By the time the Battle of Belleau Wood was over, Americans hailed it as "the Gettysburg of the Great War." Although it did not win World War I, it did rescue America and its allies from almost certain defeat, much as the Civil War's Gettysburg denied the Confederates victory.
In June 1918, all that stood between the German army and Allied defeat was 200 United States Marines. But Belleau Wood was more than the salvation of the four-year Allied crusade to "make the world safe for democracy." The battle, stunning in its concentration and intensity, was the fiery furnace from which the modern United States Marine Corps emerged as America's fiercest and most effective warriors, the world's pre-eminent fighting elite.
