The Crack of Dawn

Volume #262

3/1/23

Newsletter #262

The Crack of Dawn

Perhaps with the release of this third version of All Quiet On the Western Front — there was a good TV movie in 1979 with Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine — there will be a renewed interest in World War I.  Here is a little hunk of interesting history regarding America’s involvement in that war, and the inspiration for my toxically masculine, unproduced script, Devil Dogs: The Battle of Belleau Wood.

WWI began in Europe in August, 1914.  America managed to stay out of the war until April, 1917, which was most of the war. By then the battle-weary Europeans were completely caught in gridlock in the trenches.  When America entered the war, we would not join the Allied forces – England, France, Belgium and Russia – because we would not be part of a foreign confederation that might falsely believe that it could give Americans orders.  Therefore, we formed the AEF – the American Expeditionary Force – which was entirely separate from the Allies.  America immediately began shipping troops and equipment to France.

Even given the circumstances of the creation of the AEF, the French commander, General Ferdinand Foch, began issuing orders to the Americans to plug the holes in his faltering battle line.  The American commander, General John “Blackjack” Pershing, ignored all of Foch’s orders.  American troops continued to be shipped over for the rest of 1917 – until there were three million of them there – but so far they had seen no action.

That’s when fate stepped in.  The Russian Revolution occurred in May, 1917, and the ruling Bolsheviks declared an end to the “Czar’s War.”  With the war over in the east, the Germans moved all of their eastern troops to the western front, and for the first time in the war they outnumbered the Allies.  The Germans took advantage of this by opening their largest assault of the war.  First, in twenty-four hours, they fired a million shells into eighteen miles of the battle line, which happened to be in the Champagne Region of France.  The French and Belgians ran away, stealing as much wine as they could from local wineries and getting plastered.

The battle lines had not moved a mile east or west in years – deathly stuck in the trenches – but now the Germans advanced seventy-five miles in one day.  They were within fifty miles of Paris, which they began to bombard with their German Big Bertha guns.

It was looking extremely rocky for the Allies that day.  Finally, General Ferdinand Foch ate his Gallic pride and said to General Blackjack Pershing, “Go fill that hole, and I don’t care how you do it.”  That was all we were waiting to hear.  Pershing sent in the toughest troops who had been in France the longest (because they got there first), the U.S. Marine Corps.

On June 6, 1918, 28,000 Marines piled into American-made trucks that were driven by French Indo-Chinese soldiers (now known as Vietnamese) to what would become the battlefront, a small town called Chateau-Thierry on the Marne River.  Unfortunately, 40,000 German troops got there first.  The Germans set up a battle line that consisted of over a thousand big Maxim machineguns set up along the mile-long edge of a hunting preserve called Belleau Wood.

It was a warm, clear, late Spring day as the U.S. Marines marched across an enormous field of red poppies that abutted Belleau Wood – where a thousand machineguns sat waiting, aiming right at them.  When the Marines got into range the Germans opened fire and began mowing down not only all of the soldiers, but the red poppies as well.  Hundreds of Marines fell dead, while the rest hit the dirt, bullets whizzing over their heads while red poppies fell on them.  The Marines were brutally pinned down.

The lead character of my story, Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, 35 years old, who had already won two Medals of Honor going into this battle, stood up and yelled the often-stolen line, “Come on, you sons of bitches!  Do you wanna live forever!  Attack!”

Miraculously, Daly and his men take the southern-most tip of Belleau Wood.  Then, in a mile-square hunting preserve, the U.S. Marines fight the Germans in hand-to-hand combat for the next thirty days.  This is where the Germans name the Marines, Teufel Hunden – Devil Dogs — came from.

Unable to take Belleau Wood, the German assault was stopped dead in its tracks.  The Germans never made it one inch farther west.  For the remainder of World War I the Germans would only be backing up.  In six months the war was over.

My script is about that one, thirty-day battle at Belleau Wood, with the toughest son of a bitch Marine who ever lived taking us through it.  Admittedly, in its own way it’s exactly the opposite of All Quiet on the Western Front, which is about a scared student experiencing the horrors of war, but its every bit as valid, and a lot more exciting.  I don’t know about you, but I’m much more interested in battles we won; not defeat.  And guys like Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly, who are anomalies, as opposed to scared students, who are common.  I’m a fan of courage.  This is not a pro-war stance; this is a recognition of something heroic that actually occurred, that I find dramatically awesome.  Come on, U.S. Marines walking across that poppy field toward a thousand German machineguns waiting for them – that, my friends, depending on how long it’s played out, is suspense.  Real suspense.

Anyway, I like that script, even if it’s never gotten made.

Shalom: meaning, hello, goodbye, and peace.