The Bloody Forest: Battle for the Huertgen: September 1944–January 1945

by Gerald Astor

  During this period, the flow of replacements continued. Bill Kull, married and a father, recalled moving up a road toward the forest around 9 or 10 November with others to fill the depleted ranks of the 12th Infantry. “We had two or three truckloads of about twenty guys each. A stupid officer I didn’t know at the time, who was just back from a hospital, Captain S___, was in charge of Company C, had landed on D Day, and been wounded later.”

  On foot, the replacements followed their captain. “He takes off at a quick place and, man, this road was littered with bodies, most likely from the 28th Division, and the mud halfway up to your knees. There’s a head sticking up out of the mud here, a hand there. S___ just takes off and all of a sudden the shells start coming in. These poor recruits are getting shelled, and they didn’t know whether to run back or run ahead, and they’re getting knocked off, and they didn’t even know where they were yet. I was with some kid I had never seen before, Pvt. Rocco S. La Fauci, and I said, ‘This is crazy walking up this stupid road. We may as well at least go up the side through the trees. Maybe they won’t see us.’

  “Eventually, we got to a foxhole, and we didn’t know where it was in relationship to the line. We ducked into it, hunkered down, and a couple hours later, a guy with some experience crawled up and said, ‘Hey, you’re new guys, aren’t you? Got any water?’ We didn’t have much, because in our shock and exhaustion we had drank half a canteen each and didn’t know where we were or where the next water would come from. We told him, ‘no.’ He said, ‘You’re new. You must have some water. You just came up.’ We said, ‘Yeah, well, we drank it all.’ So he crawled on. During the night the shells pounded in and nobody else came by.

  “The next morning, I told Rocco, ‘I’m going back where we started from’ [possibly near Zweifall, which was the 12th Regiment’s headquarters about a mile or two back], and find out where we’re supposed to be, and maybe not ever come back again. We went to the motor pool area and were moseying around there. An officer came up and asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’ We told him we were recruits from the day before. On the way up we came under heavy fire, people got killed, people got wounded, and the officer we were with took off, and we have no idea where he went. We don’t think we want to go back.

  “After a day, the officer says, ‘You have a choice. You either go back with the next group that comes in or you get court-martialed. And,’ he says, ‘if you get court-martialed, you probably get shot, and if you get shot you lose all your benefits [the GI insurance paid to survivors]. So if you’re gonna get killed anyway, you may as well go up there and at least protect your families.’

  “I said I would think it over, and during the night I talked to Rocco. I said, ‘You know that really makes sense. I’d sooner get shot up there and have everybody think you’re a hero, rather than die here and have everybody know you’re a coward.’ I wrote a letter to my wife, Ethel, and made the officer promise to mail it.

  “That day a couple more truckloads of guys came. I said to Rocco, ‘The problem is carrying all this crap. It’s not ours anyway. Take your personal items, like I have a picture of mother and of the two kids, and maybe an extra pair of socks. Take your gun, some ammo, some food and water, and leave the rest. If anyone questions us, we can say we were up there before and our gear is all up there.’”

  To avoid the problem they encountered during their first day under fire, Kull said he suggested to La Fauci, “When they start off, they’re gonna be like us the other day. When the shelling begins, I’m gonna take off up that road, leave everyone behind, and get on the other side of the shelling. Then maybe we’ll find somebody up there.”

  The two followed this script, and Kull recalled, “We got to a place where a sergeant said, ‘You guys, where ya goin?’ We said to your foxhole, hunkered down, and moved over to him. He said, ‘Get down! Get down! Don’t let them know where I am!’ He said, ‘Where are you supposed to be?’

  “‘Beats us. We don’t know. They just told us to come up this road.’ ‘This is C Company.’ ‘That sounds like a good company to me. We don’t have to look further.’ ‘Okay, you’re in C Company. I’ll get a sergeant to find you a foxhole that’s empty.’”

  Another noncom crawled over to them and then led them to a vacant position. “He said, ‘You just stay here, now.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but when do we get to eat?’ He answered, ‘Whenever they can, they bring up food, water, and ammunition. All you can do is stay put, but just be ready when we pass the word down the line. We’re finally going on the attack in a couple of hours.’

  “We never saw anybody again, and the shells are raining like water. You can only go up on the ridge of the foxhole to go to the bathroom, when you really had to, and usually at night. Meanwhile, we just stayed there. I don’t remember how long, several days, maybe more. We heard battles going on but nobody ever told us anything except we’re going to attack, or something like that, but nobody ever said when. We just stayed there.”

  The near-standstill in the forest incited spasms among those charged with masterminding the Siegfried Line campaign. Any combat unit available was summoned to play a part. The 2d Ranger Battalion, an elite organization that played a critical part in neutralizing the Omaha Beach defenses and then spearheaded subsequent operations across France, moved to the Belgian border under attachment to CCA of the 5th Armored Division.

