The Germans issued the following announcement to their troops opposing the Americans:
Should the Americans at our front even temporarily gain the upper hand, it would have a most unfavorable effect for us as regards the morale of the Allies and the duration of the war. In the fighting that now confronts us, we are not concerned about the occupation or non--occupation of this or that unimportant wood or village; but rather with the question as to whether Anglo-American propaganda, that the American Army is equal to or even superior to the Germans, will be successful.
Unnumbered order by the German 28th Division, dated 8 June 1918.
At the beginning of June 1918, the 5th and 6th regiments of the U. S. Marine Corps-which, with the 9th and 23rd Infantry regiments, made up the U. S. Army's 2nd Division-were ready to embark on their first combat operation on European soil. Their principal objective was the German-held Bois de Belleau-Belleau Wood. Before that attack could be launched, however, two key positions had to be secured-Hill 142 to the left of the Marine line, and the town of Bouresches on the right. In the early dawn hours of June 6, the Marines moved out to take the first of these two objectives.
The 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, commanded by Major Julius S. Turrill, was supposed to hit Hill 142 together with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, under Major Benjamin S. Berry. Because of command difficulties and inadequate time to organize the attack, only two Marine companies would be on the mark and ready to go at H-hour-Lieutenant Orlando C. Crowther's 67th Company and Captain George W. Hamilton's 49th Company, each company made up of approximately 250 Marines. Both units were spread out along an 800-yard front facing the Germans on Hill 142, a low, pine-covered hill between the Marine lines and the village of Torcy. To reach it, they would have to cross open wheat fields and meadows, little copses and shallow ravines, all of which were strongly held by the enemy. On the hill itself, the German infantry fanned out around a series of machine-gun nests sprinkled throughout the wooded areas and behind wood piles.
First Lieutenant Crowther's 67th Company would attack along the western ravine and to the lower slopes east of Hill 142. Hamilton's 49th Company would attack along the crest and on the right flank of the hill on a nearly due-north bearing.
As June 6th dawned, tendrils of mist drifted here and there along the ground; it promised to be a clear, hot day. As the Allied artillery barrage began to concentrate solely on the hill, the German commanders passed the word to their foremost gunners to be on the alert. The Allied artillery barrage of the previous night had already alerted them to the possibility of an attack.
Crowther's and Hamilton's Marines deployed in front of the wood, the platoons of each company ready to move out in four attacking waves, as they had been taught to do. The men had stripped to their 20-pound combat packs and were festooned with hand grenades, bandoliers of extra rifle ammunition and gas masks. Still chilly from the damp night air, they stood ankle-deep in ground mist, rifles loaded, bayonets fixed, their eyes on the exploding terrain through which they soon must pass. After a brief preparatory pre-assault artillery barrage by light field artillery and machine guns, which did little more than alert the enemy, Major Turrill, although unready to do so, gave the order to attack. Nothing more could be done-time had run out.
Sector Map
Front Line Shown is Post-Capture of Belleau WoodAt 3:45 a.m., just as the red-ball of the sun was rising, the whistles of the company commanders cut through the din of exploding shells to start the first waves forward across the wheat field. Nervous young platoon commanders, their swagger sticks pointing forward to into the unknown, shouted, "Follow me!" The whole line of the gallant but green 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines, on the extreme left of the 2nd Division, leaped to the attack.
The forces opposing the Marines included two of the most highly trained units in the Imperial German Army-the 28th Brandenburger Regiment, better known as the Kaiser's Own, and the 362nd Regiment. "By the white piping on their uniforms, they were Prussians," wrote Captain John W. Thomason, Jr., a machine-gun officer in the 5th Marines, "and by the ugly, confident look of them, with a touch of Berlin swank, they were Prussians of a very good division; and there were no better soldiers in the world."
With unconscious irony, Thomason described the American advance: "It was a beautiful deployment, lines all dressed and guiding true. Such matters were of deep concern to this outfit."
It may have been a beautiful deployment, but it was also a deadly one. The concept of advance in four waves had been developed by the French and Germans for use in trench warfare, where only a short distance separated the opposing front lines. Employing the same insane arithmetic that resulted in millions of deaths, they figured to lose the first three waves and gain the objective with the fourth. The costliness of that method of attack was soon brought home to the Marines, and they never used it again. "It was," remarked Captain Thomason, "unadapted for open warfare."
