INTO

THE FIGHT

APRIL–JUNE 1918

THE U.S. ARMY 

CAMPAIGNS OF WORLD WAR I

•••

•••
CMH Pub 77–4

Cover: Members of the 7th Machine Gun Battalion, 3d Division, 

guarding the Marne River at Château-Thierry.

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••

THE U.S. ARMY CAMPAIGNS OF WORLD WAR I 

COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

Series Editor: Brian F. Neumann

The U.S. Army in the World War I Era

The Mexican Expedition, 1916–1917

Joining the Great War, April 1917–April 1918

Into the Fight, April–June 1918

The Marne, July–August 1918

Supporting Allied Offensives, August–November 1918

St. Mihiel, 12–15 September 1918

Meuse-Argonne, 26 September–11 November 1918

Occupation and Demobilization

The Russian Expeditions, 1918–1920
•••

INTO THE FIGHT

APRIL–JUNE 1918

by

Mark E. Grotelueschen

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2018

•••• 5 ••••

•••

INTRODUCTION

A century ago, the great powers of Europe became engulfed 

in what was then called the Great War. It signaled a new age in 

armed conflict in which mass armies supported by industrial mass 

production brought an unprecedented level of killing power to the 

battlefield. By the time the United States entered the war in 1917, 

the combatants were waging war on a scale never before seen 

in history. The experience defined a generation and cast a long 

shadow across the twentieth century. In addition to a tremendous 

loss of life, the war shattered Europe, bringing revolution, the 

collapse of long-standing empires, and economic turmoil, as 

well as the birth of new nation-states and the rise of totalitarian 

movements.

The modern U.S. Army, capable of conducting industrialized 

warfare on a global scale, can trace its roots to the World War. 

Although the war’s outbreak in August 1914 shocked most 

Americans, they preferred to keep the conflict at arm’s length. 

The United States declared its neutrality and invested in coastal 

defenses and the Navy to guard its shores. The U.S. Army, 

meanwhile, remained small, with a regiment as its largest standing 

formation. Primarily a constabulary force, it focused on policing 

America’s new territorial possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific 

as it continued to adapt to Secretary of War Elihu Root’s reforms 

in the years following the War with Spain. It was not until June 

1916 that Congress authorized an expansion of the Army, dual 

state-federal status for the National Guard, and the creation of a 

reserve officer training corps.

In early 1917, relations between the United States and Germany 

rapidly deteriorated. The kaiser’s policy of unrestricted submarine 

warfare threatened American lives and commerce, and German 

meddling in Mexican affairs convinced most Americans that Berlin 

posed a danger to the nation. In April 1917, the president, out of 

diplomatic options, asked Congress to declare war on Germany. 

But the U.S. Army, numbering only 133,000 men, was far from 

ready. The president ordered nearly 400,000 National Guardsmen 

into federal service, and more than twenty-four million men 

eventually registered for the Selective Service, America’s first 
•••• 6 ••••

conscription since the Civil War. By the end of 1918, the Army had 

grown to four million men and had trained 200,000 new officers 

to lead them. As it expanded to address wartime needs, the Army 

developed a new combined-arms formation—the square division. 

Divisions fell under corps, and corps made up field armies. The 

Army also created supporting elements such as the Air Service, the 

Tank Corps, and the Chemical Warfare Service. The war signaled 

the potential of the United States as not only a global economic 

power, but also a military one.

In June 1917, the 1st Division deployed to France, arriving 

in time to parade through Paris on the Fourth of July. The first 

National Guard division, the 26th Division from New England, 

deployed in September. By war’s end, the American Expeditionary 

Forces, as the nation’s forces in Europe were called, had grown 

to two million soldiers and more than forty divisions. During 

1918, these American “doughboys” learned to fight in battles of 

steadily increasing scale: Cantigny, the Marne, Aisne-Marne, St. 

Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne, adding thirteen campaign streamers 

to the Army flag. Overall, in roughly six months of combat, the 

American Expeditionary Forces suffered more than 255,000 

casualties, including 52,997 battle deaths (as well as more than 

50,000 nonbattle deaths, most due to the influenza pandemic). 

The war that the United States entered to “make the world safe 

for democracy” ended with an armistice on 11 November 1918, 

followed by a controversial peace. American soldiers served in 

the Occupation of the Rhineland until 1923, before withdrawing 

from Europe altogether. 

The United States will never forget the American soldiers 

who fought and died in the World War. America’s first unknown 

soldier was laid to rest on 11 November 1921 in the Tomb of the 

Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, where soldiers 

still stand guard. The United States created permanent American 

military cemeteries in France, Belgium, and Britain to bury the 

fallen. To this day, memorials to their sacrifice can be found across 

America, and the date of the armistice has become a national 

holiday honoring all those who serve in defense of the nation. 

The last surviving U.S. Army veteran of the war died in 2011. It is 

to all the doughboys, those who returned and those who did not, 

that the U.S. Army Center of Military History dedicates these 

commemorative pamphlets.

JON T. HOFFMAN

Chief Historian
•••• 7 ••••

•••

INTO THE FIGHT

APRIL–JUNE 1918

April 1918 marked the first anniversary of the United States 

openly aligning as an “Associated Power” with the Entente or 

Allied nations of France, the British Empire, Italy, and other 

smaller powers in their efforts to defeat the Central Powers of 

Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. 

Even though the United States had made extraordinary efforts 

to mobilize its military forces, its industry, and its entire 

society to join the fight, after a full year it had sent only 329,005 

troops to Europe, put only one combat division into frontline 

trenches in a “quiet” sector, and had yet to engage in a single 

significant battle. But over the next few months, all that would 

change dramatically.

This commemorative pamphlet focuses on the activities 

of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in the crucial 

months of April, May, and June 1918. At the start of this period, 

the Germans hoped to use their numerical superiority on 

the Western Front to smash a hole through the Allied lines 

and force their opponents to come to terms before American 

forces could fully enter the war. The Germans conducted 

three massive offensives between April and June, but failed to 

achieve any strategic advantage. Although French and British 

veterans provided most of the resistance to these German 

attacks, the AEF soon would play a significant role on the 

Western Front by racing its fresh divisions forward, helping 

to stop the German advances, and finally launching attacks 

of its own. By the beginning of July, after brutal fighting 

at Cantigny, Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Vaux, the 

bloodied American units had proved that even though they 

were inexperienced, they were willing to fight hard and learn 

fast. Those characteristics, in conjunction with the flood of 

American reinforcements arriving in France by the thousands 

each day, suggested that the tide was beginning to turn against 

the Central Powers. The Americans were not only in the war; 

they were joining the fight.
•••• 8 ••••

Strategic Setting

When Germany resumed its campaign of unrestricted 

submarine warfare in February 1917, its leaders understood 

that doing so would most likely draw the United States into the 

war. However, the Germans believed that they could knock the 

British out of the war and effectively end the conflict before the 

Americans arrived in force, and were willing to bet everything on 

their ability to do so. The German U-boat campaign sank nearly 

six million tons of shipping that year, and led to the American 

declaration of war on 6 April, but the British managed to hang 

on. Although British tenacity was a disappointment to German 

leaders, the remainder of 1917 was a disaster for the Allies. In 

April 1917, the French Army, by far the largest Allied force on the 

Western Front, launched the ill-conceived Nivelle Offensive. This 

operation, which continued long past any realistic hope of success, 

resulted in wide-ranging “acts of collective indiscipline” among 

the French forces that at times approached the level of mutiny. 

General Henri Philippe Pétain, who took over command of the 

French Army after the failed offensive, famously visited nearly 

every division in his army, promising to “wait for the tanks and 

the Americans” before ordering any more major offensives. As the 

French restored order to their ranks, the British Expeditionary 

Force (BEF) suffered horribly in the hundred-day-long Third Battle 

of Ypres (better known as the Passchendaele Offensive) from 

July to November, losing over 300,000 men to advance the lines 

just eight kilometers. On the southern front, the Italians suffered 

a crushing defeat at Caporetto beginning in late October—more 

formally known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo—where they 

were thrown back some seventy kilometers, suffering over 300,000 

men killed, wounded, or captured while losing over 3,000 artillery 

pieces. Finally, in the east, the Bolshevik Revolution in November 

1917 and the subsequent Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 1918 led to 

the departure of the Russians from the war. This final calamity, the 

capitulation of the Eastern Front, meant that Germany could shift 

its forces from the east to wage an all-out campaign in the west. 

Observing the Allies’ deteriorating position, Pétain confessed to 

French president Raymond Poincaré in the early spring of 1918: 

“There is only one remedy; rapid arrival of the Americans and [the] 

amalgamation” of them into the Allied armies. It was doubtful that 

the United States would accept this policy, but the Allies clearly 

were awaiting American reinforcements.
•••• 9 ••••

Unfortunately for the Allies, March and April 1918 only brought 

more troubles. During those months, they experienced the most 

dangerous events of the conflict since the Battle of the Marne 

in the summer of 1914. In a bid to win the war before American 

military forces could change the balance of power on the Western 

Front, General Erich Ludendorff, the de facto head of the German 

Army, initiated two enormous German offensives that drove back 

the Allies—especially the BEF—and greatly depleted their forces. 

Ludendorff launched his first spring offensive, Operation Michael, 

near St. Quentin in mid-March. It failed to end the war, but the 

Germans took over 3,000 square kilometers of territory, gaining in 

about two weeks more land than all Allied attacks on the Western 

Front had taken since the beginning of the war. In the process, the 

Allies lost another 250,000 men and more than a thousand guns. In 

response to the crisis, General Pétain sent out an emergency order: 

The enemy has hurled himself upon us in a supreme effort. He 

hopes to separate us from the English so as to open the way to 

Paris. Cost what it may he must be stopped. Hold your ground! 

Stand firm! Our (American) comrades are arriving. All together 

you will throw yourselves upon the invader. The battle is on. 

Soldiers of the Marne, of the Yser and of Verdun, I call upon you. 

The fate of France hangs in the balance.

The Allies eventually stopped the German attack, but at 

tremendous cost. (See Map 1.)

On 9 April, the German high command launched a second 

offensive: Operation Georgette. The attack hit the British near 

Ypres. Initially, it proved so successful that a shocked Field 

Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the BEF commander, issued his famous 

“Backs Against the Wall” order, demanding that “every position 

must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement.” British 

troops rose to the occasion, and they even received support from 

the few American units working and training with British forces 

in the region. About 500 troops from the 30th Engineers (later 1st 

Gas Regiment), the 28th Pursuit Squadron, and the 16th Engineers 

participated in the defense in various ways. Their contributions 

were varied, and included assisting with long-range bombing and 

reconnaissance missions, moving essential materials, and building 

miles of railway. Again, the German offensive bogged down before 

reaching the Channel coast, but the Allies had lost another 112,000 

men, as well as all of the ground they had gained during the costly 
•••• 10 ••••

Passchendaele Offensive in the second half of 1917 and much that 

they had held since 1914. This was the strategic and operational 

environment that the AEF entered when its troops actively joined 

the fight in April, May, and June 1918.

Almost the only sliver of good news for the Allies was the 

increasing number of fresh but totally inexperienced Americans 

who were arriving in Europe to fight. But even here, many Allies 

were disappointed with the pace of the American arrivals and the 

speed with which American men and units reached the Western 

Front. By the end of 1917—nine months after America’s declaration 

of war—only four partially trained combat divisions, and a grand 

total of 183,000 American soldiers, were in Europe. These numbers 

grew sluggishly into the early months of 1918. In December 1917, 

54,000 Americans arrived in Europe; but in January 1918 only 

41,000 men reached France; and in February—the month before 

the first German offensive—American arrivals dropped to just 

30,000 men. From the perspective of an exasperated General John 

J. Pershing, the commander in chief of the slowly growing AEF, 

The Alert. Sketch by Capt. Wallace Morgan

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 11 ••••

the rate of arrivals was going the wrong direction—and his Allied 

colleagues shared this view. On 1 April, the Germans possessed a 

numerical superiority of over 300,000 infantrymen on the Western 

Front, an advantage of roughly 26 percent over the Allied forces. 

Although the numbers of American arrivals would increase in 

March and accelerate dramatically in May and June to more than 

200,000 men per month, the fact remained that in mid-April, a full 

year after America had entered the war, no American division 

had entered an active combat sector on the Western Front or 

demonstrated its will and ability to shoulder its part in the defeat 

of German forces.

By the end of June, however, the strategic and operational 

situations would change dramatically. Throughout May and June 

1918, multiple American divisions entered the lines, took command 

of their own sectors of the front, released more experienced Allied 

divisions to fight in active sectors, helped resist German attacks, 

and increasingly engaged in their own offensive operations against 

a much more experienced enemy force. As American soldiers 

entered France by the hundreds of thousands, the AEF had 

demonstrated that it was willing and able not only to fight, but 

also to defeat the German Army in intense warfare.

The crisis brought on by Germany’s first and second offensives 

that spring forced many significant changes in Allied policy and 

AEF activity. The fear that the French and British armies might be 

split apart, physically and emotionally, and the need to ensure better 

cooperation going forward finally convinced the Allied political 

and military leadership to appoint General Ferdinand Foch, the 

current chief of the French General Staff, to serve as an Allied 

supreme commander. Initially, on 26 March, Allied leaders charged 

Foch “with the coordination of the military operations of the Allied 

armies on the western front.” Within two weeks, he received “all 

powers necessary” to determine and direct “the strategic direction 

of military operations” throughout that critical theater.

As the French, British, and American commanders in chief, 

Pétain, Haig, and Pershing all retained “full control of the tactical 

employment of their forces” as well as “the right of appeal” to their 

home governments, if required. Pershing, who proudly insisted 

that he was an early advocate of improved unity of command, 

showed his full support for this change by meeting individually 

with Foch during the dark days of his initial appointment in late 

March, when the first German offensive was still raging. After 

securing a private audience with the new generalissimo of all 
77

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in Brest

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Antwerp

Passchendaele

Lille

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Amiens

Abbeville

Cantigny Montdidier

Noyon

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Reims

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NETHERLANDS

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LUXEMBOURG

20 March–12 June 1918

WESTERN FRONT

Front Line, 20 Mar 

U.S. Division Locations as of 14 May

German Operation MICHAEL, 21 Mar–5 Apr 1918

German Operation GEORGETTE, 7–29 Apr 1918

German Operation BLÜCHER-YORCK, 27 May–6 Jun 1918

German Operation GNEISENAU, 9–12 Jun 1918

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ELEVATION IN METERS
•••• 14 ••••

Allied armies, Pershing gave Foch the same assurance he had 

given to Pétain:

At this moment there are no other questions but of fighting. 

Infantry, artillery, aviation, all that we have are yours; use them 

as you wish. More will come, in numbers equal to requirements. 

I have come especially to tell you that the American people will 

be proud to take part in the greatest battle of history.

The AEF’s size, state of training, and equipment at that point 

in time made the offer more important in theory than in reality, 

at least in the short term and with respect to its effect on the first 

two German offensives. However, it did signal a crucial change in 

Pershing’s initial plan to methodically build up and train a massive 

American force composed of its own divisions, army corps, and 

field armies; supported by its own logistical organization; engaged 

on its own broad sector of the front; and led entirely by American 

officers. Pershing’s offer meant that some American units could be 

General Foch (left) and General Pershing (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 15 ••••

used for combat under larger Allied field commands—a fact that 

showed his willingness, under at least some emergency situations, 

to allow for some of the amalgamation that virtually all Allied 

civil and military authorities had wanted since the United States 

joined the war. 

Although the Allied political and military leadership initially 

celebrated Pershing’s offer, within a few weeks the continued state 

of crisis led them to argue for even more amalgamation. Specifically, 

the Supreme War Council—a committee formed in the fall of 1917 to 

coordinate Allied military strategy—called for Pershing to deviate 

from his plan of bringing over entire combined arms divisions 

in the all-too-scarce Allied ships, and instead bring over only 

infantry and machine gun units in May, June, and July to replace 

the Allied losses suffered in the recent fighting. Sensing that this 

change could severely disrupt his plans of creating a large, properly 

balanced, independent, and all-American army, Pershing resisted 

these pressures at first, but soon settled on a compromise. In the 

Abbeville Agreement of 2 May, Pershing agreed to allow British 

shipping to carry over 130,000 infantrymen and machine gunners 

in May and 150,000 in June. He insisted, however, that any “excess” 

shipping capacity be used to bring the other kinds of troops required 

by a modern army, including artillerymen, engineers, and supply 

and auxiliary troops. He also refused to make any concessions 

at all for July. This compromise did not satisfy the Allied leaders, 

but it allayed some of their concerns. Unfortunately, this modified, 

unbalanced deployment plan would delay the development of a truly 

autonomous and self-sufficient AEF.

In accordance with Pershing’s offer to Foch, the U.S. divisions 

furthest along in their training went quickly into frontline sectors. 

The 1st Division was the best-trained American unit and the only 

one to have completed the entire plan of training developed by 

AEF General Headquarters (GHQ). At the time of the first two 

Ludendorff offensives, it was holding its own sector at Seicheprey, 

along the St. Mihiel salient in the east. It promptly doubled the 

length of the frontage under its command to allow a neighboring 

French division to be sped toward the more active front in the 

Somme region. The 1st Division suffered more than 650 casualties 

during its two-and-a-half-month tour in that “quiet” sector before 

it withdrew in early April for a final field exercise in Picardy. It 

did not remain there long, and within two weeks the 1st Division 

had moved into deadly frontline positions, marked only by shell 

craters, foxholes, and some shallow slit trenches, immediately west 
•••• 16 ••••

of the little French village of Cantigny. (See Map 1.) According to 

Pershing, the movement came “at General Pétain’s request.”

Like the 1st Division, the 2d Division was in the line along 

the St. Mihiel salient when the Germany spring offensives began. 

Unlike the 1st, however, the men of the 2d Division—which had 

one infantry brigade of soldiers and another of U.S. marines—

were still in an intermediate phase of training, with infantry 

and machine gunners joining French units in the front lines and 

artillery batteries learning their business within French artillery 

regiments. French units held official command and control of the 

sector. But the crisis of the German attacks to the west forced the 

French high command to withdraw the French division training 

these American units and send it to the unfolding battle. On 1 April, 

with little warning and long before it had completed its full training 

program, the 2d Division took command of the sector from the 

French and held it until the middle of May. During its eight weeks 

training in and defending the frontline trenches between Verdun 

and St.  Mihiel, the 2d Division suffered almost 900 casualties. 

Clearly, these “quiet” training sectors were quiet only by the relative 

standards of the Western Front in 1918.

The 42d Division, composed of National Guard units from so 

many states that it took the nickname of “Rainbow Division,” was 

finishing a phase of trench warfare training in the front lines of 

the relatively quiet Vosges Front, near Lunéville, when Operation 

Michael began. It also had been under the tutelage of a French 

division that held command of the sector. Within two weeks of 

the first Ludendorff offensive, the 42d Division returned to the 

frontline trenches in the Vosges region, but this time it relieved the 

French 123d Division and assumed command of its own sector. 

The 42d held this sector until mid-June, suffering nearly 2,000 

casualties in this four-month period.

Several other American divisions also made contributions in 

the late spring of 1918. The 32d Division, composed of National 

Guard units from Michigan and Wisconsin, had only recently 

arrived in France and was still conducting its initial training in 

a maneuver area well behind the line when the first two German 

offensives erupted. After an accelerated training program in 

April, it entered the front lines near Belfort in the Vosges region 

in mid-May, initially for training in trench warfare. It soon took 

command of a sector there and held it until mid-July, suffering 

365 casualties during that period. The 3d Division, which would 

play a small but important role in helping to stop the third great 
•••• 17 ••••

German offensive in late May and early June, had some units still 

in the United States when the first offensive began in March and 

a few en route when the Germans struck along the Lys in April. 

By mid-May, it was working through its AEF training program 

in Châteauvillain, well behind the front lines, but was looking 

forward to its upcoming tour in another “quiet” sector of the front.

One unique American “division” in France at this time was the 

93d Division, eventually composed exclusively of four segregated 

African American infantry regiments built from prewar National 

Guard units and rounded out with wartime volunteers and 

draftees. In fact, the 93d Division was a division only on paper. 

It had only four infantry regiments (the 369th, 370th, 371st, and 

372d), which typically were attached to different combat divisions, 

but it had no organic artillery or support units. After arriving in 

France, the men served exclusively in labor duty well behind the 

lines until the Allied manpower crisis and the constant French 

call for American troops convinced Pershing to offer the units 

Soldiers from the 369th Infantry serving with the French

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 18 ••••

to the French as combat soldiers. The French were anxious to 

receive them as soon as possible. The most famous of these units, 

the 369th Infantry (sometimes called “Harlem’s Rattlers”), was 

training with the French VIII Corps of the French Fourth Army in 

the Champagne region by mid-March. By mid-April, the battalions 

had entered the front lines under the tutelage of the French 16th 

Division to complete their training with a tour in a supposedly 

quiet region. After just a week, the battalions took command of 

their own subsectors of the front, and spent the weeks until 4 July 

rotating in and out of the front lines, fighting off raids, taking and 

inflicting casualties, and winning a few Croix de Guerre along 

the way.

The final AEF division to make a contribution to the Allied cause 

during the first two Ludendorff offensives was the 26th Division. 

Composed of National Guard units from across New England, the 

“Yankee Division” had been one of the first four divisions to arrive 

in France in late 1917, and it was finishing a phase of training in the 

front lines along the Chemin des Dames under the command of a 

French division when Operation Michael broke out. In early April, 

it hurriedly moved to the trenches along the St. Mihiel salient to 

take command of its own sector of the front. After relieving the 1st 

Division, the infantry from the 26th Division spread out to cover 

a massive eighteen-kilometer frontage of muddy but established 

trenches east of St. Mihiel. Over the next twelve weeks, they suffered 

more than 2,000 casualties, many while desperately fighting off a 

large, intense German raid near Seicheprey.

As these movements and actions indicate, Pershing was 

proving as good as his word in allowing the full use of available 

American troops to meet any urgent operational crisis. In every 

instance where American units (usually incompletely trained) went 

into combat in April, May, and June, they did so within an Allied 

command, as part of Allied field armies and corps, supported by 

the British or French logistical system, and on frontline sectors 

chosen by Allied leadership.

Operations

Cantigny

When the 1st Division began marching east toward Cantigny 

on 17 April, in a column stretching over some thirty kilometers of 

road space, French planners wondered if the still-green Americans 
•••• 19 ••••

could complete a thirty-six-kilometer movement and immediately 

deploy into proper combat formation to engage the Germans 

in battle. The day before the long hike east, General Pershing 

assembled the division’s officers to tell them that they were “about 

to enter this great battle of the greatest war in history” and remind 

them that “in that battle” they would “represent the mightiest 

nation engaged”:

You have behind you your own national tradition that should 

make you the finest soldiers in Europe to-day. We come from 

a young and aggressive nation. We come from a nation that for 

one hundred and fifty years has stood before the world as the 

champion of the sacred principles of human liberty. We now 

return to Europe, the home of our ancestors, to help defend 

those same principles upon European soil. . . . Our people today 

are hanging upon your deeds. The future is hanging upon your 

action in this conflict. 

He closed by stressing that he, the president, and the “people at 

home” believed strongly in their “success” and were confident “in 

your courage and in your loyalty, with a feeling of certainty in our 

hearts that you are going to make a record of which your country 

will be proud.” At least one officer in the audience—the Division 

G–3, Lt. Col. George C. Marshall—believed that Pershing’s message 

“made a profound impression on all those present.”

Though the soldiers were anxious for battle after nearly 

a year of training, Pershing’s personal encouragement was 

especially important considering the tremendous success that 

the Germans had been having since mid-March. As Marshall 

noted in his memoir, 

Few Americans will ever realize the situation of the Allies at this 

particular period of the war. The Fifth British Army, virtually 

demolished, had been replaced by French reserves and these in 

turn were suffering severely. . . . Those who marched to battle 

for the first time in the summer and fall of 1918, as did the great 

majority of the AEF, have never experienced the feeling of men 

who went forward to meet an enemy in overwhelming numbers, 

crushing all within his path.

By 24 April, the various elements of the division were at 

the front, and that night they began to relieve the Frenchmen 
•••• 20 ••••

who had been scrapping with the Germans for control of the 

sector until just the day prior. On their left, to the north, was 

the French 45th Division, and on the right was the French 162d 

Division. All were now a part of the French X Corps commanded 

by General Charles A. Vandenberg and the French First Army 

led by General Marie-Eugène Debeney. Opposing them—across 

a sloppy, ad hoc, but very real no-man’s-land—were troops of the 

German Eighteenth Army under General Oskar von Hutier, who 

had formed his command the previous December following his 

transfer from the Eastern Front.

Although the Germans and the French were both exhausted 

from the previous weeks of fighting, neither wanted to yield any 

advantage to the other. Those attitudes did not change when the 

Americans arrived. Though no infantry attacks occurred during 

the Americans’ first few weeks at the front, the artillery fire was 

nearly continuous, often including mustard gas. The use of such 

persistent chemicals meant that even when artillery was not firing, 

the front around Cantigny remained a dangerous place. The routine 

effort to move food, water, ammunition, and other supplies to the 

front, or simply to improve a foxhole, could and often did lead 

to serious injury or death. More than ninety different German 

batteries regularly fired into the division sector, and some French 

officers in the area compared the standard intensity of the artillery 

fire there to that of the infamous Battle of Verdun. Enemy aircraft 

adjusted artillery fire, and occasionally bombed and strafed the 

American positions. During one well-placed nighttime artillery 

bombardment, nearly a full battalion of the 18th Infantry—some 

900 men—were killed or wounded by a mix of high explosive and 

mustard gas shells. Early on, the division commander, Maj. Gen. 

Robert L. Bullard, ordered his artillery brigade commander, Brig. 

Gen. Charles P. Summerall, to respond in kind, and the American 

guns did so much firing—on average more than 10,000 rounds a 

day—that they wore out a 75-mm. gun each day. Even so, American 

casualties mounted, as did the infantrymen’s frustration at the 

artillery’s inability to suppress the German fire.

By early May, the French and American commanders were 

looking for a way to assume a more aggressive and offensive 

posture. They decided on a multidivision attack to drive the lines 

far enough forward to allow Allied artillery to shell the German 

transport hub of Montdidier, some eight kilometers southeast of 

Cantigny. When that plan had to be dropped because of the fear of 

an impending German attack elsewhere, the American and French 
•••• 21 ••••

commanders decided to allow the 1st Division to make a short but 

sharp advance to seize and hold Cantigny. French Colonial troops 

had taken the village twice in the previous weeks but lost it each 

time to unbearable German artillery and strong counterattacks. 

Anxious to show that the AEF was up to the challenge of actual 

combat, Pershing approved Bullard’s and Vandenberg’s proposal 

for the small American-led assault.

Pershing’s memoir notes three reasons for the 1st Division’s 

attack. The first was tactical, as the existing positions allowed 

the Germans to hold the high ground in and around the wrecked 

village of Cantigny and “inflict constant losses on our troops 

while suffering little damage themselves.” The second was moral, 

as the Allies’ recent enormous losses in territory, equipment, 

and manpower had been accompanied by a corresponding loss 

in spirit in both the British and the French armies. Pershing 

believed that at that moment “the morale of the Allies required 

that American troops make their appearance in battle.” Finally, 

but of particular import to the AEF commander in chief, was the 

possible benefit that an attack would have on the interminable 

argument about amalgamating American soldiers and small 

units (such as companies and battalions) directly into French 

and British divisions. Pershing hoped that a successful American 

attack “would demonstrate that we could best help the allies by 

using our troops in larger units instead of adopting their plan” of 

using Americans for the “building up of their forces.”

The details and requirements for a plan to seize the heights 

of Cantigny were so different from the original corps-sized 

attack that the division staff had to start from scratch when 

developing the orders. Colonel Marshall, along with staff officers 

Maj. William C. Sherman and a French captain named Crochet, 

completed a fresh and dangerous reconnaissance in the most 

forward positions before drafting the infantry scheme of maneuver. 

They gathered intelligence on every known enemy position, 

strongpoint, machine gun nest, and trench mortar site. Marshall 

and his officers then drew up a plan in which three battalions 

from the 28th Infantry, commanded by Col. Hanson E. Ely, would 

attack and capture the village and its outlying fields, surround it 

with new defensive positions, and prepare to meet the expected 

German counterattacks. Each battalion would be reinforced 

with a machine gun company, Stokes mortars, and 37-mm. guns 

to overwhelm the defending machine gun nests and to resist 

enemy counterattacks with the aid of attached engineers. French 
•••• 22 ••••

flamethrower teams would help two of the attacking American 

battalions to clear out enemy trenches and cellars, and the center 

battalion would advance with twelve French-made Renault FT 

tanks manned by French tankers. 

Marshall then worked with Summerall to design a powerful 

artillery fire plan to support the assault. The plan called for a 

“short but very violent artillery preparation” for one hour prior to 

the infantry assault to neutralize the defenders while maintaining 

surprise. The assaulting infantrymen would be protected by a 

rolling barrage to and through Cantigny that eventually would halt 

and remain as a curtain of fire just beyond the new defensive line 

established to the north, east, and southeast of the village. As many 

as thirty aircraft and one balloon—all of French manufacture and 

operated by Frenchmen—would support the attack by seizing 

local air superiority, helping to monitor infantry progress, and 

assisting the artillery.

Although the participants noticed the novelty of being part of the 

first American attack to use airplanes, tanks, and flamethrowers, 

all understood that the battle’s outcome most likely would hinge 

on the effectiveness of the artillery. Thankfully, Summerall knew 

what it took to provide sufficient fire support, and he secured an 

impressive number of guns for the attack—no doubt aided by 

senior commanders, both French and American, who wanted the 

first American-led attack of the war to be a certain success. In 

addition to the division’s own artillery brigade (two regiments with 

twenty-four French 75-mm. guns each, one regiment of twenty-four 

155-mm. Schneider howitzers, and twelve old trench mortars), 

the attack had the dedicated support of eighty-four more 75-mm. 

guns, twelve more 155-mm. howitzers, twenty heavy 220-mm. and 

280-mm. howitzers, and twenty-eight more trench mortars ranging 

in size from 58-mm. to 240-mm.—all French-made and operated 

by French gunners. These 228 pieces would directly support the 

infantry advance. Summerall computed that he had one 75-mm. 

gun for every fifteen meters of front, and one heavy howitzer 

(155-mm., 220-mm., or 280-mm.) for every thirty-eight meters of 

front, without even taking his trench mortars into account. He 

knew, however, that most of the casualties in the war came from 

the enemy artillery that pounded the attackers as they massed in 

forward assault positions, worked their way across the fire-swept 

zone of no-man’s-land, and tried to consolidate any newly taken 

positions. For that crucial counterbattery mission, Summerall 

received additional support from the longer-range French artillery 
•••• 23 ••••

in the X Corps. Those big guns and howitzers dedicated two guns 

to every known enemy artillery position, hoping to neutralize them 

during and following the immediate period of the attack.

As countless Allied and German attacks had shown over the 

previous three years, however, raw numbers of tubes and weight 

of shell were no guarantee of success. These modern implements 

of war needed to be coordinated specifically for each situation 

to maximize their effect. Summerall’s plan, therefore, described 

three distinct phases for the operation. The first phase involved 

the preparatory fire. In the final days before the attack, the longrange 220-mm. and 280-mm. artillery was to complete “the slow 

and methodical fire of destruction already begun on Cantigny.” To 

prevent the Germans from suspecting that an attack was imminent, 

and to prevent them from ascertaining the exact target for any 

possible attack, the artillery brigade would minimize registration 

Col. Walter S. Grant observing artillery at Cantigny

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 24 ••••

fire and conduct similar fire missions on other distinctive targets 

along the front. Then, one hour before the infantry assault, all the 

divisional artillery would begin a violent bombardment of both the 

“zone of attack” as well as other positions “selected for diversions.” 

For the final fifteen minutes of this preliminary bombardment, a 

number of guns were to shift from firing high explosive rounds 

to smoke shells in order to obscure German observation of the 

impending attack.

As the infantry advanced, the artillery would begin its second 

phase by initiating a rolling barrage to escort the soldiers across 

no-man’s-land at the rate of 100 meters every two minutes. After a 

brief pause to allow the units to reorganize, the guns would resume 

the advance at the slower rate of 100 meters every four minutes to 

cover the infantry all the way through the wrecked village and to 

the new defensive line they were to establish. Those guns not firing 

the rolling barrage would specifically target other enemy positions 

that could fire into the zone of attack. To add to the maelstrom, 

three groups of machine guns were to fire a small-arms barrage 

into the enemy positions during the assault.

The final phase of the fire support plan would ensure support 

for the infantry after they seized Cantigny and as they prepared 

for the inevitable German counterattacks. To meet this challenge, 

much of the artillery that had fired the rolling barrage would shift 

to a “box barrage” after the assault, surrounding the infantry with 

a curtain of protective fire on three sides that would help break 

up any attempted German reprisals. Because the infantry was 

not scheduled to make a deep enough advance to seize or drive 

back the enemy field artillery, and because they were going to 

be holding new, undeveloped defensive positions, French corps 

counterbattery support had to be maintained even after the 

assault. In fact, the artillery plan specified that counterbattery 

support had to continue nonstop until “the end of the operation” 

and then “on the following days . . . be ready to intervene in case 

of violent enemy artillery reaction on the conquered position.” 

Through this plan, Summerall arranged and coordinated a massive 

commitment of firepower for a relatively minor regimental-sized 

attack that had a goal of driving forward a maximum distance of 

1,600 meters along a frontage of 2,200 meters.

As the gunners finalized their plan and amassed six days’ 

worth of ammunition to support the attack, the 28th Infantry 

left its frontline positions to prepare for the assault. After being 

replaced by units from the 18th Infantry, the men of the 28th 
•••• 25 ••••

Infantry moved back to a prepared training ground well behind 

the lines where they could rehearse the entire attack on terrain 

similar to that in the assault zone, complete with a mock-up of 

Cantigny village. For two days, the regiment and supporting 

personnel practiced the attack. This was the first time that most 

of the infantry had even seen tanks and flamethrowers, and 

they had to work on communicating and coordinating with the 

French-speaking operators of each weapon system. Senior officers, 

including the regimental commander Colonel Ely, critiqued the 

various practice sessions. On the second day of training, the entire 

attack contingent completed “a full dress rehearsal,” and both 

senior observers and participants agreed that the unit was ready 

to make the assault on 28 May.

Unfortunately, despite the 1st Division’s planning and 

preparation, events far from Cantigny threatened to derail key 

elements of the plan. On 27 May, the German Seventh Army

initiated the third massive German offensive of the spring, 

Operation Blücher-Yorck, by attacking the French Sixth Army 

along the Chemin des Dames some fifty miles to the southeast. The 

attack hit the French between Soissons and Reims, completely 

rupturing the Allied lines. By the end of the day, the leading 

German infantry had advanced an unprecedented twenty-two 

kilometers—the deepest single-day advance of any attack on the 

Western Front. The new crisis had an immediate effect on French 

support for the 1st Division’s attack on Cantigny, which was to 

kick off the next morning. To stop the new German offensive, 

Pétain, with Foch’s concurrence, began ordering various Allied 

units to move into the new zone of battle. Unfortunately for the 

1st Division, that included much of the French artillery that 

was scheduled to support its operation. Although the French 

high command kept the guns in place for the initial assault, 

they ordered the weapons and their operators to begin moving 

out immediately after the attack, rendering them unavailable 

to provide crucial protection for American gains and to resist 

anticipated German counterattacks.

Even as the reassignments were unfolding and the division 

staff began working on potential adjustments, the assault troops 

assembled in their jump-off positions on the day and night before 

the division kicked off the attack. Each infantryman had, among 

other gear, 220 rounds of ammunition, 2 hand grenades, 4 empty 

sandbags, 2 canteens of water, and emergency rations. Promptly 

at 0445 on 28 May, the final preparatory artillery firing began, 
•••• 26 ••••

followed by some return fire from the German guns. About an hour 

later, the entire Allied artillery contingent let loose the full intensity 

of the prepared preliminary bombardment, smashing every enemy 

strongpoint, smothering known German artillery positions with a 

mix of high explosive and gas rounds, and practically obliterating 

what was left of the village of Cantigny. Infantrymen later claimed 

that the artillery preparation was “a sight never to be forgotten” 

and “very impressive.” Ely reported that it was “tremendous and 

most effective.”

Right on schedule, at 0640, the first attackers moved into 

no-man’s-land and followed the rolling barrage toward the 

German positions (Map 2). Supported by the French tanks, the 

first wave of infantry reached the first German line in about ten 

minutes, followed by the second and third waves of attackers. The 

Americans caught the defending Germans by surprise and in the 

middle of a transfer of command from one battalion to another. 

Aided by the tanks, the American infantrymen successfully fought 

their way through the village in a little over half an hour and 

began to set up a new defensive line on the far side of town. The 

attached machine gun units selected their new firing positions, in 

some instances choosing spots with clearer fields of fire instead 

of positions less vulnerable to German artillery. Even though the 

tanks tore up the freshly laid telephone wires on their way back to 

Americans attacking at Cantigny with the support of French tanks

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
82 Res

X X

25 Res

X X 28

III

28 3

I I

28 2

I I

28 1

I I

18

III

Fr 152

X X

1

X X

XX

XX

or T

d

si

C

s

m

o

D

s

e

r

to Montdidier

Bois de

Framicourt

Bois de

Cantigny

Bois de

Fontaine

Bois de

St-Eloi

Bois de

Lalval

Framicourt 

Villers-Tournelle

Cantigny 

Fontaine-sousMontdidier

BAT TLE OF CANTIGNY

28–30 May 1918

Front Line, 27 MayAxis of Attack, 28 MayAllied Artillery ConcentrationsFront Line, 28 May

0 60 80 100 120 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Yards 1000

Map 2
•••• 28 ••••

their starting positions, the senior commanders and staffs learned 

via runner that the initial phase of the attack appeared to be a 

success. The artillery fire had killed or wounded as many as 600 

defenders and dazed many of the rest. The initial assault netted 

150 German prisoners. The 2d Battalion, 28th Infantry, which 

seized Cantigny itself, reported that it had taken its objectives and 

established the new defensive positions with no more than light 

casualties, reported to be between sixty and eighty in the battalion. 

Interrogations of the shaken German prisoners of war and reports 

from a French aviator all seemed to confirm the success.

However, word soon trickled in that the 3d Battalion, 28th 

Infantry, to the north of the village and the 1st Battalion, 28th 

Infantry, to the south had had a much tougher time in the attack 

and had not taken, or at least had not held, all of their assigned 

objectives. Casualties were heavier on the southern flank and the 

new positions seized were not nearly as strong as expected, but 

things were much worse north of Cantigny. There, some attacking 

infantry ran into such severe German machine gun fire that those 

not killed either retreated back to their original jump-off positions 

or veered off to the right, into the lanes of the 2d Battalion. To make 

matters worse, Ely did not know about the troublesome conditions 

on the two flanks until much later in the day, and therefore was 

unable to take corrective action.

The situation on the flanks was a concern, but the most serious 

problem for the 28th Infantry and its attached personnel was the 

premature departure of the supporting French long-range artillery. 

The Americans would not have the counterbattery fire they needed 

to prevent the German gunners from pounding them in their newly 

established positions. Those German guns, nearly all of which were 

beyond the range of Summerall’s 75-mm. batteries, could blast the 

new American lines with impunity. Some doughboys reported that 

the Germans had also seized local air superiority, which enabled 

German aircraft to assist their artillery with fresh reconnaissance 

to help adjust their fire.

American casualties increased rapidly throughout the day, and 

included many officers—most notably Lt. Col. Robert J. Maxey, the 

regiment’s most experienced battalion commander, who was killed 

by artillery fire before 0900. As the casualties mounted, soldiers 

began looking to their own safety. Some groups began to move out 

of their assigned defensive positions into less vulnerable positions 

to the rear, into the wrecked village, or into surrounding woods. 

This did not bode well for the integrity of the newly established 
•••• 29 ••••

defensive arrangements that needed to be ready to meet the 

expected German counterattacks.

Thankfully, Summerall’s artillerymen stayed alert and active. 

Even though most of their guns could not reach the enemy 

artillery batteries, they could target German infantry positions, 

including suspected assembly areas and routes of attack toward 

the new American positions. Summerall’s gunners broke up a 

number of distinct but hurried counterattacks during the day 

by preventing the Germans from getting close to the defending 

infantry. In the early evening, between 1700 and 2000, the 

Germans attempted to launch their first major, coordinated 

counterattacks, supported by artillery fire. None of these attacks 

succeeded, but the Germans’ supporting artillery barrages led to 

yet more American casualties. Many of the infantry companies 

had suffered well over 30 percent casualties before nightfall. Ely 

reported to his superiors that “[u]nless heavy artillery can give 

us support it will be necessary to withdraw for entire front line 

is battered to pieces with artillery.”

Ammunition dump for used 75-mm. shell casings (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 30 ••••

Increasingly aware of the danger to his unit, and especially 

to the success of the mission, Ely sent in reinforcements and 

made arrangements for more to follow. He sent forward the 1st 

Battalion’s reserve unit, Company C, to stiffen the defenses south 

of Cantigny and secured permission from his brigade commander, 

Brig. Gen. Beaumont B. Buck, to use units of the 18th Infantry 

if necessary. Ely soon sent Company G of the 18th Infantry to 

support the flagging 3d Battalion. Thinking that they were part 

of a critical counterattack, Company G drove forward toward the 

originally assigned objective. Their advance may have been aided 

by the continued support of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, whose 

timely fire was breaking up German counterattacks on the left 

flank that afternoon. By nightfall, the 1st Division had shattered or 

beaten back counterattacks from different directions by a variety 

of German units. But even darkness failed to provide a respite, 

as German raids, probing patrols, and artillery fire kept the men 

awake and drained what little energy remained.

The morning of 29 May brought two more German counterattacks from the Bois de Framicourt, a quarter-mile east of the 

new American positions. Both failed, but Hutier ordered another 

counterattack against the southern edge of the new American 

lines for later in the afternoon. As on the previous day, Summerall’s 

gunners broke up this attack before it reached the now worn-out 

American infantry, but the exhausted doughboys continued to 

suffer under the German artillery fire. Despite the climbing casualty 

figures throughout the day, Ely’s superiors refused his request for 

his men to be relieved by the rest of the 18th Infantry, or given 

permission to withdraw to less vulnerable positions. The second day 

of battle ended without much change in the front lines of either side, 

but the terrain in and around Cantigny was so blasted by shellfire 

that it began to resemble the cratered moonscape more typically 

associated with the battlefields at Verdun and the Somme. 

On 30 May, the third day of the battle, the fighting finally died 

down. With the exception of a single probe of the southern American 

positions, the German infantry—as worn out as the Americans 

were—was generally inactive throughout the day. Yet even though 

the Germans did not attempt more counterattacks, their artillery 

fire remained active, and German aircraft occasionally bombed 

and strafed the American positions. Beginning that night and 

continuing through the next, the remainder of the 18th Infantry 

methodically relieved the 28th Infantry. The final casualty toll 

for the assault and defense of Cantigny came to 38 officers and 
•••• 31 ••••

903 men—an astoundingly high figure for a successful attack by 

one reinforced regiment. The German forces opposing the 1st 

Division suffered severely as well; the two infantry regiments of 

the 82d Reserve Division lost 1,437 men, including 488 declared 

missing (of which 285 were prisoners of war). A third regiment, 

from the 25th Reserve Division, lost an additional 324 men. In 

the gruesome calculus of an attritional war, the fledgling AEF had 

done what it needed to do. It had killed and wounded more of the 

enemy than it had lost.

Everyone involved acknowledged the impact of the geographically 

minor but bloody first American battle. Bullard claimed that 

Cantigny showed to friend and foe alike that “Americans will 

both fight and stick.” Pershing promoted the precedent-setting 

nature of this first successful American attack, claiming that it 

was “a matter of pride to the whole A.E.F. that the troops of this 

division, in their first battle . . . displayed the fortitude and courage 

of veterans, held their gains, and denied to the enemy the slightest 

advantage.” Looking for evidence to support his resistance to the 

Allies’ continued calls for some kind of broad-based amalgamation, 

he also wrote that Cantigny validated his adherence to “the 

importance of organizing our own divisions and higher units as 

soon as circumstances permit.” It was his “firm conviction that 

our troops” were “the best in Europe” and “our staffs . . . the equal 

of any.” Even the Germans, he felt, had to acknowledge that “the 

moral element” of the American victory “must not be underrated.” 

As Marshall later noted, “We held Cantigny. The Germans never 

afterwards reoccupied the village.” This would become a theme 

not only of the AEF contributions in May and June 1918, but for the 

following months as well. The inexperienced Americans helped 

stop German attacks with tenacious defense; proved able to push 

the Germans back at various points along the line; and, with rare 

exceptions, held on to whatever terrain they seized.

