resistance on the left, and it was not until later in the evening that this part of the line reached the northeast edge of the woods, after it had completely surrounded a most populous machine gun nest which was located on a rocky hill. During the fighting Colonel Catlin was wounded and Captain Laspierre, the French liaison officer, was gassed, two casualties which represented a distinct blow to the brigade, but did not hinder its further progress.

On the right Lieutenant Robertson, with twenty survivors out of his entire platoon, emerged from the terrific enemy barrage and took the town of Bouresches at the point of the bayonet. Captain Duncan, receiving word that one Marine company, with a determination to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, had gone two hundred yards in advance, raced forward on the double quick with the 96th Marine Company, and was met by a terrific machine gun barrage from both sides of Bouresches.

Lieutenant Robertson, looking back, saw Duncan and the rest of his company going down like flies as they charged through the barrage. He saw Lieutenant Bowling get up from the ground, his face white with pain, and go stumbling ahead with a bullet in his shoulder. Duncan, carrying a stick and with his pipe in his mouth, was mowed down in the rain of lead. Robertson saw Dental Surgeon Osborne pick Duncan up. With the aid of a Hospital Corps man, they had just gained the shelter of some trees when a shell wiped all three of them out.

In the street fighting that ensued in Bouresches, Lieutenant Robertson's orderly, Private Dunlavy, who was later killed in the defence of the town, captured one of the enemy's own machine guns and turned it against them.

In the dense woods the Germans showed their mastery of machine gun manipulation and the method of infiltration by which they would place strong units in our rear and pour in a deadly fire. Many of these guns were located on rocky ridges, from which they could fire to all points. These Marines worked with reckless courage against heavy odds, and the Germans exacted a heavy toll for every machine gun that was captured or disabled, but in spite of losses the Marine advance continued.

Lieutenant Overton, commanding the 76th Company, made a brilliant charge against a strong German position at the top of a rocky hill. He and his men captured all of the guns and all of their crews. Overton was hit later when the Germans retaliated by a concentration of fire against the captured position for forty-eight hours.

Lieutenant Robertson, according to the report brought back by a regimental runner, was last seen flat on a rock not twenty yards away from one enemy gun, at which he kept shooting with an automatic in each hand. He was hit three times before he consented to let his men carry him to the rear.

"There was not an officer left in the 82nd Company," according to a letter by Major Frank E. Evans, Adjutant of the Sixth. "Major Sibley and his Adjutant reorganised them under close fire and led them in a charge that put one particular machine gun nest out of business at the most critical time in all the fighting. I heard later that at that stage some one said: 'Major Sibley ordered that—' and another man said: 'Where in hell is Sibley?' Sibley was twenty yards away at that time and a hush went down the line when they saw him step out to lead the charge.

"And when the word got around through that dead-tired, crippled outfit that 'the Old Man' was on the line, all hell could not have stopped that rush."

In such fashion did the Marines go through the Bois de Belleau. Their losses were heavy, but they did the work. The sacrifice was necessary. Paris was in danger. The Marines constituted the thin line between the enemy and Paris. The Marines not only held that line—they pushed it forward.

The fighting was terrific. In one battalion alone the casualties numbered sixty-four per cent. officers and sixty-four per cent. men. Several companies came out of the fighting under command of their first sergeants, all of the officers having been killed or wounded.

I witnessed some of that fighting. I was with the Marines at the opening of the battle. I never saw men charge to their death with finer spirit. I am sorry that wounds prevented me from witnessing the victorious conclusion of the engagement. In view of my subsequent absence from the fight, I wish to give credit and thanks at this place to Major Frank E. Evans, who as Adjutant of the 6th Regiment of Marines, provided me with much of the foregoing material which occurred while I was in the hospital.

The bravery of that Marine brigade in the Bois de Belleau fight will ever remain a bright chapter in the records of the American Army. For the performance of deeds of exceptional valour, more than a hundred Marines were awarded Distinguished Service Crosses. General Pershing, in recognition of the conduct of the Second Division, issued the following order: