thedrifter
06-12-03, 01:16 PM
When the U.S. Marines Saved France
By Jason Williscroft
By the spring of 1918, Europe lay in ruins. The Western Front was a shattered wasteland of muddy trenches and shell holes. Rot and poison gas befouled the soil, and rats grew fat on the ubiquitous flesh of the dead. All else starved.
The German high command determined to strike a decisive blow in anticipation of the American Army’s imminent arrival in France. In the early hours of May 27, General Erich von Ludendorff unleashed a ferocious artillery assault on the Allied line defending the Chemin des Dames, stretching along a crest between the Aisne and Ailette rivers. More than 4,000 heavy artillery pieces delivered a deadly hail of high explosive and poison gas across a 25-mile front, catching the Allies entirely by surprise and virtually wiping out the British IX Corps.
Within six hours, in a maneuver starkly prescient of Nazi blitzkrieg tactics employed by the Germans two decades later, Ludendorff’s forces smashed through eight more Allied divisions – four British, four French – and reached the river Aisne. By June 3, the Germans had taken 50,000 Allied prisoners and advanced to within 50 miles of Paris. Troop fatigue, logistical problems, and Allied counter-attacks fortunately took their toll; by June 6, at a cost of 130,000 Allied casualties, the German advance seemed stalled on the banks of the Marne.
Paris wept with dread behind the bones of a hundred thousand freshly shattered sons.
On June 1, as the German offensive machine approached the Marne, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division arrived to set up a defensive line across the Paris-Metz road, just north of Lucy-le-Bocage. The Army’s 23rd and 9th Infantry Regiments guarded the flanks, with the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments holding the center.
Over the following two days, units of the German 237th Division entered and occupied Belleau Wood directly to the north of the Marine positions. Initially deployed without the benefit of heavy machine gun support, the Marines soon taught the Germans to fear the effects of long-range marksmanship, picking them off with deadly precision from across the 800-yard expanse of wheat and barley bordering the Wood.
But by the evening of June 3, the forward Allied defensive line had disintegrated, and American positions were inundated with retreating French soldiers. A French major confronted Marine Capt. Lloyd Williams with news of the advancing German attack. Taking a pad of paper, writing in English, the senior officer issued Williams a direct order to retreat. Famously, Captain Williams exploded with rage. “Retreat, hell!” he shouted. “We just got here!”
Captain Williams would die in Belleau Wood nine days later, blinded by gas and gutted by German shrapnel.
On June 5, having effectively abandoned the defense of Paris to American forces, the French XXI Corps ordered the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division to recapture Belleau Wood. Responsibility for the assault fell to the two Marine regiments positioned directly south of the Wood. French intelligence indicated that the Germans occupied only a single corner of the Wood, and anticipated light resistance.
A sallow sun marked the morning of June 6, 1918. At 0500, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment attacked Hill 142 to the west of Belleau Wood. Though the assault was a success, capturing a critical strategic high point, the Germans quickly counterattacked.
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Ernest A. Janson spied twelve enemy soldiers, armed with five light machine guns, crawling toward his position atop Hill 142. Janson leaped to his feet, bellowed an alarm, and stomped off to engage the enemy alone. Two German leaders died instantly with Janson’s bayonet in their guts. The violence of Janson’s assault so demoralized the remaining ten Germans that they abandoned their weapons and fled into the morning mist.
Following the war – after receiving two Medals of Honor for this action, one each from the Army and the Navy – Janson legally reclaimed his birth name, Charles F. Hoffman, and his birthright as a proud American of German descent.
Twelve hours after the assault on Hill 142, battalions of the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments launched a full frontal assault on Belleau Wood. The broad wheat fields bordering the forest offered little concealment and even less cover. German heavy machine guns mowed down the advancing Marines like bloody scythes.
