Belleau Wood: The US Marines' Bloodiest Conflict Of World War One | History Of Warfare | Timeline

In the final days of May 1918, the First World War seemed to have come full circle. After four years of slaughter unparalleled in history, the Allied cause was on the brink of catastrophe. Once again, as in 1914, the gray-clad columns of the Imperial German Army were marching victoriously into the heart of France. With the Allies seemingly faced by disaster, all their hopes rested on their final reserves, the untested soldiers of the United States of America. The United States, angered by the indiscriminate attacks by Germany's U-boats and the Kaiser's intrigues with Mexico, had at last entered the war on the Allied side in April 1917. But though its young men were filled with enthusiasm for the fight, they were painfully, almost frighteningly, unprepared. The USA had not been involved in a major world conflict since the War of Independence over a century before. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States had said, it is not an army we must shape and train for war, it is a nation. In fact, it was both, and one of the greatest social and economic upheavals in history had followed as America geared itself up for war. But time had been short, and many on both the Allied and German sides doubted what the outcome would be when the U.S. troops were tested in battle. As its men were thrown into action against the Kaiser's victorious veterans, the USA would make its entrance as a world military power in the bloody struggle for Bellow Wood. As the new year of 1918 dawned, Europe reeled under the effects of almost four years of the most terrible war in history. Nowhere had its impact been more devastating than on the Western Front. Here, for a length of almost 450 miles between the North Sea and the borders of Switzerland, the opposing trench line snaked like an angry scar across Flanders and northern France. The Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele, and a dozen other bloody engagements had all failed to produce the elusive breakthrough dreamed of by the generals, and the deadly stalemate continued. The Allied powers had been bled white by the cost of the war. In Britain, foodstuffs and fuel were in short supply, and the deprived population would fall easy prey to the great influenza epidemic later in the year. In France, food was more plentiful, but scarcely a family had not lost one or more of its menfolk in the war. War weariness was everywhere. As he surveyed the prospects for the coming year, the commander-in-chief of the British armies in Belgium and France, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, could find few reasons for optimism. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, fearful of the cost of more seemingly futile attacks on the Western Front, was denying Haig reinforcements. As a result, the British Army on the Western Front would face the coming campaign 600,000 men understrength. Haig and his commanders were doubtful if they could even hold their ground. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries from History Hit, and uncover the secrets of some of the most famous people and events in history. History Hit brings you the stories that shaped the world through exclusive documentaries from the world's top historians. Travel with us to the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, or uncover the lives of the people who called Pompeii home. We also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast network. Sign up now for a free trial, and Timeline fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code TIMELINE at checkout. The position of the French army was even worse. Since the beginning of the war, the lifeblood of France had been spilt in a series of vain attempts to drive out the German invaders. And in 1917, morale had finally cracked in a series of mutants. Almost miraculously, the news had been kept from the Germans until the new French commander-in-chief, General Henri Pétain, by a mixture of firmness and concessions, restored order. But Pétain knew that the French army remained a fragile instrument, likely to break in his hand if it came under too great a pressure. Like Hague, he could attempt no offensive, and viewed the future with foreboding. The war had begun with the might of the Russian Empire firmly on the side of the Allies, and the Tsar's armies poised to invade Germany. But the next three years brought little but disaster for Russian arms. Defeat at the front turned to revolution at home, and Russia's last faltering contribution to the Allied cause came to an end when the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917. The Germans were free to turn virtually their full attention to the West. Germany's defeat of Russia in 1917 had given them the chance to fight a war on just one front. But the German high command knew that once America's manpower and reserves got into the war fully, their chance of victory would be gone. This was particularly true because of America's massive industrial potential, which was as yet only partially used. In an attempt to strangle Britain's overseas lifelines and starve her into submission, the Germans on February 1st, 1917, had introduced unrestricted submarine warfare. This meant that any vessel, neutral or not, thought to be trading with the Allies, could be sunk without warning. But the campaign carried with it grave risks, not least of war with the United States of America. The Americans began the war very firmly neutral in their attitude towards what was going on in Europe. After all, we have to remember that a lot of them were the descendants of recent immigrants who'd gone to the United States in the first place to avoid European troubles, and they really didn't see any reason why they should get involved again. And this attitude was to some extent compounded by President Woodrow Wilson. As head of state of the leading neutral nation in the world, he saw his role as a mediator. He hoped to bring about some sort of peaceful settlement between the combatants. The sinking of the Line of Lusitania in 1915 and the death of a large number of American citizens was of crucial importance in changing American public opinion from being isolationist and anti-war to belief that something had to be done about German power at sea. In February 1917, the Germans renewed the U-boat campaign, and Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. We were now getting very near to a war situation, and the final straw came shortly afterwards with the infamous Zimmermann telegram. This had been carefully leaked to the Americans by British intelligence, and in the telegram, Zimmermann, the German foreign minister, had offered support to Mexico if she were to declare war on the United States in an attempt to recover her lost territories. Well, this proved the final straw, and in April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. America's entry into the war did not at first greatly alarm the Germans. They thought that even if they succeeded in running the U-boat gauntlet, it would be many months before United States troops could reach France in significant numbers. To Britain and France, however, the fact that they now had a potentially powerful new ally across the Atlantic brought fresh grounds for hope. The U-boats were tamed by increased ship production and the convoy system, and the first American troops disembarked in France in the autumn of 1918. The words of one of the first staff officers to come ashore, Lafayette, we are here, recalled the contribution of France towards the United States' own fight for independence, and were greeted with rapture by the listening crowd. The French and British military commanders were equally delighted by the prospect of being able to fill out their depleted ranks with thousands of young, fit American soldiers, but in this hope, they were to be bitterly disappointed. Pershing and the American government began their involvement in the war, determined that the American army would act as an independent formation in France, but they faced enormous difficulties. One was the problem of getting the troops across to France in the first place. There was a great deal of concern that the U-boats might hinder this operation, though in fact they didn't have very much effect. The other problem was equipping the troops once they got there. America had terrific industrial potential, but this was going to take quite some time to bring on stream, and in the interim, the American troops were going to have to depend almost entirely on Britain and France for equipment, and also for training in the realities of trench warfare. All of this was going to take a long time, and the question was, would Germany give them long enough to do it? The fundamental difference was that the Americans were fresh. Unlike the British and French, they hadn't been ground down throughout years of hard war, and they were keen, they wanted to do well, and they had lots of ideas as to what they were going to do. Unfortunately, because they were fresh, they lacked experience, and although they were willing to learn, it cost them a lot of time and a lot of lives before they realised what they should be doing. So the Allied commanders faced the prospect of having to continue the war, at least until the summer of 1918, without significant American military help. The question asked by all was, could they hold out? The end of the war with Russia had released nearly one million German troops for use elsewhere. It was a glittering opportunity for the German high command, headed by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and his nominal deputy, Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff. At first glance, Germany seemed to be in quite a favourable position at the beginning of 1918. Now it's true that the U-boat offensive hadn't had the success that they'd been hoping for, but the German army had withstood some massive Allied offensives on the Western Front in the previous year, and even more importantly, Russia had now been knocked out of the war. Quite apart from anything else, this meant that Germany was no longer faced by the dreaded threat of a war on two fronts. But there's another factor which is often forgotten, and that's the effects of the Allied economic blockade. It's generally said, yes, that this did cause starvation, and as a result there were food riots in Germany and among our Allied countries as well. Now this is true, but a bigger effect was the fact that the supply of raw materials which the German war machine needed were cut off. There was no real way of getting around this, and quite apart from these factors, political unrest was growing in Germany. So Germany was facing a number of serious problems, but her Allies were in an even worse situation. They were very close to collapse. And one factor which the Germans could not forget was the influence of the United States. The American army was like a time bomb which was going to explode in their face sooner or later. So looking at the options which were open to them, the German high