Bayonets fixed, the lines of skirmishers plowed through the fields of wheat and poppies. A delayed German offensive barrage added its smoke and dust to the early morning mist clinging along the slopes. Then the Maxim heavy machine guns spaced along the edge of the wood cut loose, killing some Marines, wounding others, and sending the rest prone, seeking concealment in the wheat. "We hadn't gone fifty yards," Hamilton wrote in a letter, "when they cut loose at us from the woods ahead-more machine guns than I had ever heard before."
The platoon leaders yelled, "Battle sight! Fire at will!" Even the veteran Marines, however, hit the ground and stayed there-previous combat in Mexico, Haiti and Nicaragua had not prepared them for anything like this. The German Maxims, firing at their full 500 rounds per minute, filled the air with flying metal, and they were aimed so low that some of the Marines hugging the ground-the lucky ones-had their combat packs torn to shreds on their backs. German snipers, perched in the trees, began to pick off the Americans, and the wounded started crying out for stretcher-bearers and first-aid men.
It seemed to Major Turrill, who was directing the action from his post of command in the jump off trench, that his entire force would be annihilated in the field. And indeed, but for one man, the attack might well have been stopped in its tracks.
Captain George W. Hamilton was a young man, exceptionally well built, at outstanding athlete. His battalion adjutant remembered him as "well qualified professionally, sound, brave, a fine leader respected by his men, his contemporaries and his seniors."
After enduring several minutes of punishment from the German gunners, Hamilton pulled half a dozen men to their feet and led them on a wild rush on the small woods. The rest of the company soon followed. Hamilton urged his men through the woods and into another wheat field, where they again came under heavy fire until they reached the next little woods.
Then, suddenly, they could see grey-clad forms in coal-scuttle helmets bent over clattering machine guns, and the Marines burst forward with that last deadly impulse known in the training schools as "the will to use the steel." They fell upon the entrenched Germans with bayonets fixed, then pushed on over the top of Hill 142 and its flanking slope. The German defensive line on Hill 142 fell apart.
In a letter to a friend, Hamilton modestly described the attack: "I realized that we were up against something unusual and I had to run along the whole line and get each man (almost individually) on his feet to rush that wood. Once inside, things went better, but from here on I don't remember clearly what happened…."
Captain Hamilton |
What happened was that the Marines, or at least those who made it to the wood, ran forward, thinking only of thrusting their bayonets through whatever enemy body came in their way. A few Germans threw up their hands and screamed, "Kamarad!" in time to miss death. Most were less fortunate.
"I have a vague recollection of urging the whole line on, " Hamilton said in his letter, "faster perhaps than they should have gone, of grouping prisoners and sending them to the rear under one man instead of several, of snatching the Iron Cross ribbon off the first officer I got, and of shooting wildly at several rapidly retreating Boche. (I carried a rifle on the whole trip and used it to good advantage.) Farther on, we came to an open field-a wheat field full of red poppies-and here we caught hell. Again it was a case of rushing across the open and getting into the woods. Afterwards, we found out why it was they made it so hot for us. Three machine gun companies were holding down these woods, and the infantry were farther back. Beside several of the heavy Maxims we later found several empty belts and a dead gunner sitting on a seat or lying nearby. It was only because we rushed the positions that we were able to take them, as there were too many guns to take in any other way."
"After going through this second wood we were really at our objective," Hamilton continued, "but I was looking for an unimproved road which showed up on the map. We now had the Germans pretty much on the run except for a few machine-gun nests. I was anxious to get to that road, so pushed forward with the men I had with me-one platoon. (I knew the rest were coming but thought they were closer.). We went right down over the nose of a hill and on across an open field between two hills. What saved me from getting hit I don't know-the Maxims on both sides cut at us unmercifully-but although I lost heavily here I came out unscratched. I was pushing ahead with an automatic rifle team and didn't notice that most of the platoon had swerved off to the left to rout out the machine guns. All I knew was that there was a road ahead and that the bank gave good protection to the front…."
The platoon that swerved off to the left was under Lieutenant Jonas Platt, who had joined the company just the day before. He led his men to Hill 142, knocking out several machine guns on the way, then took command of another platoon whose leader had been killed by machine-gun fire. Platt was badly wounded in the leg a short while later, but he refused to be evacuated. Instead, he dragged himself along the ground, giving the necessary orders and encouraging his men. For these actions he was awarded the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross.
Reenactment of German Defense at Hill 142
Great War Association-Geo. Gaadt
Another lieutenant in Hamilton's company and a Marine with a Chauchat automatic rifle found themselves pinned down behind a pile of cordwood by a Maxim team emplaced behind another woodpile about 35 yards away. The Chauchat rifleman rose to fire a burst at the Germans, but only got off one round before slumping to his knees, shot in the head. The lieutenant took the Chauchat from his dying gunner, waited a moment, then leaped up and emptied its magazine, killing the three Germans at the machine gun.
