A Letter describing Battle of Belleau Wood

[thedrifter]

A Letter Describing
the Battle for Belleau Wood
by Lieutenant H.R. Long USMC,
6th Machine Gun Battalion,
published in The Adirondack Enterprise,
August 23, 1918

The Adirondack Enterprise is privileged in this issue to publish excerpts from letters written by First Lieutenant L.R. Long of the Marines and a brother of Dr. Esmond R. Long, member of the staff of the Saranac Lake Laboratory. He is intelligence officer for the only battalion of machine gunners in the marines. Nothing that the marines have written in letters and nothing that the staff correspondents of newspapers circulated in this section have said of the spectacular onslaught of the "devil dogs" at Chateau Thierry ~~ the blow that smashed the Huns at the gates of Paris and marked clearly and decisively the turning point in the war ~~ can surpass the graphic pen picture that this versatile writer and gallant soldier has sketched for his relatives.

The brilliant story of Bouresches, where the Marines struck and (one or two lines illegible) ... story of Belleau Wood, where the invincible Americans walked unfalteringly through a (another line illegible) ... finding themselves uncovered, rushed forth with the craven cry of "Kamerad;" the story of Hill 142 where the Marines pressed forward to their objective and triumphed against odds ~~ these are the stories that will fill the brightest pages of the history of America's part in the war and these are the stories from which the following extracts are taken, written as they could only be by one who has passed through it all and by one whose facile pen could blend so perfectly the lights and the shadows, the horrors and the glories.




The Turning Point

"I know you don't like to think about the war at all, but I want to tell you just a few things. I think we are at the turning point, or almost, and the whole business will come to an end 'toot sweet' as we Amex force people say. The American soldiers are magnificent and there is no resisting them. In one last attack, night before last, we met with almost no opposition. They picked up and ran ~~ those who did not surrender. Our bag in this operation, in which we took a town and quite a bit of ground, was over 400 men and officers."




The German Drive Smashed

"I wish you could have been along the first few days of the battle in this particular section. Of course, you have read of how, after the Boche bursted through at Soissons and came galloping south and West for 35 kilometers, the Marines stopped 'em at Bouresches and Bois de Belleau. It had trench warfare beaten to astand-still. We were 'way up northeast of Paris, getting organized and screwed up again after two months in the line at Verdun, when the news came that the Germans had broken through west of Rheims and were coming on double for Paris.

With only a few hours preparation we were hustled on trucks (It took about 200,000,000,000 of them, it seemed like) early in the morning, and tore across country for a whole day. All afternoon our long line of camions passed refugees and refugees (hundreds of them ~~ it was pathetic beyond all words). Farm wagons, baby carriages, wheel barrows, crying kiddies in tired womens' arms, old men, resigned and fatalistic sort of looking, laughing girls riding on hay wagons, holding on to cows and horses, women, bird cages and bundles in their arms, bravely trudging along westward ~ Katini, the women of France are the bravest people in the world, ~ and the French troops going and coming."




Mowed Germans Like Hay

"Late that night we halted beside the road. To the North and East the sky was red with the light of the burning villages, and guns too far off yet to be heard flashed like fire-flies. We flopped beside the road, deliriously tired and jolted up (these springless camions were hell on wheels), and a Boche plane buzzed by overhead and dropped two or three bombs through the dark at us. Every one was too tired to take any notice. We were off again in the morning and soon had to abandon the camions and deply our brigade in line. Our machine guns, by battalion, were on the designated brigade front, in battery, long before the infantry got into action! A few isolated French units were still among the marines 'till next morning, but when the Germans (held up by night) attacked about 8 a.m. there was nothing but a line of marines to stop them,~ a pretty thin line at that,~ but Jiminy Greaser, they attacked in mass formation and wemowed 'em down like hay. They came over tyhe top of theridge and down into the valley and the town of Bouresdches in a regular stream ~~ long thick lines of slow-moving grey ~~ right through bursting 75 shell, and into a belt ofmachine gun fire ~ about 720,00,000,000 of 'em, I should say roughly. The marines never budged an inch, and what Germans reached us were easily disposed of. They kept coming too, for two or three days, and believe me, it was some strenuous time."

cont.......