command, which was now effectively running the country, decided they had to stake everything on one massive offensive in the Western Front. This must knock the Allies out before America could intervene in the war. Ludendorff's belief was that if the British army could be knocked out, France, bereft of her principal ally, would be forced to sue for peace. His first plan, therefore, was to launch a great offensive in Flanders, aimed at breaking through the British front, rolling up their line, and destroying them in detail. All through the winter and early spring, the troop trains moved westwards from the former Eastern Front, and feverish preparations and training continued for the offensive, in which Ludendorff said he was prepared to sacrifice a million lives to ensure a German victory. In order to make success more certain, radically new tactics would be employed. The Germans began World War I with the most professional and highly trained army in Europe. Now it's true that in the succeeding years they suffered heavy losses, but they retained their cohesion and organisation probably better than any of their opponents did, and by 1917 they were experts in defensive warfare. However, they now needed some means to take the offensive, to bring mobility back to war. The British had tried this with tanks, with only limited success. The Germans decided to go for infantry, the famous Stosstruppen, or stormtroopers. Now these were highly trained men, the elite of the German army, most of them under 25. They were equipped with all the best weapons, the best equipment, they were given better rations than the other troops. They were armed with submachine guns, semi-automatic rifles, or the equivalent of in those days, grenades. The idea of stormtroopers was to search for the weak spots in an enemy's defensive positions, to pierce through the weak spots to avoid areas of effective resistance, which would be mopped up by succeeding waves of conventionally armed infantry. But these tactics had some disadvantages. In the first place the Germans lacked the resources adequately to supply the troops when they'd begun their advance, and another factor which was to prove fatal in the end to Ludendorff's plans was that they lacked the transport to move their men and guns quickly from one offensive site to another. This gave the Allies the breathing space they needed to recover between the successive offensives. And finally, and probably most fatally in the end, was the fact that the stormtroopers suffered enormous casualties, and these were irreplaceable losses of Germany's youngest and fittest men. When the Allies went over to the offensive later in the year, they were faced by second-rate German troops, mostly men in their 30s and 40s, who just could not withstand the impact of the massive assaults which the British, French and Americans were to deliver against them. Ludendorff's plan to strike in Flanders was thwarted by heavy mud. Instead, his gaze fell on the sector around St. Quentin, where the old battleground of the Somme was thinly held by the British Fifth Army, behind inadequate defences. The Germans would break through, then swing north to roll up the entire British front. On March 21st, 1918, in what was popularly known as the Kaiserschlacht, the Emperor's Battle, over 40 German divisions, supported by the fire of 6,000 guns in the greatest bombardment in history, launched the offensive which was intended to win the war. Aided by early morning fog and surprise, they made the most sweeping gains achieved on the Western Front since 1914. All along the line, British positions were penetrated, and the defenders killed or driven back. The pattern repeated itself during the following days, as in bitter fighting, the hard-pressed British attempted vainly to stem the tide. Yet gradually, the pace of the German advance slowed. Desperately, the British shifted units from quieter stretches of the front to plug the gap, while the French sent troops to take over other sectors. The Germans were encountering increasing difficulties in bringing up supplies and reinforcements across the devastated ground of former battlefields, while the opportunities of loot caused breakdowns of discipline among German soldiers for so long starved of luxuries. By the beginning of April, the German drive had lost its impetus. Though Ludendorff's troops had advanced over 40 miles and taken a vast swath of territory with over 170,000 prisoners, they had failed to capture any vital strategic objective. The British army, though battered, was still on its feet, while the Germans had suffered high losses among their irreplaceable storm troops. But Ludendorff believed that the British army had been fatally weakened. He resolved to strike again, this time in Flanders. Early on April 9th, once again aided by concealing fog, the German assault broke through the British lines in the valley of the River Lys. But again, the Germans were halted, once more without taking any of their vital objectives, and having suffered further heavy losses. A German general admitted, no great strategic movement had become possible, and the channel ports had not been reached. The second great offensive had not brought about the hoped-for decision. If Germany was to achieve the victory on which it was staking everything, time was running short. Despite the deepening crisis, Pershing still refused to do more than take over one quiet sector of the front with part of a division. However, events were soon brought to a dramatic change of heart. Despite his failure so far to inflict a