“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!”

The Battle of Belleau Woods, 1918

French Engraving: “La Brigade Marine au Bois de Belleau” -- Wikimedia Commons

General John J. Pershing, commander of American forces in World War I, called Belleau Woods one of the most important battles American troops ever fought.

In the June of 1918 German forces captured Chateau Thiery on the Marne River and were moving westward toward Paris, 60 miles away. The United States had been in the war for more than a year, but until this time they had been training behind the lines, not in actual combat. In fact, the Americans had lost fewer than 200 men so far in a war that saw battles with 60,000 casualties in one day.

This changed when advancing Germans met a brigade of American Marines at a forest known as the “Bois de Belleau.”  While French units withdrew prudently to more defensible ground, the Marines stayed in an advanced position, digging shallow trenches with their bayonets.  Urged to withdraw, Marine Captain Lloyd W. Williams declared:

“Retreat? Hell, we just got here.”

On June 6 the Marines suffered heavy casualties while attacking the German positions in and near the forest.  In one of the many skirmishes that made up the battle, Gunnery Sergeant Ernest A. Janson, forced twelve Germans to retreat. He became the first Marine during the Great War to win the Medal of Honor. Later that afternoon Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Daly urged his comrades forward with another memorable phrase:

“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”

Photo by BY

More than one thousand marines were casualties during the first day of fighting at Belleau Woods, more than in any other battle in Marine Corps history to that time.

The Germans and Americans traded possession of the woods repeatedly in heavy fighting during the next two weeks. Finally on June 26 the Marines gained the upper hand and announced in a succinct report:

“Woods now U.S. Marine Corps’ entirely.”

The fighting at Belleau Woods and nearby Vaux and Chateau Thierry stopped the last major German offensive of World War I. During the battle at the Woods, the Americans suffered 9,777 casualties and lost 1,811 men killed.

Visiting the Battlefield, 1986

Twenty-seven years ago I visited the Bois Belleau, taking pictures in the old-fashioned way, with Kodak film. Until recently those pictures languished in slide trays, too much trouble to access and organize. Thanks to the help of a research assistant, Gabe Rose, they are now digitized and ready for rebirth on the web.

I visited the Bois Belleau on Armistice Day weekend, November, 1986. The date was a reminder that the war ended only about three months after the Belleau fight. There and elsewhere the last great German offensive of the war was stopped, and soon hundreds of thousands of American soldiers helped win the war for the Allies.

Entering the autumnal forest I could see a monument and flagpole in the distance, flanked by cannon:

Photo by BY

Walking closer I saw that the flag overhead was the “Stars and Stripes” and I looked more closely at a plaque on the monument. It indicated that this was no longer the Bois Belleau: the French had renamed it in honor of those Marines who fought here one lifetime before as "Bois de la Brigade de Marine":

Photo by BY

I felt grateful that morning for this sign of respect by the French for my country.

The forest is now a park, and that morning French families with picnics walked through the forest. The trees had grown back after the devastation of the battle 68 years before.

Photo by BY

But the ground was still scarred by pits from long-ago artillery shells.   

Photo by BY

And museum-piece cannon were arranged in the forest where sixty-eight years before, they had been fired in earnest by the contending forces.

Photo by BY

Coming to a ridge in the forest I looked down on another reminder of the battle in this forest: row upon row of American graves.

Photo by BY

This was the Aisne-Marne American cemetery.  I spent an hour that day walking between the crosses, reading the inscriptions, and studying the chapel built to honor the dead Americans in this French soil.  The crosses were arranged in curving columns, thirteen deep, representing the thirteen original United States.

Photo by BY

Most of the markers were Christian crosses; others featured the Star of David, marking the graves of Jewish soldiers.

Photo by BY

The historic forest and the silent graveyard were deeply moving; and so was the Romanesque chapel overlooking the graves. Other historic buildings in France feature saintly saints and grotesque goblins on the pillars; at this chapel those  figures were replaced by statues of  the brave men who fought here. I was deeply moved then as I studied those figures twenty-seven years ago, and as I compose this blog entry, the images move me still.

Photo by BY

After visiting the graveyard and cemetery, I returned to my hotel at nearby Chateau Thierry, a town where battles of the  Great War had raged a few decades before. As I walked through the streets in the evening I felt myself in the present and in the past. I decided to go to a movie playing in the local theater – “Top Gun.” Watching that film in French with a French audience provide a suitable end to an enriching day. In the cinema French and American culture mingled in the film, just as French and American blood had soaked the cobblestones and forest soil in this region, not so long before. 

More of my photos in a slide show from Belleau Woods, aka "Bois de la Brigade de Marine," and the Aisne-Marne cemetery, taken in 2012:

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