The Battle that Made

As a United States Marine, I carry with me a legacy forged in blood and fire, a legacy etched into the soil of a place called Belleau Wood. In June of 1918, the world was at war, and France was bleeding. Just forty-five miles from Paris, the German Empire launched a furious spring offensive aimed at ending the war before fresh American troops could tip the balance. The enemy swept toward the Marne River with ferocity, and the French were reeling. Into this chaos stepped the United States 2nd Division, and with it, the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments. They were fresh. Unproven. And hungry. What happened in the tangled woods near Château-Thierry would change everything. Over three brutal weeks, U.S. Marines fought inch by inch, tree by tree, against veteran German stormtroopers. The price was staggering. The courage was legendary. It was here that Marines earned the name Teufelshunde , “Devil Dogs”, from their German foes, a title worn with pride ever since. This battle didn’t just shape the Marine Corps. It announced to the world that America had arrived, and it would fight like hell. This post is written not just as a historian, but as a Marine, to honor those who came before us. The woods of Belleau are more than just a battlefield; they are sacred grounds where warriors met destiny with bayonets fixed and hearts full of grit.

Strategic Context

Before the Marines stepped into the shattered grove known as Belleau Wood, the world stood on the brink. By the spring of 1918, the First World War had devoured nearly four years of blood and steel. Trench lines carved across Europe like infected wounds. Millions were already dead. And yet, the war teetered on a knife’s edge not in favor of the Allies, but of Imperial Germany. Russia had collapsed into revolution and signed away vast territory in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Freed from the Eastern Front, the German High Command hurled over fifty divisions westward in a final gamble: the Kaiserschlacht, the Kaiser’s Battle. Their objective was audacious: break through the exhausted French and British lines, seize Paris, and end the war before American forces could arrive in numbers. They nearly succeeded. By late May, German stormtroopers had punched through French lines and crossed the Marne River. Paris lay just 45 miles away. Refugees poured south. Artillery thunder could be heard in the city. The mood was desperate. French commanders requested immediate American support. The United States, only a year into the war, responded — with steel. Enter the U.S. 2nd Division, a composite unit of Regular Army and Marine Corps elements. Under General James Harbord, this green but determined force included the 9th and 23rd Infantry Regiments, and the hard-edged 5th and 6th Marine Regiments, all under French operational control. On June 1, as the Germans advanced through fields and villages near Château-Thierry, the 2nd Division was thrown into the breach to plug a critical gap in the line. The Marines dug in near a wheat field and a tangled patch of hunting preserve known as Bois de Belleau, Belleau Wood. It would become their crucible. As the Marines arrived, French troops were pulling back in exhaustion and disarray. Artillery had shattered the landscape. Civilians fled down muddy roads. A French colonel, seeing the young Americans moving up with rifles slung and eyes wide, reportedly ordered the Marines to fall back, that they had no chance of holding the line against the advancing Germans. Captain Lloyd Williams, of the 5th Marines, a wiry Virginian with grit in his teeth and a rifleman’s fire in his gut, squared his shoulders. He looked the French officer dead in the eye, his men bristling behind him, and growled the line that would echo through Marine Corps history: “Retreat? Hell, we just got here.” Williams would not survive the coming fight. But with that defiant snarl, he captured the raw essence of the Marine Corps ethos — stand your ground, hold the line, fight like hell. The world was about to find out what kind of fighters America had brought to the war.

The Battle Unfolds

The wheat field was golden when the Marines arrived. It would soon turn red. On June 1st, 1918, the German 237th Division surged across the Marne sector near Lucy-le-Bocage, threatening to break through Allied lines. The U.S. 2nd Division, including the fresh-faced but ferocious Marines of the 5th and 6th Regiments, was ordered to halt the advance at all costs. Belleau Wood, a tangled thicket of hunting preserve and rocky outcroppings, sat directly in their path. To the Marines, it looked like a forest. To the Germans, it was a fortress. Inside, well-dug machine-gun nests, snipers, and trench networks were backed by veteran troops and artillery support. It was perfect ground for defense, and a nightmare to attack. What followed were weeks of ferocious fighting, from the wheat fields swept by machine gun fire to hand-to-hand combat in the tangled woods. Marines fought as squads, flanked enemy nests, and pushed through waves of counterattacks. They adapted. They overcame. They paid dearly. It was here that Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly rose to near-mythic stature. A two-time Medal of Honor recipient already, he charged under fire, rallied faltering Marines, and barked the immortal challenge: “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” Belleau Wood became the proving ground of Marine courage — where names like Daly, Cates, Kelly, and Janson wrote themselves into Corps history with fire and grit.

