by Gerald Astor
“We had barely started our foxholes when, to my disgust, the enemy artillery plastered our gully, one terrible shell after another. I immediately stood and flattened myself against the thick trunk of a big beech tree and yelled at the men to get up and find trees. A few of them had time, but many were hit before they could move.
“Our new commander broke down in tears, blubbering about how it was all his fault. He kept at it, and when I realized he was completely out of control, I called battalion to report the situation and was told to send him back to the aid station.
“Very soon, another officer was sent to take command of the company. He was a good man, a combat veteran who had been wounded earlier. Though not yet fully recovered, he was being rushed back into a special hell called Huertgen.
“He was just not ready. On a cold November day, beads of sweat plastered his forehead; his fingers trembled so much he couldn’t manage to light his cigarette. Next day, he went back to battalion headquarters and was sent on to the rear. It must have been hellish to come back to the front lines after a serious wound.
“Since headquarters apparently had no one else to send up, I was left in command of F Company once more. I felt totally inadequate. I was sure I could handle a platoon of forty-some men in combat, but I was overwhelmed by the responsibility for a whole company with its four platoons and a headquarters section.”
The devastation that befell the 2d Battalion shattered the other elements of the 22d. Don Warner of Company A, like so many of his contemporaries who entered the Huertgen as a platoon leader and emerged as company commander, told the historian Edward G. Miller, “We were there to be killed, and the sooner you realized it, the better. Lord knows, they were dropping like flies.”
On the first day, the 1st Battalion commander, Maj. Hubert L. Drake, was killed, and the 3d Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Arthur S. Teague, was wounded. So many of the officers had been cut down that the regimental commander, Col. Charles “Buck” Lanham, instructed the replacement for Drake not to share a foxhole with his executive officer. The drain on experienced company leaders further impaired combat effectiveness.
Bill Boice, a chaplain with the 22d, like the other clergymen, threw himself into the desperate efforts to treat the wounded. “Perhaps they had been patched up after a fashion by the forward aid man, but the casualties were too great and the wounds too many for him to be able to see all of them, and so back they came in an ever-increasing stream, some on litters having to be carried through mud, setting their teeth at every jar, or crying out in pain as the litter bearer slipped and perhaps dropped his end of the litter. Streams had to be forded, and, indeed, it seemed as if nature and God himself had turned his face away from this embittered and tragic regiment.
“At 0200, a railroad gun had fired from Düren, some five miles away, and had hit upon a dugout occupied by three officers. The dugout had a heavy roof of two layers of six-inch logs, but the shell, having landed beyond the dugout, blew back in. One officer was killed outright. Another, a TD officer, was wounded in the chest. The third, an infantry officer, had his right leg broken in a compound fracture, the shrapnel passing on through his left ankle, leaving a hole the size of an egg. Strangely enough, the pain came from the broken leg, and in the dark the officer put a tourniquet on the broken right leg, not even knowing his left foot was injured. And so he lay through the hours of the night—long, bitter, terrifying hours—while he constantly bled, growing weaker and weaker, and feeling the great grayness approaching closer and closer. Nothing could be done, for in the hell of the inferno of artillery which continued minute after minute and hour after hour, no creature could move with impunity, and it would have been sheer suicide to attempt evacuation under these conditions. Indeed, the evacuation could not be effected until eight o’clock the following morning, when a litter party had to remove the two layers of logs in order to evacuate the two living officers to the aid station.
“In the aid station, the battalion surgeons, working under strain, loss of sleep, and the pressure of increasing casualties, still continued to work quickly and effectively. Blood plasma, priceless life-giving fluid, was quickly rigged and administered. The wounded officer was given four bottles, and now for the first time some semblance of life began to appear in his ashen cheeks, but with it, stupefying and heartbreaking pain.
