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Show f Over, the target the chaos was incredible. zoomed The ls between towers and smokestacks like fighter planes. They literally flew through a wall of fire and flak to strike at the heart of "Adolf Hitlers gas tank" B-2- . to-ha- bayonet st ruggle after a hundred yards dash. . . It was one of the finest things I have ever seen men do." The first, second, third and fourth waves of Marines plunged into the woods and What now began was a struggle unequaled in ferocity by anything in the bloody history of the western .front. There were machine-gu- n nests everywhere, says General Gatlin. On every hillock and small plateau, in every ravine and iocket, amid heaps of rocks, behind piles of cut timber and even in no sot was the trees safe from the spray of bullets. Command dissolved. There was no room for grand strategy here. It was a battle led by disap-jieare- d. ... pri- from race ii ) man advance had been checked. Mystified, the Boehe hestitated, trying to figure out what had hit them. They knew jhe demoralised French army was incapable of such a blow. It took the Kaiss men two days to bring up heavy artillery and, in those precious 48 hours, the French regroued behind the Marines and took over some of the precarious front line. But the Germans still had the initiative and vast superiority in men and equipment. .The Allied high command decided there was only one way to ' attack. knock them off balance The target was Belleau Wood, a small but dense forest less than a mile and a half long and ( of a mile wide. In this shadowy refuge, the Germans had concentrated an immense number of machine guns, mortars and elements of three divisions. The wood formed a salient jutting into the heart of the Allied line and was to lie a jumping-of- f place for the next German push forward. When the generals ordered the Marines to capture Belleau, they had no idea how strongly T it had been fortified. . On June 6, Allied artillery bombarded Belleau for a half hour but, since not a patrol had entered the woods, they were firing blind and probably hit no one. At 5 p.m. the Marines moved out. Two three-fift- hs half battalions, 500 men each, hit the woods from two angles. The first battalion of the 5th Marines, attacking from the west, tried to get across a d wheat field into the very1 teeth of the German defenses. Brigadier General A. W- Gatlin, who watched them advance, tells what hapened: The losses were terrific. Men fell on every hand. . . Intoa hell of hissing bullets . . . with heads bent as though facing a March gale, the shattered lines of Marines pushed on. . . The voice of a sergeant was heard above the uproar: Come Do you want to live forever? on, you 400-yar- - ! ut that storm of machine-gu- n bullets was too much even for Marine flesh and 'blood. A hundred yards from he wood, the attack collapsed, and those that were still alive flung fhemselves on the ground and lay there until darkness enabled them to withdraw. The other Marine battalion hit the woods at the southern end and had better luck. German defenses were not as strong and the Marines had more cover on their advance. But good men still and rifle fire toppled before blazing machine-gu- n General Gatlin went the in, watching They said, as if on parade. There was no yell and wild rush , , . because a man is of little use in a hand- 1 vates. In small groups, sometimes singly, howling Marine?! charged the machine guns. Others picked German gunners from the trees like squirrel. The Germans fought furiously, surrendering only when Marines got behind them, sometimes not even then. Scyeral t i mes t hey cried, Kamerad and when the Marines advanced to seize them, they fell on the ground and other machine guns would cut ' down the exposed Americans. But in four hours, those 500 Marines who got into the woods on the first day fought their way across the lower quarter, nearly a mile wide. This was only the beginning of the battle for Belleau Wood, .The Crown Prince was command-in- g the German offensive and he promptly decided to make Belleau the test of American fighting ability. Smash them in Belleau, he reasoned, and they will never forget it. German reinforcements jioured in, including the crack Fifth Guard Division. Their big guns flung thousands of shells into the Marine Ksitions. Gas attacks forced the Marines to wear masks for 18 hours at a stretch. In the first nine days the Marines flung back 15 counterattacks,, and grimly retained the initiative, advancing steadily through the trees. Every hour, more men fell. Private John C Geiger, telling of one small action, said, Of the twenty-five. |