Château-Thierry

For much of the Allied leadership and forces, the emergency 

brought on by Operation Blücher, the third German offensive 

that started on 27 May, overshadowed the 1st Division’s successful 

attack and dogged defense at Cantigny. In the first two days of 

the initial assault, the Germans had driven back the French Sixth 

Army as much as twenty-five kilometers while attacking along a 

front of some seventy kilometers. The rapid German advance, the 
•••• 32 ••••

most significant since 1914, appeared to be heading straight for 

Paris, roughly fifty kilometers to the west. French units retreated 

so quickly and in such disorder that they failed to destroy the 

bridges across the Aisne and Vesle rivers. The Germans captured 

tens of thousands of French soldiers, along with hundreds of 

artillery pieces, in the first few days. More than a million people 

left Paris, and the French government prepared to evacuate and 

move to Bordeaux farther west. Perhaps of even greater import, 

British military and political leaders discussed the possibility of 

having to evacuate the BEF from the continent, and began to plan 

for that terrible possibility. By 30 May, the Operations Section 

of the French high command, GQG, believed the situation to be 

the “gravest of the war.”

Pétain himself had to consider the almost certainly catastrophic 

options of withdrawing completely from either northern or eastern 

France, and told his army-group commanders to examine the 

possibility of full retreat to some more defensible position in the 

west. He also advised the French premier, Georges Clemenceau, 

to move the government from Paris—but Clemenceau, based on 

assurances from Foch, disregarded the recommendation. Foch 

appears to have seen what Pétain did not—that this attack was not 

intended to win the war by taking Paris, but rather to convince the 

French to send reserves from Flanders to this new front so that the 

Germans could launch a massive war-winning offensive against 

the British. Nevertheless, this reasoning was not clear to everyone 

at the time, and Ludendorff had shown in his previous attacks a 

complete willingness to take whatever gains he could from his 

offensives, whatever their original objectives. This German drive 

had to be stopped regardless of its intended goal.

For the third time in just nine weeks, the Germans threw the 

Allies into a state of operational crisis management. Again, as 

before, the AEF’s fresh but inexperienced units were an important 

part of the answer, and in fact the American contribution to 

stopping Operation Blücher exceeded its involvement in the first 

two German offensives. When the German attack broke through 

the French lines along the Chemin des Dames on 27 May, both the 

American 2d and 3d Divisions were in training areas well behind 

the front. The 2d Division was north of Paris, over a hundred 

kilometers to the west of the new offensive, while the 3d Division 

was over a hundred kilometers to the southeast of the attack zone. 

Neither unit had completed its training—the 2d was concluding 

an abbreviated series of field maneuvers in only a quarter of the 
•••• 33 ••••

practice time originally scheduled in the AEF training plan, while 

the 3d was in the initial phase of the standard AEF overseas 

training program and none of its units had experience in the 

trenches. Nevertheless, Pershing decided that the gravity of the 

emergency warranted offering both divisions to the French high 

command. The French accepted and made plans to employ the 

Americans immediately, though not without an openly stated 

concern for their respective states of training and experience. 

Pétain issued explicit instructions limiting how to employ the 

fresh American units, especially the 3d Division, and detailing the 

kinds of support they would need to get the most out of them. The 

French also assigned ten French officers to serve as assistants to 

the American battalion commanders.

On the afternoon of 28 May, the 3d Division received its first 

warning order to prepare to move out for the front, to an unspecified 

sector. Division commander Maj. Gen. Joseph T. Dickman was away 

from his headquarters examining a quiet frontline sector in the 

St. Mihiel region in preparation for the division’s expected move 

there as part of the next phase of training. Hurriedly recalled to 

the division, Dickman learned that the frontline phase of training 

was canceled, and that the division needed to prepare to move 

immediately to actively defend a still-unknown section of the 

front. The division’s leaders may have expected to go to the Vosges 

region to replace a more experienced French unit that could deploy 

to the raging battle. This was how AEF divisions had indirectly 

contributed to stopping the first two German offensives. But the 

next day, AEF GHQ notified the 3d Division that it would support 

efforts to block the Germans from crossing the Marne River, 

and that it would join the French Group of Armies of the North, 

commanded by General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey. D’Espèrey soon 

assigned the division to the French Sixth Army, which assigned 

the Americans to the French XXXVIII Corps, then operating near 

Château-Thierry, a small city divided by the seventy-meter-wide 

Marne River.

The bulk of the division, especially the two infantry brigades, 

had to shift north by train. They began to move out on the evening 

of 30 May and arrived in the battle zone by 3 June. However, the 

7th Machine Gun Battalion—the division’s one fully motorized 

combat unit, composed of around 370 men, a few dozen heavy 

machine guns, and assorted cars, motorcycles, and trucks—was 

on the road in their overloaded light Ford trucks by the early 

afternoon of the 30th. Their orders were to reach Condé-en-Brie, 
•••• 34 ••••

a small town about ten kilometers southeast of Château-Thierry, 

as soon as possible. Most of the battalion’s convoy arrived at 

its destination midday on 31 May, having battled bad roads and 

traffic congestion. Gas shortages, breakdowns, and perhaps some 

bad driving delayed the arrival of a few vehicles. The scene at 

Condé-en-Brie was even more chaotic than the roads en route, 

and the Americans struggled to locate the appropriate French 

commander and ascertain what they were to do next. Eventually, 

the commander of the sector’s French 10th Colonial Division 

(DIC), General Jean-Baptiste Marchand, ordered the battalion to 

Château-Thierry, then perceived to be the “most threatened point 

in the line.”

After a brief reconnaissance of the area in the early evening, 

two companies took up defensive positions in the southern portion 

of Château-Thierry (Map 3). Two gun-crews—some fourteen 

men, commanded by 1st Lt. John T. B. Bissell—went across the 

river to join men from the 10th DIC defending the northern part 

of the town. They set up a firing position 300 meters northeast of 

the main bridge over the Marne. General Marchand ordered the 

American gunners to provide cover while the French withdrew, 

and authorized Bissell to withdraw to the south bank when 

necessary. The two companies positioned all other machine guns 

along the southern bank. Company A, with eight guns, defended 

the main stone bridge by taking up positions in houses along the 

river; Company B, with nine guns, established itself 500 meters 

to the east in order to cover the approaches to a railroad bridge. 

Its crews set up their guns in a sugar refinery and along a road 

following the river. The remainder of the battalion’s guns took up 

positions stretching out to a thousand meters to the east. A French 

machine gun officer attached to the battalion ensured that the gun 

positions were secure and had clear firing angles on the bridges 

and their northern and eastern approaches. Both bridges had been 

wired for detonation in the face of the German advance, which 

had already reached the northern and eastern parts of the city. 

The first crews began firing by 1800 on 31 May. By the time all the 

men and guns were in position and firing, about 0400 on 1 June, 

most of the troops had been awake for over thirty-six hours, and 

the battle was only beginning.

The German artillery had been shelling the Franco-American 

positions throughout the night of 31 May–1 June, killing and 

wounding numerous soldiers. Some retreating French troops 

passed through these positions on 31 May and 1 June, while many 
231

X X

7

I I

Fr 10 DIC

X X

31 M ay

1 Jun

Marne R

Marne R

Aqueduct

Château St.-Martin

Brasles

Étampessur-Marne

CHÂTEAU-THIERRY

DEFENSE OF C H ÂTEAU-THIERRY

31 May–4 June 1918

German Limit of Advance, Date

Machine Gun Emplacement

Unit Withdrawal

Front Line, 4 Jun

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Map 3
•••• 36 ••••

Senegalese infantry engaged in desperate house-to-house combat 

in the northern half of the town. The American machine gunners on 

both sides of the river were occasionally targets of enemy snipers, 

machine guns, and “severe” artillery fire throughout that first night. 

On 1 June, the Germans attempted to seize the entire city, and so 

threatened the Allied positions that the French blew up the main 

bridge that night around 2000, while many Allied troops—including 

Lieutenant Bissell and his crews—were still on the north side of 

the river. Bissell initially tried to swim to the south bank to inform 

his compatriots that he and the French needed cover in order 

to withdraw, but found the river impassible. Instead, Bissell and 

his men, some wounded and all under heavy enemy fire, had to 

make their way to the south bank by working across the railroad 

bridge. As the bridge was then under fire from both the Germans 

and Americans, Bissell called out and exposed himself to friendly 

fire to signal the gunners on the southern bank to cease fire so the 

withdrawing troops could cross the trestle. Although the Allies had 

been forced to abandon their guns, Bissell and all but one man made 

it safely across the river, accompanied by an indeterminate number 

of Senegalese soldiers. For his bravery, Bissell received the Croix 

de Guerre with Palm and in 1920 the Silver Star.

The situation was so confused that at least one American 

company commander ordered some of his men to withdraw from 

their positions on the south bank after receiving an erroneous 

report that the Germans had successfully crossed the main bridge. 

Once they realized the error, the men returned to cover what 

remained of the bridges. The Germans made one more effort to 

cross the Marne on 2 June, again focusing their efforts on seizing 

the railroad bridge before it was destroyed the night of 3–4 June. 

Even though they drove out all organized Allied resistance from 

the northern half of the town, the combined efforts of the French 

colonials and American machine gunners prevented the Germans 

from succeeding. In fact, the War Diary of the German 231st 

Division explicitly credited the “heavy machine gun fire from the 

south bank” as the reason why it was unable to cross the main 

bridge when its forward patrols found it intact.

In his memoirs of the war, General Dickman provided an 

accurate, if American-focused, summary of the 7th Machine 

Gun Battalion’s participation in this important firefight: “A few 

hundred machine gunners of the 3d Division delayed the Germans 

in the northern outskirts of Château-Thierry, gained time for the 

withdrawal of the outnumbered French troops, and prevented the 
•••• 37 ••••

crossing of the bridges until they could be blown up.” Considering 

the size and scope of the battle, the American machine gunners 

made a small but nonetheless critical contribution to the massive 

French effort to stop the Germans from successfully establishing 

a bridgehead over the Marne. Despite the chaos of the situation, 

they did all that was asked of them and performed well, especially 

considering their incomplete level of training. Sixty-five Americans 

were killed or wounded in only a few days of fighting in and around 

Château-Thierry between 31 May and 4 June, when the battalion 

moved to the corps reserve.

The French were pleased with the American contribution to 

the Allied effort that stopped the offensive at that point of the 

line. General Marchand made special mention of the battalion’s 

contributions to the corps command, and recommended that 

many individuals be decorated. Col. Jean de Pierrefeu, a GQG 

staff officer, described the importance of the timely American 

reinforcement around Château-Thierry by writing:

The spectacle of this magnificent youth from across the sea, 

these youngsters of twenty years with smooth faces, radiating 

Destroyed main bridge over the Marne River, Château-Thierry

(National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 38 ••••

strength and health in their new uniforms, had an immense 

effect. They offered a striking contrast with our regiments in 

soiled uniforms, worn by the years of war, with our emaciated 

soldiers and their somber eyes who were nothing more than 

bundles of nerves held together by an heroic, sacrificial will. 

The general impression was that a magical transfusion of blood 

was taking place.

Later, Pétain honored the American machine gunners with a 

special citation:

The 7th Machine Gun Battalion (American) under the command 

of Major [James] Taylor, barred to the enemy the passage of the 

MARNE. In the course of violent combat, particularly the 31st 

of May and the 1st of June, 1918, it disputed foot by foot with 

the Germans the northern outskirts of Château-Thierry, covered 

itself with glory, thanks to its valor and its skill, costing the 

enemy sanguinary losses.

During the first week of June the rest of the infantry and 

machine gun units from the 3d Division went into scattered 

positions all along the south bank of the Marne, extending from a 

point a few kilometers west of Château-Thierry to positions nearly 

twenty kilometers to the east, near Dormans. Although the Allies 

did not know it at the time, by early June the third great German 

offensive of 1918 had run out of steam along that part of the front. 

The 3d Division would hold its position along the Marne, keeping 

a watchful eye on the Germans across the river, until the final 

German offensive of the war erupted in the middle of July and the 

Second Battle of the Marne began.

Montdidier-Noyon Defensive

While the 3d Division was holding the line along the Marne 

in June, the 1st Division had to defend its gains at Cantigny 

during the fourth great German offensive of the year. On 9 

June, the Germans launched the Montdidier-Noyon offensive 

known as Operation Gneisenau, striking immediately to the 

south of Cantigny. Though this offensive was not as successful 

as Ludendorff’s first three attacks—in part because Allied 

intelligence sources accurately identified its location and 

timing in advance—it still achieved a relatively deep but narrow 
•••• 39 ••••

penetration nearly ten kilometers into the French lines. In 

fact, the neighboring French division on the right of the 1st 

Division was thrown back more than two kilometers on the 

first day, causing a serious threat to its flank. The men of the 1st 

Division—by this point stretched to cover approximately eight 

kilometers of the front—held on to all their defensive positions 

despite being subjected to a heavy bombardment of high 

explosive and gas, and numerous local infantry attacks. The 1st 

Division’s resolute defense and timely counterattacks prevented 

the German offensive from getting any wider and served as a 

solid foundation for the French counterattacks that eventually 

plugged the lines. The fighting was fierce enough along the 1st 

Division front that it suffered more than 560 casualties in the 

effort to hold its lines. Although halting the offensive proved 

less dramatic than other engagements during those chaotic 

months, Marshall noted that the commander of French First 

Army, General Debeney, “promptly and emphatically declared 

that the American division was the only one carrying out [its] 

orders” to resist all attacks without withdrawing. By 13 June 

this German attack had run its course, but the 1st Division 

would hold its line around Cantigny until it withdrew in the 

middle of July.

Gas alarm being sounded by an American soldier (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 40 ••••

Lucy-le-Bocage

Before the Germans struck south of Cantigny, and while the 

fighting was cresting and then subsiding in Château-Thierry, the 

third German drive continued a few kilometers to the west. The 

actual German goal for this phase of the attack is uncertain, 

but from the perspective of some members of the French high 

command and the French government it appeared to be heading 

directly toward Paris. In fact, as late as 30 May, Ludendorff 

reminded his army commanders that the main goal of the attack 

was to “threaten Paris.” In the end, it was along that path, astride 

the road from Château-Thierry to Paris, that the U.S. 2d Division 

made its first contribution to Germany’s eventual defeat.

On 30 May, while elements of the 3d Division were racing 

northwest toward Château-Thierry, the 2d Division was in a 

training area near Chaumont-en-Vexin, north of Paris, finalizing 

preparations to depart the next morning to relieve the 1st Division 

at Cantigny. Late that night, GHQ issued new orders for the 

division to move the next day by trucks to Meaux, a town about 

thirty kilometers east of Paris, halfway between the capital and 

Château-Thierry. Like the 3d Division, the 2d Division was being 

assigned to a French corps—the XXI Corps, commanded by 

General Jean-Marie Degoutte—to help stop the leading elements 

of the advancing German Seventh Army.

