Evening star., 1918-08-04
u. s. men SHOW
CLASS IN BATTLE
Have That Intangible Some
thing Which Wins, Even
Against Odds.
PUT FEAR IN HUN HEART
By HERBERT COREY.

WITH THE AMERICANS ON THE
MARINE. June 13.--Nothing in the
American effort in France has so i'm
pressed me as the fighting quality OF
the men. I am trying to differentiate
here between quality and efficiencl
Complete efficiency is a result of ex-
perience plus perfect quipment plus
quality. Quality alone is the spirit
which leads green troops to win
against veterans when conditions are
otherwise equal.
Any man who has ever made a
habit of watching ring fighting will
understand what I mean. Two pugi-
lists may be perfectly matched in age
and weight and height and reach and
skin. In friendly boxing encounter
one is AZ good as the other. In a
grueling fight one wins-and that
same sne will always win. He has
the quality or class. Every ring
champion who ever won a belt by
hard fighting and not by some mere
accident of overpowering weight or
by the decay Of the title holder had
that quality. Fitzsimmons had It and
McGovern and Nelson and a hundred
more.
Fight Like Wild Men.
These grass-green American troops
have 1t. They fight like wild men.
They never know when they are lick
ed. The Germans they smashed at
Cantigny complained that the Amer
leans "hit them with any part of the
gun" At Bouresches q German prls-
oner wept when he was taken. He
had fought through two years Of war.
but he had had enough.
II weep because I have been
afraid" said he. Your mon fight
like dovils."
An officer coming back from the
Bois de Be1leau. just after tho wood
had been cleaned Of the last machine
Tell me about the fight" I urged.
There isn't anything to tell" said
he. I'VE were ordered to take the
wood and we took 1t. That's all"
did your men do much bombing !?
"The fact Is" said he. rather shame
damn rotten lot of bombers. They
like to dig 'om out with the bayonet."
That fight in the wood Of Belleau
illustrates this quality in tho Ameri-
cans. The wood was once taken and
once lost. The first time it was seized
by them. with the exception of one
nest of machine guns in place of
piled up rocks in the eastern edge
of the southern part.
1T looks like stage scenery" said
an officer. you wouldn't believe 1t
true II you saw it in theater."
Defed Order to Retire.
In this fight both the commanding
officers of the battalion were put out
Of action. The companies lost touch
with each other. Lacking a directing
the artillery fire the Germans used
on them. High explosive was the
boche rule here. One company held
on. because it would not quit. It dug
itself in in one edge of the woods and
stayed. Headquarters sent word to
it to pull out. and it sent back word
that:
.We'u be damned IL we do"
Later Americans undertook the re-
capture of Belleau Wood. There was
an artillery preparation and then the
men went in with their bombs and
bayonets. Bombs are almost useless
in a wood, even in a wood that has
the Bois de Belleau. There were ma
chine guns everywhere-we captured
thirty-six of them-and every now
and then a heavy trench mortar. We
took seven of these devices. and each
of them was so heavy that it took an
officer and twenty-five men to move
them out.
Finally the boche was cleaned out
of the wood again. except in the one
nest of machine guns in the stage
scenery in the southeastern end.
The men had done it with rife fire
and the bright steel. Remember, these
troops were once 70 per cent marks
men and the man who cannot get
into the bull's-eye pretty regularly
has no place with these troops even
now. when their ranks have been
lately filled. The men went forward
with their guns at the ready, as quail
shooters do through a wheat field.