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

by Gerald Astor

  The appalling conditions soon seemed to blast the unwarranted optimism and hopes. Sylvan noted the next day: “Gen. Gerow was closeted in Gen. [Hodges] office this afternoon from 2 until almost 5:30. The Gen. is still far from satisfied with the situation and the relief of 28th Div. Concerned with what steps to take to enhance the military situation. Main question of the day was about the weather, and preliminary reports gave no cause for hope and the final report telephoned shortly before 12 o’clock being no.”

  With the First Army still grounded by the atmospheric conditions on 12 November, Sylvan deadpanned, “After lunch Gen. left for the VII Corps, where Gen. Collins tried unsuccessfully to woo away from Gen. Gerow most of the latter’s troops. It was snowing.” Again, the meteorologists advised Hodges of weather problems, with the comment, “There was a one in 1,000 chance of sun tomorrow.”

  Regardless of the visibility, whether the First Army counted on an element of surprise or not, it cloaked Operation Queen under the darkness of top secret. But the Germans were well aware not only of the coming offensive but also who would be involved.

  Platoon leader George Wilson, who joined E Company of the 4th Division’s 22d Infantry just before the Saint-Lô breakout, was at the Elsenborn ridge area during the first week of the month. “Long after darkness on [9–10 November], the 4th Division leapfrogged some thirty miles farther north along the German-Belgian border. This was to be a highly secret maneuver, so elaborate pains were taken to erase all signs of our identity. Divisional and regimental numbers were blocked out on all vehicles, and the green four-leafed ivy shoulder patches of which we were so proud were removed from our uniforms. All personal letters bearing the division number were burned.

  “Our blacked-out trucks took long, confusing detours to the rear to mislead local enemy agents, and we arrived at our new post before dawn, sleepless and miserable. It was something of a shock early that morning to pick up the English-language propaganda broadcast of Berlin Sally, welcoming the 4th Division to its new position in the Huertgen Forest.” No one determined the sources of information for German intelligence, but, as Wilson pointed out, the disappearance of a known organization from one sector and the arrival of an outfit with its identity hidden a short distance off could hardly be a coincidence in the eyes of a watchful enemy. Furthermore, the long delay because of weather problems between the inception of Operation Queen and its actual start enabled the Germans to acquire an accurate picture of what they faced.

  Perhaps because word of the enormous damage done to the 12th Regiment might dampen morale of the other elements of the 4th Division, on 16 November, its commander, Gen. Ralph O. Barton, visited the command post of the 22d to state, as written in that organization’s journal, “that the 12th Infantry has made a remarkable recovery.” Five days later, however, Barton relieved the 12th’s commander. Lieutenant Colonel James Luckett moved to another division, while the unit itself, in the words of the historian Edward Miller, “was in no condition to do anything more than secure its own position.”

  As part of the offensive forces, the 1st Division marched from their sites in the Aachen area to the toeholds held by Americans in the Huertgen Forest. Warren Eames, a replacement, caught up with G Company in the division’s 18th Regiment outside of Aachen, where he endured his baptism by fire in the grim contest for the heights labeled Crucifix Hill.

  “We left our positions on Crucifix Hill,” said Eames, “between 7–10 November. Up front we lost track of time, never really knew what day it was. Instead, it seems as though, like Indians, we judged the season by the increasing cold and bitter weather.” To shield his body against the lowering temperatures, Eames donned an extra olive drab shirt and a sweater. “We started out in the darkness on what proved to be a very long march to the south and at double time also. After an hour or so, in which there was no respite or slowing down, I became so overheated that I thought I could not stand it any longer. I thought I would pass out. In the midst of this long and arduous march, I began trying to peel off some of my excess clothing, no mean task, since I was loaded down with rifle, sixty pounds of pack, entrenching tools, blankets, canteen, and two extra bandoliers of M1 cartridges, which I wore crisscrossed over my shoulders. The bandoliers were the first to go. I pulled them off and threw them away. Then I tried to take off my combat jacket, one half at a time, in order to tear off the sweater and extra shirt underneath. Somehow I succeeded in slipping off half my pack straps, getting shirt and sweater undone and ripped off my left side. After much effort I got [them] off my right side and threw them away in the dark.” He would soon regret the loss of the extra garments.