[thedrifter]

A Letter Describing
the Battle for Belleau Wood
by Lieutenant H.R. Long USMC,
6th Machine Gun Battalion,
published in The Adirondack Enterprise,
August 23, 1918

Crack Hun Divisions Beaten

"So far I haven't been able to realize what it means. I have been numb ever since theend of the first week of our arrival in this sector, which is 35 days ago. So many of my best friends have been killed since then that announcements of death don't mean a single thing to me any more. We have been beating the Germans ever since the first day when we pushed up through the retreating French. One brigade of Marines is a single straw in the broom that is going to swep the Germans out of France. They have shown the Boche that they are no match for Americans. Division ... (illegible) ... opposite us and we have knocked the stuffins out of all of them. The Germans surrender now in a most spineless, whipped and tired fashion. Their only sentiment is relief at being captured. What an anomaly it is! Men like that driving back the Allies!"




The Craven Cry of "Kamerad"

"Night before last we brought in 40 prisoners in a little operation. But they did fight hard at first ~~ especially in Bouresches andBois de Belleau. The German machine gun nests in athe woods played hell with us. Prisoners that they were told the Marines would kill them if they surrendered and I guess that accounts for the desperate way they resisted us in the Belleau Woods."The forest is very dense and full of rocks with big fissures, crevices and caves. Germans like Maxims were everywhere among and under the rocks, in places where we could not blast them out with our artillery. We gave them 24 hours of 150s and 75s and then advanced under arolling barrage of 75s. Nests survived this rain of high explosives and shrapnel, but the woods were a wreck. We followed up our barrage all right, but in the progress of the attack theenemy machine guns still held out and we left them to be mopped up later. It was bloody, nasty work. The Marines just threw away their lives ~~ they couldn' be held back.

The Boche would keep firing into our faces until we were right on top of a nest and then the dirty, yellow, craven cowards would come piling out, throwing down their steel helmets, holding their hands up in the air, and yelling 'Kamerad' for all they were worth, officers and men alike. (After the war, just like now, the National anthem of Egypt will be B'k sheesh! N'k sheesh, of China, Cum shaw, and of Germany, Kamerad! Kamerad!) But, after that, honestly do you think they deserved to be taken prisoner? Did we take many? What do you think they had coming to them? The nests were impossible to see until you got right up on top of them, which made it just like being ambushed. Major Cole and I went forward with the infantry ~~ there were machine guns in the wave for consolidation of our new line ~~ and a Dutchman suddenly heaved a hand grenade from him from one of those nests we had stumbled into. He picked it up to throw back ~~ in the excitement ~~ and it went off in his hand. He was the best machine gunner in the Marine Corps, too."




Rest and Comfort

"Within a few days we can be out of te line and rest up a bit. Pretty soft it will be. A Sam Browne belt instad of a gas respirator at alert, and overseas cap for a steel helmet, and take off my shoes every nght. Majorie's socks have stood up fineunder the acid test of ~~ of, I blush to state how many days.

I slept last night in a circassian walnet bed in a beautiful old chateau overlooking one of the most picturesque parts of the Marne valley. Writing this isn't very descriptive, but the change from this peaceful spot ~~ well, can you imagine what it means to me?"


A Pathetic Incident

"I had extraordinary good luck with my intelligence section, but one incident was mighty pathetic. We machine gunners were the last people in the division to be removed, and the Major and I, with my section (scouts, telephone operations linemen, runners, etc.) stayed to see that the brigade front was in good running order asfar asthe M.G's were concerned. I had the men all standing by, packs rolled up and everything, last night, ready to filter out one by one back to an assembly point a few kilometers. We were standing in the rasvine at the entrance to a dugout (our P.C. was in a wooded gulley which zig-zags like a communication trench ~~ and it is pretty hard for the Boche to drop shells square in it) when a .77 H.E. lit right in the ravine a few feet away and killed the N.C.O. who was in charge of my section. A fragment almost severed his head, and yet no one else was even injured. We buried him before we left. Two hours after the poor kid was issuing some directions to a man he was lying in a grave with a (illegible) over his head. Wasn't that tough? After 35 days ~~ the last hour, too!"




Captured 80 Huns

"We sure did clean up the Germans in those 35 days, too. We had 'em figuring all kinds of ways to surrender to us. One marine, who, wounded, was captured in a counter-attack, was kept in a German dugout for four days by the Boche and fed up treated fine, and later when we cleaned the last few nests out of the woods, led in two officers and 78 men, Germans who wanted to surrender. Did you hear of this case? It is all over France."




THE ADIRONDACK ENTERPRISE, Saranac Lake, New York, Friday, August 23, 1918.

Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

Bring back Up.......


Ellie