Taking of Belleau Wood and Bouresches by US Marines

Title

Taking of Belleau Wood and Bouresches by US Marines

Creator

United States. Committee on Public Information

Identifier

WWP25108

Date

1918 August 7

Description

Account of fighting at the French front sent to Major General George Barnett.

Source

Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum

Subject

World War, 1914-1918--United States
U.S. Marines in battle

Contributor

Danna Faulds

Language

English

Provenance

Document scan was taken from Library of Congress microfilm reel of the Wilson Papers. WWPL volunteers transcribed the text.

Text

[Stamped in upper right corner] FUTURE RELEASE PLEASE NOTE DATE

From the Committee on Public Information
Released for morning papers Sunday August 11th.

Major General George Barnett, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, has received a letter from France, giving the following account of the taking of Belleau Wood and Bouresches and other operations of the Marines in that part of the front:-

“We have all been under a terrific drive from the time we left our rest area on May 30 and left our trucks and went into line the afternoon of June 1st. Holcomb’s battalion was unloaded just in rear of the support position to which our brigade was assigned and his company commanders got part of their orders while their men were disembarking, and then they deployed and went in. The strain accumulated like a snowball running down hill until we were pulled out temporarily on the 15th, and at times in that long stretch it looked as though the elastic backbone of the men and officers could not stand another tug, but they were always ready on an instant’s notice to deliver a new attack or stop a new counter-attack.

“I feel I can say without boasting that the Marine Brigade not only lived up to the very best traditions of our service, but even surpassed them at times, because we never faced such odds and never were confronted by such a crisis.

“We left our rest area at 4 a.m., May 31, in camions, 20 to 30 in a camion, having bivouacked the night before, as we had expected to leave at 6 and again at 10 that night. We took a route that skirted within 15 kilometers of Paris and when we reached those villages we realized that we were really on our way. Our other villages had been drab, primitive little villages where we had comfortable billets and a simple hospitality. Here we found beautiful little towns with charming villas, blooming gardens and French who had that unconquerable gayety of the Parisian, and they lined the roads and threw flowers into the trucks or handed them to the men, and waved American flags at us. It was a wonderful transformation, and the men responded to it. Then, as we neared Meaux, we saw our first fugitives on a road that was a living stream of troops in camions, guns and trains hurrying to the front. And the refugees went straight to the heart of us. When you saw old farm wagons lumbering along with the chickens and geese swung beneath in coops, laden down with what they could salvage, cattle driven by boys of nine or ten years, little tots trotting along at their mothers’ skirts, tired out but never a tear or whimper, saw other groups camping out on the road for the night, there was the other side, the side that I think fired the men to do what they did later. I saw one wagon coming along towering to the top with boxes and mattresses and on the top mattress was a white-haired old lady who would have graced any home, dressed in her best, and with a dignity that blotted out the crude load and made you think of nothing but a silver-haired old lady, who was the spirit of a brave people that met disaster with dignity. Meaux was crowded with them but we had learned by that time that the work of getting them into new homes was well organized, and we knew that the camions that were rus[h]ing our division up to the lines would pick up many of them on the return.

“Up from Meaux the road went straight to the front with glimpses of the Marne. And it was a living road of war, troops on foot and in the lumberling camions. French dragoons trotting by them with their lances at rest and the officers as trim as though they had just stepped out of barracks; trains, ambulances, guns from the ‘75s to the 210s, staff cars whizzed by, and a trail of dust that coated the men in the camions until they looked like mummies.

“It was late in the evening when we were diverted to the right of our first destination. It was midnight when our 1st Battalion halted in their trucks at a point seven kilometers back of where we finally went into line, and officers and men bivouacked on the roadside or in the fields. We found orders to throw us into line that night, but two of our battalions had been held up, the men were sadly in need of rest, for they had practically no sleep for two nights, and it was finally decided by the French to put us in the next afternoon. And Holcomb’s battalion arrived just in time the next afternoon, so that order could be carried out by rushing their trucks close up to our line and deploying them out from the trucks to their positions.

