The Probert Encyclopaedia of Warfare

BATTLE OF BELLEAU WOOD

The Battle of Belleau Wood was an engagement of the Great War, fought between German and American troops in Belleau Wood, a wooded tract less than 2.6 sq. km in an area, located 8 km north-west of Chateau-Thierry, and about 65 km north-east of Paris. A German drive toward Paris had been halted, and the Germans were entrenched in Belleau Wood when on June the 6th, 1918, they were attacked by an American brigade of Marines attached to the Second Division of the American Expeditionary Force commanded by General James Guthrie Harbord. The marines repeatedly attacked, fighting through matted underbrush and over rocky ground. On June the 24th they launched a final successful drive to capture Belleau Wood. The American casualties were more than 7800 officers and men killed, wounded, and missing. The German losses were also severe.
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