  Wounded on D Day but having recovered sufficiently to win a DSC during the battle for Brest, Lt. Bob Edlin, a Ranger A Company platoon leader who had been wounded on Omaha Beach, relished a month-long sojourn at a rest camp before trucking to the Huertgen area. “You could always tell when it was getting time to go into combat. Good things started happening. We were visited by General Eisenhower. The whole battalion gathered around, and he just flat out asked if anybody could tell him why we didn’t have the new boot packs. One of the men yelled out, ‘Hell, everybody back at headquarters has got them,’ which was true. Back in army headquarters and corps headquarters and division headquarters, everyone was wearing boot packs, parkas, and warm clothes. Up in the front lines [that gear] never leaked down. We were still wearing summer clothing, and the temperature was now down in the low thirties, high twenties. General Eisenhower said that [it would] be taken care of and, God rest his soul, it was. A few days later, we received boot packs and even wristwatches. He must have raided the whole damn headquarters to get enough for one Ranger battalion.”

  The table of organization for a Ranger battalion listed 500 soldiers in six companies of sixty-two men each with three officers. Each company carried its own aid men, and headquarters company fielded communications specialists, the requisite clerks, and supply people. The Rangers operated with abundant small-arms firepower but lacked any heavy weapons. Their original mission was to strike quickly and hard, then turn over the position to larger units. But as the Allied armies had moved across France, the Rangers had been employed more and more, as if they were an ordinary infantry battalion. The resultant casualties and the absence of Ranger-trained replacements meant an infusion of GIs with neither the physical nor psychological screening or extended training that had previously marked the outfit.

  Sid Salomon, a Ranger captain who participated in the capture of the strategically vital Pointe du Raz Percée overlooking Omaha Beach, noted, “Cold weather and a driving rain did not help the morale of the inexperienced American troops. Trench foot and casualties helped to add to the confusion that was rampant. After one month of fighting, the Americans had barely advanced twelve miles into Germany. The Rangers of Baker Company were amazed to see the GI equipment, clothing, and even weapons that had been discarded by the division troops who had previously held this area.”

  Frank South, a medic and an original among those who stormed the heights during the Normandy invasion, said, “We were placed on repeated alerts for various attack missions on the 4th, 8th, and 11th, each of which was called off. Finally, on the 14th we were detached from the 5th Armored and assigned to relieve the 112th Infant
ry Regiment. We moved by convoy to the wooded area near Germeter, where temporary battalion headquarters and the aid station were set up. The line companies were placed either in perimeter or reserve positions. On the way in, the convoy came to a crossroad and received direction from a combat MP who suddenly emerged from the trees. Our motor pool driver, who had to go to a rear depot for supplies during the following month, was amused that the MP became harder to see or find. He was no longer hidden in the trees but would emerge briefly from a foxhole, which became deeper and deeper each time they passed, precisely as in a Bill Mauldin cartoon. He was justified since the crossroad received a fair amount of artillery fire.” Like the others during the forest’s November, South remarked on the deepening cold, the freezing rain. The Rangers of the line companies began to use quarter-pound charges to break the frozen surface before they dug.

  “The entire battalion,” noted South, “came under artillery of varying intensities. We dug in, as it became apparent that we might be held there for a day or two and were even able to cover our entrenchments where the medics slept with logs that had been felled. I caught a shell fragment in the arm. The wound was too light to warrant anything but cleansing, a few sutures, and bandaging. Until then, I had been becoming convinced that I would be one of the few to make it through the war with impunity.”

  During this period, the Rangers operated patrols to ensure contact among their companies and to gain intelligence on the enemy. One four-man patrol, led by Bob Edlin, poked through the woods to the outskirts of Schmidt and saw few signs of activity in the town. The patrol team agreed that this might be staged to lull the Americans into a trap, and Col. James Rudder, the 2d Ranger Battalion CO, concurred. In any event, after several days in the Germeter-Vossenack sector, the 28th Division relinquished its responsibilities in favor of the 8th Division. The Rangers passed into the status of a reserve for that organization.

  It was not until 18 November that the last of the Keystone Division soldiers, the men from Bill Peña’s 109th Regiment, left the area bound for Luxembourg. The 28th at this point was in tatters, no longer an effective organization. Cecil B. Currey, a former member of the 28th, wrote in his book Follow Me and Die of the 110th: “By 13 November all officers in the A, B, C rifle companies were listed as KIA, MIA, or WIA or evacuated with trench foot or combat exhaustion.

  “Not only did Able Company have no remaining officers, neither were any NCOs left. Baker Company consisted of only four men, three privates, and a sergeant. Charlie Company had twenty-three men but only one NCO. In Dog Company, only two officers and six privates were still carried on the roster. Their MIA statistics were high; Able Company lost thirty-eight, Baker lost forty-four, Charlie counted thirty-nine, Dog suffered eight.

  “These figures become even more poignant in light of the fact that the 1st Battalion began with 871 men and received nearly 100 replacements [like Alexis] during the fighting. When its remnants returned to the battalion assembly area on 13 November, only fifty-seven men stood there. Medics immediately evacuated thirty-seven of these because of trench foot, wounds, combat exhaustion, or a combination of all three. Only twenty-five out of nearly 1,000 men could still function as infantry. In the next two days, perhaps fifty men straggled back from the front. Most of them were evacuated because of trench foot.”

