If You Survive

by George Wilson

  All at once a chorus of small arms fire broke out that sounded like it was about two hundred yards ahead in a patch of thick pines. “I’ll bet that’s our boys,” I remarked to Mays. “You’re probably right, Lieutenant, but if we get caught up there and we lose you, what will the men do?” In my heart I knew this was the plain reality. If the new lieutenant was in trouble, he would have sense enough to pull back. And two of us alone couldn’t help him much, so Mays and I headed back.

  As soon as I rejoined my small group I had them all pick out old German foxholes, because the shelling might pick us up any moment. Up ahead the small-arms fire became even more intense, with most of it seeming to be German weapons. It’s hard to describe what distinguishes different firearm sounds, but after one has heard them a while it’s easy to tell the types of weapons apart.

  While we were enlarging a shell hole one of the lieutenant’s men, a Latin-American, came tearing up to us, all out of breath. He was so excited he chattered out his first sentences in Spanish. I stopped him and calmly told him to speak slowly in English and tell me what had happened.

  “We just ran into a lot of Germans, and the lieutenant sent me to get some help. Quick!” he blurted.

  “I don’t have anyone to send,” I told the messenger. “Go back and tell the lieutenant to get back here as soon as possible.” He took off again running.

  Ten minutes later he returned with the lieutenant and no one else. They were the only two who had managed to escape. The lieutenant was slightly wounded.

  He told me they had moved into the pines as I had ordered and immediately had run into a whole German company. This misunderstanding startled me. I had clearly told him to get into the woods and wait for me there. I couldn’t believe that anyone would not consider scrub oaks to be woods. Now it was too late for discussion.

  Anyway, his men had taken cover under the pines when the shooting started and had tried to hide. He hadn’t seen anyone shoot back at the Germans. Some were wounded, and others began to surrender. They were hopelessly outnumbered and out of control, and there was no way a single lieutenant could save them. The best he could do was ignore his wound and get away. Thus, in just a half hour, he had lost about thirty-five men, killed, wounded, or captured.

  What had happened there was about the norm for inexperienced men with an inexperienced leader, particularly men who had been unsettled by the most terrible baptism a man could get. Perhaps we had been asking too much of human beings, and that mistake was catching up with us. Men work best in small squads under a leader of their own, and there had been no way to bring this about in that open field in a trench under German fire.

  The lieutenant went on to the rear to have his wound treated, and I never heard of him again. He had had a chaotic, traumatic three hours in combat, and it must have given him plenty of fuel for memories.

  Now we were down to only twelve men, including Sergeant Bert Smith of H Company and myself. Again I was the only leader. What in hell could we do if the Germans somehow found out how weak we were and came in on us? Probably make them pay as dearly as possible, and that was it.

  We began to dig in and try to roof our foxholes. Some of us leveled off the bottom of a bomb crater that was about six feet deep and twelve feet across. We needed poles to stretch across as a roof, and we cut scrub oaks. This was not easy, since we had neither saws nor axes. All we had were trench knives, so we selected the smaller trees only three or four inches in thickness and chipped away at them like beavers. Somehow we finally got enough poles to crisscross the crater; then we laid raincoats on that latticework and piled dirt on top to help absorb shrapnel. It looked like a pretty strong roof, and it later proved itself.

  In two days’ fighting, we had gained about eight hundred yards. In twenty-four hours my company had lost 138 men of 150. With only twelve men, we stayed in place that night.

  The night was nice and quiet, and I slept for a few hours in spite of the gnawing cold. Next day I moved about one hundred yards to a very well engineered German shelter and made this my headquarters. And soon E Company moved up beside us, and things seemed to be taking a turn for the better.

  We took up positions to cover the left of the firebreak road, and E Company took the right. The men were busy most of the day digging and covering their foxholes. Some men had to stay alert for possible enemy action; thank God, none developed.

  Later that day a mortar landed smack on top of the roof we’d made over the bomb crater. The men inside were shaken up and got something to think about, but no one was hurt. A little more dirt on top and the roof was as good as new.

  During the day we received sixty-six new replacements and a couple of new officers. My orders were to remain in place and set up a defense, so I had the men dig in along the ridge that was our front. Now we had seventy-eight men, and we felt much stronger, although I knew we were far from being a fighting unit.

  We were getting an awful lot of incoming mortar shells, and mortars don’t have much range, so I knew they had to be fairly close by. Our new artillery forward observer sent up the Piper Cub, and it circled around but could not spot any mortar batteries. I borrowed his map and found a few ravines and partial clearings within two thousand yards, natural places for the Germans to have mortars, which fire in a high arc and so must have a position with no trees overhead. Because of their high arc, mortars usually had to be within a mile of their targets. The Piper Cub was sent to check them out. Soon we were pleased to get his “Bravo, bull’s-eye” over the radio. His artillery batteries made quick work of the Kraut mortars, and we were able to breathe a little easier.

  On December 3 I got word that another company from a different division was coming up to relieve us, and I spread the word; I knew it was the truth, since it came from Colonel Kenan. And sure enough, at 9:30 that morning the captain of this relief company came up to check out the area with his officers. I toured them around my defensive position and cautioned them not to bunch up because we probably were under observation and would draw fire.

  They paid no attention to the warning and continued to move around in a tight group, and in less than a minute the shells began to whistle in. One landed not far from the captain, and although he had not been hit, he claimed he couldn’t get up. Some of my men had to carry him into my dugout.

  This relief company was something of an eye-opener for me because they were by far the worst bunch of infantry I had ever seen. They had served so poorly on the front in the swamps near Saint-Lo that they had been transfered to siege duty around Brest from July until November. They still were not fit for combat.

  They had a full complement of officers, and even one extra, and were up to full strength in noncoms and enlisted men. After a while the captain announced that he just couldn’t carry on. His exec must have been of the same stripe, for he didn’t stir himself to take over.

  I finally told the executive officer he’d better get moving to bring his company up from Grosshau, and when he hesitated I told him flatly that I was going to move out and that he might have to fight the Germans to get the position back.* This got his butt in gear, and in about an hour he was back with the rest of this truly pathetic company.

  Privates in this company called their officers by their first names. With this sort of familiarity, it seemed to me, there was no sense in taking orders. And they didn’t. There simply was no discipline. I even heard a sergeant tell a lieutenant to go to hell, and I think I might have sided with the sergeant. What should have been an easy exchange became a real problem with men milling around, refusing to go where they were told.

  We wasted no time getting together what was now F Company and heading back over that bloodstained hill and through the shattered ruins of Grosshau, only a quarter mile to our rear. We continued on through three or four miles of shell-splintered, mutilated forest to Second Battalion’s bivouac area.

  We were going in the right direction, but I was so totally played out, so emotionally spent and physically exhausted, that
putting one foot in front of the other was a chore. I didn’t think we’d ever get there.

  I was in something of a daze, probably from delayed shock. I was thinking that of all the men who had started out with me in the F Company attack a few weeks back, I was the only one still able to walk out of those awful woods. I might also have been crying. At any rate, my vision was misty, and I didn’t see my old friend from E Company, Supply Sergeant O’Malley, when he came up to me as I shuffled along the trail.

  O’Malley threw his arms around me in welcome and then insisted on taking all my gear—rifle, bandoleer, canteen, trench knife—and carrying them the rest of the way. I tried to say something to him, but I became all choked up and couldn’t.

  Our division had been in many battles, but none more costly for the ground gained. We had taken about four and a half miles of forest in our sector, reaching the Cologne Plains, our objective. Our replacement division was engaged there for several more weeks. Perhaps because of the unexpected development of the Battle of the Bulge some two weeks after we broke through the Hürtgen, our gains were never exploited. One might rightly say that the battle of the Hürtgen forest was a major military error. The First Army’s losses there must be recorded as the most severe of any American army fighting in Europe during World War II. Yet it is not considered a victory, nor is it even known to most Americans as a battle.

