Belleau Wood - another perspective

[Plain Old Dave]

Nope. The Army's anti-Marine bias is exceptionally well documented.

[Plain Old Dave]

This forum's obsession with friendly casualty rates is morbid . The point of war isn't to die for one's country. It's to make as many of the enemy do that as you can. How many Germans did the AEF kill or capture?

Really? On What basis do you make this claim? If a mild glance at the statistics show this to be a ludicrous claim.

The US were only doing roughly 10% of the fighting. taking 11.5% of casualties and takening 11% of prisoners taken during 100 days offensives,


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive

The French took 530,000 casualties,
The British 412,000
The US 127,000

11% of Prionsers taken the AEF 43,000 (The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the First World War) overalls 386,000 (wikipedia)

[Terry Duncan]

Nope. The Army's anti-Marine bias is exceptionally well documented.

So the man on the spot cannot be trusted.

[pugsville]

This forum's obsession with friendly casualty rates is morbid . The point of war isn't to die for one's country. It's to make as many of the enemy do that as you can. How many Germans did the AEF kill or capture?

Did you literally not read the part about prisoners? You ask a question quoting a very small post where I literally answer that very question.

Casualties iot's a rough measure of how much fighting the various armies were doing, I also provided prisoner taken as another metric.

There is no doubt the AEF was much less efficient in the number of German casualties inflicted for the number taken compared to the French or British. They had been at it a lot longer , had experienced, well trained men, with a sensible doctrine, commanded by experienced officers, with long experience at co-coordinating the various complex arms that were needed for effective combat performance in 1918. All of which the AEF lacked.,

The AEF was a swiftly improvised mass army, a difficult thing, in 1918 it's pretty directly comparable to the British Army on the Somme in 1916, with many similar deficiencies for much the same reasons. Just the AEF was a little worse because they stuffed up their training so badly, a particularity their officers.

[StrangerHereMyself]

pod: ‘pointy headed academics’ What do you think Wawro is? Zero military experience, but a lifetime spent in the ivoried towers of academia. Instead of employing the ‘poisoning the well’ fallacy, point out where the reviewer is in error. E.g. the reviewer’s noting Wawro’s mistranslation of ‘Züge’ as ‘division’ instead of ‘platoon’ or ‘section’ augers ill for Wawro’s reliability.

While not denying the USMC saw the lion’s share of fighting at Belleau Wood, it was not an exclusively USMC show. This site has 680 profiles of the 1,811 dead from Belleau Wood, and the first page of 10 alphabetically arranged results lists six US Army casualties beside four USMC, three from 2ID, two from 3ID and one from 4ID.

But if neither ‘pointy headed academics’ nor commanders on the spot are to your taste (unless maintaining a particular narrative) how about a USMC Lt Col?

The wood was neither tactically nor strategically significant in itself; it was the battle of opposing wills for psychological dominance that underscored its importance.
…
In the overall course of the war, the importance of the battle for Belleau Wood is questionable. What would have happened had the 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions not blocked the German advance crossing the Marne is open for debate. The origin of the term “Devil Dogs” is debatable; no matter, we are not about to change that. What is not questionable is the psychological importance of this fight; it buoyed our exhausted Allies and extinguished any hope of the Germans that the American Expeditionary Force could not fight. Surviving German records attest to the bravery, marksmanship, and even recklessness of the individual Marine; there is no debate there. Our initial tactics, C2, and decisions may have been questionable, but the Marines learned and adapted.

Kelly, Michael “Kiwi” (Lt Col USMC ret). “Battle of Belleau Wood.” Marine Corps Gazette, Marine Corps Association, June 2018, www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2018/06/battle-belleau-wood.
Few would seriously fault Kelly’s conclusions nor his evident pride in his Corps, which he displays without going all Amerika über Alles; and he is secure enough to admit fault where it occurred.

I ask again for the exact quotes and footnoted sources.

[Plain Old Dave]

Is he an Infantry officer?

[Terry Duncan]

Is he an Infantry officer?