Despite the late change of orders, the division’s infantrymen 

and some of its machine gun units boarded buses the next morning 

and headed toward the battle in a road column over twenty 

kilometers long. Upon arriving at Meaux on 31 May, the leading 

units went forward in separate columns to plug holes in the rapidly 

withdrawing French front lines. In doing so, they traveled along 

roads filled with French troops and civilians “retreating in great 

confusion.” Some American units headed directly east toward 

Château-Thierry while others advanced slightly northeast along 

the line of the Ourcq River. The commander of the 4th Brigade 

(U.S. Marines), Army Brig. Gen. James G. Harbord, later described 

that next leg in these terms:

Hundreds of refugees crowded the road and the adjacent fields. 

Every portable thing that a frightened peasantry would be likely 

to save from among their little treasures was to be seen along 

that crowded highway. . . . Meanwhile we passed many French 

officers and men all going from and none toward the front. Until 
•••• 41 ••••

nearly dark, when some very good-looking French cavalry came 

along, my small party were [sic] making the only movement in 

one direction along that congested highway. We were seeing 

the motley array which characterizes the rear of a routed army.

The division leadership sped ahead of the troops in its staff 

car, racing forward to report to General Degoutte and receive his 

orders. Maj. Gen. Omar Bundy, the commander, and Col. Preston 

W. Brown, the chief of staff, finally met Degoutte that evening and 

discussed the plan for the division’s involvement in the westwardmoving battle. Degoutte originally proposed to have the division’s 

arriving infantry regiments counterattack the advancing Germans 

as soon as each new regiment reached the front. The French 

had been using this approach for their own reinforcing divisions 

throughout the current crisis, though in the words of one French 

officer the high casualty rates made it seem as if the arriving troops 

“evaporated immediately like drops of rain on white-hot iron.” 

The Americans were aware that Degoutte’s plan would lead to a 

series of small, unsupported attacks as each road-worn regiment 

arrived at the front, and that these hurried and isolated attacks, 

French refugees fleeing the German offensive (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 42 ••••

without the support of the division’s artillery and machine gun 

units, would be both costly and unproductive. As an alternative, 

the 2d Division’s leadership suggested that they be allowed to form 

up the entire division along a new defensive line just behind the 

retreating French front. They explained that this approach would 

allow the exhausted French units to withdraw through the new 

American position and reorganize, and would give the Americans 

the time needed to rest from the forced march, prepare for battle, 

stop the Germans, and then counterattack in good order. Degoutte 

eventually accepted this recommendation, and then asked Bundy 

and Brown if the untested units would be able to withstand the 

expected German onslaught. Brown’s reply has become one of the 

most famous statements of confidence in American arms: “General, 

these are American regulars. In a hundred and fifty years they 

have never been beaten. They will hold.”

By the next day, 1 June, two American regiments—the 9th 

Infantry and the 6th Regiment (U.S. Marines)—were assigned 

to the French 164th and 43d Divisions, respectively, and had 

established a long but hastily organized defensive position blocking 

the road to Paris near the villages of Le Thiolet, Bouresches, 

Lucy-le-Bocage, and Champillon. Unit commanders struggled 

to gather solid information on the terrain and tactical situation 

ahead of them—the entire 6th Regiment, for instance, may have 

had only one good map of the new combat sector—though some 

reports suggested that only scattered elements of French divisions 

remained between their new line and the advancing Germans. 

The Americans met no enemy infantry on that day, but did receive 

hostile artillery fire.

Unfortunately, the situation to the immediate northwest 

of them was collapsing. That night, advancing German forces 

exposed a four-kilometer gap in the French line near Gandelu. 

Degoutte, who had no other reserves, ordered Bundy to send some 

of his men north immediately to plug it. Bundy quickly ordered 

an ad hoc combat team composed of the 23d Infantry, the 1st 

Battalion of the 5th Regiment (U.S. Marines), two companies of 

the 5th Machine Gun Battalion, and a company of the 2d Engineers 

to move north to help stop any possible German advance between 

Brumetz and the Bois de Vaurichart. These units had just arrived 

in the American sector and were beginning to get settled when 

they received orders to move. After a ten-kilometer forced march 

in the dead of night, they established a new defensive position by 

early the next day, effectively plugging the gap.
•••• 43 ••••

By 2 June, the rest of the 2d Division’s combat units were 

arriving in the sector, as some French elements continued moving 

to the rear through the new American line. Many U.S. soldiers 

reported that retreating French soldiers exclaimed that the war 

was lost—“le guerre est fini”—as they trudged past, although 

other reports suggested that the sight of the fresh American 

reinforcements immediately revived the spirits of retreating 

French soldiers. Both reports likely have some basis in fact. At 

many spots in, around, and even in front of the new American 

positions, other French units held their ground. Stiffened by the 

AEF reinforcements on their flanks and rear, the French prepared 

to fight with greater determination on the following day.

Some American companies saw their first enemy infantry 

on 2 June, as the German offensive continued on a front from 

Vaux in the east to Gandelu to the northwest. Marines from the 

6th Regiment, east of Lucy-le-Bocage on the right flank of the 

4th Brigade position, joined French infantry in engaging the 

attacking Germans with long-range machine gun and rifle fire. The 

Americans experienced for the first time—but not the last—the 

devastation that those weapons, along with some accurate French 

artillery fire, could inflict on infantry that advanced in waves 

through open country without sufficient artillery support. One 

corporal noted that “at three hundred yards it was like being on the 

rifle range.” But even a thoroughly successful defensive stand had 

its cost; nine marines were killed or wounded by sporadic enemy 

artillery fire that day. On the far right of the American line, the 

commander of the 9th Infantry, Col. Leroy S. Upton, reported two 

dozen casualties from enemy shellfire. Yet the motley collection of 

experienced but tired French veterans and green but determined 

young Americans had slowed the German advance. It was the first 

time the opposing German corps had been stopped since the start 

of the offensive on 27 May.

Early on 3 June, Degoutte ordered the French 43d Division to 

counterattack east in an attempt to retake a small wood known 

as the Bois de Belleau—in English, Belleau Wood—which French 

troops had evacuated the night before out of fear that they would 

be outflanked by the previous day’s successful German advances. 

The counterattack failed, offering a warning of the strength with 

which the Germans were already holding that small, dense wood. 

The attack also served as a reminder that the French Army still 

held nearly all of the most forward positions on 3 June. By late that 

afternoon, the 2d Division’s four infantry and marine regiments 
•••• 44 ••••

had stretched themselves into a thin defensive position at least 

fifteen kilometers wide—with a few small but unsettling gaps in the 

line—and dispersed machine guns and artillery in firing positions 

to support them against the expected German onslaught.

At this point, the 3d Brigade’s regiments were actually holding 

opposite ends of the new American line, with Upton’s 9th Infantry 

on the far right, south of Monneaux, and Col. Paul B. Malone’s 

23d Infantry on the far left of the line, west of Champillon. The 

4th Brigade’s two marine regiments held the center, with the 

6th Regiment to the left of the 9th Infantry, and Col. Wendell C. 

Neville’s 5th Regiment to the right of the 23d Infantry. This area 

had no trench systems, so the defensive positions aligned with the 

natural terrain—following little ridges and ravines, and making 

a maximum use of the small farms and woods in the area. The 

soldiers and marines dug shallow holes to provide protection from 

enemy fire; the new German observation balloons that went up in 

American field artillery receiving reports from an observation post 

by telephone (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 45 ••••

this sector warned that enemy artillery fire was going to become 

more intense each day. Although the French logisticians arranged 

for the divisional artillery to travel to the front by rail, they 

unfortunately ordered the American rolling kitchens to travel by 

road, which meant that the men in the line had to go days without 

any warm food to strengthen their spirits. The only decent food 

the troops were able to enjoy had been appropriated by foraging 

in the nearby farms.

General Harbord and some other Americans reported that 

elements of the 4th Brigade stopped at least one serious German 

attack in its tracks on 2 and 3 June, inflicting heavy losses. Col. 

Albertus W. Catlin, commander of the 6th Regiment, described 

severe fighting by marines in the center of the American line, 

and 1st Lt. Lemuel C. Shepherd, a future Commandant of the 

Marine Corps serving in the 5th Regiment, was wounded in 

one of these firefights. The division’s semiofficial history states 

that the situation was “critical” on 2 June and that the Germans 

maneuvered and made probing advances on 3 June.

Early the next day, 4 June, the 2d Division took over full 

command of its broad sector of the front. The last of the isolated 

French units in front of and beside the American frontline 

positions withdrew to the rear, and the 2d Division relocated 

a few of its units to straighten out its order of battle. The 9th 

Infantry retained its place on the far right of the line in the Bois 

de la Morette, while the 23d Infantry moved into positions from 

Le Thiolet to a complex known as Triangle Farm, between the 

9th Infantry and the 6th Regiment. The 6th Regiment held the 

line from Triangle to Lucy-le-Bocage, while the 5th Regiment dug 

in along a semicircular line running north from Lucy and then 

west to Champillon, connecting the Americans with the French 

167th Division on the left (Map 4).

On that same day, the opposing German corps commander 

sensed that his offensive had run out of steam in the face of 

increasing resistance, so he ordered his divisions to discontinue 

any major attacks and to temporarily shift over to the defensive. 

Still, on 4–5 June, some German units maneuvered, patrolled, and 

even made small attacks to secure better defensive terrain. For the 

inexperienced American defenders, these local skirmishes often 

felt like serious attacks. Even if the firefights posed little strategic 

or operational threat to the Allies at that point in the war, they were 

violent enough at the tactical level. In only two days, the division 

suffered more than 200 casualties.
2

X X

Fr 167

X X

USMC

5

III

XXX

XXXVIII Fr

XX

Clignon R

Bois de

Vaurichart

Hill 142

to Paris

Les Mares

Farm

Dhuisy

Chambardy

Montreuil-aux-Lions

Chamoust

La Sablonnière

Les Glandons

Villersle-Vasle

Torcy

Lucy-le-Bocage

Champillon

Marignyen-Orxois

La Voie-du-Châtel

Montgivrault

Coupru 

Domptin

Bézu-le-Guéry 

Veuilly-la-Poterie 

Chézy-en-Orxois 

Hautevesnes

Bussiares

Licy-Clignon

Courchamps

St.-Gengoulph

Germignysous-Coulombs

Prémont 

Gandelu

Bremoiselle

Brumetz 

Map 4
Fr 10 DIC

X X

USMC

6

III

23

III

9

III

XX

Marne R

Clignon R

Aqueduct

Bois de

Belleau 

Bois de

la Morette

Hill 133

Hill 169

Hill 181

Hill 192 

Hill 204

Triangle Farm

Belleau

Givry

Épaux-Bézu Bézu-Saint-Germain

Étrépilly

Bouresches

Le Thiolet

Bonneil

Mont de

Bonneil

Crogis

Montcourt

Nogentel 

Rouvroy

Aulnois

 Essômes-sur-Marne

Vaux

Monneaux

St.-Martin

Le Buisson

Vincelles

Azy-sur-Marne 

Bonnesvalyn

Monthiers

CHÂTEAUTHIERRY

2D DIVISION ORDER OF BAT TLE

5 June 1918

0

0 1 2 Kilometers

Miles 1 2

Front Line, 4 Jun

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS
•••• 48 ••••

Thus, during the first five days of June the soldiers and marines 

of the 2d Division completed an exhausting, chaotic, unexpected, 

and last-minute movement into a French defensive sector that 

had been collapsing for nearly a week. The American forces 

established a new defensive line; shifted their units around as 

required to plug emerging gaps; and responded in kind to sporadic 

enemy fire from rifles, machine guns, and artillery. They repulsed 

some strong but localized German attacks, and strengthened the 

resolve and morale of the Frenchmen fighting around them. After 

the battle, Degoutte wrote a note to General Denis Duchêsne, then 

commander of the French Sixth Army, in which he complimented 

the Americans’ speed and stamina at that critical spot of the 

front, and admitted that “their unexpected arrival and the way in 

which they entered the zone of fire created a decidedly favorable 

impression on our troops. Their bringing into action of machine 

guns, here and there, at long range, made it possible to inflict heavy 

losses on the enemy.” Although the near chaos of those trying days 

makes it practically impossible to reconstruct with certainty the 

exact encounters between the Americans and the Germans, the 

2d Division suffered more than 500 casualties from 2 to 5 June. In 

hindsight, the 2d Division’s activity in its new defensive positions 

near Lucy-le-Bocage and along the Paris Road complimented 

that of the 3d Division at Château-Thierry. The French were still 

doing the majority of the fighting at both locations, but both of the 

American divisions provided critical contributions to stopping the 

German offensive for good in that sector.

The arrival of the fresh American divisions, each about the 

size of a small French corps, provided at least as much moral 

encouragement as combat power. Both were extraordinarily 

important and, at this point in the war, inextricably related. French 

Army morale had dropped dramatically after the tremendous 

defeat it had suffered during the third German offensive of late 

May 1918. As Degoutte’s initial conversation with the 2d Division 

leadership illustrates, the very presence of the American units 

was vital to the Allied war effort. In the uncertain situation 

on 1 June, the French XXI Corps commander felt compelled 

to question the American divisional leadership’s confidence in 

their men’s ability to hold in the face of the expected German 

attacks. Yet once he had overcome his surprise at Brown’s firm 

declaration that the Americans “will hold,” Degoutte’s sentiments 

shifted from concern to hope, and he told the Americans that 

he intended to counterattack the enemy as soon as the German 
•••• 49 ••••

offensive was stopped. Colonel Pierrefeu, the prominent French 

staff officer who described this timely American reinforcement 

on a broken front as “a wonderful transfusion of blood,” extended 

the metaphor when he asserted that “life was coming in floods 

to reanimate the dying body of France.” The Americans’ timely 

arrival encouraged French soldiers of all ranks by providing the 

numbers and morale necessary to stop the German advance and 

quickly shift over to the offensive. On 5 June, Degoutte ordered 

the Americans and the French division on their left to press 

forward. The French commander may have intended these short 

advances to be minor attacks designed to seize better defensive 

terrain, but they unwittingly initiated a fierce battle that became 

one of the most famous of the war.

Belleau Wood

The orders that led to the brutal nineteen-day fight for Belleau 

Wood, a one-kilometer by three-kilometer kidney-shaped forest, 

did not foreshadow the famously bloody conflict that was to follow. 

In accordance with Degoutte’s command, Harbord directed that 

at 0345 on 6 June, the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, commanded by 

Maj. Julius S. Turrill, was to advance about a kilometer to seize 

and hold the northern portions of a small elevation just north of 

Champillon, identified as Hill 142 on the map. Reinforcing Turrill’s 

unit were the regiment’s 8th Machine Gun Company, the 23d (B) 

Company*

 from the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, and Company 

D of the 2d Engineers. To shore up Turrill’s left flank, Harbord 

eventually sent in the 51st (G) Company from Lt. Col. Frederick 

C. Wise’s 2d Battalion, 5th Regiment, which was serving as the 

brigade’s reserve. The French 167th Division on Turrill’s immediate 

left would make the main advance, but Turrill’s marines needed 

to advance as well to keep their front line abreast of the attacking 

Frenchmen. More significantly, Degoutte also directed that “as 

soon as possible” after this minor Franco-American attack—even 

as soon as that afternoon—other 2d Division units should make 

a similar advance to take “the Bois de Belleau and the long crest 

(southeast-northwest), which immediately dominates Torcy and 

Belleau,” two small villages about two to three kilometers north 

of the American lines. These orders, and the way the 2d Division 

*

 Marine Corps companies initially used numbers for unit designations. Over 

the course of the war, these numbers shifted to letters to align with U.S. Army 

standards.
•••• 50 ••••

carried them out, were to make 6 June one of the most famous and 

most bloody days of the war for the American forces.