As men bit and tore at the earth to escape the murderous fire shredding their rucksacks not twelve inches off the ground, Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly – already a recipient of two Medals of Honor for gallantry under fire in China and Haiti – leaped to his feet. “Come on, you sons of *****es!” he roared at his men. “You wanna live forever?” Thus inspired, Daly’s Marines – outnumbered, outgunned, and unsupported from the rear – seized a German machine gun nest and turned its guns on the fleeing enemy, establishing the first Allied foothold in Belleau Wood.
Despite assurances of French intelligence to the contrary, Belleau Wood was lousy with Germans. The three-square-mile patchwork of forest and field held thousands of crack German troops, manning hundreds of well camouflaged, liberally supplied heavy machine gun emplacements.
The battle raged – continuously – for twenty days. Near the end, as starvation and exhaustion closed in, trapped together in close quarters among the trees and suffering from a shortage of ammunition, both sides were reduced to bitter, hand-to-hand combat.
Finally, armed with little beyond bayonets and bare hands, the U.S. Marines drove the Germans from Belleau Wood and prevented the sack of Paris. In twenty days of combat, the Marines suffered 9,777 casualties, including 1,811 dead – a record of bloody sacrifice that would stand until the Marine assault on the island of Tarawa over 20 years later.
Stunned by the ferocity of the Marines’ assault, surviving Germans cursed them with a name that the Marines cherish fondly to this day: Teufelhunden.
Devil Dogs.
A nation moves toward tomorrow on wheels greased with the fat of yesterday’s fallen. Canada has her Flanders Fields. The Tommies remember Gallipoli. The U.S. Marines have Belleau Wood and Dan Daly, armed with two hand grenades and a Colt .45, kicking apart a German machine gun nest with murderous intent.
Contemporary events suggest that – at least so far as America is concerned – the French national memory has not survived the Great War.
Jason Williscroft is a former enlisted Marine who received a commission in the U.S. Navy following graduation from the Naval Academy. Following 12 years of active-duty service, he founded a private financial management firm and works as an independent engineering consultant. He can be reached at jscroft@hotquant.com.
Sempers,
Roger
By Jason Williscroft
By the spring of 1918, Europe lay in ruins. The Western Front was a shattered wasteland of muddy trenches and shell holes. Rot and poison gas befouled the soil, and rats grew fat on the ubiquitous flesh of the dead. All else starved.
The German high command determined to strike a decisive blow in anticipation of the American Army’s imminent arrival in France. In the early hours of May 27, General Erich von Ludendorff unleashed a ferocious artillery assault on the Allied line defending the Chemin des Dames, stretching along a crest between the Aisne and Ailette rivers. More than 4,000 heavy artillery pieces delivered a deadly hail of high explosive and poison gas across a 25-mile front, catching the Allies entirely by surprise and virtually wiping out the British IX Corps.
Within six hours, in a maneuver starkly prescient of Nazi blitzkrieg tactics employed by the Germans two decades later, Ludendorff’s forces smashed through eight more Allied divisions – four British, four French – and reached the river Aisne. By June 3, the Germans had taken 50,000 Allied prisoners and advanced to within 50 miles of Paris. Troop fatigue, logistical problems, and Allied counter-attacks fortunately took their toll; by June 6, at a cost of 130,000 Allied casualties, the German advance seemed stalled on the banks of the Marne.
Paris wept with dread behind the bones of a hundred thousand freshly shattered sons.
On June 1, as the German offensive machine approached the Marne, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division arrived to set up a defensive line across the Paris-Metz road, just north of Lucy-le-Bocage. The Army’s 23rd and 9th Infantry Regiments guarded the flanks, with the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments holding the center.
Over the following two days, units of the German 237th Division entered and occupied Belleau Wood directly to the north of the Marine positions. Initially deployed without the benefit of heavy machine gun support, the Marines soon taught the Germans to fear the effects of long-range marksmanship, picking them off with deadly precision from across the 800-yard expanse of wheat and barley bordering the Wood.