“So it was June 1st when we took up the support line with French troops, hard pressed by the Boche, holding the line out in front. The new[s] was that the Boche was coming. Our first P.C. (post command) was in the outer edge of a strip of woods that is now two kilometers in rear, with as much protection from any kind of fire as a spot in the speedway. But from what the French told us the Boche guns had got up in small numbers and that in their fights the Boche had fought with machine guns, a prodigious quantity of them, and grenades. Our position then linked up on the left in front of Champillon with the 5th, who in turn had the 23rd on their left. The 5th had Wise’s Battalion in line while we had the 1st and 2nd, with Sibley in support. On our right were the French. The next day, the 2nd, the French began to drop back, tired out and outnumbered and that afternoon, by prearranged plan, they were to pass through and our line was to become the front line. In the meantime, to close a gap between us and the 5th, we had put three of our reserve companies into line on the left, and that afternoon the 6th held a front of 7 kilometers with one company as regimental reserve.

“We had dropped back from our too-close-to-nature P.C. and installed ourselves in a house in La Voie Chatel, a little village between Champillon and Lucy-le-Bocage. From one side we had observation of the north and when the Germans attacked at 5 p.m. we had a box seat. They were driving at Hill 165 from the N. and N.E. and they came out, on a wonderfully clear day, in two columns across a wheat field. From our distance it looked flat and green as a baseball field, set between a row of woods on the farther side, and woods and a ravine on the near side. We could see the two thin brown columns advancing in perfect order until two-thirds of the columns, we judged, were in view. The rifle and machine fire were incessant and overhead the shrapnel was bursting. Then the shrapnel came on the target at each shot. It broke just over and just ahead of those columns and then the next bursts sprayed over the very green in which we could see the columns moving. It seemed for all the world that the green field had burst out in patches of white daisies where those columns were doggedly moving. And it did again and again, no barrage but with the skill and accuracy of a cat two brown mice that she could reach and mutilate at will and with playing without any hurry. The white patches would roll away and we could see that some of the columns were still there slowed up, and it seemed perfect suicide for them to try.

You couldn’t begrudge a tribute to their pluck at that.

“Then under that deadly fire and the barrage of rifle and machine gun fire, the Boche stopped. It was too much for any men. They burrowed buried in or broke to the cover of woods and you could follow them by the ripples of the green wheat as they raced for cover. The 5th bore the brunt of it and on our left the men raked the woods and ravines to stop the Boche at his favorite trick of infiltrating through. An aeroplane was overhead checking up on our artillery’s fire, and when the shrapnel laid down on those columns just as an elephant would lay down on a ton of hay, the French aviator signalled back to our lines “Bravo!” The French who were in support of the 5th and at one time thrown into the line, could not and cannot today, grasp the rifle fire of the men. That men should fire deliberately and use their sights, and adjust their range, was beyond their experience. The rifle fire certainly figured heavily in the toll we took, and it must have had a telling effect on the morale of the Boche, for it was something they had not counted on. As a matter of fact, after pushing back the weakened French and then running up against a stone wall defense, they were literally up in the air and more than stopped. We found that out later from prisoners, for the Germans never knew we were in the front line when they made that attack. They were absolutely mystified at the manner in which the defense had stiffened up until they found that our troops were in line.

“The next day Wise’s outfit pulled a spectacular stunt in broad daylight. They spotted a machine gun out in front, called for a barrage, swept out behind it, killed or wounded every man in the crew and disabled the gun. They got back O. K. and then the Boche launched a counterattack that was smashed up. For the next few days we were busy pushing out small posts to locate the enemy, and to reoccupy such strong points as were beyond the main line assigned us. While it had all been pre-arranged, our people were anxious to recover what they could, without precipitating an engagement, of some of the ground evacuated by the French.