Through their early morning attack, the marines successfully 

advanced the American lines as ordered, but suffered severe 

consequences when Harbord failed to coordinate sufficient 

artillery fire for the effort. After a scant five-minute preparation by 

a small percentage of the divisional artillery, the marines advanced 

without the benefits of a rolling barrage. Their infantry tactics 

only made matters worse. Moving forward in a linear formation of 

dense waves more appropriate to some bygone era of warfare, they 

crossed 300 meters of open wheat fields in the face of machine gun 

fire that rapidly thinned their ranks. Through grit, determination, 

and sheer impetuosity, the surviving men disregarded their losses, 

dispensed with the parade ground formations, and worked their 

way forward in small groups that ultimately killed, captured, 

or drove back the Germans. Reinforcements, and the slow but 

eventual arrival of the French on their left flank, helped them hold 

the new positions in the face of German counterattacks. Yet the 

attack had a high cost: Turrill’s unit lost thirteen officers and 325 

men, or about 90 percent of the officers and 50 percent of the men 

who made the initial advance.

At the direction of the division commander, General Bundy, 

Harbord followed up the morning attack at Hill 142 with orders for 

an afternoon advance to seize Belleau Wood at 1700. He developed 

a two-phase plan in which troops from four battalions would first 

take the southern half of the woods and then take the northern 

portion, while other marines advanced through the village of 

Bouresches immediately to its southeast and drove all the way 

through to the rail station north of the village. Sadly, Harbord 

coordinated even less artillery support for the hurried afternoon 

attack than he did for the early morning assault. A portion of 

the division artillery was to provide merely “interdiction and 

harassing” fire in the attack zone and to target locations where 

“it is possible that there are nests of machine guns.” Again, he 

did not arrange for a rolling barrage to cover the infantry as they 

advanced. The order’s lack of detail about the fire support for the 

attack suggests conspicuous ignorance about the strength of the 

German defenses and of the requirements for successful assaults 

in modern war. Harbord later explained the insufficient firepower 

support by claiming that the French had told him that the wood 

was only lightly held, and he took them at their word. As with 

the morning attack, the assault troops made matters worse by 
•••• 51 ••••

using slow-moving linear wave formations. The results would be 

disastrous for the marines who attacked that day.

Although the Americans’ approach to the battle showed their 

inexperience, the German defenders prepared for a tough fight. By 

the time of the initial American attack, nearly 1,200 men from the 

237th Division’s 461st Infantry Regiment, supported by around 

200 machine guns and a number of trench mortars, had been 

organized in three distinct defensive lines in the woods. These 

positions made maximum use of the natural terrain features, 

which included many rock formations with massive boulders and 

some ravines. The woods were dense enough to give any attacker 

substantial problems with forward movement, communication 

and liaison between small units, and general spatial awareness. 

In short, it was difficult attack terrain, an easy place to get lost 

and disoriented. The Germans augmented these natural defensive 

strengths by digging their own trenches and foxholes, making a 

maximum use of the boulders, and protecting those positions 

with barbed wire.

The marines began their assault promptly at 1700. The men 

of Maj. Benjamin S. Berry’s 3d Battalion from the 5th Regiment 

had been holding a generally north-south line directly north of 

Lucy-le-Bocage, and had to move straight east across a road and 

through a wheat field for nearly a kilometer before they could reach 

the edge of the woods. Sgt. Merwin H. Silverthorn, of the 20th (K) 

Company, described their tactics this way:

We started off in  .  .  . formation  .  .  . which consisted of four 

waves with first wave and all waves holding their rifles at 

what is call high port, not even aiming or firing or hip firing or 

anything like that. . . . the first wave, consisting of riflemen and 

hand grenadiers that were supposed to throw hand grenades 

to protect the riflemen; the second wave consisting of rifle 

grenadiers, people who had rifle grenades and riflemen; and 

then the third wave duplicating the first wave, and the fourth 

wave duplicating the second wave—with 75 meters between the 

first wave and the second wave—and then actually the third and 

fourth waves are replacements for the first and second waves 

[sic]. . . . We moved towards Belleau Woods, which we could see 

at this high point, nobody firing a shot. Bayonets fixed, moving at 

a low steady cadence that we had been taught to move, because 

theoretically a barrage is shooting in front of you and you don’t 

want to go too fast or you’ll walk into your barrage.
•••• 52 ••••

Unfortunately, no rolling barrage escorted the advancing 

troops that day. They were walking straight into the trained fire 

of experienced German riflemen and machine gunners without 

any covering fire whatsoever, with predictably tragic results. The 

enemy fire mowed down Berry’s men as they marched forward 

in waves through the green wheat. Some marines continued to 

walk forward until they were hit, while others dove to the ground 

and attempted to work their way forward in more sensible ways. 

Berry himself was seriously wounded, forcing Capt. Henry L. 

Larsen to take temporary command of the battalion. One veteran 

marine in the 47th (M) Company, on the far right of the attacking 

formation that was being blasted from the front and the front left, 

remembered some men “spreading out in the wheat and taking 

the old formations” marines “had used so many times in the cane 

fields of Santo Domingo,” during the 1916 American invasion 

of the Dominican Republic. Elements of the broken formation 

veered away from the enemy fire—heading to the right, in this 

instance—and ran or crawled to the nearest cover. Remarkably, 

a few did make it into the far southern part of the wood, where 

Part of Belleau Wood soon after its capture (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
•••• 53 ••••

they met the remaining members of Maj. Berton W. Sibley’s 3d 

Battalion of the 6th Regiment, who had survived a much shorter 

walk through open fields due south of the wood.

Sibley’s battalion had held an east-west line directly east of 

Lucy-le-Bocage. Their approach toward the woods meant that most 

men had to drive straight north, across an open expanse of only a 

few hundred meters, before hitting the southern edge of the woods. 

But even that shorter crossing distance was enough to enable the 

Germans to inflict severe damage to the companies assaulting the 

woods. The men who eventually reached the tree line gathered 

themselves into combat teams to eliminate enemy strong-points 

and drive out the German infantry from the southwest arm of the 

woods. After moving forward a few hundred meters into the wood, 

they ran into the enemy’s main line of resistance along a rocky slope, 

which stopped them cold. They soon reported that it would take 

“direct hits from heavy artillery” to overcome the enemy positions.

The two easternmost companies of Sibley’s battalion advanced 

to the northeast down the road that ran south of the woods from 

Lucy-le-Bocage toward Bouresches. They found and followed a 

convenient ditch to the south of the road that took them as far 

as some wheat fields southwest of the village, where they were 

stopped by enemy fire. They too suffered heavy losses to machine 

gun fire along their route of attack.

The 6th Regiment’s 2d Battalion, led by Maj. Thomas W. 

Holcomb, was in line immediately to the east of Sibley’s men, and 

its mission was to advance as required to stay abreast of them 

as they moved to attack and hold Bouresches. One of Holcomb’s 

companies, the 96th (H), had some cover from a ravine that ran 

from its starting position straight toward the village, until it opened 

up to a wheat field south of Bouresches. After being pinned down 

in the wheat field for nearly an hour, 1st Lt. James F. Robertson got 

his men up and moving again. Although they fired as they moved 

and used the creek depression to its utmost, only twenty-one men 

were able to fight their way into the village and drive out its German 

defenders—who withdrew to their main line of resistance along a 

railroad embankment to the rear of Bouresches. Robertson then 

put another lieutenant in charge of preparing the village for defense 

against German counterattacks and ran back for reinforcements, 

which arrived in time to ensure that the village never again fell 

back into enemy hands.

As the fighting on 6 June continued, the brigade and division 

headquarters received a great deal of misinformation throughout 
•••• 54 ••••

the afternoon and evening, most of it suggesting that the attack 

had started out well and that casualties were light. One glaringly 

inaccurate report claimed that the attacking marines “entered 

into woods to the attack . . . with absolutely no loss. . . . Things 

going fine.” As evening fell, the truth began to emerge, and it 

became clear that the assault had been costly and not even close 

to successful. Even though the 2d Division had advanced along 

Hill 142, moved into the southern edge of Belleau Wood, and taken 

Bouresches, the marines had failed to accomplish the first phase 

of the plan and Harbord had to cancel the second phase entirely. 

The casualties for the day were horrendous—1,087 marines were 

killed, wounded, or captured, a figure greater than the total Marine 

Corps losses in all engagements from 1775 until 1918. To date, the 

attack on Belleau Wood remains one of the bloodiest days in U.S. 

Marine Corps history.

To the east of the 4th Brigade, the soldiers of the 3d Brigade 

also attacked on 6 June. Although that assault has been 

overshadowed by the marines’ assault on Belleau Wood, it had an 

equally high cost and was even more fruitless. Two battalions from 

the brigade’s 23d Regiment, the 1st Battalion under Maj. Edmund 

C. Waddill and the 3d Battalion under Maj. Charles B. Elliott, had 

been holding the line from Triangle Farm down toward Le Thiolet. 

They were ordered to advance toward the Bouresches-Vaux road 

“where necessary to prevent a reentrant angle in the line near 

Triangle Farm” as the marines advanced on their left. The orders 

of the regimental commander, Colonel Malone, specified that the 

two battalions were to advance “only slightly” to a “very limited 

objective” approximately a half a kilometer to the front, and only 

after the marines to their left had secured their objectives around 

Bouresches. (See Map 5.)

Even with these supposedly clear orders from the brigade and 

regimental commanders, the battalion commanders attacked at a 

time, in a manner, and to an extent not consistent with expectations. 

The 3d Battalion initiated its attack at 1715, before the marines 

to the left had advanced or even moved far enough to create the 

feared “reentrant angle” in the line that would require the 23d 

Infantry to advance. When the 1st Battalion realized that the 3d 

had advanced, it went forward to protect the 3d Battalion’s flank. 

By the time the brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Edward M. Lewis, 

learned what was happening and ordered the advances to cease, 

both units were fully engaged with the enemy. In the face of severe 

machine gun fire that caused heavy losses to the attackers, some 
•••• 55 ••••

aggressive survivors ended up driving the Germans off of Hill 192, 

a slight elevation that was beyond the new line specified in the 

attack orders. That unexpected and unwanted “success,” however, 

placed the surviving soldiers in an exposed advanced position with 

no support on either flank. When Malone learned of the situation, 

he immediately ordered the men to move back to their original 

lines, but their withdrawal—to the extent that they attempted 

one—was confused at best. In the worst of the fighting that night, the 

Americans were thrown back and annihilated by counterattacking 

Church used as a hospital for wounded Americans (National Archives) •••••••••••••••
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Hill 142

Hill 133

H

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Torcy

Lucy-le-Bocage

Champillon

Marigny-en-Orxois

La Voie-du-Châtel

Montgivrau

Coupru

Bussiares

BELLEAU WOOD AREA

INITIAL OFFENSIVE

6–7 June 1918

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Axis of Attack

Unit Movement

Front Line, 4 Jun

Front Line, 6 Jun

Front Line, 7 Jun

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ELEVATION IN METERS

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Hill 169

Hill 181

Hill 192 

Bois de

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Bois de

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Triangle

Farm

Belleau

Givry

Étrépilly

Bouresches

ult

Le Thiolet

Vaux

Monneaux
•••• 58 ••••

Germans. The two companies suffered more than 300 estimated 

casualties. Company M was destroyed, and Company K nearly so, 

and yet the American lines did not advance.

For their part, the Germans yielded no important ground and 

never had their main line of resistance in the sector breached. 

The two German divisions attacked by the Americans on 6 June, 

the 237th and 10th Divisions, suffered approximately 400 and 

150 casualties, respectively. In the first large-scale clash between 

Germans and Americans in the Belleau Wood sector on 6 June, the 

Germans were the indisputable victors. Even though the next few 

weeks would see a shift in the Allies’ fortunes, the following days 

were equally trying for the American soldiers and marines.

On 7 and 8 June, the 2d Division sent fresh units to replace 

the battalions shattered in the previous day’s attacks. The 5th 

Regiment sent Wise’s 2d Battalion to relieve the survivors of 

Berry’s 3d Battalion in Belleau Wood, and the 23d Regiment 

moved Maj. Deshler Whiting’s 2d Battalion into the line to replace 

Elliott’s seriously weakened 3d Battalion near Le Thiolet. They 

beat back some local German probing attacks, consolidated 

their positions, and made preparations to continue the advance 

in the immediate future. General Degoutte, the French corps 

commander, wanted the Americans to resume the attack, but 

he also explicitly admonished the marines to take a much more 

thoughtful approach. He insisted that “in view of the strength of 

the hostile points of support” in the target area, “this advance 

will be conducted methodically, by means of successive minor 

operations, making the utmost use of artillery and reducing the 

employment of infantry to the minimum necessary.” The French 

and German leadership knew all too well that hurried, haphazard 

infantry assaults, made without considerable artillery support and 

based on uncertain intelligence and sloppy reconnaissance, led to 

little or no advances and long casualty lists.

Meanwhile, the Germans also reorganized their positions. 

They brought in the 5th Guards Division to replace the 167th 

Division, which had been severely damaged by strong French 

attacks to the left of the marines on 7 June. They also shortened 

the width of the 237th Division sector and inserted the 28th 

Division to its left. Strangely, this change drew the new division 

boundary line in the middle of Belleau Wood. When the marines 

renewed their attack, they now faced the 461st Regiment of the 

237th in the northwestern half of the wood and the 40th Fusilier 

Regiment of the 28th Division in the southern and eastern 
•••• 59 ••••

portions. These adjustments were still underway as the battle 

resumed on 8 June.

That day, Sibley’s 3d Battalion of the 5th Regiment attempted 

to drive forward after a brief mortar barrage of the German 

line in the southeast sector of the wood. Although the Germans 

suffered more than 150 casualties and lost a few machine guns, 

the Americans took heavier losses and did not meaningfully affect 

the German defensive position. After a visit from the division’s 

artillery brigade commander, Brig. Gen. William Chamberlaine, 

Harbord finally decided that he needed a new approach to secure 

the desired results, and ordered Sibley to withdraw his men to a 

clearly identifiable line at the southern end of the wood so that 

it could be “systematically covered by artillery fire” before they 

launched any more attacks.

For the first time since entering the line at the beginning of 

June, the 2d Division was going to make a full, methodical use of 

its artillery in support of its infantry. Chamberlaine organized the 

fire of all 160 artillery pieces in the division’s sector to support 

the advance of one battalion of marines in its effort to take the 

southern half of the wood. Beginning the morning of 9 June and 

for nearly the next twenty-four hours, all available guns were to 

pound the woods and the surrounding area at a rapid, sustainable 

rate of fire. Before the marines began their advance toward the 

German line, all guns would fire at their maximum rate for a full 

hour at suspected enemy strongpoints in and around Belleau Wood. 