Legacy and Mythmaking

The name echoed long after the gunfire stopped. “Devil Dogs.” According to lore, the stunned German troops who faced the Marines in the woods near Château-Thierry coined the term “Teufelshunde”, Devil Dogs, to describe the relentless ferocity of the Americans. They fought through gas, gunfire, and hand-to-hand chaos, refusing to retreat. The name stuck. But whether it was shouted by terrified Germans or shaped in the notebooks of embedded American correspondents, one thing is certain: the legend of the United States Marine Corps was born in those woods. And much of it was written into existence. The War Correspondents: Floyd Gibbons and the Power of the Pen Among the mud and machine guns, war reporters followed the American units into France. One of the most influential was Floyd Gibbons, a hard-charging journalist from the Chicago Tribune. Gibbons embedded with the Marines during the fighting, and he was severely wounded at Belleau Wood, losing an eye. But before he was evacuated, he filed dramatic dispatches describing the courage, grit, and sacrifice of the Marines. His reporting was electric. He didn’t just describe the battle, he painted the Marines as larger-than-life warriors, echoing the style of Homeric epic more than cold military dispatch. One of Gibbons’ phrases in his reports: “The Marines fought with the fury of madmen. The Germans called them Teufelshunde, Devil Dogs.” There is debate among historians as to whether “Teufelshunde” was ever used by German soldiers. The term is grammatically incorrect in German (the proper word would be Höllenhunde), and it does not appear in surviving German records from the time. But the power of the myth was already in motion. Gibbons’ accounts were picked up by papers across the United States. They helped turn Belleau Wood into a symbol, and the Marines into icons. Back home, enlistment surged. The Marine Corps began using the term in recruiting posters within months. Legend had taken root, and legend can be more enduring than fact. Bois de la Brigade de Marine: A Lasting Tribute Their valor was not only reported in newspapers, it was formally recognized by the French military. The 5th and 6th Marine Regiments were awarded the Croix de Guerre for their actions at Belleau Wood, with palms indicating army-level citation. To this day, those units wear the fourragère, a braided cord — on their dress uniforms in memory of their heroism. French soldiers began calling the Marines “les terribles américains.” A French general reportedly said: “The Marines are shock troops. They saved Paris.” In honor of their tenacity, the French government officially renamed Belleau Wood as “Bois de la Brigade de Marine”, “Wood of the Marine Brigade“, on June 30, 1918. This renaming was a tribute to the 4th Marine Brigade’s courageous action in seizing the wood amidst determined German resistance. A Corps Transformed Before 1918, the Marine Corps was a small naval infantry force. After Belleau Wood, it had an identity, one forged in violence and sanctified by the press. The battle’s legacy shaped how the Marine Corps would train, market, and imagine itself for the next century: This is where Marines were recognized as:

Elite warriors Fearless under fire

Riflemen first Unbreakable esprit de corps

Even the battle’s physical site was preserved. Belleau Wood was renamed “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.” The nearby cemetery became the final resting place of hundreds of Marines and soldiers who fell there, hallowed ground maintained to this day by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Teufelshunde. Real or not, the name became a banner, one earned in blood, written in ink, and carried forward in honor.

The Cost of Glory

War has no memory for mercy. Only names etched in stone. Belleau Wood cost the Marine Corps over 1,800 killed and nearly 8,000 wounded. Among the dead were teenagers and old hands, lieutenants leading charges and sergeants dragging the wounded. Many Marines were buried in temporary graves under shattered trees. The nearby Aisne-Marne American Cemetery would later receive their remains, 2,289 Americans rest there, including hundreds of Marines from the 4th Brigade. The cost was staggering. The courage was unshakable. Blood in the Wheat The Marines advanced into the wood without artillery support, facing Maxim machine guns, gas attacks, and countercharges. It was bayonet work, hand grenades, trench knives. And they didn’t break. Medal of Honor Recipients at Belleau Wood: Gunnery Sergeant Ernest A. Janson (Charles F. Hoffman): On June 6, he single-handedly repelled a German advance, killing two enemy soldiers with his bayonet. Private John J. Kelly: On October 3, he ran through artillery and machine gun fire, leaped into a German trench, killed an enemy, and returned with a captured officer. Lieutenant Weedon Osborne: Killed on June 6 while carrying wounded men to safety under fire. Posthumously received the Medal of Honor. Other Acts of Valor: Lieutenant Clifton Cates: Took over his company after all officers were killed. Despite multiple wounds, he held the line. Cates would send “I have only two men left out of my company, and I want to report this fact so that we can be relieved. It’s not possible to hold the position with two men.” The response: “Continue to hold.” Sergeant Major Dan Daly: Led charges, destroyed machine gun nests, and dragged wounded men to safety under fire.

