The Brighton Boys at Chateau-ThierryDriscoll, James R.
General
The Brighton Boys at Chateau-Thierry
Driscoll, James R.
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- France -- Juvenile fiction
“Drive the enemy from Bouresches and Belleau Wood!” was the order
from headquarters. Again, as one man, the marines went forward. The
Huns must be taught that their advance at the Château-Thierry front
was at an end.
“Pound the enemy’s lines in Bouresches!” came the order to the
artillery as a forerunner of the charge of the marines, and the
artillery pounded. Across the grain and flowering fields marched the
soldiers, advancing in thin lines, one after the other, the marines
in the center and on either flank a battalion of doughboys, regulars
of the United States army. This was the good old training in American
fighting methods: Advance on a run and lie down, advance and lie
down, the front rank shooting all the while, and when these fellows,
who must bear the brunt of the strong defense that the enemy was
making, were thinned out reinforcements were rushed from the rear to
fill up the broken ranks.
[Illustration: THEY WENT RIGHT TO WORK DISLODGING THE HUNS FROM THE
HOUSES.]
In every conceivable point of shelter, from every thicket, bit
of woodland, hollow or knoll around the village there were enemy
machine-gun units, with here and there larger calibre quick-firing
fieldpieces, sending a perfect hail of lead and iron across the
fields at those ever-advancing boys in khaki.
But it mattered little to the boys in khaki how fast and furious came
this death-dealing rain of bullets, for they kept right on into the
village, and they went right to work dislodging the Huns from the
houses, using rifle, hand-grenades, bayonets and pistols. The enemy
sought every means of protection; they fortified themselves behind
walls which the American artillery had left standing, or behind
piles of débris the shelling had made. They poked their rifles and
machine-guns out of windows, and cellar-entrances, and down from roof
tops. They made street barriers of parts of ruined buildings, and
thus contested every inch of ground until the Americans were upon
them and when they could no longer fight, they surrendered. Some ran
away while some went down fighting, for they had been told it was
better to die than to be taken prisoner by the cruel Americans.
When the village of Bouresches was clean of Huns, their artillery
made it hot for the conquerors. So marines and the doughboys found it
their turn to seek shelter. They did this so well that after hours of
shelling they had hardly lost another man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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