decisive defeat on the British, General Ludendorff was determined to adhere to his original plan of inflicting a knockout blow in Flanders. But first, he needed to weaken the Allies still further. What was needed first, he felt, was a massive diversionary attack designed to attract the full attention of the French. An obvious site for such an attack quickly presented itself. A breakthrough on the thinly held Chemin des Dames ridge north of Reims would seem to threaten Paris and draw in every available French unit in order to safeguard their capital. In conditions of absolute secrecy, Ludendorff switched his artillery and stormtroopers southwards, and on May 27th launched another massive assault, Operation Blucher. Sweeping aside all opposition, over 30 German divisions raced southwards. In three days, Ludendorff's men were approaching the Marne, only 50 miles from Paris. Dazzled by the lure of the French capital and believing that its capture would end the war just as surely as a British defeat, Ludendorff threw caution to the winds and urged his weary troops on. The French appealed once more for American help. It was not to be in vain. By the spring of 1918, 120,000 American troops a month were arriving in France. A carefully organized training program had been in operation since the previous autumn. Each newly formed division spent six months in basic training in the United States before being sent overseas. On arrival in France, a further two months were needed to become accustomed to its new French and British arms and equipment. And finally, another month was spent in a quiet sector of the front, where, under French or British command, the Doughboys could begin to come to terms with the realities of trench warfare. There are several theories for the origination of the word Doughboy to describe the American infantrymen, and my favorite is a term of abuse given to American infantry by their own cavalrymen to the dust-cake infantrymen. And they thought the infantry looked like the adobe huts that were prevalent on the Mexican border, and adobes became changed into dobies and hence doughboys. And infantrymen always disliking cavalrymen, they used it as a badge of pride, as a sort of nickname, rather than a term of abuse. Though some American engineers did see action in the final stages of Ludendorff's push toward Amiens, Pershing was still unwilling to commit his men, who he proudly, if tactlessly, described as the best damned divisions in any army. But by the end of May, with the Allied cause plainly faced by its greatest crisis of the war, the time for hesitancy was past. On May 31st, the first United States troops began to move up towards the River Marne in support of the hard-pressed French. The effect on the weary French soldiers who witnessed them was electric. As Winston Churchill later described it, suddenly the roads between Provence and the front towards Mion and towards Colomiers began to be filled with endless streams of Americans. The impression made upon the hard-pressed French by this seemingly inexhaustible flood of gleaming youth in its first maturity of health and vigor was prodigious. None were under 20 and few were over 30. As crammed in their lorries, they clattered along the road singing the songs of the new world at the tops of their voices, burning to reach the bloody field. Half-trained, half-organized, with only their courage, their numbers, and their magnificent youth behind their weapons, they were to buy their experience at a bitter price. But this they were quite ready to do. When the Americans came over, they quite naturally wanted to fight as an American army. They didn't really fancy the idea of being split up amongst British divisions, French divisions, and so on. They felt that if that happened, they'd just be cannon fodder. In fact, they'd be very expendable, because whereas a British commander or a French commander might look after British or French troops respectively, they might not be quite careful about foreigners. And it was very important, therefore, both from a practical as well as an emotional point of view, for the Americans to stick together. On the other hand, both the British and French commanders were skeptical about this, because the Americans had absolutely no experience of modern warfare on the Western Front. Pershing believed that the British and French generals had failed in their professional duty, and all they had succeeded in doing was killing millions of their men. The Americans had a new way of doing things, a new world way of doing things. They wanted to get away from European ideas of what should and should not be done, and to do everything they could to break the deadlock of the Western Front and end the war as quickly as possible. There were a number of differences between the United States Army of 1918 and its German opponents. The Germans were highly disciplined, highly experienced troops. They probably had more combat experience than any of the other participants in the 1918 offensives. They'd fought all over Europe. They'd been on the Western Front. They'd also brought Russia to her knees. There's probably very little to compare with them. The Americans, on the other hand, were completely fresh to the whole business. A few of them had been involved in irregular operations against Pancho Villa and his Mexicans a couple of years previously. But we have to remember that the regular United States Army was very small, only about 26,000 officers and men. They were coming to the whole business completely fresh. We've got a situation where we're