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The gunny was in a tight spot. For that matter, the entire 2d Battalion, 5th Marines was in a tight spot. The out-of-date, inaccurate French maps the battalion had been issued-one to a company-called the place the Bois de Belleau, and on Monday, 10 June 1918, it seemed that every tree sheltered a German. Every man jack of them was blazing away enthusiastically, laying down enough fire to quell a revolution. Much of it was directed at Captain Charlie Dunbeck's 43d Company, where the gunny led the 4th Platoon. Even worse, to the gunny's way of seeing it, a large body of gray infantry was moving into a position on the company's left flank. Enfilade fire from there could shred the entire 43d Co, thereby stopping the battalion dead in its tracks.
The gunny wasn't one to waste time dithering about things. In 1915, while stationed at the Navy's Craney Island Ammunition Depot in Norfolk, Va., he had not hesitated to dash into a high-explosive storage bunker to remove burning refuse that could have set off a devastatin- explosion but for his action.
The gunny was a man of action, and he took action then. Without waiting for orders he gathered up the handful of men nearest him and led them in a looping movement to the left, angling for the rear of the rocky outcropping where the enemy machine-gunners were beginning to adjust their sights. Intent on the Marines advancing across their front, the Germans were completely unprepared for the band of howling wild men who burst out of the woods in their rear. Surprise, total and violent surprise, can unnerve the best of men. These Germans were no different. They dropped their weapons and raised their hands in surrender.
The 43d Co's executive officer, First Lieutenant Herb Bluhm, saw it this way: "This enemy position was on our flank, and only for the good work of GySgt Wodarczyk the company would have been caught in an enfilading fire and the loss would have been very large. GySgt Wodarczyk took a few men and advanced on this enemy position and without the loss of a man, captured the entire enemy position, which consisted of about fifty men well armed with rifles and machineguns."
Freed...