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

by Gerald Astor

  Even as they departed the battlefield, having been relieved by other units, the 517th suffered final losses. Charlie Keen was on his way back up the slope to safety. “We all watched as a small ball of fire came across the Roer, traveling slowly about 100 feet in the air and crashed right next to the only house still standing. There was a loud explosion and the concussion from the rocket caused the entire house to collapse. We didn’t know it at the time, but a group from B Company’s 2nd Platoon was in the building. Many were injured, but the one man killed was big Frank Hayes, the former heavyweight champion of the 17th AB Division. Frank had joined the outfit at Toccoa from Painted Post, New York, and was the last man from the outfit to die in battle.”

  Clark Archer, 2d Platoon sergeant in B Company, recalled that during daylight hours the men remained under cover in Bergstein. “We had no officers remaining. I placed our first squad in the basement of a two-story building. Evidently, an advance party from the 508 PIR [another 82d Airborne unit] entered Bergstein by jeep and immediately drew a barrage of screaming meemies. The building housing our 1st Squad suffered a direct hit, killing all four of the men in the basement. Four men in the immediate vicinity, including me, were also wounded. I was told in Liége General Hospital that the ‘Buffalo,’ [a] jeep rigged to carry four stretchers, had detonated a land mine between Bergstein and Brandenberg, killing the driver. I was on the right side and became a patient of the traction ward for three weeks.”

  The 517th pulled out of the area in a welter of grief, bitterness, and anger. While the firepower delivered by the 517th wiped out most of the German paratroop regiment opposing it and persuaded the enemy to depart without further resistance, the troopers believed that they had been needlessly thrust into battle and had more than 200 men sacrificed. None too robust following weeks of battling to stop the enemy in the Ardennes, the line companies of the 517th, after their tour in the Huertgen, averaged only 39 percent of their normal complement. On the other hand, the fight prevented any reinforcement of the Schmidt garrison.

  In the assault on that town, impelled by the unhappiness of the corps commander and First Army, Parker chose to abandon the orthodox policy of retaining a reserve and pitched all three of his regiments into the attack. In a pincers formed with the 82d Airborne’s 505th, the 309th moved on Kommerscheidt, northwest of Schmidt and a death trap for the 28th Division in November. Elements of the 310th approached Schmidt from the southeast, while the 311th attacked the town itself.

  Godfrey Stallings, a radio operator with K Company, recalled that in the direct assault, his unit would work with armor. “We were to rendezvous with the tanks at the edge of the woods. Some of our men were to ride on top of the tanks across the open space, while the rest of us followed on foot. There was some mix-up in getting the tanks and infantry together.

  “Tanks make a lot of noise when they move with their motors roaring, treads clanking and squeaking. When the tanks came roaring up, they were heard and spotted by the enemy. We were coming to the rendezvous through the forest, as this would keep us hidden from enemy observation until the last minute. The enemy spotted the tanks and figured an attack was building up. They were getting their artillery zeroed in on the tanks.

  “In the mix-up and confusion of getting the infantry and tanks coordinated, the enemy found out we were in the woods behind the tanks. They changed the artillery range and began a heavy barrage of shells into the woods where we were waiting. They decided to go after the infantry instead of the tanks.

  “Our captain, realizing we would be cut to pieces if we stayed there, jumped up and started ordering the men to move forward, out of the woods. He got the men assigned to ride the tanks up on the tanks, and the tanks to move out into the attack. The rest of us followed and started the attack across the open area on foot. It seemed that everything broke loose about that time. Everybody seemed to be firing everything they had, and I do mean everybody was shooting.

  “Those of us on foot did not have much protection in the open area. Just blades of grass, weeds, and depressions in the ground left by tank tracks. Our best bet was to keep moving forward. One group would shoot while another moved up. It was sort of a leapfrog action. When you ran forward, it was in a zigzag pattern, and when you hit the ground, you rolled to spoil the aim of any enemy shooting in your direction.” He was describing the fire-and-movement tactic.

  “When the leading tank got almost to the edge of the village, it was hit by antitank shells and set on fire. The other tanks, seeing that the leading tank had been destroyed, wheeled around and started back toward the woods. The GIs on the ground saw the tanks turn around and thought a retreat had been ordered, so they started back toward the woods, too.

  “Captain Feery, my company commander, seeing the attack was faltering, started moving around, getting our men off the tanks and ordered everybody to start toward the village again. He kept the attacking going. There was so much noise it was hard to hear anything. It seemed that Captain Feery was everywhere, urging the men forward. I did the best I could to keep up with him, as I had a walkie-talkie on my back and had to keep in touch with him as much as possible to relay any messages received.”

  According to combat interviews conducted shortly afterward, the Company A, 774th Tank Battalion, commander refused to order his vehicles forward. He remained adamant despite the demands of the 3d Battalion CO, Lt. Col. Andy A. Lipscomb, seconded by Lt. Col. Harry Lutz, the CO of the 310th’s 3d Battalion, which occupied an adjacent area. The tankers balked even when a pair of infantry lieutenants offered to leave their foxholes and personally escort the armor forward.

