We're not lost, Sergeant, We're in … France

100 years ago, Thaddeus Stephenson Allen answered his country’s call and enlisted in the Marine Corps. T.S. Allen soaked up history as a young man, reading

stories of Lexington and Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Lundy’s Lane, Chapultepec. These seemed to me like those stories which begin, “There were giants in those days.” Still, they gave a heroic background in my mind for the closer events of the Civil War, and the brief but glorious episodes of the War with Spain, in reading of which I was first introduced to the Marines.

The internet is an amazing thing. I was reading Alan Axelrod’s “Miracle at Belleau Wood: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps” and he quoted, but did not identify one of the Marines in MAJ Thomas Holcomb’s 6th Marines. Checking the end notes, I found that it was from “Echoes from Over There” (Edited by Craig Hamilton and Louise Corbin), as quoted in Robert Asprey’s “At Belleau Wood“. Fortunately, “Echoes from Over There” is available online, so I was able to not only to find the original quote, but the full, first-hand story of Marine Private T.S. Allen. Not only that, but with a quick visit to Ancestry-dot-com, I was able to find out considerably more details about his family. (Sadly, once I get on that site, it’s a time-sink for me and I emerge hours later knowing many things, most of which are of no relevance to what I was looking for originally!)

He writes vividly of his first experience in combat, drawing on his knowledge of history. He wrote this while still hospitalized due to being gassed in Belleau Wood and one can easily see how he’d eventually end up in the newspaper business…

“Here they come!” a shrill boyish voice piped up.

“Hold your fire!” the injunction ran from officer to officer and man to man.

The German barrage lifted; the French guns almost ceased firing. The men about me were cursing and swearing in that choice collection of profanity that belongs to the Marines. It took me back swiftly, on the wings of memory, to a lonely walk in the woods I had taken, as a boy, when I had whistled to keep up my courage.

The German troops were clear of the woods. On they came with closed ranks in four lines. One looked at them with almost a friendly interest. No particular hate or fear. And yet there was a queer sensation along the spine, and the scalp seemed to itch from the tug of the hair at the roots. The fingers bit into the rifle.

“Hold your fire!”

As the command rang on my ears with a sharpness that enforced obedience, I seemed to be standing on Bunker Hill and hear the command: “Wait till you see the whites of their eyes!”

I think I know how those old Yanks felt that day, as the enemy drew nearer and nearer.

The next I recall is firing. Firing. Firing. My fingers were tearing greedily at more ammunition, then the instinct of the hunter restrained me. I began to fire slower, looking for my mark, making sure of a hit. The Huns now appeared to me almost on top of us and then, all of a sudden, there was nothing more to aim at. A few scattered groups with hands held up, racing for our lines and shouting “Kamerad! Kamerad!”

The Marines weren’t the only ones there, as Army units were on both sides of them, but this fight really does deserve credit for “The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps”. It remains legendary in the Corps and I hope to be able to some more research to learn the stories of these Marines and share them with you. If my cards fall right, I’ll be in Belleau Wood next year, walking the ground. After all, that’s the only way to understand it.