Great book. Author lost a leg in Belleau Wood. He states:
Now Bullard was ordered by [Maj. Gen. Jean] Degoutte to push out a patrol from bloody Fismes across the Vesle toward the village of Fismette. (in his memoirs, Bullard declined to name the unit, mindful of the bereaved at home.) The Germans were finely situated there, in the chalk hills of the treeless Champagne rising 150 meters above the bottom lands, their sides pitted with deep caves the French had dug before [German Col. Georg] Bruchmullers's guns had driven them back to the Marne. The patrol, 150 strong, crossed the Vesle in darkness over a single-file footbridge. Morning found it pinned down in the riverside caves without food. It was hazardous to send out rations--even if sympathetic buddies could dash at intervals across a footbridge under fire to bring them. So Bullard himself got the 150 men out the following night, one at a time, between the methodical machinegun bursts of the enemy, and brought them back where they belonged.
The angry chief of staff of the French Sixth Army informed Degoutte of Bullard's sensible action. Degoutte was incensed. He personally ordered Bullard to send the Doughboys back across the footbridge and into the trap again, a hopeless 150 knowing they were doomed. The Germans took their time; they held the high ground and could enfilade either side of the trap, maintaining a fire of interdiction against any attempt to bring up reinforcements. On the fourth night, [Col. Gen. Max von] Boehns's men came down the hill and wiped out the famished lads. Degoutte's communique the next day read, in part: "in the region of the Vesle, Bullard's American III Corps wiped out a counterattack" Degoutte was a warwise officer, a charming man who kept a sumptuous mess where American officers were always received with Gallic courtesy. Unlike Mangin and Gouraud, he simply had little regard for the lives of men.
Pershing came down on Bullard blazing. "why did you not disobey the order of General Degoutte?" He shouted and pounded the table. Cadet-Lieutenant Bullard had been Cadet Corporal Pershing's company commander in the plowboy's second year at West Point. He knew when it was his turn not to answer. Pershing understood that a Corps commander, if a war was to be won, must be putty in the hands of an Army commander, even though hell-on-wheels to his own Division commanders. And Bullard knew that Pershing would cool off. But the incident had an effect on Pershing's insistence upon an independent American Army.
pp. 201-02