  I didn’t know what F Company’s losses were in the Hürtgen until Francis Thiefels, the company clerk, told me they were about 167 percent for the enlisted men alone. This means that we had started with a full company of about 162 men and had lost about 287, including replacements.

  Casualties among the company’s officers probably were about double that of the men. I personally recall the loss of twelve officers, and I think we lost a few others, for a total of perhaps fourteen or fifteen.

  It was very difficult for me to believe that of all the men and officers who started out on the front lines in F Company with me, I was the only one who finished. And I had been wounded twice but never evacuated. All I could do was shake my head and wonder.

  Of over thirty officers in the Second Battalion, it appears that Captain Newcomb at battalion headquarters, Lieutenant Lee Lloyd at E Company, and I were the only ones who survived the entire eighteen days of battle. Our only purpose in fighting there had been to help finish the efforts which had been made by several other divisions. Fighting with us in this last phase of the battle of Hürtgen forest were the First, Twenty-eighth, and Ninetieth divisions, and part of the Fifth Armored Division. The fighting had been going on for over a month when we arrived. Our goal was to reach the Cologne Plains at a small town named Gey. The objective lay only four and a half miles away, but it took eighteen terrible days to reach. All the divisions taking part in the battle were badly mauled.

  The total losses for the Twenty-second Infantry Regiment with a complement of the Fourth Infantry, which was part of division in the Battle of the Hürtgen forest, were approximately three thousand men.

  Killed In Action (KIA) - Enlisted men: 126 - Officers: 12-F Co.: 3*

  Wounded In action (WIA) - Enlisted men: 1,782 -Officers: 77-F Co.: 8

  Missing In Action (MIA) - Enlisted men: 489 - Officers: 8-FCo.:0

  Non-Battle Casualties (NBC) - Enlisted men: 178 -Officers: 6-F Co.: 1

  Totals: Enlisted men: 2,575 - Officers: 103 - F Co.: 12.

  This came to about 100 percent loss for the three battalions in the regiment. It was an awful beating—a terrible price for that damned patch of woods, a total of about five miles.

  In bivouac our men soon settled down for the night. Someone thought to set up a pup tent for me, and I crawled in. Still in the same dirty clothes of the last eighteen days, without either a shave or a bath, I didn’t feel much like a conqueror or victor of any kind. Outright exhausted, I soon was sound asleep.

  That was the Hürtgen.

  *My wife and I met Servat and his wife in New Orleans in 1960, fifteen years after the war. I still don’t see how he could have dragged himself back to the aid station that awful day in the Hürtgen.

  *For example, at Saint-Lô I led the second day’s attack because I was the last one to lead the previous night; as we approached Germany my platoon led the combat patrol to the Siegfried Line and led again in our first attack through the line; I was called on to lead nearly every patrol from our company during September and October, 1944; my platoon led the jump-off attack the first day in the Hürtgen forest. Other examples can be found in the text.

  *After the war, at camp Butner, near Durham, North Carolina, Captain Toles explained to me with tears in his eyes how sorry he was he just couldn’t get G Company that far up. He had heard me on the radio that last time but lay there gravely wounded and couldn’t answer me. All his officers were gone, and there was nothing he could do.

  *Actually, I couldn’t move out until relieved by them, so I prodded the company’s executive officer to get moving and bring the men up.

  *F Company losses are based on officers only. They are from my personal recollection. We started with six officers, so we had 200 percent losses.

  XII

  REST FOR THE WEARY

  On a crisp, bitterly cold December 4, three weeks after we had entered the forest, the battered remains of the Twenty-second Infantry plus its frightened replacements boarded the usual two-and-a-half-ton, 6×6 trucks for our seventy-five-mile trip to a quiet sector of the front lines in Luxembourg. We were told no fighting had occurred there since September and that we could R and R there and obtain more replacements.

