American operations in the salient now took a more active turn to the northwest of Château-Thierry in the vicinity of Neuilly, where the Germans had already clashed with their new antagonists. There the Americans were linked with the French on a line that rested on Neuilly-la-Poterie, and ran through Champillon, Lucy-le-Bocage, and to the south of Triangle, and then meandered in an irregular course to Château-Thierry. From this line came a forward movement on June 6, 1918, directed east of Neuilly toward Torcy, Belleau, and Bouresches. The next day the line stood south of the village of Torcy, south of the village of Belleau, with the wood of Belleau partly in American possession, and through Bouresches, then south to the highway east of Thiolet, and thence to Château-Thierry. This advance represented an extension of the American line over a front of about six miles to a depth of nearly two and a half miles.
The brunt of the fighting was borne by United States Marines. It was a sustained action, extending for thirty-six hours. It held the center of the war stage; on no other part of the fighting fronts were there any measurable activities that produced like successes against German arms. The movement, which aimed to drive the German lines farther back from their Paris objective also had its significance in that its second stage was directed by American commanders and undertaken solely by American troops. Most of the fighting by Americans on the western front had been carried out under French commanders. The American units detailed to the Somme, for example, reported to the French command, who assigned them with French soldiers where they were most needed. The commander of the unit to which the marines belonged wanted full control of his own sector in the Château-Thierry region. The request was granted, and the result showed that an American unit, acting on its own initiative, could acquit itself equal to the best-trained German unit.
The first assault on the enemy lines was made at dawn, when the American marines swept forward, with the French attacking on their left, and gained over a mile on a four-mile front. By 8 o'clock they had gained all their first objectives and held all the important high ground northwest of Château-Thierry. They captured 100 prisoners, among them thirty-five mounted Uhlans, and ten machine guns.
The enemy had augmented his line recently, the Americans having pressed him so hard that he was forced to throw three new divisions of his best troops into the breach. Against them the Americans advanced in a solid phalanx, singing and whistling "Yankee Doodle," and cheering. No barrage preceded them, although there had been some advance artillery preparations. On certain parts of the line the resistance was weak; but in other instances our marines ran into German machine-gun nests which, in some cases, succeeded in inflicting considerable casualties. But they did not stop the Americans. Marines with hand grenades and rifles charged the machine guns, wiping out the nests, and in one instance capturing a gun and its crew.
Where the American marines stopped the German advance on the Marne.
From the new line gained by the first attack, a second American advance was made at five in the evening, and by night it reached Torcy and Bouresches. The next morning, June 7, 1918, the Americans were holding Torcy in the face of repeated counterattacks and pushing back the Germans through the streets of Bouresches. Torcy was not part of the American objective, but the eager marines swept into the village by their own momentum.
The hardest fighting took place in the wood of Belleau, to the east of Torcy and between that village and Bouresches.
The wood of Belleau into which the marines penetrated with such ardor proved a hornets' nest. It was ambushed with machine guns, which hampered the American advance and caused many casualties. There were about twenty of them in the plateau formed by the wood. The Americans vainly tried to demolish them by rifles, mortars, and hand grenades. Finally, despite the streams of bullets, they surrounded the plateau, cut off the Germans in it, and went ahead, capturing a hill beyond the wood and inflicting heavy losses on the Germans as they withdrew.