  “Sometime before dawn, we reached our destination, a bivouac area in the deep woods. There, in the dawn, we tried to pitch our pup tents in the pouring rain. The ground was very sodden, and we were completely exhausted from the prolonged march.” To his dismay, there were no further orders despite their forced march. Instead, they waited out day after day under seemingly endless cold mists and rain that inundated their encampment. The prolonged inactivity stemmed from the delay of the attack and the 18th’s initial role as the reserve troops.

  “Walking through these woods in the daylight was a fascinating sight. The whole 1st Division had moved there, and there were thousands and thousands of men in pup tents, sprawled up and down the hillsides of the western part of the forest. The 1st Division had a reputation for being nonconformist, and they certainly were in their dress. Soldiers were everywhere ‘out-of-uniform,’ wearing all kinds of miscellaneous captured clothing; many of them had camouflage scarves made from parachutes and crazy hats. I found [that] up front anything went. Officers, too, were totally changed in their behavior from stateside. They were considerate, easy to get along with, and did not shout at us. The prime reason was that with so many bullets flying around, it was absolutely certain that any unpopular officer would end up dead of a stray bullet.

  “While we were in bivouac, they handed out a large number of citations and medals for valor in the Aachen battle [contrary to the remarks of Sylvan on commendations]. We had a large contingent of boys from Tennessee and Kentucky, and they just loved to fight. As a matter of fact, it soon became too quiet for them there. They could not stand a few days rest, and soon bad fights broke out among them. If they couldn’t be fighting Germans, then they had to fight among themselves, and officers would have to stop them.

  “J and I talked a lot in the pup tent [which they shared] to pass the rainy days. J was a little runty guy, and he hated the war with a passion. He told me repeatedly that he planned to surrender to the Germans the first chance he got and he meant it. I was disgusted with him. J had a best friend in the company, E. J., a bespectacled little intellectual who had the same ideas. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out a safe way to safely defect to the Germans. Most everyone wanted to get out of the war, but this was cowardice.”

  Although Eames and his associates languished in reserve, the 16th Infantry drew the assignment of exploiting the 47th Infantry’s tenuous grip on Schevenhutte to gain the objective of Hamich. The 9th Division organization, temporarily attached to the 1st Division, would operate on the left flank. The 1st Division’s 26th Infantry, meanwhile striking from the right flank of the 16th, would threaten Langerwehe and Merode.

  The outpost established by the 47th Infantry’s 3d Battalion at Schevenhutte acted as an assembly area for the 1st Division soldiers. During their prolonged stay, frequently under artillery and mortar fire, the GIs in the Schevenhutte area had nestled in the remains of buildings and created reasonably well-protected bunkers. Henry Phillips, who commanded the heavy weapons company for the 47th’s 3d Battalion remarked, “In their more permanent and improved positions, troops of the 3d Battalion shared their improvised stoves and shelter with the less fortunate newly arrived, and all troop leaders moved among their men inspecting the conduct of foot massage exercises and daily sock changing prescribed to minimize the danger of trench foot.”

  While waiting
for the clouds to vanish, Hodges toured his combat divisions. Sylvan noted, “Today, preliminary for the big show, he went to 1st Div. CP on the top of a hill in captured German bunker, personal HQ of Gen. [Clarence] Huebner. Aside from telling Gen. Hodges that everyone in the 1st Div. says they fight differently than the rest of the army, Gen. Huebner was perturbed about decorations for 1st Div., although it is the most dec. [decorated] div. in the 1st Army. Gen. Huebner still insists that his div. should receive more, since 12th Army Group has now put a quota on the number of decorations that may be given out in a month per outfit. Gen. Huebner’s wishes will in all probability not be granted.

  “From the 1st Div. the Gen. went to the 4th Div. In the absence of Gen. Barton, he had a brief chat with Col. Roddwell, the assist. div. commander. A long talk with Gen. Davis at the 28th Div. followed. Gen. Davis [explained] the failure of the 28th to hold Schmidt, and bad showing afterwards [occurred because they] did not get armor up forward quickly enough, because of the terrain.” The postmortem served more as a distraction than as a valuable lesson for the immediate future. The November offensive, with its enormous preparatory aerial and artillery bombardment, and the infusion of elements of three infantry divisions were expected to rout even the most stubborn enemy from the Huertgen.

