Posted on 06/01/2017 6:46:18 AM PDT by fugazi
1813: The frigate USS Chesapeake - one of the United States Navy's original six ships - clashes with British ship HMS Shannon outside Boston Harbor. After being mortally wounded by a sniper round Chesapeake captain James Lawrence's last words to his crew are "Tell the men to fire faster and [don't] give up the ship! Fight her till she sinks!" Shannon's crew boards and will capture Chesapeake, taking her crew prisoner, but Capt. Lawrence's famous final words live on today.
1864: The bloody battle of Cold Harbor opens in earnest between Union Army forces under the command of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate forces under Gen. Robert E. Lee. Grant will launch a series of futile attacks over the next three days. Lee will defend and hold. Union losses will be staggering: 13,000 to the Confederacy’s 2,500.
1918: At Belleau Wood, the site of an old French hunting preserve near Chateau-Thierry, Germans punch through the French lines, and American soldiers and Marines move up to fill the hole. When Marine Capt. Lloyd W. Williams arrives, he sees French troops withdrawing from battle. After being advised by a French officer to retreat, the Marine officer famously replies, "Retreat? Hell! We just got here!"
Williams will die during the battle, but the crack shooting and tenacious fighting of the Marines at Belleau Wood becomes legend and
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
I have often wondered what he actually meant by that. Did he have an appreciation that, while they were rushing to their certain annihilation, physically, the act itself would go down in legend? Or was he expressing the “infinite nature” of life itself, in terms of “No remembered beginning, no remembered end”?
Cold Harbor and WWI Western Front.
Nice parallel between the two examples of the mindless slaughter of your own troops.
Also, the battle of Belleau Wood is where we received the honorific “Devil Dogs” (Teufel Hunden in German)
Gunny Daly was simply pissed off that his Marines were not moving. Dan Daly was on the wall in China during the Boxer Rebellion, where he earned his 1st MOH.
I am probably just overthinking it.
Certain? Yeah, if the Marines humbled themselves and turned tail. The idea is "Of course, we want to live forever, and the way to do that is to stay alive and force the enemy to die for their country, and in such superior numbers that they can no longer afford it."
He is a fool that wants to die for his country just for the glory of it. How about the Chosin Reservoir account?
"All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us . . . they can’t get away from us now!
– Lewis B. Chesty Puller, USMC
Outstanding!
He was born in my hometown. And my son, soon to be a father himself was just promoted to corporal in the corps.
Tell him Semper Fi.
Congratulations to both you and he on the incoming round and his induction into the NCO corps!
My family lost a member at Cold Harbor. They also lost a leg. And my great great grandfather was wounded.
Not a good day for Northern VT.
For a brief moment the Union had cracked the CSA main line and could of won that battle. Union Generalship was lacking as there was no follow up to that salient, no flexibility in the attack plans.
Incoming rounds, just found out,twins!
Thank you, I will pass that on.
A couple of years ago I was driving throigh that area when I was on a cross country motorcycle trip. I found myself going up the driveway into one of the battlefields. It was completely out of the blue...I had no idea where I was in relation to where my ancestors were.
A few years later I realized that I was standing literally feet away from where my Great Great uncle fell, and where his brother was wounded.
Life is funny that way. Beautiful country.
The best preserved battlefield IMO would be Antietam.
1944: Airships K-123 and K-130 of the U.S. Navy’s Blimp Squadron Fourteen land at French Morocco following a 50-hour, 3,100 nautical mile flight from Naval Air Station, South Weymouth, Mass. – the first transatlantic flight of a non-rigid, lighter-than-air aircraft. The massive airships made two stops for fuel and maintenance in Newfoundland and the Azores.
1990: As the Cold War nears its end, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty banning the production of chemical weapons and reducing the two superpowers’ stockpiles of the deadly weapons by 20 percent
Back atcha.
There aren’t enough Chinamen in the world to keep a fully armed Regiment of Marines from going wherever they want to.
Chesty Puller.
So you are from West Point? I live near the battlefield at Yorktown.
SF
Thanks for the compliment, but I was in the Army.
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