Honored Brothers

To Our Fallen Brothers:

Let us remember before God, and commend to his sure keeping:

those whom we knew, and those whose memory we treasure;

and all who have lived and died in the service of mankind.

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

we shall remember them.

PVT Francis Edward Williams

USMC 49^th Co., 5^th Regiment

Belieau Wood, France

HM Harry Thomas Bowman II

Company: H&S Corpsman HM 3

Date of Birth: August 31, 1945

Date of Death: May 9, 1968

Place: Thua Thien Province, South Vietnam

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

More than 1,800 Marines from the 5th and 6th Regiment and several U.S. soldiers were killed during the Battle for Belleau Wood. In addition to their heroic feats at Belleau Wood, the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments went on to fight in other battles such as Aisne, Saint-Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Soissons, and Blanc Mont. For their gallantry in combat, the French government awarded the regiments the fourragère, a unit award given to units who distinguishing themselves more than once in combat. The Marines of 5th and 6th proudly wear the award today.

By June 1918, the Marines were nearing Chateau-Thierry, east of Paris. The forest was known as Belleau Wood.

On June 6, German machine-gunners opened fire, killing 300 Marines in the 4th Brigade within 30 minutes.

Dick Camp, a retired Marine colonel and author of "The Devil Dogs at Belleau Wood: U.S. Marines in World War I," says: "It was God-awful. The Marines of the 5th and 6th Regiments had to work their way across an open wheat field" under withering fire. It was the largest single-day loss ever for the Marine Corps.

Through subsequent battles at Soissons, Blanc Mont, St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest in France, the Marines established themselves as worthy foes.

German soldiers called them teufelhunden, or "devil dogs," for their fierceness in battle.