A Marine private, the only survivor of his squad, worked his way around and behind an enemy machine gun, picked off the gunner, then charged with fixed bayonet and captured the other two men and an officer.
Hamilton, having advanced some 600 yards beyond his objective, decided to turn back. He was catching fire from three sides, and 90 percent of his officers and noncommissioned officers were casualties. Hamilton's letter continued: "I realized that I had gone too far-that the nose of the hill I had come over was our objective, and that it was up to me to get back, reorganize, and dig in. It was a case of every man for himself. I crawled through a drainage ditch filled with cold water and shiny reeds. Machine-gun bullets were just grazing my back and our own artillery was dropping close (I was six hundred yards too far to the front). Finally I got back, and started getting the two companies together, and I sent out parties to the right and left to try and hook up with French and American friends…."
Some 25 of Hamilton's men went even farther beyond the objective than he did. A French reconnaissance pilot reported them fighting in Torcy, where the Germans were concentrated. Most of them died there, overwhelmed by a German battalion. Finally, three survivors remained-a corporal and two privates, one of them wounded. The corporal sent the wounded man back to report the town taken and to ask Hamilton for reinforcements. As they approached the first house of the village, heavy enemy fire drove them into a large hole in the ground. Two Germans rushed the hole. They never emerged-nor did the Marines. Nine years later, a French farmer found the four corpses, arms and equipment undisturbed, at the bottom of the hole.
While Hamilton and his men were making their costly breakthrough, the company on his left, under Lieutenant Orlando Crowther, was also pinned down in the wheat and was being decimated by machine-gun and sniper fire in a small thicket off the flanking ravine. Crowther tried to send a squad to flank a machine gun on their left, but all eight men were killed the moment they started to move. Then a sniper bullet hit Crowther in the throat, killing him instantly. Again the Marines charged, and again few made it. A Corporal named Geer broke the Marines' temporary paralysis by leaping to his feet with a yell and charging the gun. Several other men followed him, and one of them grabbed the bullet-spitting muzzle and up-ended the Maxim on its gunner, losing his hand in the process. The man who lost his hand remembered one of his buddies laughing as he bayoneted several of the remaining German crew members. Geer, who was awarded the Navy Cross for his action, sent the prisoners to the rear under guard, then led the rest of his platoon forward.
Reorganizing the companies was not easy. In just over two hours, Hamilton had lost all five of his junior officers. On his left, only one lieutenant remained of the 67th Company's original five. The platoons, reduced in some cases to a few men led by a corporal, were dispersed and disorganized. Neither the French on the left of the 67th Company or Berry's battalion on the right had shown up. German artillery was pounding the hill. Hamilton ran from group to group, ordering a strong point established here, an outpost there. After setting up a rudimentary defensive line, he sent out runners to find and contact units that were supposedly on his flanks.
Reinforcements in the form of two support companies and a platoon of engineers, who had come up with pioneer tools to entrench the position, joined Hamilton on the north slope of Hill 142-just in time to repulse a series of five counterattacks by the Germans. Using their favorite trick of infiltration, the Germans would approach the Marine positions unobserved and then announce themselves with a shower of exploding hand grenades. The Germans tried to storm the slope while their artillery forced the Americans to keep their heads down. One of those attacks was broken up by a platoon leader in one of the support companies. The platoon leader led his men in a bayonet charge against a machine gun, captured it, and turned it against the enemy.
Several German attacks were beaten off at long range by the Marines' accurate rifle fire. There were sharpshooters among them who could hit the bull's-eye three times out of five at 700 yards-a performance that astonished the French and the British. They had, furthermore, learned to fire the bolt-action M1903 Springfield rifle as fast as a World War II GI could fire the semiautomatic M-1 Garand, by squeezing the trigger with their little finger and working the bolt with their thumb and forefinger. The Chauchat automatic rifle teams were decimated early in the battle, but the trusty Springfield saved the day.
Through the rest of the day, U. S. Marines and German infantry struggled furiously around Hill 142. At one point the Marines almost took Torcy, at another they almost lost Hill 142. Before the fighting died down, almost half of the original assault force had become casualties, and elements of other units had to join the fight to hold the position. Nevertheless, when the survivors of both sides collapsed from sheer exhaustion during the latter part of that extremely hot afternoon, the Marines were still holding Hill 142.