“The real fireworks broke on June 6 when a general advance on the Brigade front to straighten out the lines and recover territory was decided on. In the meantime the 23d had been brought in from the left and put on our right, Holcomb’s flank. Our Division sector had been shortened to about the front that the 6th had held and we had two battalions of the 5th and two of the 6th in line. At 5:00 p.m. we started out for our new objectives, on a wonderful day, and the twilight is so long here that it was practically broad daylight. The eastern edge of the Bois de Belleau and Bouresche were our main objectives, with Torcy and other parts of the Belleau the 5th’s. Sibley’s battalion had the advance with Holcomb’s in support. The Colonel and Capt. Laspiere, our French military adviser, went out to Lucy, the central point behind the advance, Sibley moved out in perfect order, and poor Cole told me the night before they got him that when Holcomb’s 96th company moved out later and came through the woods and into the wheat fields in four waves, it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. The artillery preparation was short and one of the platoons of our machine gun company laid down a barrage. But out in the thick Bois de Belleau liaison was extremely difficult. The woods were alive with machine guns and at times where our lines and those of the 5th had passed through they soon found Boche and machine guns in their rear. The advance on the left was held up by stubborn fighting but about 9 Sibley sent in a runner with word that his left was advanced as far as his right, that he had reached the northwest edge of the woods, that the worst of the machine gun nests was on a rock plateau near his post command, but that he had surrounded it. In the meantime word came in that Col. Catlin had been wounded, and I felt that the bottom of the war had dropped out. He had such a complete grasp of military situations, was familiar as no one else could have been with what was to be done, and officers and men invariably looked to him, and there seemed no limit to his capacity for work or his ready sympathy with and understanding of his subordinates. Capt. Laspierre had gone to report to Feland who was in charge on the left when a shell burst near and he was evacuated, shocked and gassed. It was a double blow. The Colonel had moved a short distance out, as he had planned, from Lucy to watch the first phase. He was standing up in a machine gun pit with his glasses up when a sniper drilled him clean through the right chest. It was a clean wound and our reports lead us to believe that he will be out by the middle of July if not sooner.

“In the meantime, because of the extreme difficulty of liaison and with a dark night closing in, orders went out to consolidate. This came just before we had word from Sibley. It was just 9:45 when word came in that Bouresches had been taken by Robertson’s platoon of the 96th, or rather the 20 odd men of his platoon who had managed to break through a heavy machine gun barrage and enter the town. One of Sibley’s company had been assigned the town, with Holcomb’s battalion to establish the line from there to where the 23d’s left flank lay. It had been unable to advance and at the same time keep in touch on its left as ordered. Duncan, hearing, however, that this company was 200 yards in advance (an error) raced ahead with his 96th company and was met by a terrific machine gun barrage from two sides of and from Bouresches. As Robertson told me, he had managed to get part of his platoon through the barrage and looking back, saw Duncan and the rest of the company charging through the barrage, ‘go down like flies’. Robertson had one half of the line and Duncan half. Robertson blew his whistle just before this to bring up all of his half of the line, and missed Lt. Bowling. He passed the word, ‘Where is Johnny?’ and saw Bowling get up, face white with pain, and go stumbling ahead with a bullet in his shoulder. Duncan, the last he saw of him before he was mowed down, had his pipe in his mouth and was carrying a stick. Dental Surgeon Osborne picked Duncan up and with a hospital corpsman had just gained some shelter when a shell wiped all three out.

“Just after Robertson gained the town and cleaned out the Boche, after street fighting in which his orderly, Private Dunlavy, killed later in the defense of the town, captured and turned on them one of their machine guns, others filtered through, and the 79th Company, under Zane. Holcomb was very enthusiastic about Zane’s handling of the town.

“In the meantime, although the capture of Bouresches was the most spectacular of the first fighting, Sibley was having heavier work in the Bois de Belleau. He reported early that there were many machine guns in the woods. At first prisoners came in early, and the men who brought them back reported that the companies were cleaning up fast with few casualties. Young Timmerman charged one machine gun nest at the point of the bayonet and sent in 17 prisoners at a clip.

