You might know something about what happened in the year of 1918 with the American Marines. The United States brought the Marine Corps to the front for an elite fighting force as well as a demonstration on how terrifying American military firepower was, and they made sure that all nations could view it.
What they’re up against
A few minutes before 5:00 PM, on June 6, 1918, three companies of Marines were led by Major Benjamin S. Berry, approached Belleau Woods with lines of American Marines with fixed bayonets. Their quest was to stay in a hunting preserve with dense cover, huge rocks, and trees. It made a great cover so the Germans machine guns and their gray colored known as the “world’s finest” crack troops also known as “Stormtroopers” would have an incredibly hard time shooting them.
The Attack
The attack started at 5:00 PM. Forty-four year old First Sgt Dan Daly, recipient of two Medals of Honor, crouched with his men of the 73rd Machine Gun Company in a wooded grove at the edge of the wheat field. As the bullets snapped and ripped the bark of the trees, shots hit close to three feet from the ground right over their heads. A Gunnery Sgt commanded the platoon for the the lieutenant who was shot and was out of the fight. As the minute before the advance arrived, he arose from the trees. He jumped out onto the exposed edge of the field. That was the field where the Sgt. and his men were about to charge across. He turned to give the charge orders to the men of his platoon, the men he loved. He said “come on men, do you want to live forever!” The first lines of men were slaughtered and most of the other marines were pinned to the ground and if they got up they would be shot.
Casualties
After dark, everyone who survived, crawled back to safety which was their original starting line. Major Berry was injured severely in the left arm and with correspondent Floyd Gibbons trying to help the Major take out three bullets from his arm. Gibbons was sent to Paris, a dispatch reporting that the Marines were entering combat. The censor, hearing that the reporter was wounded and was killed in combat, passed the story unchanged. The censor going against the rules to identify units in combat, the censor’s sentimentality allowed the world to know that the Marine Corps was in combat at Belleau Wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Dog