“They were placed in the ambulance, these wounded, two litter cases, carefully slung in racks, with the wounded sitting on the floor and on the seat along the side. Then the ambulance started down the makeshift road toward the safety of the collecting station. A man with an arm off at the shoulder tried to sit erect. The ambulance lurched as it headed for the ravine and the bridge, which had been thrice blown out by enemy artillery. The driver increased his speed, for he knew there was intermittent fire on this bridge and that it was by luck and a prayer that any vehicle got across without being hit. Ambulances, like any other vehicles, were fair prey for artillery. The increased speed over the rough roads, pockmarked by shell and mortar, had the effect of a medieval torture rack on the broken men within.
“The collection station, set up in a German farmhouse, was busily working, since the wounded from the entire combat team were collected here. Every wound was quickly examined, and the wounded sorted into categories. The walking wounded sat in one room on the floor or on chairs or simply stood, staring vacantly at one another.
“In the next room, the litters lay on the floor so close to one another that the doctors and the aid men frequently had to step on the litter itself. Aid men quickly and efficiently appraised wounds and brought into play their first and most efficient weapon, a pair of scissors, which they carried tied to their wrists or waists by a piece of Carlisle bandage. A sergeant took a quick look at the wounded captain’s feet and, grabbing his scissors, began cutting the clothing from the knee down.
“The amount of clothing which the soldier wore was appalling, but he wore everything he could get his hands on in an effort to keep warm, since there were no blankets. The scissors cut through a pair of fatigues; beneath the fatigues, a pair of ODs [olive drabs]; beneath the ODs, long underwear and long socks. Now the sergeant saw the condition of the leg. He cut the clothing completely open to the shoe, but the foot lay twisted in an odd and somehow horrible position. The slightest movement of the shoe or the litter caused the soldier to grit his teeth with the pain. The sergeant took a razor blade and began to cut the laces of the shoe and the pain became excruciating. It was necessary to remove the shoe from the broken foot, and the soldier fainted from the pain.
“The sergeant had called sharply for plasma, and from a wire run across the center of the room between two windows, a T/5 had already hung a bottle and, with another stretch of bandage had twisted the tubing and had tried to insert the needle into the veins of the forearm, but the soldier had been through too much, and from lack of blood, the veins had almost collapsed. The T/5 appraised the situation and called sharply, ‘Captain!’ A tired, hollow-eyed surgeon raised his eyes and, without a word, immediately saw the situation. He came at once and, calling for a scalpel, he slit the skin inside the elbow, exposed a vein and expertly slipped the needle into the vein itself. Then he stood and rested his back as he watched the plasma drop by drop giving life to the almost empty veins of the captain.”
During his time at the medical facilities, Boice, who bandaged wounds and even helped administer plasma transfusions, also observed a steady flow of men in emotional collapse. “The standard treatment upon the arrival of an exhaustion or combat fatigue case was to give the man narco-therapy. This consisted of enough sodium amytal to keep the man sleeping constantly for three days. He awoke only long enough to go to the latrine, and, in most cases, he had to be helped even for this. Frequently, he was given saline intravenous injections in lieu of feeding. During this time his subconscious condition was horrible to behold, and he lived over and over again his most terrifying events of combat. When he awoke he was hollow-eyed, cheeks drawn—the shock upon both
his physical and nervous system had been tremendous. He was taken to the showers, where he enjoyed a hot, invigorating shower, perhaps for the first time in weeks.
“Subsequently, it was a matter of care, perhaps of psychoanalysis, which at best was but fleeting, due to the number of men and the scarcity of psychiatrists. An attempt was made to rehabilitate him for use in the front lines—which never worked. Having once found he could be evacuated with combat fatigue, the soldier instinctively knew that the medical tag reading ‘combat fatigue’ represented safety for him and surcease from danger. Frequently, some soldiers made the circuit from the rest center to the front lines three or even four times. It was another one of the hells of war. The psychiatrists had no choice, for there was no other place to send the man unless he was physically disqualified or mentally unstable. If he were simply and truly exhausted, he went back to the front lines.