  The entire 28th incurred 5,684 battle and nonbattle casualties. Attached units added another 500 soldiers to the totals. (German losses were estimated at 2,900.) Along with horrific figures for dead, missing, wounded, and otherwise disabled, the organization also suffered the loss of an incalculable amount of savvy, highly trained men whose ranks would only be replaced in numbers rather than quality.

  Dutch Cota later told the survivors, “I am very, very proud of the fight that you men have put up and of the results you have accomplished. It cost us heavily in killed and wounded. You who have come through this fight know full well the hardships and heartaches that the soldier must endure during battle. It has been rough and tough. History will record you men of the 28th Infantry Division can take it and hand it out. I congratulate you on a job WELL DONE!”

  His comments must have seemed small comfort to men of the 28th. At all high levels of command, from division up through the First Army, there was no talk of “a job well done.” Cota and his closest advisors talked about “certain weak links in the training of the division, both tactical and command and staff.” Gerow blamed, among other things, the failure of the division artillery commander to keep close contact with battalion artillery. Everyone at the top agreed that they had been misled by status reports from the combat units. No patrols attempted to gather intelligence on the defenses in front of Vossenack and Schmidt. The maps left out such important items as the huge minefield Hubert Gees knew as Wilde Sau. Missing from these critiques was any question of the basic strategy—head-on assaults on the redoubts of the forest.

  Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges, a West Point dropout, veteran of the American Expeditionary forces during World War I commanded more than 250,000 soldiers in his First Army.

  Maj. Gen. Joseph Lawton Collins, an aggressive graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, headed the VII Corps, the first organization to founder in the Huertgen.

  Maj. Gen. Leonard Gerow, a planning specialist, led the V Corps during its forays into the Huertgen and his inability to achieve the objectives brought a tongue lashing from Hodges.

  The first GIs from the 110th Infantry, members of the 28th Division, entered the woods 2 November while the trees still had branches. It is believed that few of these riflemen survived the blizzard of shot and shell that followed.

  The narrow, twisty Kall Trail prevented tanks from readily moving forward to support the embattled soldiers of the 28th Division.

  Medics tended a pair of wounded on the slopes of a hill early during the Huertgen campaign.

  Flooded roads denied easy passage to U.S. vehicles like this jeep crawling through the woods.

  Infantrymen from the 8th Division occupied the badly battered town of Huertgen during the final days of November.

  Incessant bombardment by mortars, artillery, planes and small arms denuded the once lush green forest to stands of scarred tree trunks.

  Pfc. Thomas W. Gilmore, Company 1, 121 Infantry, weary of combat as the campaign dragged into December, clutched his bazooka.

  The mighty Schwammenauel Dam resisted both Allied efforts to destroy it from the air and feeble attempts by the Germans to open its gates. It was captured by the 1st Battalion, 309th Infantry and engineers of the 78th Division.

  A tank from the 5th Armored Division prowled the streets of the village of Huertgen after it fell to the Americans.

  M-10 tank destroyers from the 893d Tank Destroyer Battalion traveled along a forest road to aid the besieged soldiers of the 28th Division.

  On snow-covered ground a bazooka team blasted one of the huge pillboxes that confronted the GIs.

  Temporarily out of harm’s way, men from the 121st Infantry trudged out of the forest after their ordeal.

  During a respite from the action, a soldier cleaned the mud encrusted tracks of an armored vehicle.

  From behind a low wall, a mortar man attempted to register on a target.

  As night approached, soldiers stood watch at the edge of a wooded area.

  A jeep plowed through the innundated streets of Huertgen while the shattered buildings testified to the fury of the fighting.

  Engineers used fallen trees to create corduroy roads but the mud frequently claimed the repairs.

  The china platters seem out of place as American infantrymen eat their first hot meal after fifteen days of siege in Huertgen, Germany, 5 December 1944.

  Technical sergeant Harry A. Burroughs, 8th Infantry Division, is awarded the Silver Star by Col. Thomas J. Cross, commander, 121st Infantry Regiment.

  10

  THE START OF THE GREAT NOVEMBER OFFENSIVE

  Originally, the plan called for the new offensive to start as early as 10 November, but thr
ough the 13th, the weather refused to cooperate. Heavily overcast skies, frequently punctuated by outbursts of rain or even snow, canceled air missions. And while the strategists vainly waited for more benign skies, the ordeal for some American tenants in the forest continued. On 10 November, while the men of the 28th Division and the 707th Tank Battalion vainly struggled to maintain the semblance of an organized armed force, at First Army, Sylvan summarized: “Situation was more or less status quo. The need to hold Vossenack; 1st Bn. of 109th in north and 2d Bn. of 109th and 3d Bn. of 112th made astonishing progress to within 1,000 yards of Huertgen.” What is truly astounding is the credence the First Army granted to any indication of success, for it was obvious to anyone except perhaps those at Hodges’s headquarters that the 28th Division soldiers were themselves under siege. The first reinforcements, the troops of the 12th Infantry, had already been repulsed with such tremendous damage that the outfit could not play any immediate role in the coming offensive.