THE QUICK ADVANCE
The story of the quick advance of the American marines was related in detail by Wilbur Forrest in The New York Tribune as follows:
It is a narrative that stands for more, perhaps, than most of those written in American history books. It is literally another story of American minute men who abandoned the figurative plowshares of peaceful training camps and rushed to the scene of action. They met the enemy with weapons they knew how to handle.
On May 30 the enemy reached the Marne east of Château-Thierry and began a forceful advance along the north bank toward the city. The same day American machine gunners received orders 100 kilometers to the rear to jump into auto trucks and hurry into action.
They started almost immediately, and an all-night journey found the battalion at 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the 31st on a hill overlooking Château-Thierry. All around them French batteries were firing full tilt. The enemy was advancing on the city.
Right here those American machine gunners got their first glimpse of real war. German shells crashed into villages within plain view and the little city below them was not being spared. The officers chose a small nearby village as headquarters and the marines waited for darkness before loading little black machine guns on their shoulders and marching into Château-Thierry.