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Old 04-03-2017, 04:21 PM
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Thumbs up At Belleau Wood, Marines saved Paris, proved mettle during WWI

At Belleau Wood, Marines saved Paris, proved mettle during WWI
By JIm Michaels - USA Today 4-3-17
RE: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ar-i/99826998/

In the spring of 1918, the wooded area known as Belleau Wood, about 30 miles northest of Paris, was a quiet sanctuary of graceful old-growth trees, a hunting preserve for well-off Parisians, teeming with birds and game. Despite its proximity to the front, it had been largely untouched by the war. That all changed in June.

When the battle at Belleau Wood was over, the ground was soaked with the blood of nearly 10,000 American casualties, including more than 1,800 killed, and an unknown number of Germans. The U.S. Marine Corps suffered more casualties in that battle than it did in its entire history to that point.

The battle was three weeks of carnage that left the once-beautiful preserve a scorched ruin, its trees splintered or uprooted. Only the stone walls of the hunting lodge that marked the northern edge of the forest remained standing when the smoke cleared.

Acts of extraordinary heroism were commonplace. "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" 1st Sgt. Dan Daly famously yelled to his attacking Marines as he urged them into German lines. The lines would come to epitomize Marine Corps espirit for generations to come.

The battle was a result of a major German offensive launched that spring. The Bolshevik revolution had taken Russia out of the war, which allowed Germany to move troops from the eastern front to the west.

The offensive was working and by June 1 the Germans had moved into Belleau Wood. Capturing Paris looked possible. If successful, it would almost certainly have led to an Allied defeat.

Army Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, ordered U.S. troops — including a brigade of untested Marines — to blunt the German advance.

Pershing was wary of the Marines. Before World War I, the Marine Corps was a relatively small force that specialized in protecting U.S. interests abroad or performing security duties on military bases. Pershing was skeptical of their ability to serve as a major ground force going up against the German army.

For the same reason, the Marines were itching to get into the fight, eager to prove they were more than just a constabulary force with fancy uniforms. “This was a defining moment for the Marine Corps,” said Charles Neimeyer, director of the corps' history division in Quantico, Va.

Rushing into the breach, the Marines encountered exhausted French soldiers heading in the other direction. French officers told the Marines they, too, should turn around.

The Marines dismissed the idea. “Retreat, hell,” one Marine is alleged to have said. “We just got here.”

For weeks, the fighting went back and forth as Marines attacked the German lines repeatedly, crossing an open wheat field that was raked by machine-gun fire coming from well-protected German positions in the woods.

Their marksmanship training paid off, as they picked off Germans from great distances. When command broke down, junior officers and noncommissioned officers stepped into provide leadership — a rare occurrence in most armies of the time.

But it was their tenacity that stood out above all else.

“The only thing that drove those Marines through those woods in the face of such resistance as they met was their individual, elemental guts, plus the hardening of the training through which they had gone,” wrote Lt. Col. Frederick May Wise, the commander of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines.

On June 26, 1918, Maj. Maurice Shearer sent a message: "Woods now entirely U.S. Marine Corps."

The battle was over.

The battle of Belleau Wood did not win the war, but it prevented the Allies from losing it, said Alan Axelrod, author of Miracle at Belleau Wood: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps.

After three weeks of combat, sometimes at the tip of a bayonet, the Marines had pushed the Germans back and cut off their path to Paris.

The battle would become an essential part of Marine Corps history, almost as iconic as the flag raising at Iwo Jima would become less than 30 years later.

“It really is fair to compare the Marines to the Spartans at Thermopylae,” Axelrod said in an interview, referring to the battle between Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C. “A very small group of dedicated warriors stopped a superior force.”

But the battle was significant for another reason. It established the Marines as a major force capable of sustained ground operations. The Marines had been assigned security duties in garrison and were often referred to dismissively as “bellhops and stevedores,” because of their sharp uniforms and work associated with naval ports, Axelrod said.

The battle would have made it into the history books anyway, but thanks to Floyd Gibbons, a swashbuckling war reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the Marines' exploits were plastered across the nation’s front pages.

Pershing had an ironclad rule that no individual units were to be identified in reporters' dispatches from the front. His aim was to prevent rivalry within the American Expeditionary Force.

Gibbons was shot through his left eye during the battle while accompanying Marines into the fight. Certain that Gibbons would die – he survived – military censors allowed his report to go out unchanged.

The stories boosted morale back home, and men lined up at Marine recruiting stations across the country. Congress would go on to enlarge the corps.

Back in France, the Marines were taking stock of what they had accomplished, and at what cost.

Battalion commander Wise's wife was in France working as a hospital volunteer. After the battle, she asked him, “How are the Marines?” according to Miracle at Belleau Wood.

“There aren’t any more Marines,” he replied.
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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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