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Updated: June 2, 2025
The fact is or so it seemed to me that while the British Army salutes with all its heart, the glorious record of that veteran Army of France which bore the brunt of the first years of war, which held the gate at Verdun at whatever cost in heroic lives, and inscribed upon its shield last year the counter-attacks in the Marne salient, and the superb stand of General Gouraud in Champagne; and while, at the same time, it realises and acknowledges to the full the enormous moral and military effect of the warm American tide, as it came rushing over France through the early summer of last year, and the gallantry of those splendid American lads, who, making mock of death, held the crossing of the Marne, took Bouresches and Belleau Wood, fought their hardest under General Mangin in the Soissons counter-attack of July 18th, and gallantly pushed their way, in spite of heavy losses, through the Argonne to the Meuse at the end of the campaign there is yet no doubt in any British military mind that it was the British Army which brought the war to its victorious end.
The Marine casualties at Belleau Wood and Chateau-Thierry appalled The Laird; he read that twenty survivors of a charge that started two hundred and fifty strong across the wheat field at Bouresches had taken Bouresches and held it against three hundred of the enemy led by Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary, of Port Agnew, Washington! Good old Dirty Dan!
In one battle alone, that of Belleau Wood, the citation lists bear the names of fully 500 United States marines who so distinguished themselves in battle as to call forth the official commendation of their superior officers.
Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his literary revolution this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time, which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander, and all the works of Henry the Second with the double crescent, and all the works of Anne of Brittany with the knotted cord, they called themselves the Pleiad; seven in all, although, as happens with the celestial Pleiad, if you scrutinise this constellation of poets more carefully you may find there a great number of minor stars.
The Germans, mystified that they should have run against a stone wall of defense just when they believed that their advance would be easiest, had halted, amazed; then prepared to defend the positions they had won with all the stubbornness possible. In the black recesses of Belleau Wood the Germans had established nest after nest of machine guns.
Such was the character of the fighting in Belleau Wood; fighting which continued until July 6, when after a short relief the invincible Americans finally were taken back to the rest billet for recuperation. In all the history of the Marine Corps there is no such battle as that one in Belleau Wood.
It also establishes the fact that the Marines who helped stop the German drive on Paris at Belleau wood early in June were honored by being brought from this wood to Vierzy and Tigny, near Soissons, for participation with a crack French division in the great counter-attack which started the disintegration of the German front in the west.
They were in the first contingent of the expeditionary forces, the Rainbow Division, and figured prominently in the earliest fighting about the St. Mihiel salient, at Cantigny, and later with the Marines at Belleau Wood.
Even now there were moments when he felt the whole thing must be some wild nightmare. Vividly he remembered the sudden winking out of consciousness in the midst of that panting, uphill dash through Belleau Wood.
The boy he was only 19 had been killed in action near Belleau Wood, on June 25th, while leading his detachment in an attack on a machine gun. Citations and decorations for gallantry in action were given posthumously by General Pershing, Marshal Pétain, Major-General Omar Bundy, and Major-General John A. LeJeune. A brief glance at his father convinced him that he was dying.
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