Finally, for the first time in the battle, the 75-mm. guns would shift 

to a rolling barrage to escort the attackers to and through the 

German positions. The attack plan also directed twelve machine 

guns in Bouresches to fire a massed barrage along the eastern edge 

of the wood to isolate the German defenders from reinforcements.

At 0430 on 10 June, Maj. John H. Hughes’ 1st Battalion, 6th 

Regiment, which had replaced Sibley’s worn-out battalion, followed 

the rolling barrage forward in the hopes of securing the entire 

southern half of Belleau Wood. Hughes reported that the artillery 

preparation had “blown the Bois de Belleau to mince meat,” and 

that the rolling barrage was “working beautifully.” Enemy machine 

gun fire was generally silent, suggesting that the defenders were 

shaken by the new firepower-based approach. By 0510, the attacking 

marines reported reaching their objective—“approximately 

an east-west line” running “through Hill 169.” Casualties were 

much lighter than in any of the previous attacks since 6 June, 

and the regimental intelligence officer reported: “Action in the 
•••• 60 ••••

woods deemed finished.” It seemed that the Americans finally 

had discovered a formula for success. However, unbeknownst to 

Hughes, his battalion had stopped nearly a kilometer short of its 

assigned goal. In fact, it had merely advanced to the position that 

Sibley’s battalion had held on 8 June. Not only did the assaulting 

companies fail to reach their assigned objectives, as expected, but 

Hughes’ failure to properly identify and report his new position led 

to additional problems for the brigade and division leadership as 

they attempted to manage the battle’s progress (Map 6).

Hughes’ error specifically affected Harbord’s next effort to take 

the woods, in which Wise’s 2d Battalion from the 5th Regiment 

would drive into the woods from the west early on 11 June. Harbord 

ordered Wise’s marines to attack along the same route that Berry’s 

men had covered on 6 June, but this time with much more artillery 

support. However, Harbord thought that Hughes’ battalion was in 

a much more northern, and therefore closer, supporting position 

than it really was. Even more seriously, Chamberlaine’s gunners 

had to limit their preparatory artillery fire to areas beyond the 

line where they believed Hughes’ men to be.

Despite these problems, the attack of 11 June, though tougher 

and bloodier than it should have been, nevertheless produced 

significant results. A morning fog enabled Wise’s men to get much 

farther across the bloodstained wheat field west of the wood before 

German machine gun fire began thinning their ranks. Even with 

heavy casualties, many marines successfully reached the forest 

edge. There, they gathered into combat teams and began working 

their way to the northeast, east, and southeast, hoping to link up 

with Hughes’ men. Fortunately, a still unknown group of ingenious 

marines found a weakly guarded ravine running along the seam 

between the two German regiments holding the wood and followed 

it to the northeast. They eventually slammed into the left flank of 

the 461st Regiment holding the northwest portion of the wood 

and the right flank of the 40th Regiment holding the southeast 

sector. The Germans in the 40th Regiment also had to contend 

with intense machine gun fire pouring into the eastern edge of the 

woods from Americans in Bouresches. To make matters worse 

for the defenders, Hughes’ men were driving forward from their 

line in the southern section of the wood. The Germans thus were 

being assaulted from at least two directions and fired upon from 

a third. Entire German companies were surrounded and either 

destroyed or convinced to surrender. Some observers noted 

that American machine gunners were mowing down groups of 
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Bois de

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Hill 133

Hill 169

Hill

181

Railroad Station

Triangle

Farm

Torcy

Belleau

Givry

Bouresches

Lucy-le-Bocage

Montgivrault

Le Thiolet

BELLEAU WOOD AREA

10–11 June 1918

Axis of Attack, 10 Jun

Front Line, 10 Jun

Axis of Attack, 11 Jun

Front Line, 11 Jun

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Map 6
•••• 62 ••••

Germans attempting to move in and out of the eastern edge of the 

wood. Beyond the numbers of killed and wounded, at least 400 

Germans and 30 enemy machine guns were captured in the day’s 

assaults. The two attacking battalions were finally able to link 

up, breaching the enemy’s main line of resistance. The Americans 

suffered over 180 casualties in the effort.

Although the attack was arguably the most successful of the 

battle thus far, it did not achieve its stated goal, and misinformation 

again clouded the leadership’s understanding of the situation. Wise 

initially reported that his men had reached the far northern edge 

of the wood. In reality, they had driven across the width of the 

wood and were holding the eastern edge. Wise compounded the 

error by refusing to listen to his battalion intelligence officer who 

attempted to set him straight. Harbord received the inaccurate 

information and quickly reported to Bundy that “the northern half 

of Bois de Belleau belongs to the 5th Marines.” Bundy conveyed the 

thrilling news to Pershing, who issued a press release announcing 

the capture of the entire woods. Only later did Wise come to 

realize his mistake, particularly when German infantry began 

counterattacking into his open left flank.

To meet these attacks, Wise bent back his flank and, aided by 

the support of the 2d Engineers, had his marines assume a strong 

defensive position that enabled them to hold their new line and 

exact serious losses on the enemy. The new American position was 

not accurately identified and relayed to Harbord and Bundy until 

later that afternoon. As Harbord gained a better understanding of 

his units’ true position, he also gained a deeper appreciation for the 

condition of his men in the wood. He reported to Bundy: “Officers 

and men are now at a state scarcely less than complete physical 

exhaustion.” Staff officers at AEF GHQ began thinking through 

ways to find and bring in reinforcements to continue the fight.

By dawn the next morning, 12 June, the battle was raging 

again as the Germans attempted another counterattack that the 

tired marines beat back. Artillery fire from both sides increased in 

intensity. Some troops later said it was the worst they experienced 

in the entire war. As the fighting settled down, Harbord held a 

conference with his subordinate commanders to plan his next 

attack for that afternoon. Wise agreed that with sufficient artillery 

support, his men should be able to clear out the northern half of 

the wood. Harbord directed an hour and a half of artillery fire 

from some of the 75-mm. guns in the division’s 12th Field Artillery 

Regiment to soften the German defenses prior to an assault at 
•••• 63 ••••

1700. At 1630, after the first hour of the artillery preparation, Wise 

reported that the light guns were not having the desired impact 

in the dense woods, and that the number of guns firing could not 

saturate the portion of the wood held by the enemy. He asked for 

an extra hour of fire, which Harbord granted. But this was not 

enough. In spite of the bombardment, the attacking marines still 

had to work forward with ingenious tactics and make a maximum 

use of their own mortars and rifle grenades to advance. Although 

the men fought their way forward nearly another kilometer despite 

heavy casualties, they remained unable to clear the northern edge 

and northwestern section of the wood. By now the American 

companies were so reduced in size that they could not adequately 

hold all the terrain they had taken. Although the division wrongly 

informed Pershing that the marines had captured the entire wood, 

a powerful German strongpoint still anchored one more defensive 

position in the northern half (Map 7).

Long before this point, the battle had assumed the character 

of a grudge match. Neither side wanted to concede failure, 

especially at the strategic level. When the German high command 

decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in early 

General Harbord (right), wearing a French Adrian helmet, 

questions a German prisoner (National Archives)

•••••••••••••••
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Relief Action

12/13 Jun

Failed Relief Action

13/14 Jun

Relief Action

13/14 Jun

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Bois de

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Hill 133

Hill 169

Hill 181

Railroad

Station

Triangle

Farm

Torcy

Belleau

Givry

Bouresches

Lucy-le-Bocage

Montgivrault

Le Thiolet

BELLEAU WOOD AREA

12–14 June 1918

Front Line, 11 Jun

Axis of Attack, 12 Jun

Front Line, 12 Jun

Front Line, 14 Jun

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Map 7
•••• 65 ••••

1917, the senior naval officer had promised the Kaiser that no 

Americans would make it safely across the Atlantic. America’s 

prewar army was tiny and wholly unprepared for the kind of 

massive, industrial, expeditionary effort that would be required 

to engage in the fighting on the Western Front. By mid-1918, with 

over a million American troops in France, the naval leadership’s 

inaccurate assertions had been replaced by assurances from 

German army officers that the young and inexperienced AEF was 

not professional or competent enough to affect the war. Yet each 

American success in combat, no matter how small, suggested 

that over time, American belligerency in general and American 

combat forces specifically would ensure Germany’s ultimate 

defeat. As the commander of the 28th Division, General Gustav 

Böhm, admitted during the battle:

Should the Americans on our front gain the upper hand only 

temporarily, this may have the most unfavorable influence on 

the morale of the Entente and on the continuation of the war. 

In the fighting that faces us it is therefore not a matter of the 

possession or non-possession of a village or wood of indifferent 

value in itself, but the question of whether the English-American 

publicity will succeed in representing the American Army as 

one equal to the German Army or as actually superior troops.

For his part, General Bundy viewed the situation in a similar 

light, stating that “effects on both American and German morale 

and prestige . . . make imperative the occupation of the Bois de 

Belleau.” In this charged atmosphere, tactical and operational 

considerations gave way to the strategic concerns of national and 

inter-allied morale fed by international propaganda. This line of 

reasoning helps to explain not only the American persistence to 

take the small and tactically insignificant wood at practically any 

cost in blood, but also the German decision to pay an even higher 

cost in men to retain a partial hold on that same little section of 

the line.

The morning of 13 June dawned with a German counterattack 

that hit the American lines from the eastern edge of Belleau 

Wood to Bouresches. The fighting was fierce but the soldiers and 

marines held their positions and inflicted heavy losses on the weary 

attackers. That night, Bundy shortened the 4th Brigade’s front line 

and extended that of the 3d Brigade. Soldiers from Major Elliott’s 

3d Battalion, 23d Infantry replaced the 3d Battalion, 5th Regiment 
•••• 66 ••••

(now under the command of Maj. Maurice E. Shearer) that had been 

fighting hard in Bouresches since 6 June.

Even with their shortened brigade frontage, the marines 

holding the line in and around Belleau Wood experienced a new 

level of misery early on 14 June when the Germans hit them with 

mustard gas. German artillery fired between 6,000 and 7,000 

rounds of gas between Lucy-le-Bocage and the wood. This barrage 

hit many units, but had the most serious effect on Holcomb’s 

2d Battalion. The marines were moving forward to replace the 

men of Wise’s 2d Battalion, 5th Regiment, in the wood when a 

combination of high explosive and mustard gas rounds struck 

their position. As troops removed their masks to deal with their 

wounds and those of their comrades, they inhaled the gas, which 

seriously damaged their lungs. A regimental surgeon reported that 

“practically [the] entire battalion [is] physically unfit do [sic] to 

gas.” The 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment, which continued to occupy 

the southern portion of Belleau Wood, also took heavy casualties. 

These included the battalion commander, Major Hughes, who had 

to be evacuated and temporarily relieved by Maj. Frank Garrett. 

All told, the division suffered approximately 800 casualties from 

that gas attack alone.

The persistent nature of the gas meant that unless troops in the 

affected areas exercised extreme care, they could be injured by the 

gas for many days to come. In an environment where men needed 

to dig holes and constantly stay in the dirt to avoid being shot or 

shelled, this risk of injury was a serious problem. Harbord therefore 

directed his men to clear out of the gas-saturated portions of 

the wood, and reported to Bundy that his infantry companies 

were horribly depleted, the remaining men were exhausted, and 

morale was “liable to snap” at any time. In response, Bundy visited 

Degoutte and asked for Col. Thomas M. Anderson Jr.’s 7th Infantry, 

5th Brigade, from the 3d Division, then in corps reserve, to be 

assigned to the 2d Division to help hold the line in Belleau Wood. 

The reinforcements were desperately needed, as by 16 June the 

division had suffered over 4,000 casualties since the month began. 

If Pershing’s headquarters had not been able to send it some 2,700 

replacements—even ones who were not fully trained and had not 

yet been tested in battle—the 4th Brigade, and perhaps the entire 

division, would have had to withdraw from the line to rest and 

refit before finishing the battle.

Between 15 and 17 June, both sides relieved their thoroughly 

worn-out units in the northern portion of the wood. The German 
•••• 67 ••••

87th Division replaced the 237th Division in line, while the 28th 

Division shifted its boundary to the east, which allowed the 87th

to hold complete command and control of the German positions 

within the wood. By 17 June, the fresh but only partially trained and 

wholly inexperienced men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Infantry, led by 

Lt. Col. John P. Adams, relieved the exhausted marines. But even 

though the units changed, the nature of the battle did not, as the 

brutal fighting would continue for another week. The commander 

of the 87th Division requested permission to withdraw completely 

from the woods and take up positions in the rear with better fields 

of fire, but the German corps commander instead demanded that 

the fresh troops make “assault raids” on the American positions 

while also continuing to pummel them with artillery fire. At this 

point German shelling was causing a hundred American casualties 

a day, irrespective of infantry patrols, raids, or attacks. Even as the 

American gunners sought to protect their infantry by replying in 

kind, the French—who controlled the ammunition supply for the 

2d Field Artillery Brigade—reduced the number of shells available, 

believing that the Americans had fired excessive rounds of artillery 

Marines of the 2d Battalion, 6th Regiment, on the move to a rest area

(National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 68 ••••

during the first two weeks of the engagement. The French also 

reduced the number of aircraft available for the sector, effectively 

yielding air superiority to the Germans for the rest of the battle. 

The reduced artillery and air support proved unfortunate, as the 

new French corps commander, General Stanislas Naulin, wanted 

his corps to push the Germans back all along the sector. Doing so 

would mean taking the rest of Belleau Wood.

In accordance with the corps orders, Harbord ordered 

the fresh but untried soldiers from the 7th Infantry to clear 

the northern tip of the wood. On both 18 and 19 June, the 1st 

Battalion’s Companies B and C attacked the German strongpoint 

in the northwestern section of the wood, without any artillery 

support at all. The first attack failed completely and led to 

twenty-one casualties. The second made some initial progress, 

but at the cost of three times the number of men killed and 

wounded. On 20 June, Adams ordered a third attack by two 

platoons from Company D and one platoon each from Company 

A and Company C, again without any artillery support. It too was 

repulsed. That evening, Harbord, who wrongly believed that just 

a “little machine gun nest” was holding up an entire battalion 

of American soldiers, sent a stinging note to Adams, criticizing 

the failed efforts of his unit and challenging him to succeed in 

its final attempt the next morning. Adams’ men were scheduled 

to be relieved later that same day.

