The Boy Allies with Pershing in France; Or, Over the Top at Chateau Thierry

by Clair W. Hayes

With captured German machine guns, men, whom the marines farther back could not reach with food and water, held their gains, taking food and water from the American and German dead.

Although the first phase of the attack had not been fully accomplished, it was determined not to hold back the other companies, which had been waiting under shell fire that only aroused their eagerness to advance, from undertaking the second phase.

Theirs was a simpler task than that of their comrades who had stormed the woods. Artillery preparation in clearing away was, of course, more serviceable against a village than against a woods, and neither machine gun nor shell fire delayed the precision of the movement across the open to the village of Chateau Thierry itself.

But the enemy contested every step of the advance. These troops that the German general staff now hurled forward to stem the tide of the American advance were the flower of the emperor’s army—the Prussian Guards, who boasted that they had never been stopped.

But not only were they to be stopped by the impetuous daring of the Americans, but they were soon to be driven back in utter rout.

In the woods the marines were cheek by jowl with the enemy, who were slipping more machine guns into that section of the wood.

The Germans must be made to understand that the woods was the property of the Americans—that was the thought in the hearts of all the marines as they went about their work, while the Germans, on their part, began gassing the approaches both of Chateau Thierry and Belleau village.

The very irregular shape of Belleau Woods, no less than the character of the ground, favored the defenders in forming cross zones of fire. It was a strange and fierce business, there in the dense brush, where men of the same squad could not keep in touch with one another at times. Happily the marines had located some of the enemy nests before they attacked, but those farther ahead they could locate only when the Germans began firing, or when they stumbled upon gunners who were still hugging cover after the bombardment, or who simply had concluded it was better to be a live prisoner than to die for the Kaiser.

They were taken in groups and singly, taken standing behind trees and hugging the holes they had dug in the earth. Some were trying to retreat with their guns; others fled precipitately, and many continued to work their guns.

It was a hunt of man-hornet nests, with khaki the hunter and the German gray the hunted. The marines fought even more fiercely than in their first attack. They wanted to finish the job this time; and the job was to be finished soon.