matching American enthusiasm, great willingness and keenness to learn against German discipline and hard combat experience. The Americans would do well when they got the opportunity and when they'd learned, but they were going to pay a very high price in this learning experience. The first United States troops to see serious action were the men of the 7th Machine Gun Battalion, who reached the south bank of the Marne just before the Germans arrived opposite them at Chateau Thierry and helped repulse their attempted crossing. It was an encouraging beginning, but the real test was being faced to their right, where the main Paris-Chateau Thierry road was being held by the soldiers and marines of the 2nd US Division. The United States 2nd Division included some of the best troops in the United States Army. They were a mixture of regular army personnel and marines, and it was the marines who were to cause the greatest controversy. Their first problem was with their commanding officer, General Pershing. He didn't like the marines, but they were grossly overrated. In fact, he hadn't wanted them in France at all. It was only the intervention of the Secretary for War that actually led to them being there, and even then Pershing refused his request that they should form a separate division. They were brought over as the 4th Marine Brigade of the 2nd Division, but in order to keep them firmly under his thumb, Pershing decided to appoint his protégé as their commanding officer. This was Colonel John A. Harbord, US Army, and this led to problems right from the beginning. Harbord was outranked in seniority by his two marine battalion commanders, and they and their men very much resented his presence. There was a bad working relationship among them from the beginning, and this was to have very inauspicious results. The German offensive, though slowing, was not yet over. All through the long summer day of June 2nd, the men of the 2nd Division bore the brunt of the last desperate lunge of the German 7th Army towards Paris. By the end of the day, the Germans had been halted, and Ludendorff called off the offensive. The Germans knew they were facing a formidable new opponent. Both sides were shaping up for a trial of strength, which would have much more than local significance. Its outcome might well influence the entire course of the war. The scene of this contest was to be Belleau Wood. Lying some eight miles to the northwest of Château Thierry, Belleau Wood was a 600-acre area of closely growing trees set amidst a tangle of rocks, steep-sided ravines, and narrow streams. Before the war, it had been a hunting reserve, but now was to be home to a much more deadly game. The veteran troops of General von Cotter's Reserve Corps, who held Belleau Wood, lost no time in putting their long experience of defensive warfare into practice. A complex system of interlocking machine gun and mortar posts was established, and in the small village of Borèche, just to the west of Belleau Wood, the stone-built cottages were turned into mutually supporting strong points. The senior Allied commander in the Belleau Wood sector, the French General Jean de Goute, was concerned about German reserves reported to be massing northeast of the ridge crowned by Belleau Wood. During the afternoon of June 5th, de Goute ordered the 2nd Division to launch an attack early the next morning, aimed at disrupting enemy preparations and clearing the wood. Their first objective was to be Hill 142, on the left of the position held by the 4th Marine Brigade. Major John A. Hughes, commanding the 1st Battalion of the 6th Marines, was not happy with the plan of attack, which committed his men to advancing for several hundred yards across an open wheat field before they could reach the enemy positions. To him, it seemed uncomfortably reminiscent of Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. However, Brigadier General James J. Harbord, the regular army officer whom Pershing had placed in command of the 4th Marine Brigade, was adamant, and during the night, in preparation for the assault, the 1st Battalion was pulled back five miles to the village of Nantuy. Here, the men stripped off their sodden clothing, ate their first hot meal for a week, and snatched what rest they could in the houses and haylofts of the village. Already, they could hear the explosions of the preliminary Allied artillery. The Americans, because of their failings in reconnaissance, believed Bellow would only be lightly defended, whereas in fact the reverse was true. It was a mass of German machine gun posts, trenches, and fortified bunkers. Now, this probably wouldn't have mattered so much if the artillery bombardment had been on target, but it wasn't. A lot of the shells overshot fell harmlessly beyond the wood, and those which actually hit the German defences didn't do a lot of damage. They uprooted trees and branches and so forth, with the result that the American advance would be even more difficult than it would have been in any case. The Americans were very keen, but at Bellow Wood they discovered that the best way to learn is combat experience. They began by advancing in wave formations, and they ended by attacking in small groups, using the firepower of their light machine guns, and basically fighting in a very different manner from the failed discredited tactics that had been used in At about 4.30 on the morning of June 6th, the assault began. Initially, all went well. After a stiff fight, men of the 5th Marines took Hill 142 and beat off enemy counterattack. By 9am, fighting had