In response, Adams sent Harbord two messages—one open 

and official, and one confidential. In the open note, Adams told 

Harbord that his men needed more and better weapons to complete 

the task: 1,000 hand grenades and 500 rifle grenades, as well as 

mortar and artillery support, were “absolutely necessary.” In the 

confidential message, Adams acknowledged that “orders have been 

issued for an attack tomorrow morning” but “under the conditions 

noted I do not believe any attack without heavy artillery fire 

preceding can move the [machine] guns from the woods. They are 

emplaced and strongly held. The woods is almost a thicket and 

the throwing of troops into the woods is filtering away men with 

nothing gained” [sic]. He asked Harbord to consider withdrawing 

the two frontline infantry companies to a clear line so that “a heavy 

artillery fire” could safely precede the assault. He then reiterated, 

“I can assure you that the orders to attack will stand as given, but 

it cannot succeed. This is only my individual expression and has 

not reached the ears of anyone else . . . please consider this . . . the 

two Stokes [mortars] won’t even worry the German Machine Guns.”
•••• 69 ••••

Whatever Harbord thought of Adams’ messages, he did not 

ignore them. In response, he agreed to arrange some artillery 

support from midnight until 0315, after which the infantry were to 

advance behind a rolling barrage and wipe out any Germans that 

were left. It is unclear how many guns Harbord dedicated to this 

preparation, or what their rates of fire were, but this fire support 

plan proved inadequate. Adams reported that the artillery fire was 

“light in volume and ineffective.” Subsequent events confirmed his 

assessment. The attack began on time, but failed to achieve its 

goal. Not only did the infantry run into strong resistance from the 

German infantry, but German artillery responded to the American 

barrage with a much more effective counterbarrage. The soldiers of 

the 7th Infantry ended the attack back in their starting positions, 

having suffered dozens more casualties. As planned, Shearer’s 3d 

Battalion, 5th Regiment, soon relieved them.

Despite the 7th Infantry’s failed attack, Harbord sent Shearer’s 

marines back into the woods with instructions to wipe out the 

remaining German positions—again without any artillery support. 

Although intelligence reports indicated that the Germans had 

placed as many as 200 men and fifteen machine guns into the 

wood, he told Shearer it was “not practicable to withdraw again 

and give further artillery preparation.” He instructed Shearer 

to make “judicious use of sharpshooting snipers,” which would 

allow the battalion to take the enemy positions “without much 

expenditure of men.” He continued: “With the sniping . . . you should 

be endeavoring to get the machine gun nest surrounded so you 

can rush them when ready.” Harbord wanted Shearer to clear the 

woods with these tactics before the end of 23 June.

At 1900 that day, the 16th (I) and 20th (K) Companies attempted 

an assault on the German positions. Although they made some 

initial progress, overtaking the forward enemy outposts, they 

stalled at the main German line of resistance, which was much 

more strongly held than Harbord suspected. According to 

estimates, one portion of the German line had as many as sixteen 

heavy and thirty-five light machine guns. The two companies 

suffered nearly 130 casualties but ended up withdrawing to their 

starting positions to regroup. Shearer then reported: “The enemy 

seems to have unlimited alternate gun positions and many guns. 

Each gun position covered by others . . . am of the opinion that 

infantry alone cannot dislodge enemy [machine] guns.”

Finally, on 24 June, Harbord returned to the approach that 

had yielded some earlier success, namely saturating the known 
•••• 70 ••••

enemy positions with a long, heavy artillery bombardment before 

sending his marines forward. After a conference with all the 

applicable infantry and artillery commanders, Harbord agreed to 

withdraw Shearer’s battalion to an identifiable line farther south 

in the wood by 0300 on 25 June and then give the artillery an 

effective free-fire zone in the remaining northern portion of the 

wood and surrounding areas until 1600 that afternoon. The rate 

and density of fire was to be heavy enough to prevent any enemy 

infantry from moving in or out of the area. From 1600 to 1700, all 

artillery was then to fire at its maximum rate, before shifting to a 

rolling barrage to escort the marines all the way to the northern 

edge of the wood (Map 8).

This combined artillery-infantry attack worked superbly. When 

the marines attacked at 1700 on 25 June, they reported meeting 

“very little machine gun fire” and successfully advanced, for the 

first time in the battle, to the far northern edge of the wood. It was 

far from a walkover, and much hard fighting ensued along the main 

line of resistance, but the artillery preparation had so weakened 

the German defenders that they could not beat back the assault 

of the increasingly experienced marines. Even after the advance 

reached the northern tip of the wood, some scattered German 

remnants remained in isolated pockets, but the mopping-up 

operations that continued into the next morning completely wiped 

them out. Although Shearer’s unit still suffered over 120 casualties 

in this assault, it achieved all of its objectives, capturing over 300 

Germans and nineteen heavy machine guns along the way. The 

attack practically destroyed an entire German battalion of the 

347th Regiment, which lost 440 men killed or captured and left 

only 66 to fight another day. In this great war of attrition, it was 

significant that the Americans had finally begun to inflict more 

casualties on the enemy than they were suffering themselves.

The inexperienced Americans had defeated the Germans in 

the brutal battle for Belleau Wood, but at an enormous cost. When 

the 2d Division finally left the front lines after forty days in the 

sector, the casualty list ran to some 8,000 names. The losses were 

the result of a tenacious German defense in ideal defensive terrain, 

and many mistakes made by various American officers. But the 

marines and soldiers learned and improved during the battle, and 

their courage and stamina remained unquestioned. Long before the 

end of the battle, the German corps staff produced an intelligence 

report complimenting the Americans’ aggressiveness and stating 

that overall “the American 2d Division may be considered as a 
USMC

2 5

I I

USMC

3 6

I I

23

III

USMC

2 6

I I

USMC

3 5

I I

87

X X

347

III

28

X X

XX

III

Bois de

Belleau

Hill 133

Hill 169

Hill 181

Triangle

Farm

Railroad

Station

Torcy

Belleau

Givry

Bouresches

Lucy-le-Bocage

Montgivrault

Le Thiolet

BELLEAU WOOD AREA

25–26 June 1918

Axis of Attack

Front Line, 12 Jun

Front Line, 25 Jun

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Map 8
•••• 72 ••••

very good division, if not even an attack unit”—high praise for 

an untested division in the middle of its first major engagement.

Vaux

Although the capture of Belleau Wood ended the marines’ 

offensive activity in this sector, it was not the last significant 

attack by the 2d Division. Soldiers from the 23d Infantry had 

held Bouresches for many days, fighting off German attacks and 

pouring machine gun fire into the east edge of the wood, but the 

men of the 9th Infantry had held their sector on the far right of 

the division line without engaging in any major attacks. They 

finally got their chance in a limited but successful attack on the 

German-held village of Vaux, which lay in a small valley on the 

western side of Hill 204 along the boundary with the neighboring 

French 39th Division.

The genesis of the attack on Vaux came during the heart of 

the fight for Belleau Wood, when on 12 June the French corps 

commander directed the 2d Division to advance its lines in the 

3d Brigade sector with a series of “minor attacks.” The division 

leadership may have allowed Harbord to send the marines into 

Belleau Wood without making proper preparations, but it did 

not repeat this mistake for the attack on Vaux. Its staff, led 

by its new intelligence officer Lt. Col. Arthur L. Conger, spent 

many days gathering information on the village and the German 

defenses in it. Conger collected intelligence from infantry 

patrols, aircraft reconnaissance, and former village residents, 

enabling the 2d Division staff to develop a meticulous attack 

plan. The planners knew “the location, design, and strength of 

every building, cellar, enemy strong point, machine gun nest, 

trench mortar emplacement, sentry post, supply route, and 

billeting location.” Under the leadership of the division’s new 

artillery brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Albert J. Bowley, they 

then developed a fire-support plan that made a maximum use of 

artillery before, during, and after the infantry attack to ensure 

its success. Bowley choreographed the fire of sixty-six 75-mm. 

guns, thirty-six 155-mm. howitzers, and a number of trench 

mortars in a twelve-hour preliminary bombardment of the village 

area that was less than a couple kilometers wide and a couple 

kilometers deep. During the final three hours of the preparation, 

some dedicated guns were to fire 6,000 rounds of mustard gas 

north of the village to disrupt any German effort to reinforce the 
28

X X

201

X X

402

III

401

III

3 23

I I

2 9

I I

Fr 39

X X

2

X X

Fr 153

III

XX

XX

III

Bois de

la Morette

Hill 192

Hill 204to Château-Thierry

Triangle Farm

Bouresches

Le Thiolet

Bonneil

Mont de Bonneil

Crogis

Montcourt

Essômessur-Marne

Vaux

Monneaux

BAT TLE OF VAUX

1 July 1918

Axis of Attack

Front Line, 30 Jun

Front Line, 1 Jul, Morning

0 100 150 200 and Above

ELEVATION IN METERS

0

0 1 Kilometer

Mile 1

Map 9
•••• 74 ••••

defensive garrison and to maximize casualties among any fleeing 

defenders. In the last hour of the preparation, the rate of fire of 

all guns would increase to a maximum rate. Then three minutes 

prior to step off, half the light guns were to initiate a box barrage 

around the village, while the other half would place a standing 

barrage immediately in front of the American jump-off positions. 

At H-hour, the standing barrage would then shift to a rolling 

barrage to escort the infantry all the way through the village, and 

then halt to become a standing barrage just past the infantry’s 

final objective. The differences between the fire-support plans 

for Vaux and for the initial attack at Belleau Wood could not have 

been more striking. (See Map 9.)

The division also made vastly superior arrangements for the 

actual infantry attack. The two battalions that were to assault 

the German positions in and around the village each had machine 

gun and engineers companies, and each infantry company had 

its own dedicated mission to perform in taking, clearing, and 

holding their objectives. As at Cantigny, the assault units were 

able to rehearse these specific tasks prior to the attack. Certain 

machine gun units that would not advance with the infantry were 

positioned to provide supporting fire during the assault, as were 

teams of 37-mm. guns and Stokes mortars. One final difference 

between the attack on Vaux and the battle of Belleau Wood was the 

level of support from the air, as the French dedicated aircraft from 

five flying squadrons and three observation balloons to ensure air 

superiority, accurate artillery fire, and real-time information on the 

attack’s progress. It was a superb plan, and the division executed 

it with an impressive level of competence.

Promptly at 1800 on 1 July, companies from Major Elliott’s 

3d Battalion, 23d Infantry, followed the rolling barrage through 

the German lines west of the village, while men from Maj. Arthur 

E. Bouton’s 2d Battalion, 9th Infantry, assaulted Vaux itself. The 

preliminary bombardment had shattered the German fortifications 

in and around the town, and the rolling barrage and French air 

support performed well. The men were able to take all their 

objectives on schedule and consolidate their new positions so 

securely that they had little difficulty beating back a German 

counterattack the next day, even though it was supported by 

a “drenching bombardment” with mustard gas. The casualty 

figures, although far from insignificant, further confirm the 

overwhelming nature of the victory. The Americans suffered 328 

total casualties, including 47 killed, but also “a high percentage 
•••• 75 ••••

of slightly wounded,” while the Germans suffered 254 killed, 162 

wounded, and 510 missing, nearly all of whom were captured. 

The Vaux attack may have been a relatively minor affair along 

the Western Front in 1918, but it, like the successful assault of 

Cantigny, showed that even the untested American units, when 

augmented with French resources and given time to prepare their 

attacks, could successfully take and hold German positions while 

inflicting devastating losses along the way.

Graves of three American soldiers killed in the assault on Vaux 

(National Archives) •••••••••••••••
•••• 76 ••••

The Allied high command took great pains to recognize and 

laud the American contributions to halting the German advance at 

the Marne, defeating them to capture Belleau Wood, and ousting 

them from Vaux. The Allies were desperate not merely for good 

news, but especially for reassurances to the tired French and 

British forces that the Americans had entered the fight at last. 

For their part, the Germans could not ignore the fact that in those 

battles the rookie 2d Division severely damaged regiments from 

four experienced German divisions. The tide was turning.

Analysis

When General Ludendorff launched Operation Michael in 

mid-March 1918, only four full American divisions were in the 

front lines of the Western Front, and of those four only one 

was completely trained and in full command of its own sector. 

Americans were occupying just 27 of the Western Front’s roughly 

750 kilometers of trenches. By the end of June, AEF divisions 

were occupying more than ninety-five kilometers of frontage, a 

clear indication of America’s growing contribution to the Allied 

war effort. In May and June, more than 460,000 American troops 

arrived in France, assuring both the Allies and the Germans 

that the American presence would grow dramatically in the 

coming months. More important, in specific locations along 

the increasingly active Western Front in the spring of 1918—at 

Cantigny, Château-Thierry, Lucy-le-Bocage, Belleau Wood, and 

Vaux—a growing number of American units demonstrated that 

they were willing and able to fight with the grit and determination 

necessary to achieve an Allied victory.

The American divisions employed in these early operations—

the 1st, 2d, and 3d—showed all the signs of inexperienced units 

in their first engagements. The Allies that fought with them, the 

Germans that fought against them, and even the American officers 

and men within the divisions and at AEF GHQ all were aware of 

this fact. Yet these three divisions, and those that came after them, 

were fighting in extraordinarily difficult tactical, operational, and 

strategic situations. All but one went into combat without having 

completed a full training program. At times, they arrived on a 

battlefield and went into action without sufficient maps or enough 

time to examine the terrain and establish liaison with the units 

alongside them. In light of these challenges, it is not surprising 

that these untried officers and men made mistakes and suffered 
•••• 77 ••••

more casualties than hindsight suggests they should have. Yet for 

all their inexperience, they occasionally demonstrated sufficient 

skill to competently plan and execute attacks against a more 

capable and experienced foe, and showed the tenacity and courage 

to fight their battles through to victory even in the face of the 

initial problems, mistakes, and terrible losses that were almost 

unavoidable characteristics of any Great War battle.

The Americans displayed these strengths and weaknesses in 

May and June 1918, when these AEF divisions helped stop and then 

turn back a desperate German Army. These same divisions, as well 

as a number of others, would show them again in mid-July during 

the true turning point of the war—the Second Battle of the Marne.
•••• 78 ••••

•••

THE AUTHOR

Lt. Col. Mark E. Grotelueschen, USAF, is professor of history 

and director of academics in the Department of History at the 

United States Air Force Academy, where he holds a Senior 

Military Faculty position. In addition to teaching courses in 

military, international, and American history, he is responsible 

for all history courses taught at the Academy, and serves on the 

advisory council for the Academy Scholars Program. A graduate 

of the United States Air Force Academy (1991), he received his 

M.A. from the University of Calgary in 1998 and his Ph.D. from 

Texas A&M University in 2003. He is the author of two books, 

Doctrine Under Trial: American Artillery Employment in 

World War I and The AEF Way of War: The American Army 

and Combat in World War I.
•••• 79 ••••

•••

FURTHER READINGS

Asprey, Robert B. At Belleau Wood. Denton: University of North 

Texas Press, 1996.

Bruce, Robert B. A Fraternity of Arms: America & France in 

the Great War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.

Davenport, Matthew J. First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, 

America’s First Battle of World War I. New York: St. Martin’s 

Press, 2015.

Grotelueschen, Mark E. The AEF Way of War: The American 

Army and Combat in World War I. New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2007.

Harbord, James G. Leaves From a War Diary. New York: Dodd, 

Mead and Company, 1925.

Lengel, Edward G. Thunder and Flames: Americans in the 

Crucible of Combat, 1917–1918. Lawrence: University Press 

of Kansas, 2015.

Marshall, George C., Jr. Memoirs of My Services in the World War, 

1917–1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.

Millett, Allan R. Well Planned, Splendidly Executed: The Battle of 

Cantigny, May 28–31, 1918. Chicago: Cantigny First Division 

Foundation, 2010.

For more information on the U.S. Army in World War I, 

please visit the U.S. Army Center of Military History Web site 

(www.history.army.mil).
PIN : 203072–000

LYS 1918

AISNE 1918

MONTDIDIER-NOYON 1918