But by the evening of June 3, the forward Allied defensive line had disintegrated, and American positions were inundated with retreating French soldiers. A French major confronted Marine Capt. Lloyd Williams with news of the advancing German attack. Taking a pad of paper, writing in English, the senior officer issued Williams a direct order to retreat. Famously, Captain Williams exploded with rage. “Retreat, hell!” he shouted. “We just got here!”
Captain Williams would die in Belleau Wood nine days later, blinded by gas and gutted by German shrapnel.
On June 5, having effectively abandoned the defense of Paris to American forces, the French XXI Corps ordered the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division to recapture Belleau Wood. Responsibility for the assault fell to the two Marine regiments positioned directly south of the Wood. French intelligence indicated that the Germans occupied only a single corner of the Wood, and anticipated light resistance.
A sallow sun marked the morning of June 6, 1918. At 0500, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment attacked Hill 142 to the west of Belleau Wood. Though the assault was a success, capturing a critical strategic high point, the Germans quickly counterattacked.
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Ernest A. Janson spied twelve enemy soldiers, armed with five light machine guns, crawling toward his position atop Hill 142. Janson leaped to his feet, bellowed an alarm, and stomped off to engage the enemy alone. Two German leaders died instantly with Janson’s bayonet in their guts. The violence of Janson’s assault so demoralized the remaining ten Germans that they abandoned their weapons and fled into the morning mist.
Following the war – after receiving two Medals of Honor for this action, one each from the Army and the Navy – Janson legally reclaimed his birth name, Charles F. Hoffman, and his birthright as a proud American of German descent.
Twelve hours after the assault on Hill 142, battalions of the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments launched a full frontal assault on Belleau Wood. The broad wheat fields bordering the forest offered little concealment and even less cover. German heavy machine guns mowed down the advancing Marines like bloody scythes.
As men bit and tore at the earth to escape the murderous fire shredding their rucksacks not twelve inches off the ground, Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly – already a recipient of two Medals of Honor for gallantry under fire in China and Haiti – leaped to his feet. “Come on, you sons of *****es!” he roared at his men. “You wanna live forever?” Thus inspired, Daly’s Marines – outnumbered, outgunned, and unsupported from the rear – seized a German machine gun nest and turned its guns on the fleeing enemy, establishing the first Allied foothold in Belleau Wood.
Despite assurances of French intelligence to the contrary, Belleau Wood was lousy with Germans. The three-square-mile patchwork of forest and field held thousands of crack German troops, manning hundreds of well camouflaged, liberally supplied heavy machine gun emplacements.
The battle raged – continuously – for twenty days. Near the end, as starvation and exhaustion closed in, trapped together in close quarters among the trees and suffering from a shortage of ammunition, both sides were reduced to bitter, hand-to-hand combat.
Finally, armed with little beyond bayonets and bare hands, the U.S. Marines drove the Germans from Belleau Wood and prevented the sack of Paris. In twenty days of combat, the Marines suffered 9,777 casualties, including 1,811 dead – a record of bloody sacrifice that would stand until the Marine assault on the island of Tarawa over 20 years later.
Stunned by the ferocity of the Marines’ assault, surviving Germans cursed them with a name that the Marines cherish fondly to this day: Teufelhunden.
Devil Dogs.
A nation moves toward tomorrow on wheels greased with the fat of yesterday’s fallen. Canada has her Flanders Fields. The Tommies remember Gallipoli. The U.S. Marines have Belleau Wood and Dan Daly, armed with two hand grenades and a Colt .45, kicking apart a German machine gun nest with murderous intent.
Contemporary events suggest that – at least so far as America is concerned – the French national memory has not survived the Great War.
Jason Williscroft is a former enlisted Marine who received a commission in the U.S. Navy following graduation from the Naval Academy. Following 12 years of active-duty service, he founded a private financial management firm and works as an independent engineering consultant. He can be reached at jscroft@hotquant.com.
Sempers,
Roger