[TexasCowboy]

"In front of the Marines stretched a hunting preserve, Belleau Wood, roughly peanut shaped, about a square mile altogether, filled with underbrush and tumbled boulders. In the first attacks Marines in well-dressed lines crossed open wheatfields. Nineteenth-century tactics and raw courage barely carried the attack forward.
Machine guns in the competent hands of veteran German gunners extracted a terrible cost. Once into the woods, the fragments of the Marine lines instinctively reformed into small combat groups, a hard lesson expensively learned.
In the first day alone more than a thousand Marines were killed or wounded, more than had been lost in all the Corps’ previous battles. But after a week’s fighting, the Marines held most of the wood.
The Marine brigade, having taken more than 50 percent casualties, pulled out on 16 June for a week’s rest, and then went back and finished the job."

[Mama_Bear]

Thanks for the additional information on the "Devil Dogs" and the battle of Belleau Wood. I learn something new here everyday.