  As 13 November passed without an opportunity for the Air Corps to blast the enemy, a new window on 14–16 November automatically appeared. However, Hodges insisted that even if the weather remained unfavorable, the attack would begin on the 16th. On that day, Bradley sat at the breakfast table with Hodges, and, according to Karl Wolf, the executive officer for K Company of the 16th Regiment, the First Army commander glanced out the window and remarked, “Just look at that ball of fire—that’s the sun.” His audience laughed but Hodges then warned them not to stare too intensely, “or you’ll wear it out and chase it away.”

  Operation Queen commenced shortly after 11 A.M. with broken clouds at 1,500 feet and a light fog that permitted two miles of visibility at an altitude of 8,000 feet. To avoid incidents of friendly fire, antiaircraft batteries lofted red smoke shells to indicate the American positions, while the troops set out orange-colored panels marking their front lines, and the RAF contributed eleven barrage balloons as additional markers. From Eighth Air Force fields in England, 1,204 four-engine bombers dropped 4,120 tons of fragmentation bombs, designed chiefly to kill and wound soldiers. A thousand heavyweights from the RAF dumped more than 5,400 tons on rail lines, roads, marshaling yards, and other installations in Düren, Heinsberg, and Jülich, which might act as hubs to feed reinforcements and supplies into the Huertgen defenders. Fighter-bombers from the Ninth Air Force also smashed at known enemy emplacements and any armor or artillery caught in the open.

  Henry Phillips reported, “Following the heavy and medium bombing deep in the enemy’s rear, screaming P-47 Thunderbolts dived in to drop their destruction on Gressenich and Hamich and other towns up the Wehe Valley. Many of the dive-bombers, deceived by the smoke and dust of earlier bombings, dropped their loads too far to the enemy’s rear to be of the best ground support. The single tactical air control party in the vicinity of Schevenhutte was incapable of correcting this to any great extent.”

  As the aerial assault faded, a TOT (time on target) synchronized artillery barrage thundered into the village of Gressenich, less than two miles from Schevenhutte and the objective designated for the 1st Battalion of the 47th Infantry. Fearsome as the combined weight of a five battalion artillery fusillade was, the German defenders rallied sufficiently to greet the GIs rushing from the woods with deadly small arms. Nevertheless, the Americans doggedly advanced. The defenders, perceiving themselves threatened by encirclement because of the 3d Armored Division gains to the north and the thrust by the 1st Division in the east, abandoned Gressenich to soldiers from the 47th Infantry, for the first achievement of the November offensive.

  About a mile northeast of Gressenich was the objective of the 1st Division’s 16th Infantry, the village of Hamich. Two companies of German soldiers held Hamich and the woods in front of the attackers from the 1st Battalion of the 16th Regiment. The platoon leader, Lt. John Beach with C Company of the regiment, recalled, “From the first to the eighth of November, we remained in the rear preparing for our next attack toward Hamich. For several days, we occupied the woods near the town of Schevenhutte, a few thousand yards from Stolberg. The weather was the worst we had experienced since Normandy. Trench foot attacked many. Provision was made to move one platoon at a time into the town to dry out. Inclement weather delayed our attack for several days until the 16th of November. In the many artillery barrages while staying in the woods, we lost four men. One was killed, one wounded, two were cases of combat fatigue who had to be sent to the rear. In addition, three were victims of trench foot.”

  “The platoon was down to thirty-six men. Two squads of machine gunners from D Company were attached to me for the attack. I therefore had fifty-six men under my command at the jump-off line. To my left was Jim Wood [a fellow platoon leader]. Our orders were to move out at 0830 no matter what happened.” Beach said his orders directed him to attack “regardless of casualties. … If we were hit by artillery shells, we should leave our casualties where they lay and keep on moving.” Toting a Thompson submachine gun, he followed instructions after the enemy began to fire artillery, killing one man and wounding another. “We left him behind to be picked up by the medics. Harassed constantly by artillery, we moved forward; the shriek of shells and the loud crack as they exploded over our heads acted as a sort of devil’s serenade. My squad leader fell, his shoulder pierced by a fragment. The compass I was carrying to guide me through the woods was knocked from my hand. I called the assistant squad leader forward and told him to take charge of the men. Having nothing to guide me, I moved forward, by dead reckoning, attempting to follow the edge of the forest to my right.

