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

by Gerald Astor

  At the hillside battalion headquarters, 400 yards behind the killing field, the long-range weapons of the Germans blasted the slope, putting in peril any individual not in a bunker. Jackson talked to Regimental Commander McKee by field telephone, explained the dire situation, and advised that his people had been so hard hit they could not advance. McKee ordered him to renew the effort. Jackson summoned the G Company Commander to the CP for instructions to commit his unit. As he made his way toward Jackson, his opposite number at F Company also worked his way back in order to give a first-hand report. Before either reached the destination, a concentration of artillery shells seriously wounded both. The company commander of E Company had already been killed. The insertion of G Company only added more dead and wounded without a breakthrough in the deadly barbed wire barrier.

  As night fell, Jackson could only direct the survivors to withdraw under the cover of darkness and dig in at the original line of departure. The battalion commander spoke again to his regimental leader and reported the loss of all rifle company commanders and most of the platoon leaders and noncoms. He requested his battalion be taken off the line. McKee not only refused but ordered the shaken survivors to attack in the morning.

  According to Swearingen, who overheard one side of the conversation, McKee apparently accused Jackson and his men of being “yellow.” The battalion commander, said Swearingen, replied, “I am not yellow and neither are my men.”

  Haley described an awful night. While staff officers hurriedly formulated plans and orders, he noted, “Food, water, and ammunition had to be brought forward and, the largest job of all, the wounded had to be evacuated. Furthermore, the depleted rifle companies had to undertake some kind of reorganization. The night became miserably cold and wet, but blanket rolls were out of the question. Everything had to be hand-carried up the steep slope of the ravine, and too many items took priority over the rolls. The ammunition and pioneer platoon worked unceasingly through the night, carrying supplies up the hill and bringing casualties down. The night was pitch black, and the wounded could only be found by their cries of pain. A round-trip for a litter team required from one and one-half to two hours, and many of the wounded died from exposure before they could be evacuated. The number of wounded officers and enlisted men who passed through the aid station during the night, plus those who had been killed, totaled approximately 135 men.” He remarked that Jackson stayed up the entire night, drafting the script for the following day and trying to comfort the wounded.

  “The battalion plan of attack for 17 November,” said Haley, “was essentially the same as that for the previous day, and for this reason was doomed to failure before it began. E and F Companies were again to attack abreast in this area, in which they had been slaughtered the day before.” The only two changes were a supply of bangalore torpedoes to cope with the barbed wire and the assignment of tanks to mash a pathway through the minefield and breach the barbed wire.

  The noise of the armor clambering up the trail to the rock quarry alerted the Germans, who scoured the area with artillery and mortar fire, while the foot soldiers burrowed deeper into their foxholes as they awaited H hour. At 0900, zero hour, the GIs obediently left their refuges, only to discover that just one tank out of the five had made it to the line of departure. Mud and the steep slope balked the others. The sole tank gallantly led, breaking a path through the mines, but could not penetrate the wire, even though it slammed into the obstruction several times. Again, the GIs cowered on the ground, unable to move without being picked off and vulnerable to the rain of shells.

  First Lieutenant Bernard Ray, platoon leader from Company F, loaded his pockets with blasting caps, wrapped primer cord about his body, and charged the barrier. As he placed the charges, mortar shells crashed down nearby, wounding him. Instead of unraveling the primer cord from his body, he simply connected it to the explosives, blowing a gap in the wire, killing himself in the process. For his act he received a posthumous Medal of Honor, but it was a futile sacrifice. Several other men, mostly noncoms, crawled close enough to place more bangalores, but the fuse igniters, damaged by exposure to mud and water, failed. The continued shot and shell from the Germans remained too deadly for any advance.

  Jackson again pleaded with McKee for relief. Instead, he was ordered to hold the present positions and prepare for a third assault on 18 November. Jackson replied that such a venture was impossible in light of the condition of his forces. The regiment finally agreed to replace the 2d Battalion with the 3d for the next round.

