19181776 Club
Marines charge Belleau Wood; 1,087 fall crossing the wheat fields
Two battalions advance into German machine gun fire west of the Marne, and the Corps records its worst single-day loss in 143 years of existence.
By the summer of 1918, German forces had pushed within 95 kilometers of Paris, and a brigade of U.S. Marines stood in their path near the Marne River. On June 6, 1918, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines and the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines advanced from the west into Belleau Wood, crossing waist-high wheat fields swept by German machine gun fire. The casualties that afternoon — 31 officers and 1,056 enlisted men — were the worst the Marine Corps had suffered in a single day in its 143-year history. They would not be surpassed until the landing on Betio Island at Tarawa in November 1943…