“After the first batches of prisoners came into the courtyard of our post command and stood with hands up in the orthodox Kamerad style, and the runners were full of the easy manner in which Sibley was going through the woods, came a message that the woods ahead were full of machine guns and that one, on a rock plateau in the northeastern edge, was especially troublesome, a nest estimated to hold between 10 and 12 guns. Then came word that he had reached the limit of his objective at the edge of the woods, that he had surrounded the machine gun nest, and was awaiting orders. Then came word from the Brigade to dig in and consolidate the positions won. Two companies of Engineers were placed in Lucy one for each battalion. We sent out a truck loaded with ammunition and tools to Bouresches, got up our Stokes and one-pounders for Sibley, and Holcomb was ordered to straighten out his line from Bouresches straight down to the Triangle Farm, where the 23d rested its left flank.

“The truck went out with Lt. W. B. Moore, the captain of the track team, halfback on the football team, and president of the Senior Class at Princeton last year. The whole road was lighted up by flares, exploding shells and swept by both artillery and heavy machine gun fire. It was a great trip and we had fifty volunteers from the Headquarters Company, of whom we only sent the necessary crew. When it got back we knew we could hold Bouresches and the counterattack at 2:30 in the morning, although they got within 30 feet of the town, was smothered by our fire.

The 7th was spent in getting rations, water and ammunition out to both Battalions, and the little Ford we have hung on to, although it was twice on the verge of salvage, ran through a period of 36 hours over the road to Bouresches in daytime and at night, or to a point from which the stuff could be carried off to the left to the ravine running along the right of Sibley’s position. All that day and the next Sibley’s men rushed machine gun nests in hand-to hand fighting. The guns were emplaced on crests in the thick woods, on rocky ridges, with fire to all points. Their light guns could easily be moved around to our flanks or rear and the Boche certainly know the art of working through, infiltrating, and opening fire from unexpected quarters. Many times the groups got a footing on these crests, only to have to fall back in the face of a deadly machine gun and stick grenade fire. It was work of the most reckless courage against heavy odds, and they took their toll of us for every gun captured or disabled. All through this time Sibley had Boche and guns on his flank and in his rear, for the woods were held by both forces and the liaison on our left had been crippled by the initial advance in which the battalion on his left, Berry’s, and his own had to right their way in the dark, and Berry wounded early in the fight.

On the 9th Sibley was withdrawn to a point from which the artillery could hammer away at the machine gun nests, which had been thoroughly located. For an hour 50 American and French batteries of 75’s and 155’s threw everything they had into those woods on the right. Hughes went in on the 10th and his first message was that the artillery had hammered the Bois de Belleau into mincemeat. Overton, who had taken over the 76th Company that day, charged the old rock plateau position in brilliant fashion, killing or capturing every gunner and capturing all the guns, and with few casualties. He ‘got his’ later when the Boches shelled him in his hastily dug in position for 48 hours. Hughes captured six Minnenwerfers, about 30 guns, light and heavy. The copy of commendations we sent to you will tell you better than anything else the story of Sibley’s magnificent work before the artillery preparation made the task an easier one. Young Robinson charged into certain death to take one nest, and a string of bullets caught him full in the breast. Young Roberts, a runner told me - the last time the runner saw him - was flat on a rock not twenty yards away from one gun, blazing at it with an automatic in either hand. They hit him three times, and hit him hard before he would consent to go to the rear.

There was not an officer left in the _2nd Company, and Sibley and his adjutant, Bellamy, reorganized them under close fire and led them in a charge that put that particular nest out of business at the most critical time in all the fighting. I heard later that at that stage someone said “Major Sibley ordered that ---”, and another man said “Where in hell is Sibley?” Sibley was twenty yards away at the time and a hush went down the line when they saw him step out to lead the charge. And when the word got around that dead-tired, crippled outfit that the “Old Man” was on the line, all hell couldn’t have stopped that rush. With all the stories that I’ve heard about it I wonder if ever an outfit went up against a more desperate job, stuck to it so gamely without sleep, at times on short rations, with men and officers going off like flies, and I wonder if in all our long list of gallant deeds there ever were two better stunts than the work of Sibley and Holcomb.