died down, and Harbord prepared to go ahead with the assault on Bellow Wood itself. As the afternoon of June 6th wore on, the Marines rested, smoking or talking quietly, and peering through the heat haze toward the crest topped with a line of trees, which marked the position of Bellow Wood. The assault was to begin at 5pm, and Harbord was unimpressed by the tough fight which the Germans had put up that morning, for he expected Colonel Albertus W. Kaplan, commanding the 6th Marines, to take his objective with a force of only three battalions, no more than 2,000 men. Much of the line of advance lay across open fields of green spring wheat, dotted with the scarlet of poppy. As another largely ineffective Allied artillery bombardment ended, the Marines went forward in a formation which had not been seen since the bloodbath of the Somme in 1916. Rifles at the port, the Marine skirmishers pushed their way through the wheat in four ranks, 20 yards apart, with five-yard intervals between each man. For the first hundred yards, not a shot was fired, and then, suddenly, the German machine guns opened up. The Marines wavered under the first impact of enemy fire, but were rallied by their officers and NCOs. In small groups and squads, giving each other covering fire, the Marines pressed on toward the edge of the wood. But at the point where the 3rd Battalion was attacking, enemy fire was so intense that the advance was halted a hundred yards short of the tree. To their right, Major Burton Sibley's 3rd Battalion of the 6th Marines had more success. Advancing deliberately in four carefully formed lines, the Marines pushed forward steadily into the southern fringes of the wood, though at a high cost. The fighting of the afternoon of June 6th was to characterize the course of most of the battle. Groups of Marines, armed with grenades, would crawl through the undergrowth and rocky outcrops toward the German machine gun nests. They would hurl their grenades and then go in with the bayonet. The German gunners would frequently keep up their fire until the last moment and then attempt to surrender. Other machine gun nests, which had initially been undiscovered, would open fire into the rear of the attacking troops. On the right, in a desperate rush, two companies of the 6th had reached the outskirts of the village of Boresh, but found that their troubles were only now beginning. At first, the Marines tried to take advantage of their generally superior marksmanship to shoot the enemy through the narrow windows of the houses. This had little success, so next the Marines attempted in small groups to storm the German strong points. This effort also made little impression and casualties were mounting. Eventually, aided by darkness, the survivors of the battalion under Lieutenant Robinson, the only officer still on his feet, made a renewed assault. The night was filled with the sounds of bitter hand-to-hand fighting, as one by one the cottages of Boresh were cleared of their defenders. By 2 a.m., the village was in American hands, but only 20 of the original assault force was still on their feet and growing desperately short of ammunition. In the nick of time, they were reinforced and resupplied, and managed to beat off a series of German counterattacks. But if Boresh was for the moment secure, the American situation in Bellow Wood deteriorated after nightfall. Lack of reliable maps had already caused serious problems as unwary parties of Marines lost their bearings and became entangled with each other. During the fighting of the past 12 or so hours, the Marine Brigade had suffered over 1,000 casualties, more than had been suffered by the Marine Corps in the whole of its previous history. Harbord felt the position to be generally favorable, and even when the reality began to emerge, his reaction was angrily to order the attack to be resumed. However, in bitter day-long fighting, the exhausted Marines could make little progress against the skillfully positioned German machine guns and heavy mortars. And von Kante meanwhile responded with his own series of counterattacks. By the early morning of June 9th, the Marines had once again been driven back out of Bellow Wood. But there was no thought in Harbord's mind that the action should be halted. Possession of Bellow Wood had now become a matter of symbolic importance to both sides, which far outweighed its actual military value. Before launching yet another infantry assault on the stubborn German defenses, Harbord tried the effects of a sustained artillery barrage. Throughout June 9th, Bellow Wood was subjected to the fire of 200 guns. But this served only to make the going even more difficult for the attackers. The debris of fallen trees made the already tangled undergrowth still harder to penetrate. The battle for Bellow Wood continued for more than two weeks. Gradually, displaying customary American flair for improvisation, tactics changed. Instead of the close-packed ranks of attackers seen in the earlier assaults, the Wood was infiltrated by smaller squads of troops, armed with grenades, bayonets, and even cudgels. Conditions were primitive. Until their survivors were withdrawn for rest and recuperation, units were frequently denied even the basic necessities. One survivor remembered, food was not a problem. There just wasn't any during our first week in the Wood. As well as the constant threat from German machine gunners and snipers, the continual danger of gas attacks forced the troops to either wear their stiflingly uncomfortable gas masks or risk the terrible consequences. And to