This achievement was the taking of the Bois de Grimpettes, or Grimpettes Wood.
The operation, in the opinion of officers outside the Fifty-fifth Brigade, compared most favorably with the never-to-be-forgotten exploit of the marines in the Bois de Belleau.
There were these differences: First, the Belleau Wood fight occurred at a time when all the rest of the western front was more or less inactive, but the taking of Grimpettes Wood came in the midst of a general forward movement that was electrifying the world, a movement in which miles of other front bulked large in public attention; second, the taking of Belleau was one of the very first real battle operations of Americans, and the marines were watched by the critical eyes of a warring world to see how "those Americans" would compare with the seasoned soldiery of Europe; third, the Belleau fight was an outstanding operation, both by reason of the vital necessity of taking the wood in order to clear the way for what was to follow and because it was not directly connected with or part of other operations anywhere else.
Grimpettes Wood was the Fifty-fifth Infantry Brigade's own "show." The wood lies north of Courmont and just south of Sergy. It is across the Ourcq, which is so narrow that some of the companies laid litters from bank to bank and walked over dryshod, and so shallow that those who waded across hardly went in over their shoetops. At one side the wood runs over a little hill. The 109th and 110th were told, in effect:--
"The Germans have a strong position in Grimpettes Wood. Take it."
The regiments were beginning to know something about German "strong positions." In fact they had passed the amateur stage in dealing with such problems. Although, perhaps they could not be assigned yet to the expert class, nevertheless they were supplied with groups of junior officers and "non-coms" who felt--and justly--that they knew something about cleaning up "strong positions." They no longer went about such a task with the jaunty _sang froid_ and reckless daredeviltry that had marked their earlier experiences. They had learned that it did themselves and their men no good and was of no service to America, to advance defiantly in the open in splendid but foolish disregard of hidden machine guns and every other form of Hun strafing.