Plain Old Dave.

Please answer questions when people directly ask you something, rather than simply posting a question of your own in response. The rules of the forum on claims and citations are clear enough, a random 'from Wawro' is woefully insufficient. Others have provided you with sources for you to check, please be so good as to respond likewise when they request details from yourself. The latest 'Is he an infantry officer' response is also inadequate, it does not matter as such what his service branch was, he was the commanding officer on the spot and would obviously have a far better appreciation of events than the casual observer a hundred years later. If you have any specific evidence to prove he had some malicious bias against units under his command, then please post it, and not random unsupported claims that a bias existed. The forum rules on supporting the things you write are here;

2. Claims and Proof

The sixth rule of the forum is: "When quoting from a book or site, please provide info on the source (and a link if it is a website)."

If a poster raises a question about the events, other posters may answer the question with evidence. If a poster stops asking questions and begins to express a point of view, he then becomes an advocate for that viewpoint. When a person becomes an advocate, he has the burden of providing evidence for his point of view. If he has no evidence, or doesn't provide it when asked, it is reasonable for the reader to conclude that his opinion or viewpoint is uninformed and may fairly be discounted or rejected.

Undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless posts and threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum.

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

A general reference to a website, or a book without page references; citations or links to racist websites; generalized citations to book reviews; and citations to unsourced, secondary articles or opinions.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.

3. Opinions

Since the purpose of this section of the forum is to exchange information and hold informed discussions about historical problems, posts which express unsolicited opinions without supporting facts and sources do not promote the purposes of the forum. Consequently, such posts are subject to deletion after a warning to the poster.

The same reasoning applies to opinion threads.

8. Miscellaneous

1. Discussions

The research sections of the forum are meant for persons who are fairly well-informed on the topics being discussed, and our discussions are not directed at the lowest common denominator of readership. Rural customs of discourse, such as feigned ignorance, pettifogging, playing at peek-a-boo, fact-free repartee, redundant and uninformative posts, and/or "stonewalling" denials of facts well-known to most informed persons, are strongly disfavored here.

The object of the research sections of the forum is to exchange information, not to engage in dim wrangling as a form of diversion. Our readers are intelligent people, who have already taken the time to inform themselves on the topic under discussion and don't have a lot of time to waste playing games. Shrill and highly polemical posts are also strongly disfavored.

If you are unwilling to follow the rules, all non-complying posts from you will be deleted until you see fit to do so. I have allowed you enough leeway over the last week, but you are still ignoring requests from other members even when they provide you with sources without your asking them to do so. Your present method of discussion is not acceptble, so perhaps you should reconsider how you are acting, or maybe if these are the right forums for you?

Terry Duncan

[Plain Old Dave]

This morning: October 1918. The Germans are still "Going down game" as the saying goes, but rather than the ordered retreat to another line of defense seen earlier in the Argonne now they're simply lighting out for the Fatherland.

This, not August, is the "blackest time" of the German Army. And it's almost completely attributed to Pershing's "invincible obstinancy." He knew exactly what needed to be done, and just like Grant ground Lee to mush in Central Virginia he's ground Germany to powder here.

(Who's Chief Admin here? Something needs to be done about the Forum Moderator)

[Terry Duncan]

This morning: October 1918. The Germans are still "Going down game" as the saying goes, but rather than the ordered retreat to another line of defense seen earlier in the Argonne now they're simply lighting out for the Fatherland.

This, not August, is the "blackest time" of the German Army. And it's almost completely attributed to Pershing's "invincible obstinancy." He knew exactly what needed to be done, and just like Grant ground Lee to mush in Central Virginia he's ground Germany to powder here.

(Who's Chief Admin here? Something needs to be done about the Forum Moderator)

David Thompson or Christian Ankerstjerne, the two people who have dealt with your last three or four pointless complaints. I didnt deal with them, contrary to your opinion. Now please either source where these quotes are from or the post will be deleted for failure to comply with the rules I have only just specified to you.

Terry Duncan