  For the few of us who had survived the Hürtgen, it was as delicious and unbelievable as a release from a long prison sentence. No longer did we have to flinch from the scream of artillery and its shattering explosions; no longer were we forced to wonder if the next minute would be our last. The relief was so overpowering, yet once again I found myself fighting back tears of grief for our terrible losses.

  As the convoy headed out mine was the dubious honor, of riding in the open jeep of the commanding officer of F Company. Still below half strength with its seventy-six souls, of whom sixty-six were new recruits the final day of the Hürtgen, F Company limped away from the scene of one of the nastiest battlefields of World War II. According to Army records, our heaviest losses in Europe occurred there.

  The convoy covered over one hundred miles, passing through many villages and small towns and then Luxembourg City itself. I can understand why so many of us have returned to those battlefields, for there is where we came of age, there is where we went through our rite of passage. I recall names such as Zweifall, Eupen, Houffalize, Bastogne, and Arlon. Under other circumstances, and perhaps in the early fall when the hardwoods were in full color, it could have been a most enjoyable, scenic excursion. Now it was dreary, gray, bleak, cold, miserable winter.

  Convoy travel was usually irritatingly slow and fitful. No one along the line ever knew why there had to be so many stops, why the convoy couldn’t get going again quickly. The halts were always exasperating, particularly since we knew there probably was no other traffic, certainly not civilian. It took us all day to travel about one hundred miles.

  At least when we were stalled the wind wasn’t so bad. Once we started up again the wind whipped through the open cabs of the trucks and the jeeps and bit right down to the marrow. It had never seemed that cold when we went hunting in the freezing wilds of Michigan, though we were better dressed then and weren’t riding in open cars. My feet were so icy that they began to hurt. They weren’t in particularly good shape; I hadn’t been able to change socks or even take my shoes off for three weeks.

  Finally I had to do something about it; perhaps my actions made a little history—I am probably the only one ever to have built a fire on the floor of a moving jeep. I simply emptied a K ration box and set fire to the wax box. This helped my hands, but I couldn’t get my feet over the fire long enough to help. The driver looked at me a little strangely but didn’t say anything.


  Forwarding units had gone ahead the previous day to arrange our exchange of position with the 331st Regiment of the Eighty-third Infantry Division, and my company wound up near the Moselle River in Luxembourg about twelve miles southeast of Luxembourg City. My command post was in Oberdonwen, Luxembourg.

  We were now part of a sector of the German western front known as the Ardennes, which two weeks later became part of the Battle of the Bulge. For almost four months, as though by tacit agreement, there had been little activity, except for occasional minor patrols just to keep an eye on the area. For us it would be a rest and training area. We were just a shell of the old Twenty-second Infantry, and we would now rebuild, train the new men, and absorb them into a fighting unit. We hoped.

  In the same area, the rest of the Fourth Division had very loose defensive positions along a twenty-five-mile stretch of the Luxembourg-German border, west of German troops facing the Sauer and Moselle rivers. Each rifle company covered at least a mile of the front. My F Company had an exceptionally large area. By road it was over five miles from one of our outposts to the company command post. In addition, we had several outposts between which we had to keep patrols roving.

  The terrain was rugged, with many winding roads, steep slopes, and deep valleys. There were many gaps in our defense, and it would not have been difficult for the Germans to penetrate quite a distance into our territory without being stopped. Our line was very weak; at best it would only be an early warning system.

  We were not the only ones so vulnerable, for the entire seventy-five miles of the sector was held by divisions chewed up in the Hürtgen that were then only at token strength. What we were doing was apparently the only thing that could be done with such damaged divisions, and no one seemed overly concerned. The Allied High Command was well aware of the circumstances and took the calculated risk.