The French were still being pushed out of a string of small villages beyond the ridges that faced the 2nd Division. Occasional detachments of chasseurs in their black berets came through in fair order. Falling back was all they could think of. One French officer went so far as to order a marine battalion he came across to join in the retreat. Their captain made the retort that soon became legendary: “Retreat hell, we just got here.”
By June 5 General Degoutte, who commanded the French corps to which the 2nd Division was attached, felt he had the situation well enough in hand to order some small advances to improve his defensive positions. He had enough artillery available to give support for a limited attack.
Part of the American lines was uncomfortably overlooked by a dense growth of hardwoods on the crest of the long smooth rise the boche occupied as soon as they ran the French out of the villages along Clignon brook in the valley beyond. This was Belleau Wood. General Bundy was ordered to take possession of it.
American staffwork was still rudimentary. Requests for topographical maps of the region met with shrugs at French headquarters. Maps could only be procured through certain army departments which were not in evidence on the battlefield. Billy Mitchell’s airforce was promising observation planes but none had appeared. The Americans were utterly ignorant of the lay of the land. Maybe the way to find out what was in the wood was to go up there and look. The job fell to Harbord’s marine brigade.
The morning of June 6 the Americans and the French on their flanks began a general advance to seize the higher ground. Most of the operation was successful. To the east of the Metz-Paris road elements of the 3rd Division helped capture at least part of the bare hill, marked 204 on the military maps, which dominated Château-Thierry and the road along the valley of the Marne.
At the same time the marines attacked the innocentlooking wood in front of them. Behind a brisk artillery barrage they deployed as they had been taught in manoeuvres, in four skirmish lines. When they reached the edges of the wood, fire from machineguns invisible amid the dense foliage cut them down like a scythe. The survivors kept on going and vanished among the trees.
The attack on either side of Belleau Wood moved with such dash that at the western end of the line some companies loped past the road where they were supposed to dig in and charged into the outskirts of Torcy in the valley beyond. There the krauts picked them off at their leisure. To the east the marines poured over the hill without too much loss and occupied the village of Bouresches. For hours there was no news from the battalion in the center which had disappeared into the wood.
The first reports to brigade headquarters were encouraging indeed. Harbord was in high spirits. “He is happy as a clam,” a liaison officer wrote back to Chaumont, “even though he has about ten batteries so close to his p.c. that it sounds as if the guns were all in his bedroom.”
During the afternoon Harbord’s command posts began to piece together a picture of what was happening in Belleau Wood. The great trees that looked so harmless through the glasses extended much further than anybody had imagined. Under their shade was a nightmare of sudden ravines and boulders and mossy outcroppings masked in dense undergrowth. The enemy had the broken ground organized into a network of machinegun nests placed so that as soon as one machinegunner was overpowered others to the flank and rear could make the position untenable. Their mortars and minenwerfers were craftily hidden in hollows and behind jutting rocks. The artillery barrage had done them no harm.
The marines were suffering punishment. Their commander Colonel Albertus Catlin was severely wounded early in the day. Many companies lost officers and noncoms. One had only ten men left. The chain of command broke down. Isolated companies and isolated individuals roamed on as best they could without guide or chart among the trees and boulders, firing at an enemy they never could see. Men lost their sense of direction. Occasionally they strayed into their own machinegun fire. The nearer German machineguns were ringed with circles of dead marines. The lucky ones found spots of soft loam where they could dig themselves in among the rocks and the brambles. Wounded and bleeding men struggled ahead. If they were licked they did not know it.
Come nightfall the walking wounded started to trickle back, grimy ash-faced men with bandaged heads, men with arms in slings improvised out of web belts, men hobbling on rifles for crutches. Colonel Catlin was brought out on a stretcher. Lieutenant Colonel Lee took his place. Morale remained high. The machinegunning was tremendous, reported the marines, but if you got within bayonet range of a kraut the kraut would surrender. A little more time and they’d clean out that wood.
Reinforcements were sent into Bouresches under cover of darkness. A party of volunteers ran in a truckload of ammunition and rations through heavy German fire.
Next day the marines were encouraged by the sight of a real American airplane. From then on American pursuit and observation planes that had been training in French and British machines back of Toul became more common overhead. They continued to be outnumbered and outclassed by the Germans who had faster planes and more experienced pilots.
On June 8 the marines made another attempt to storm Belleau Wood. German machineguns too well placed. Casualties; but no results except for two minenwerfers and some machineguns captured. Harbord had to pull his marines back into a ravine on the edge of the wood so that the artillery could give the place a thorough shellacking.
June 10 after a stepped up barrage, the marines attacked again and reported optimistically as they had so often before that they held the entire wood. Still they had stopped short of the main German defense line in the northeast corner.
The marines were game. Next day another attack drove clean through to the north side but after the smoke cleared it was discovered the Germans hadn’t budged. Still no accurate maps.
The men were wearing out. General Bundy telegraphed Pershing’s headquarters asking for relief: “The Second Division has been marching, entrenching and fighting since May 30. During that time few of the men have had a night’s rest … For the past five days it has been engaged in close combat, offensive and defensive. The division holds a front of ten kilometers. There are no troops to relieve them.”
After a number of such messages, and one from Harbord pointing out that many of his men had not even taken their shoes off in two weeks, an infantry regiment from the 3rd Division was sent in to relieve the contingents that had suffered most casualties.
The usual confusion ensued. The officers were so green that they didn’t know they had to keep their men out of sight of the sausage balloons that were directing the German artillery fire. The boche took the occasion to mount a brisk raid on Bouresches. A box barrage cut off the garrison for a while, and an officer fresh from the rear sent back word that Bouresches was overwhelmed. A little later a runner appeared with the message “Nothing but marines in Bouresches” and asking for hot coffee and drinking water.
By this time a little more than half of Belleau Wood was in American hands. Prisoners were accumulating, but still no one had an accurate idea of its topography. The marines sent in skirmish line after skirmish line of infantrymen to grope their way through ravines and underbrush into savage machinegun fire. By June 13 they were sure the wood was theirs.
That very day the boche, who had used little gas thus far, made a sudden and saturating bombardment with mustard gas. Eight hundred American casualties. Lines of blinded men came stumbling back to the dressing stations with their hands on eachother’s shoulders, led by a wounded man who still had his sight. Though gasmasks gave good protection against the effect on the lungs, wherever there was moisture on the skin either from sweaty clothing or dew on the grass, the gas left painful burns. The mustard gas made Belleau Wood untenable. Next day Harbord had to pull his marines out to positions on the fringes of the thickets they had lost so many lives to conquer.