“It was pitiful to observe the genuine fatigue cases in the tent wards of the rest center. It was time for chow and hot chow was being served. An artillery observation plane flew overhead. The effect was amazing and pitiful. One soldier poured a cup of hot coffee over his head. Another turned his mess kit of C rations over in his lap. Still a third made an effort to dive in the latrine and had to be forcibly restrained. Some of the others crawled underneath canvas cots for instinctive protection. The wards with shattered and missing legs and arms were bad, but the hospitals with vacant and missing minds were worse.”
Entering the forest at the right flank of the 1st Division’s 26th Infantry was the 4th Division’s 8th Infantry Regiment. Harper Coleman, a draftee out of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and a machine gun squad member in the heavy weapons company, had landed without incident on Utah Beach on 6 June 1944, where he saw the assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., having a cane as he urged the troops inland. As Coleman trekked into the morass of the forest, he recalled, “We had no idea what it was, or where. We knew we relieved the 28th and I had an uncle in that outfit. I remember thinking, maybe we passed in the dark as they went back through our line.
“We stayed in a number of captured bunkers, which we used to dry out and get in out of the rain. The fire going in the bunker and smoke was about as bad as being outside. It was difficult to move, but more so for vehicles and tanks. I don’t recall seeing much of either. There was artillery fire, and much of it was treetop explosions with wood splinters much of a problem.
“At one point, we were in a sort of retreat through hedgerows. We were with the rifle company and had moved across a field two to three hundred yards wide with a small stream at the far end, a ditch or canal through the middle. We were under heavy artillery and machine gun fire when word started for everyone to get out as best they could. This was later said to have been said in error, but we lost several machine guns and equipment at the time.
“Several of our people in a land mine area were hurt and could not move. One of our officers convinced a group of prisoners who happened to be on hand that it would be good if they brought them out. They kept saying, ‘nein,’ but in the end they do go and carry them out. Elsewhere, we were moving past a group of buildings, and a wounded German lying in a ditch asked for ‘vasser.’ He kept repeating this, asking for water, and a lieutenant said, ‘vasser, hell’ and shot him.
“There was a group of Germans in a sort of fortification to our left front who waved a white flag of surrender. A captain of one of the rifle companies took several men with him and went forward to accept their surrender. When he was maybe fifty yards or so from them, they opened fire, killing him and those with him. I often thought later that this was not a smart thing to do. He should have let them come to him.
“Sometime early in November, I was hit in the right arm by what I always presumed to be shrapnel, but it may have been wood. It did not draw blood but tore my clothes and caused quite an infection. My arm swelled and I was evacuated.” It was not quite a million-dollar wound, because Coleman was returned for active duty about five weeks later during the Battle of the Bulge. About a week later, he developed trench foot and then left the combat area permanently.
While their comrades from the 22d butted against the stalwart enemy defenses guarding the approaches to Grosshau, the 8th Regiment jumped off in pursuit of its major objective, the Roer crossing near Düren. Deep in the forest, about a mile and a half from Schevenhutte, was the initial objective, a ruined monastery called Gut Schwarzenbroich. To reach the place, the GIs would embark on a frontal assault through a two-mile thick belt of enemy defenses. The men from the 4th Division would pass through the sector maintained by the 9th Division’s 47th Infantry at Schevenhutte. Lieutenant Colonel Langdon A. Jackson, Jr., the commander of the 2d Battalion, along with his executive officer, Maj. George L. Mabry, Jr., visited the command post of the 47th to learn what his troops faced.
According to James Haley, initially with the 1st Battalion but subsequently executive officer of the 2d, “Information of the enemy defenses was very limited,” although they included “barbed wire entanglements of unknown extent or type and log bunkers, whose exact locations were unknown. No information on minefields was available except that the road running east from Schevenhutte was mined and blocked.” Jackson requested his hosts at the 47th CP to send out reconnaissance patrols to gain additional intelligence. Jackson was not permitted to use his own soldiers for this purpose because of security reasons. The insertion of the 4th Division and the forthcoming attack were supposed to be a surprise, and, should any man from the 2d Battalion be captured on a patrol, the game would be given away.