add to their miseries and dangers, there were frequent German artillery barrages as well. On the night of the 12th and 13th of June, for example, the enemy guns fired no less than 5,000 shells at the Marine positions in Bellow Wood. Totally exhausted, the Marines were pulled out two days later and replaced by Army units. Yet fittingly, it was to be the 5th Marines who on June 26th mounted the final attack to clear the last German strong points in the northern edge of the Wood. From first to last, the battle for Bellow Wood had cost the 4th U.S. Marine Brigade 5,711 casualties, including almost half of its officers and almost half of its original strength. German losses may have been even heavier. But at last, Harbord was able to report Bellow Wood, now U.S. Marine Corps entirely. And the United States press could, and did, rejoice. Officially, possibly reflecting General Pershing's attitude towards the Marines, the significance of Bellow Wood tended to be played down. Most highly prized, however, was an official order of the day issued by the French General Degout, decreeing that Bellow Wood would henceforward be known in orders as the Wood of the Marines. Militarily, Bellow Wood wasn't any more significant than any number of similar divisional level actions fought all through the First World War. But it was a first American victory, admittedly on a small scale, but it was the start of things to come. It was the first great media battle for the United States in World War I. The press corps followed it very closely, much to Pershing's disgust, we might add, because he just saw it as further unmerited publicity for the Marines. But it did have wider significance than this. It was the first major test in combat of the American army. The Germans thought it would be no match for their veterans, but in fact the opposite had proved to be the case. The Americans had not only coped with everything the Germans had thrown at them, but had given as good as they got and better. After that would come America's involvement with NATO, the Gulf War, and her position in the world as one of the great superpowers. Much hard fighting still lay ahead, but the Allies were at last learning to deal with the German tactics. Both time and resources were running out for Germany. The initiative was passing to the Allies, and it was now their turn to take the offensive. Progress was steady, and as the days went by, more and more Allied troops went over to the attack. On August 8th, near Amiens, it was the turn of the British. There was a rapid breakthrough, and for the first time in the war, entire German units surrendered without a fight. To the robotic German Ludendorff, the news was devastating. 8th August was the black day of the German army. Our war machine was no longer efficient. Throughout August and September, the pace of the Allied advance quickened. An increasingly important part was played by the ever-increasing numbers of American troops. Pershing formed the First Army in August, and in September, his vision of an independently operating American command came to fruition when the First Army launched its offensive against the Saint-Michel salient. In the largest American military operation since the Civil War, and incorporating some of the lessons learned at Belleau Wood, the U.S. First Army cleared the salient in four days of fighting, taking 15,000 prisoners and 250 guns. These operations involved United States troops in some of the bitterest fighting they experienced in the whole war. But progress, though slow and sometimes costly, was steady. By early November, the American forces were poised to drive into Belgium. It's arguable what the result of the First World War would have been without American intervention. It's quite probable that the U-boat campaign would have brought Britain to her knees by the end of 1917 in any case, and even if she'd somehow succeeded in holding out, it's difficult to see how the Allies would have withstood the great German offensive of the following year. The only thing which made this possible was the influx of American troops, and even more so the consequent rise in Allied morale. But we have to remember that even at the end of 1918, there were not all that many American troops actually engaged in combat. What was much more significant was their potential. The new campaigning season of the following year would see massive American forces in place, and the Allies were planning huge offensives which would surely have brought Germany to her knees anyway. Ludendorff and the German high command knew this. They knew really that having lost their gamble in 1918, they had no option but to make peace. The defeat of the German offensives by the middle of 1918 meant that Germany had lost its chance to win the war. Bellow wood was an important stage in the defeat of the German offensives, and it brought home the fact that America was now beginning to play a real part in winning the war for the Allies. By now, German ability to resist was almost at an end. At home, revolution was spreading through the cities. The Kaiser was forced to abdicate on November 9th, and the German Republic was proclaimed. Ludendorff, broken by defeat, had already resigned when, on November 11th, the German delegation signed the armistice at Compagnie. The war to end wars was over, and the United States had come of age as a world-class military power. But amidst the rejoicing, General Blackjack Pershing voiced an uncannily prophetic warning. They never knew in Berlin that they were beaten. We'll have to do it all over again.