The Marines' attack carried forward for a gain of a kilometer and a half toward Torcy; the crest of Hill 142 had become an American observation point. It also brought the American left around until it faced the western border of Belleau Wood. The fight resulted in the loss of nine officers and 325 men for the Marines, and about the same for the Prussian fusiliers.
Battle Sketches by Participant, J.W. Thomason, USMC
The last, and most dangerous, of the German counterattacks was stopped single-handedly by Gunnery Sergeant Charles F. Hoffman of the 49th Company. Hoffman, a quiet, 40-year old career Marine, had spotted 12 Germans about 20 feet away, crawling up through the bushes, dragging five light machine guns. Captain Hamilton was momentarily helpless-a "potato-masher" grenade, landing nearby, had flung a stone against his temple and left him dazed-but he later recalled hearing a bloodcurdling yell from the right, where Hoffman was trying to organize a strongpoint.
Those five machine guns, Hoffman had realized, were more than enough firepower to sweep the Marines off the hill. Leaping to his feet with a yell that proclaimed his personal bayonet assault, he charged down the slope-alone. Before the enemy knew it, he was on them. A short bayonet thrust killed the lead German. Pulling back the dripping blade, the lithe sergeant whirled and caught the next man. Hurling into the melee and joining Hoffman, other Marines effectively dispersed the remaining Germans. The five machine guns were captured. Hoffman was badly wounded, but survived. For that swift stroke, which undoubtedly saved his company, the sergeant became the first Marine in World War I to receive his country's highest award for bravery, the Medal of Honor. Hoffman, in fact, received both the Army's Medal of Honor-the first awarded to a member of the 2nd Division-and the Navy's Medal of Honor under the name of Ernest August Janson. Hoffman had originally enlisted under the name of Janson in order to avoid the stigma then attached to men of German parentage and name, but after being awarded the Medal of Honor, he reclaimed his birthright; now, there could no longer be the slightest doubt that he was a "good American."
In between attacks, Red Cross aid men on both sides tended to the wounded, who were now lying parched and pain-wracked beneath the blazing sun. The Red Cross men worked openly at first, but late in the afternoon something happened that put an end to the benevolent mutual courtesy. Several Marines were watching a German first-aid team carry a stretcher back to their lines. The stretcher was covered with a blanket and, at that distance, it looked as though a man were lying on it with his knees drawn up. "He's been gut-shot-the poor bastard," one of the Marines commented. Just then a gust of wind flapped back one edge of the blanket, and the Marines could see the "poor bastard"-a heavy Maxim gun with several boxes of ammunition. "Thereafter," wrote Captain Thomason, "it was hard on Red Cross men and wounded: hard, in fact, on everybody. Like reasonable people, the Americans were willing to learn from the Boche…; and if the Boche played the game that way-they would meet him at it."
A few days later, a Marine took an unmailed letter from the body of a German corporal. The letter was addressed to the corporal's father, and in it he said: "The Americans are savages. They kill everything that moves."
Hamilton and Crowther's companies captured their objective, but at a heavy cost-90 percent of the officers and 50 percent of the enlisted men were killed or wounded. Now that their left flank was secured, the Marines turned their attention to their second objective, Boureshes on the right flank. Bouresches, a village of about 1,000 souls and many solidly built stone houses, sat just off the southeastern end of Belleau Wood.
The Marines knew nothing about Bouresches, except that they had to take it from the German 10th Division, a first-class combat unit. The Germans knew that the village was an important tactical point, and they used it to filter their troops into Belleau Wood.
At 5 p.m., with a good three hours of daylight left, Berry's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, and Major Berton W. Sibley's 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, went over the top and advanced on Belleau Wood and Bouresches-and into a hailstorm of German bullets. As is the case with most battles, this one did not go according to the plan. The Marine assault on the west face of Belleau Wood ended in dismal failure, replete with horrendous casualties. Sibley had all he could handle in the wood, so the original brigade order was then modified for the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, to take Bouresches and the village railroad station. Due to failure of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines flank companies to advance into Belleau Wood, the right flank companies could not advance farther, and the second phase of the attack had to be cancelled. Thus, the original brigade order was modified for the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, rather than the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, to take Bouresches and the village railroad station.
The task of taking Bouresches was assigned to Major Thomas Holcomb's 96th Company at the southern end of the Marine attack. They attacked from the vicinity of Triangle Farm to the south of Bouresches, using the ravine that leads into the village to excellent advantage. Thus, Captain Donald Duncan's 96th Company led this attack.
Accompanying Duncan's 96th Company was a U. S. Navy dentist, Lt.j.g. Weedon Osborne, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for assisting the wounded in the attack. Both Osborne and Captain Duncan were killed by an artillery shell as Osborne helped the wounded Duncan to safety. After the war, a street in Bouresches was named rue Weedon Osborne.