  “The shells rained down like hail and two more men fell. I could do nothing for them other than discerning they were still alive. I had to continue. Then, Kuhn, who had been in the rear with the supporting squad, came up and reported he was the sole survivor. The rest of his squad had either been killed or wounded by shell fire. Dyer, with the other front squad to my left, had been lucky so far, having not lost a single man so far. We came to the enemy’s barbed wire entanglements. A machine gun fired on us, hitting a man in the throat. The fire came from a small gorge to the right. I saw an earthen emplacement from which the machine gun was spitting death at us. Woody could not bring his platoon forward unless the gun was knocked out.

  “I fired into the slit from which the machine gun protruded, while Strickland, now acting leader of the right squad, fired some antitank grenades. A few well-placed grenades fell into the open top of the emplacement, killing most of the crew. The two surviving Germans immediately jumped up with their hands in the air. We disarmed them and sent them to the rear, making sure the machine gun could not be used again. A second machine gun emplacement met us as we moved forward and effectively stopped us. By a direct assault, we killed one man and wounded another, taking the remaining prisoner. We were now coming out of the woods to a group of buildings—Woody’s objective.

  “Woody came up with his platoon and we conferred briefly. ‘All right, Beach, here’s where I leave you,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’ We didn’t expect that our next meeting would not take place until three months later, in a German prisoner of war camp.

  “I swung over to the right and counted my men before continuing the advance. They added up to fourteen left out of the fifty that I had started with a few hours before. I was studying the map when Dyer interrupted. ‘There’s a Heinie,’ he observed. A German was rushing toward us with fixed bayonet. Dyer stood up and one of the men already taking aim behind us shot the enemy down within two feet of us. I looked down at the map again. We had to cross an open ditch to reach the final area, and I posted the fourteen men there as best I could before being called back to company headquarters.

 
; “No sooner had I arrived there than I received a frantic call that the Germans were counterattacking. I rushed back to my position. The Germans had pushed back one squad, killing four men and taking the area they were holding. Strickland was out there wounded. Dyer was holding up the remaining eight men. A particularly heavy enemy burst came from one direction. I yelled, ‘Dyer,’ but there was no answer.

  “A German in front of me began waving a white flag. A moment later, German medics ran out from cover, turning over the greenclad bodies to determine who survived, dragging the living out of the firing area. I carefully relaxed the finger with which I had taken up the slack on the trigger of my tommy gun.

  “I was no medic, but there were some of my men out there, too. If only those who were wounded could be given first aid, perhaps carried to the rear, their lives might be saved. Deciding to take a chance, I laid down my submachine gun, stood up empty-handed and walked quickly but carefully toward the spot where several motionless olive-drab figures lay. Suddenly, I heard the enemy machine gun open up again. Simultaneously, I saw flashes of fire from beneath and alongside the white flag and felt sharp stabs of pain in both legs. I felt paralyzed.

  “I could see the German medics ignoring the Americans but hurriedly caring for their own wounded. Having dragged the last of them away, they scurried back to the safety of their own positions. Around me I could see the bodies of my own men, but I could not tell whether they lived or not.

  “A few yards away, I began to make out the shadowy shapes of silent soldiers moving in; in the distance, an occasional rifle spat, the bullet crackling overhead. The darkness grew rapidly, and I commenced to shiver uncontrollably in the gathering coolness. The underbrush rustled. In a moment, I stared at the downy cheeks of a boy perhaps eighteen years of age, a determined look on his face. He was preparing to pull the trigger of a vicious-looking machine pistol pointed straight at my nose. In despair, I raised my hands and in what little I knew of the German language told him I was helpless. He pointed the muzzle of the gun away from me, nodded, and moved on down the slope. The sudden rattle of an American machine gun yammered briefly, and the German boy fell flat on his face a few feet away moaning. In a few minutes he was still.”