Unfortunately, the 47th Regiment leader denied the request on the grounds that, with his people so thinly spread over the front, he could not afford to assign anyone to the task. Jackson, Mabry, and some of their staff attempted to reconnoiter the front but the results were meager. “Observation was very limited,” noted Haley, “because of the thick woods and because the commanding ground was in the hands of the enemy. No locations of enemy positions were obtained except for that of a machine gun that fired on the party. The opportunity to study the terrain over which the battalion was to attack proved of great benefit. Especially noted were the two rock quarries located about halfway up the slope of the ravine, one in the center of the sector and one on the left flank, and the two trails leading up to them.” Both of these quarries were just inside the 47th’s domain.
As 16 November dawned, the plans had been drawn, and while the soldiers recognized a difficult time lay ahead, according to Haley, “spirits were high, morale was excellent. The possibility that within a few days they would be out of the cold, wet, and depressing forest brought some little comfort to the men. Little did they know how long it was to be before this possibility was to materialize.”
All along the forest front, the air support pounded the area with tons of deadly ordnance, but, as Haley remarked, “the enemy positions close in front of the 4th Infantry Division went untouched [because] no clearly defined bomb line close in could be defined.”
The artillery that followed the aircraft, however, struck much nearer. Haley continued, “The shells could be heard whining overhead and crashing into the trees showering the area with fragments. The forest was literally being chewed to pieces by the exploding shells. Trees were shot off and fell across each other, making large areas absolutely impenetrable. However, as it was soon to be evident, the Germans were so well dug in that they suffered only slight casualties.”
South Carolinean and, Clemson graduate Capt. John Swearingen, the battalion S-3, said, “We moved out, proceeded approximately 1,000 yards without opposition until all hell broke loose. The Germans had prepared and occupied a massive defensive position. They had concertina wire stacked three high, two on the ground and one on top. The enemy machine guns were spaced every fifty feet with fields of fire placed between trees. In front of the wire were mines, almost solid, with mortars zeroed in front of them.”
Still, by stretching the interval between men sloggin
g over a muddy road to conserve strength rather than attempting to cross rough, but more concealing, terrain, the forward part of the column reached positions that put them close enough for a final assault. Of necessity, the friendly artillery and mortars shifted their attention, and, no longer forced to seek cover, the enemy drenched the GIs with devastating fire from a variety of weapons. The well-camouflaged guns defied efforts to pinpoint their locations.
The Americans doggedly pressed their case, gaining perhaps 200 yards before a barbed wire entanglement, higher than a man’s head, spanned the entire front. Schu mines blew off the feet of the first to venture close to the triple layer of concertina snarls. The Germans, hidden from sight, could target every man from E and F Companies, leading the assault.
“It also became evident,” said Haley, “that E and F Companies were caught in an area on which the Germans had previously registered their artillery and mortars. In spite of all efforts, the advance was halted and E and F Companies were pinned to the ground by deadly machine gun fire from the front and flanks. Friendly artillery and mortar fire was brought in as close as possible, but still the enemy fire continued. By this time [it] had reached a crescendo. Experienced officers who had fought all through Normandy and across France, later stated that they had never before seen the Germans mass so much artillery fire on one area.
“Men trying to dig in were blown to pieces where they lay. If a man rose from the ground, he was almost certain to be hit by the machine gun fire, even if he escaped the artillery and mortars. The support platoons of both E and F Companies were committed but were stopped as soon as they hit the minefield and barbed wire. Officers and noncommissioned officers, exhibiting the highest order of bravery and leadership, moved along the line encouraging the men and trying to find some way forward until there were few left who had not been killed or wounded. Still, neither company could advance. No bangalore torpedoes or other means of blowing gaps through the mines and wire had been provided, since the information available prior to the attack had not revealed the presence of these obstacles.”