Captain George W. Hamilton: Led from the front, described by men as “bulletproof.” Private Roswell Winans: Held position for 48 hours, repelled repeated assaults. Belleau Wood forged the Leaders of the Corp through WWII Many Marines who fought at Belleau Wood would become the architects of the Marine Corps’ triumph in World War II. Clifton B. Cates — wounded, became 19th Commandant. Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr. — wounded, became 20th Commandant. Charles D. Barrett — later commanded 1st Marine Division. Holland M. Smith — led amphibious operations in WWII. John A. Lejeune — became 13th Commandant. Belleau Wood was part of them, applied the lessons to doctrine, filled their spirit, and they carried the scars. Echoes in the Soul The survivors of Belleau Wood spoke rarely of the horror, but when they did, the words were heavy. A young Marine wrote in his journal: “The trees were alive with bullets. The screams, the smoke, the smell — I can still feel it on my skin. We left parts of ourselves in that wood.” Another, writing home in July, confessed: “I cannot sleep. I see the field every time I close my eyes. But we held. By God, we held.” What was forged at Belleau Wood wasn’t just legend; it was identity, paid for in pain, sacrifice, and eternal pride.

The woods are quiet now. But beneath the soil of Belleau, the echoes remain, rifle cracks, shouted orders, whispered prayers. The ghosts of June 1918 still walk among those trees, not in haunting, but in honor.

We remember Belleau Wood not just for what was won, but for what was forged: courage in chaos, leadership under fire, brotherhood in blood. It was the battle that gave the Marine Corps its myth and earned it with bone and grit.

As a Marine, I carried the weight of those that came before me. As a historian, I want to make sure this story is shared and remembered. I hope that you enjoyed this post. Semper Fidelis, Captain….Out.

Check out this awesome song by Sabaton: Devil Dogs!

And this video about Dan Daly by the Fat Electrician: Dan Daly

About the Author

Cliff “The Captain” Ryan is a seasoned Aircraft Mechanic, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and dedicated educator in aviation maintenance and leadership. With a passion for precision and performance, Cliff brings decades of technical experience into every lesson, article, and project he tackles.

He’s also the creative force behind Captain’s War Chronicles, a platform delving into the untold stories of military history, and the founder of Wings of Rock Radio, a vibrant tribute to rock music from the ’70s to today. There, he blends music, pop culture, and historical insight into an unforgettable listening experience.

Known for his commitment to excellence, storytelling, and lifelong learning, Cliff bridges the worlds of aviation, history, and music—offering a unique and powerful perspective for curious minds and bold thinkers alike.

Primary Sources

• Gibbons, Floyd. And They Thought We Wouldn’t Fight. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918. (Archive.org full text)
• Shearer, Maurice. “After Action Report – Belleau Wood.” U.S. Marine Corps Historical Division, June 26, 1918. (Available through Marine Corps University Archives and USMC History Division)
• Daly, Daniel J. Personal Letters and Statements. Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Quantico, VA.
• United States Marine Corps. Marine Corps Communiqués, 1918–1919. Government Printing Office, 1919. (Available via U.S. Naval War College archives)
• Osborne, Weedon E. Medal of Honor Citation. U.S. Navy, General Orders No. 403, 1919.
• Kelly, John J. Medal of Honor Citation. War Department, General Orders No. 16, January 1919.

🔸 Secondary Sources

• Axelrod, Alan. Miracle at Belleau Wood: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2007.
• Coffman, Edward M. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
• O’Connell, Aaron B. “The Modern Marine Corps and Its Origins.” The Journal of Military History 77, no. 3 (July 2013): 845–872.
• Trask, David F. The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917–1918. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.
• Moskin, J. Robert. The U.S. Marine Corps: A History. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992.
• Millett, Allan R. Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps. New York: Free Press, 1991.

🎖️ Multimedia / Archival Resources

• American Battle Monuments Commission – Belleau Wood and Aisne-Marne Cemetery
• Marine Corps University Archives – Belleau Wood Interactive Exhibit
• National Archives – WWI Marine Corps Photos, Belleau Wood
• Library of Congress – American Expeditionary Forces in France
• U.S. Army Center of Military History – American Armies and Battlefields in Europe (CMH Pub 23-1)