  Officially, Jackson repaired to regimental headquarters to confer with McKee. After the war, George Mabry told his son, Benjamin Mabry, that when ordered to attack a third time, Jackson “quit.” He followed the telephone wires back to the rear and was relieved of his post. Mabry, a 1940 graduate of Presbyterian College in South Carolina who went on active duty in 1940 and for his exploits on D Day earned a Distinguished Service Cross, took over the battalion with Haley as his exec.

  Mabry said he was chagrined to hear McKee announce that he would write off the 2d Battalion and offered to reorganize the outfit and mount another attack. McKee then gave Mabry a day to prepare his new command for its role. About 200 replacements checked in to fill the depleted ranks, but even with these additions, the 2d Battalion mustered only about 60 percent of its complement, and the line companies carried only an average of two officers.

  Meanwhile, McKee ordered the 1st Battalion, buttressed by tanks and tank destroyers, to smash through on the third day. The enemy refused to yield any significant ground. If anything, the toll on the 4th Division soldiers only worsened. Company C, committed to the fray from 18 to 21 November, managed to gain 1,800 yards before it withdrew with only one officer and thirty-five men from the 184th, who began the attack still fit for duty.

  As the disintegrated 2d Battalion assembled in the village of Bend, Mabry scrounged for officers and noncoms, even cajoling a victim of battle fatigue to leave a rear echelon post and return to the front. On the morning of 19 November, the reborn 2d Battalion started out from their brief interlude in Bend. In the hope of surprising the defenders in the chosen sector, the American artillery remained silent. The strategists believed the Germans might be focused on the ongoing effort by the 3d Battalion on the 2d’s left flank. Charles Haley, executive officer, watched the men en route to the line of departure. “The old men [veterans] appeared to be still suffering from the effects of the attacks of 16–17 November, and the new men appeared to be dejected and low in spirits due to the weather, the mud, and the thought of their first taste of action. Only grim fortitude and determination seemed to be pushing the wet, muddy feet of the battalion.” At least one individual found the prospect too daunting. A veteran of much action, and formerly a highly effective sergeant, shot himself in the foot.

  As the troops climbed a steep ravine, a machine gun on a nearby hill locked on them, and any try to evade the withering fire drove the GIs into one of the ubiquitous minefields. The scouts and others leading the battalion sought cover and refused to advance. Mabry, who with his staff had been following in the footsteps of the lead company, moved to the head of the column.

  “We received heavy artillery and mortar fire,” recalled Swearingen. “We heard the shrapnel zinging through the air. My radio operator was hit in the shoulder by a large piece. It severed his arm about three or four inches from the shoulder.”

  Arriving at the mine-seeded turf, Mabry conducted a hasty personal reconnaissance and then directed his people to detour around the hill with the machine gun emplacement, rather than try to go through the infestation of schus and up the slope. The functioning elements of the battalion succeeded in bypassing these obstacles, only to encounter an even more extensive minefield. Several soldiers went down, and when an aid man started to work his way toward the wounded, he, too, incurred serious injury.

  In conversations years later with his son, Benjamin, Mabry said he needed to figure a way to clear a path in the minefield. Looking over the
snow-covered ground, he noticed indentations in specific places, which he reasoned indicated the presence of mines. On his own, using his trench knife, the battalion commander crawled into the field and dug out the devices to clear a safe route.

  Beyond this danger zone were enemy bunkers. Mabry, as he had done when he landed on Utah Beach, physically led the soldiers, with several scouts trailing him. He approached the first emplacement, kicked open the door, and it was deserted. He proceeded to a second dugout and again smashed through the entrance. Nine German soldiers came at him. He knocked down the first with his rifle butt and bayoneted the second. The GIs behind him rushed up and subdued the remainder.

  The small party of Americans, with their battalion commander still in front, charged a third bunker, despite the vigorous small-arms fire. The inhabitants also surrendered. The American forces under Mabry now rallied sufficiently to fight their way through stubborn resistance to a small stream. When the lead platoons crossed to the opposite bank, the Germans from above rolled grenades down toward them. It was now late in the day, and Mabry halted the attack to tie in for the night. For this day’s work, he received a Medal of Honor.

  That evening, another fifty replacements appeared, and they immediately began to act as carrying parties for supplies and the removal of wounded. During the following week, the 8th Regiment’s three battalions were all committed to the fighting. Working in concert but separated at many points, the Americans coped with enemy pockets that lay behind their thin front line. On 22 November, the day before Thanksgiving, the 2d Battalion was relieved, pulled back to the Schevenhutte vicinity. At a horrific human cost, the regiment had, in six days, gained about a mile, but the objective of Gut Schwarzenbroich still remained about three-quarters of a mile distant.

  The accounts of many, such as Mabry, emphasize the lack of information on the nature, location, and strength of enemy defenses. In some cases the timetables established by strategy wonks denied the men on the line an opportunity to dispatch reconnaissance patrols, but the terrain also seriously handicapped units that specialized in intelligence gathering. Bill Burke, a graduate of what was then the Oklahoma Military Academy and recipient of a commission through the reserve, became a member of the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion, which was well trained and combat experienced. Attached to the 4th Division in the Huertgen Forest, the line companies of the 803d relied on the M10 tank destroyer, which mounted a U.S. Navy three-inch gun, more effective against German armor than the standard 75mm weapon on the Shermans. However, the M10 operated under a deadly disadvantage in the Huertgen, because its open turrets left it vulnerable to tree bursts. The crews fashioned log pallets to provide some protection over the turrets.

  Burke actually commanded a mechanized company in the 803d, and, among its other duties, his outfit specialized in recon. “The Huertgen was the worst place to perform recon. Vehicular mobility was limited to the few roads, trails, and firebreaks, the majority of which were zeroed in with German 88s or mines. Conducting medium/long-range reconnaissance with mounted units was extremely limited, due to terrain and difficult or lack of avenues of approach. The designed-in mobility, tactics, and missions of my reconnaissance potential could not be fully realized in the thick forest.

  “Our mechanized reconnaissance unit did not seek out direct combat, because it was not equipped with armored cars and jeeps for that purpose. Instead, it employed stealth and maneuver in seeking out or maintaining contact with the enemy and wherever possible bypassed enemy concentrations.” The most useful element in Burke’s command was his pioneer platoon, which had the capacity to construct bunkers, build or remove roadblocks, lay down corduroy roads from the fallen timbers, and defang minefields.

  While the 8th Regiment of the 4th Division struggled east from Schevenhutte, the 22d bogged down in its first drive toward Grosshau, reorganized after catastrophic losses of enlisted men and officers as high as the battalion level. On 19 November, Lt. Col. Thomas A. Kenan appeared at the 2d Battalion CP, taking over command from Major Howard “Wild Man” Blazzard, the regimental S-2 who had temporarily taken charge when, as George Wilson related, his predecessors were either wounded or otherwise disabled.

  Kenan informed his four company commanders, including Wilson, of the script for the following day. As Wilson listened to the plan, a line abreast approach for E and F Companies with the flanks open and visibility extremely restricted because of the omnipresent pines, he sensed disaster.

  “As a brand new company commander at my very first meeting with experienced company commanders before a new battalion commander, did I wait to find out what the others might think or did I brashly stick out my young neck?

  “‘With all due respect, sir,’ I heard my myself saying, ‘I don’t like this plan, because I think it would be a major mistake to spread out so thinly with our flanks unprotected. We’re very short on officers and noncoms, and, in my opinion, control would be extremely difficult. With unprotected flanks we have to be able to move very fast.’

  “The colonel looked startled. and after he’d swallowed, asked if I had any suggestions. ‘Sir, why don’t we hit in a column of platoons? Hit hard and quickly and punch a hole through fast. That way we have our men closer together, we can control them, and we can defend better if we get hit from a flank. If we move fast enough, we might get in ahead of a lot of shelling.’

  “I was sweating a little as Colonel Kenan looked around at the other officers and asked what they thought. They quickly supported me. My hat was off to the new colonel. He would listen to suggestions and be willing to follow them. The colonel thanked me. … We worked out some details and returned to our company areas as the colonel wished us luck.”

  Wilson led his company, the first time under his command, on schedule the following morning. With his second platoon up front, Wilson entered thick woods. Checking their position on a map, Wilson realized they were off course. He radioed the head of the column to shift in the proper direction and then waited for the lead platoon to adjust.

  “A few moments later, I looked up to find the lead platoon tearing headlong back to us like frightened deer. When they were near enough, I jumped in front of them, waved my arms, and ordered them to stop right there. I was mad enough to use my rifle on them, and it must have shown, because the men all hit the ground and hid behind tree trunks and stared back the way they had come.

  “I walked right up close to the most senior man visible and was practically spitting in his face, as I demanded to know what he thought he was doing—trying to start a stampede? I raised my voice and told him he’d better not ever again move to the rear without permission. I had not heard any enemy action up front, so I asked just what all the running was about. He said they had run into a big German tank and were pulling back so we could hit the tank with artillery.”

  Wilson conferred with a Lieutenant Caldwell, his artillery observer, who agreed to take a look, and when he located the tank would call down artillery on it. Meanwhile, the company commander started to tour his other elements, only to discover the rear guard missing. “I went back to the road we had crossed earlier and whipped the men out of the shell holes they were hiding in and sent them back up to the main body of the company, which was still where I left it.

  “I had been gone less than fifteen minutes but it had been costly. The fine, young, redheaded second lieutenant who led the 2d Platoon had been shot between the eyes. There he was, fresh from the hospital, his first day back on the lines, and he was dead before he even saw a German.” Wilson was further dismayed when Caldwell reported that the big German tank was only a log sticking over a stump.

  Company F ran into genuine trouble, well-entrenched Germans, occupying high ground, which opened up with rifles and machine guns when the Americans closed within range. “We all hit the ground at once, and now no one could move. Our position looked hopeless. I crawled forward until I got the nearest platoon leader and told him to get his men going by fire and movement. This was slow and painful, but it
seemed the only way, since we were too close for artillery support.”

  In “fire and movement,” a few men crawl or run forward toward the next available cover, while their comrades lay down heavy fire to keep the enemy buttoned up. Then, others repeat the process until the objective is reached. Although the maneuver can be successful, it also risks considerable casualties and requires uncommon courage from those engaged in “movement.” It is a standard tactic taught during infantry training.

  Wilson realized that the main threat was a bunker with a machine gun. He worked his way to his 60mm mortar section. “The noncoms who led this section had been wiped out and not yet replaced, so I asked a likely private if he could fire the mortar. He said he wasn’t sure but would give it a try. I showed him the target in a clump of trees 150 yards ahead. He and the men fired a round.” But the novice had set the weapon to fire almost straight up, and the shell fell quite close to its origins, forcing Wilson and the nearest soldiers to duck for cover. That convinced Wilson to summon the artillery observer, who brought in a few 105mm howitzer rounds. “These shells, plus a few near misses with rifle grenades, finally gave the German machine gun crew the right idea and they withdrew.”

  However, F Company was in a dire predicament, and Wilson contacted his battalion commander, Colonel Kenan. “I spoke very carefully on the radio as I explained to him that all my officers were gone, that we were getting loaded down with wounded needing evacuation, that our ammunition was almost gone. I said I didn’t see how we could continue in this condition against such a formidable enemy defense. It seemed to me I was completely objective, simply listing the plain facts, and that my assessment was correct.