“Since the 10th, while the fighting has not been of that savage hand to hand fighting, we’ve been in there, the two regiments, always advancing, never giving an inch, attacking and smashing counter attacks by the literal score. They’ve had five and part of a sixth division versus our brigade and half the time three divisions at once. One of them, the 28th, is one of their finest.

“Just one more incident of Sibley’s work. The supply of grenades gave out at one time, due mostly to the fact that no one knew what a veritable nest of machine guns those woods sheltered. They would have been a Godsend, and as one of the men said, ‘When I thought of the hundreds I’d thrown away to practice, I’d have given a million dollars for a grenade more than once.’

“They’ve had reliefs for a few days, the battalions, for it’s a battalion war now, but many people would have hardly called it rest. It was the best we could get, but the rest woods were shelled at times, there was no chance to scrub and wash clothes, and if it rained no shelter except ponchos and little dugouts that were soon flooded. But every time they went back into the lines, dead tired, but with a spirit that made any task possible. There were times we when it seemed to me, with my talk over the ‘phone, their official and unofficial messages and their reports of casualties, of bombardments and gas, that they must have reached their limit and could not hold. But they held like grim death without a whimper and got away with it. At one time, when a borrowed regiment took over the sector for a few days, the battalion marched back to the Marne for a swim. They had to go before daybreak, and return at nightfall, and by the worst of luck those were cold, rainy days.

“We’re still in (this was written on June 29) and the line now takes in all the woods from our right, which Sibley is now holding, up to the left where the French are. In one night, on the 26th, Shearer moved his line forward for the 5th and sent in 560 prisoners. The next two nights, Keyser, on the extreme left, for the 5th, moved his lines and took up the positions assigned without a loss, and sent patrols 300 yards ahead without resistance.

“They (the Germans) have had the fight knocked out of them and admit it. The artillery has done wonderful work at all times. The last big draft of prisoners had been cut off from supplies by three days by our fire. One man in the 16th Company Leonard, captured and held in the front lines, brought in, unarmed, a captain, 4 lieutenants, and 73 Germans, unarmed. Another Marine, wounded and found in a dugout by Shearer’s men, had had his fun when they hammered questions at him, in a smattering of German, French and English. When they asked him how our food supply was he said, ‘Bon Beaucoup chow.’ When they wanted a line on our machine guns they asked, ‘Combien put-put-put,’ and he came back with ‘Beaucoup put-put-put.’ The prisoners vary a lot, some fine big chaps, and many look like retired farmers, undersized, or running down to 17. At first they thought we were Canadians, but the last lot say all the Germans know we have about 700,000 and they say they don’t want to fight us, that we give them no rest and our artillery punishes them terribly. We’ve found lots of letters and diaries and the diaries are interesting. They start off with the ‘Gott-mit-uns’ lines and boasts of what they will do to the Big Americans. Then they tell of lying in the woods under a terrific fire and about the big Americans who seem to know no fear. Then they end -- a complete story of disillusionment.

“I know you will be interested in what gallant work the officers and men are doing. The men have learned that the officers will lead them anywhere and the men worship them. And the officers will talk you to a finish at any time about their men. But they’ll hit us heavily on officers, for they had to fight with a reckless bravery to carry the day.”

Speaking of the relations of officers and men the writer says: “I don’t believe there ever were battalions where officers and men had such a common feeling of strong love and affection and mutual admiration for each other. They were brothers in arms in the fullest sense of the word and if anyone asks why our officers and men cannot adopt the French attitude of officer and men comradeship, you can tell them that those days in the lines simply was the medium through which the constant care, the faithful performance of duty, and the live interest that our officers, notably the platoon officers had shown from the Quantico days in their men, was translated into as perfect a comradeship as could exist between men. I saw them towards the end out in the woods, and I found them out there serenely confident, their faces showing the strain, but the old spirit unconquered. And I found them either clean shaven or shaving, and Turner, ‘Hughes’ old adjutant, then acting as Garrett’s adjutant as Hughes had just been evacuated gassed, could have walking into the White House and passed inspection.”

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Citation

United States. Committee on Public Information, “Taking of Belleau Wood and Bouresches by US Marines,” 1918 August 7, WWP25108, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.