Belleau Wood

This is the story of the battle that resulted in the American WWI cemetery in France that Trump refused to visit, opting instead to sit in his hotel room and watch TV while General Kelly went in his place.

The cemetery there was the expected site of a Trump visit on Nov. 10, 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice to end World War I, which also coincided with the 243rd birthday of the Marine Corps.

Inclement weather grounded Trump’s helicopter, the White House said, preempting his visit. Other U.S. officials did attend.

A century and a few months before then, Belleau Wood was a living nightmare of muddy and rocky terrain, bristling with lurking enemies.U.S. Marines under [1st Sgt. Daniel] Daly were pinned down under fire and running short on ammunition. German soldiers in June 1918 had seized the initiative in a summer blitz toward Paris, and in the ledger of what can be counted, the enemy had it in spades: the guns and the numbers.

Daly, already a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor in other wars, ground his boot heels into the French-countryside mud and ordered his men to attack.

“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” he walloped, instantly inscribing the words into Marine Corps legend.

[...]

U.S. commanders moved up two Army divisions to counterattack, including the 2nd Division — which had an unusual element of an attached brigade of U.S. Marines.

The soldiers and Marines settled along the wood and braced for the onslaught of several German divisions heading straight toward their line. Friendly troops evacuated, confusing the Marines, who were told by a French commander that they should retreat.

“Retreat, hell! We just got here!” said Capt. Lloyd W. Williams, according to some accounts, also becoming lore among Marines.

The battle began June 6, and a swirling mass of rifle butts, bayonets and artillery rounds churned through the wood for weeks as the Americans repulsed waves of German soldiers clawing for any foothold.

Part of the strategy, Lt. Clifton B. Cates, 24, would later write his mother, was to dislodge U.S. positions with chemical weapons.

“We were shelled all night with shrapnel and gas shells,” wrote Cates, a future Marine Corps commandant. “It was mustard gas and a lot of the men were burned.”

[...]

One Marine, Gunnery Sgt. Fred W. Stockham, was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for giving his gas mask to a wounded comrade whose mask had been shot off. Stockham died of gas poisoning.

[The battle began June 6.] All Germans had been driven from Belleau Wood by June 26. Four days later, the 6th French Army issued an order renaming Belleau Wood “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

  WaPo

Meaning Marine Brigade Woods, of course.

The U.S. forces and Germans both had about 10,000 casualties, mostly wounded, but including 1,811 American dead. And it transformed the Marine Corps into a force that stepped into grander battles after fighting smaller skirmishes for years.

[...]

The force “must be considered a very good one and may even be reckoned as storm troops,” one German commander said.

[...]

[US Marine] units that trace their lineage back to the fight still wear a fourragère, a braided green cord on their dress uniform that was originally bestowed by the French military.