The men, moving ahead, could see the red-roofed houses of the town about 500 yards away, just beyond a shallow, grassy valley. Bouresches had been subjected to a severe pre-attack artillery bombardment, which was believed to have driven the Germans out of town. That supposition proved to be unfounded, as the Marines came under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire.
While standing upright and observing his men making their attack on Bouresches, Colonel Albertus W. Catlin, Commanding officer of the 6th Marines was shot through the chest by a German sniper. Catlin was fortunate enough to survive his wound.
Two platoons-one of them commanded by Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, the other under Lieutenant James B. Robertson-headed straight for Bouresches. Robertson's men made faster progress through the valley, though they took heavy casualties from the German barrage. With 22 men still on their feet (out of the more than 100 who had entered the valley with him), Robertson plunged into the village. By then in the mood for revenge, the little band of Marines proceeded to wage a severe house-to-house fight to establish a foothold in Bouresches.
Behind every ruined wall, in the cellars, behind barricades, at blind corners, behind piles of debris, in the second stories and on the roofs of houses, the Germans had planted machine guns and riflemen. Robertson's Marines were outnumbered when they started, and one by one, more of them were put out of the fight. But the survivors kept on going, taking gun after gun, until the Germans-for all their numbers and advantage of position-became unnerved and began to fall back. Accurate rifle and pistol shooting and a willing resort to the bayonet finally cleared the village, except for the railroad station.
Gunnery Sgt. Hoffman
Medal of Honor Recipient |
After the initial capture of the village, the Marines were isolated and low on supplies and ammunition. 2nd Lieutenant William Moore and Sgt. Major John Quick volunteered to make a dash between Lucy-le-Bocage and Bouresches in a truck. Moore, Quick, and ten other volunteers loaded the truck with ammunition, and-with the volunteers in the back-they drove it down the open road between the two villages, swept by machine gun and artillery fire. The re-supply mission was successful.
Robertson asked for and got reinforcements to help him hold Bouresches. It had been a tough objective to seize and was found to be even harder to hold. The bitter fight for possession of Bouresches would go on for weeks, with the Germans and Americans positioned right next to each other on the eastern end of the village. Movement was impossible by day, as the Germans, whose observation points had a clear view of the village from the surrounding hills, bombarded it with gas shells and large-caliber mortars in an effort to dislodge the Americans from the town cellars. The Marines almost lost the town several times, but managed to hold on until they were finally relieved by Army units of the 2nd Division on June 13.
The magnificent fights by the U. S. Marines to take Hill 142 and Bouresches achieved little in terms of real estate, but they proved to be of much greater value from the standpoint of American morale. In their first major engagement of World War I, the Marines had prevailed against some of the most combat-seasoned troops in the German Army. The price they had paid, however, was only a prelude to the horrific struggle still to come. Now that the flanks of Belleau Wood were secured, the fight to clear the wood itself could proceed.
Author's notes:
Captain Thomason states in his book, Fix Bayonets, that the two German regiments on Hill 142 were the 28th Brandenburger and the 362nd. On page 95 of his unpublished manuscript entitled, The United States Second Division Northwest of Château-Thierry. . ., author Thomason says that the 3rd Battalion, 460th Regiment was on the west side of the 'hill,' and the 2nd Battalion, 460th Infantry Regiment was on the east side. Inasmuch as Fix Bayonets is a work of fiction and the U.S. Second Division...a work of non-fiction and the supposed 'official' history of the Belleau Wood campaign, this latter work is assumed to be the more accurate source for the German unit designations and placement on June 6, 1918.
Tactically speaking, the somewhat misleading name "Hill 142" was solely an American military designation for an almost indistinguishable line of "low pine covered hills" in the battle area. It was actually the nose of a finger of land trailing down from St. Martin Wood. While "Position 142," as it is referred to in contemporary reports, offered good observation and was a sound tactical objective, it was not a commanding height, and the Marines did not have to attack uphill to take it. In fact, downhill momentum may have played a role in the overshoot of the line of advance by Captain George W. Hamilton's men, which carried some of them down a ravine and as far as Torcy.
Hill 142 was the topographical height as given on the 1918 French maps. Today, with more modern measuring methods, the same hill has a given height of 154 meters. One can use the commonly available French 1:25,000-scale maps, on which a transposition of the 1918 battle features, including Hill 142, can be made to the 1918 plan directeur (battle maps), most of which were to the same scale.
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