“They had lost comrades at the hands of the Germans and now were to avenge them.  No quarter was asked or expected.  The Germans had orders to fight to the death and the Americans needed no such order.

“Without much artillery on either side and without gas, the Americans fought the Germans through that woods, four kilometers (nearly three miles) long, for six hours.  At last we got through and took up a position across the northern end of the woods.

“Perhaps the most sensational part of the fight was when about Germans got around behind our men.  They were chased into a clearing, where the Americans went at them from all sides with the bayonet, and I am told that three prisoners were all that were left of the Germans.”

“How did you do it?” inquired a dazed Prussian officer, taken prisoner at Chateau Thierry by an American soldier.  “We are storm troops.”

“Storm hell!” said the American.  “I come from Kansas, where we have cyclones.”

That was and is the idea.  This spirit enabled American soldiers to go wherever they wanted to go.  A European officer on observation duty with the United States force at Chateau Thierry wanted to know how our soldiers got through as they did.

“They seem to have been trained somewhere,” he said, “for they fight all right.  But that doesn’t explain to me the way they keep going.”

The American officer with whom he was talking gave this explanation: 

“They were thoroughly trained in our camps at home in all but one thing.  They were not trained to stop going.”

It was a splendid exhibition, the first of many of its kind.

A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

The following is one of hundreds of thrilling experience stories that could be told by officers and men who fought at that front.

Details of the participation of the United States Marines in the counter-attack of the allies against German forces on the Marne, July 18, are given in a letter written shortly afterward by Major Robert L. Denig, of the United States Marines, to his wife, in Philadelphia, and which had been forwarded to Washington for the historical files of the Marine Corps.

It is the best and truest form of war history, and important in that it gives details of action during those July days when American troops stopped the German drive.

It also establishes the fact that the Marines who helped stop the German drive on Paris at Belleau wood early in June were honored by being brought from this wood to Vierzy and Tigny, near Soissons, for participation with a crack French division in the great counter-attack which started the disintegration of the German front in the west.

Names that became familiar through the fighting in Belleau wood are mentioned in Major Denig’s letter as being prominent in the allied counter-attack—­Lieut.  Col.  Thomas Holcomb, Lieut.  Col.  Benton W. Sibley, Lieut.  Col.  John A. Hughes, Capt Pere Wilmer and others who took a prominent part in the fighting.  The letter in substance follows: