https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lUw-sgxZI0
Above is a link to a song by a Christian singer/guitarist. Inspired by a visit to some small cemetery of Americans killed in France in WWI. Especially the many crosses with “Unknown but to God” on them.
Long introduction ends around 3:15.
Sabaton - Devil Dogs (Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIC6OhYwOqw
the video with it is a good reminder that the fight to just get into the woods was brutal and bloody. Crossing those wheatfields against German machine guns with almost no artillery support (the artillery had been stripped from that portion of the front and sent north for the planned “big push” by higher command) cost a lot of Marines’ lives.
What’s also usually lost in the telling is that this battle, for all intents and purposes, was a “meeting engagement”.
The Germans were advancing. The French were falling back with plans to keep falling back in a fighting withdraw to the defenses around Paris, and the US forces force marched and trucked up over a three day period, with very little rest on the way, and where they met was where the battle happened.
That’s the context of the “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!” quote. It was in response to a French officer telling a Marine officer that the Germans were right behind the French and coming fast.