Aisne-Marne Offensive
The Aisne-Marne Offensive was not one single engagement but a collection of battles in the summer of 1918. It marked the final German offensive and began on July 15, 1918 when 23 German divisions attacked toward Reims, France with hopes of drawing Allied troops away from Belgium. The Allies were able to halt the German advance two days later. With the German advance stalled Allied commander Ferdinand Foch launched a counteroffensive that included the battles of Soissons, Chateau-Thierry, and Belleau Wood. The Allies, including significant help from the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), fought a fluid offensive battle using tanks and other new technologies. By August the Allies had totally eliminated the German salient and had started on the road to the end of the war.
Below are the stories of three "VPI men" who were there.
John Alexander Tebbs
"Tebbs was badly gassed during the fighting in France and spent three months in the hospital as a result of his experience.”
-The Virginia Tech, reporting on Captain Tebbs returning to the United States on April 3, 1919
Only a month after the United States joined the Allied war effort in April 1917, John Alexander Tebbs joined the Marine Corps and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. After completing training at Quantico, Virginia, Tebbs to France and arrived on June 8, 1918. Once there, Tebbs was quickly transferred to the 6th Marine Machine Gun Battalion and was rushed to the front to join that unit which was already fighting in the Aisne-Marne Offensive.
In the Aisne-Marne Offensive, Tebbs participated in the last phase of the Battle of Belleau Wood, where his machine gun battalion was tasked with providing suppressing fire for the final Marine assault to the Wood. Due to the ferocity of the Marines of the 4th and 5th Regiments, along with the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, German soldiers at Belleau Wood nicknamed the Marines “Teufel Hunden” or “Devil Dogs.” Belleau Wood was later renamed “Bois de la Brigade de Marine,” meaning “The Wood of the Marine Brigade.”
After the Aisne-Marne Offensive, Tebbs and the 6th Machine Gun Battalion participated in the St. Mihiel Offensive, where Tebbs received minor wounds from a German bullet. In late September, his unit was transferred to the Meuse-Argonne. It was there, on October 4, 1918 that Tebbs was involved in a gas attack near the Mont Blanc Ridge. In his Marine Corps service report, Tebbs recalled that this gas attack was, at first, not serious enough to warrant leaving front-line service. However this, combined with another wound sustained on November 2, removed Tebbs from the fighting. Four months after the armistice, in March 1919, Tebbs was still recovering from his wounds. In a report from medical staff at Quantico, doctors reported that Tebbs’ physical condition was fair and that he was still suffering from shortness of breath and occasional bouts of coughing.
Walton Marshall Ellingsworth
“He performed his duties as Reconnaissance Officer and Observation Officer under heavy shell fire with great courage and coolness, and aided materially in the efficient firing of his battalion.”
-Citation from General Preston Brown regarding 1st Lieutenant Walton Ellingsworth’s bravery during the Battle of Soissons
Walton Ellingsworth was completing his last semester at VPI when the United States entered the war. Just days after he graduated he joined the Army, boarded a train, and entered officer training in May 1917. A year later, in May 1918, Ellingsworth and his unit arrived in France and quickly joined the Allied offensive along the Aisne and Marne rivers.
Soissons, a French town located along the Aisne River, was one of the most seriously affected towns during World War I. The town, being only miles away from German trenches, was heavily bombarded throughout the war. When the town was captured by German forces in the spring of 1918, French and American units were sent to the area to recapture it that July.
Ellingsworth’s unit, the 12th Field Artillery, was among the American troops dispatched to recapture the town. On July 18, twenty-four French divisions, alongside two American divisions, launched an all out assault upon German positions in the town. American troops who attacked Soissons described passing through gas, artillery bombardments, and withering machine gun fire. It was here, on July 21, that Ellingsworth, in the face of constant attack, held his ground. He commanded his battalion to continue firing upon German positions to support advancing American Marines.
For his actions in the Battle of Soissons, Ellingsworth received the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, and the Croix de Guerre. Ellingsworth went on to serve with the 12th Field Artillery for the entirety of the war, fighting in the St. Mihiel Offensive and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Charles Tell Lawson
“War is a serious and inhuman affair at best, however, it is necessary when so much is at stake.”
-Captain Charles Lawson
Charles Tell Lawson, from Lancaster, Virginia, joined the Marine Corps on May 24, 1917 as a second lieutenant. After training at both Parris Island, South Carolina and Quantico, Virginia, Lawson and the rest of the 2nd Division departed for France on October 22, 1917. They arrived in the city of Brest on November 13, 1917. His unit continued to train in France until March 13-14, 1918 where they were deployed as reserves for the French Army in the area of the front line. On March 21, the Germans began a series of offensives which resulted to the Allied lines begin pushed to the brink of collapse. After the lines had stabilized, Lawson and the rest of the 2nd Division were ordered to push the Germans back.
In this ensuing action, the 2nd Division and the United States Marine Corps as whole would earn fame at the Battle of Belleau-Wood. After five weeks of bloody, often hand to hand combat, the now hardened American Marines pushed the Germans out of the ground they had gained in the March offensives which had precipitated the Aisne-Marne Offensive.
Lawson would go on to participate in every major American action of the war, most notably the massive Meuse-Argonne Offensive of October 1918.