r
nest of machine guns. There in the jungle of matted underbrush, of
vines, of heavy foliage, they had placed themselves in positions they
believed impregnable. And this meant that unless they could be routed,
unless they could be thrown back, the breaking of the attack of June 2
would mean nothing. There would come another drive and another. The
battle of Chateau-Thierry was therefore not won and could not be won
until Belleau Wood had been cleared of the enemy.

It was June 6 that the attack of the American troops began against that
wood and its adjacent surroundings, with the wood itself and the towns
of Torcy and Bouresches forming the objectives. At 5 o'clock the
attack came, and there began the tremendous sacrifices which the Marine
Corps gladly suffered that the German fighters might be thrown back.

The marines fought strictly according to American methods--a rush, a
halt, a rush again, in four-wave formation, the rear waves taking over
the work of those who had fallen before them, passing over the bodies
of their dead comrades and plunging ahead, until they, too, should be
torn to bits. But behind those waves were more waves and the attack
went on.

"Men fell like flies"; the expression is that of an officer writing
from the field. Companies that had entered the battle 250 strong
dwindled to fifty and sixty, with a sergeant in command; but the attack
did not falter. At 9:45 o'clock that night Bouresches was taken by
Lieutenant James F. Robertson and twenty odd men of his platoon; these
soon were joined by two reenforcing platoons. Then came the enemy
counter-attacks, but the marines held.

In Belleau Wood the fighting had been literally from trees to tree,
stronghold to stronghold; and it was a fight which must last for weeks
before its accomplishment in victory. Belleau Wood was a jungle, its
every rocky formation forming a German machine-gun nest, almost
impossible to reach by artillery or grenade fire. There was only one
way to wipe out these nests--by the bayonet. And by this method they
were wiped out, for United States marines, bare chested, shouted their
battle cry of "E-e-e-e-e y-a-a-h-h-h-yip!" charged straight into the
murderous fire from those guns, and won!

Out of the number that charged, in more than one instance, only one
would reach the stronghold. There, with his bayonet as his only
weapon, he would either kill or capture the defenders of the nest, and
then swinging the gun a