  Companies I and K struggled forward to the outskirts of Schmidt, where they began the systematic but bloody task of routing the enemy from each building. As the night approached, Stallings said his outfit gained a crossroads in the middle of the village. Feery received a DSC for his work.

  Believing Schmidt was securely in the hands of his forces, Parker directed the 310th to march through Schmidt on its way to the Schwammenauel Dam. But before they advanced all the way through the village, nasty firefights blazed up, and the drive to control the vast reservoir stalled. From First Army headquarters, Hodges communicated his discontent to corps. Apparently, the 9th Division CO, General Craig, happened to be at Huebner’s command post shortly after the call from Hodges. Huebner snatched the opportunity to enlist Craig in the effort and scheduled two regiments of the 78th to serve under Craig for a final assault on the Schwammenauel.

  A genuine sense of urgency gripped American field commanders, as intelligence reports on 9 February spoke of an ominous rise in the river level, predicting two feet above flood stage within four days. Troops from the 9th Division achieved their objective, the village of Hasenfeld, which would provide an assembly area for the spearhead (the 1st Battalion of the 309th) against the dam defenders. The infantrymen would be accompanied by a detachment from the 303d Engineers, who would be responsible for dismantling any explosives and inspecting the dam for damage.

  Because of the imminent flood threat, the attack, originally scheduled for daylight on 10 February, began during the preceding night. The steep, debris-covered terrain severely hampered the movement of the soldiers, but the darkness and the constant artillery cloaked their approach from the enemy. Only after a commotion created when a GI fell into a foxhole occupied by Germans did the foe come alert. Flares lit up the sky, revealing that the GIs had already entered into the German lines. Furious exchanges of small arms, grenades, and close combat ensued.

  Explosions in the dam’s valve house building alarmed the Americans, who rushed forward to capture the gatehouse and some other structures. Because of the destruction of the control valves, water gushed through openings in the Schwammenauel. Around 11 P.M., five men from the 303d Engineers first approached the dam itself. As the Americans attempted to cross the top, German gunners tried to blow them away. Lieutenant James Phelan, leader of the group, said, “It was like a ten-minute artillery barrage—repeated every
ten minutes; between shell explosions the burp gunners could be heard.”

  Driven off by the intense fire, the patrol returned around midnight. They planned to sprint across the dam to the spillway and climb down from there to a tunnel in the dam, the most likely place for demolition charges. They covered the 1,000 feet atop the structure, unharmed by sniper bullets and shells of varying calibers. But the spillway had been blown up, leaving a chasm fifty feet wide, forty feet deep, and with vertical concrete walls. The only means to approach was a daring slide down a 200-foot face to the tunnel entrance, which the engineers successfully navigated. They surprised and captured a handful of Germans, machine gunners and snipers, but could not find any explosives. In fact, as GIs swarmed over the Schwammenauel, they discovered no sign of any demolition materials. The only water escaping came from the destruction of the valves and that was controllable.

  The Americans were now out of the woods; the five-month battle for the Huertgen Forest was finally over.

  17

  POSTMORTEMS

  The “victory” achieved by the First Army in the Huertgen cost 24,000 dead, wounded, captured, or missing GIs with an additional 9,000 disabled by frozen or wet feet, respiratory ailments, and other nonbattle injuries. For one of the few campaigns of the war, German losses actually were fewer, although the Third Reich was far less able to replace men and equipment than the Allies. The ability of the Nazi government to continue resistance was eroded, but that was not the purpose of the offensive in the Huertgen.

  To gain the real estate, the strategists had committed the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 28th, 78th, and 83d Infantry Divisions, the 505th and 517th Parachute Regiments, the 2d Ranger Battalion, the 5th Armored Division, and some attached special tank, engineer, and artillery units. The damage to the American forces seriously weakened the First Army, diluting its extended front line into a thin crust that enabled the Germans to crash through in the initial phases of the Battle of the Bulge. The struggle in the Huertgen left the 1st and 9th Divisions, which had been fighting since the 1942 North African campaign, almost entirely populated by replacements. The 4th and 8th Divisions, veterans from D Day and the Normandy campaign, respectively, likewise suffered huge turnovers. The 28th Division was still trying to replace, regroup, and reequip when von Rundstedt’s legions struck on 16 December. Both the 2d Ranger Battalion and the 517th Parachute Regiment came out of the forest as skeletal outfits.

  According to the 82d Airborne CO, James Gavin, the German Maj. Gen. Rudolph Gersdorff, chief of staff for his country’s Seventh Army, said, “The German command could not understand the reason for the strong American attacks in the Huertgen Forest. … The fighting in the wooded area denied the American troops the advantages offered them by their air and armored forces, the superiority of which had been decisive in all the battles waged before.”

  William Burke, who served with the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion, remarked, “Some of us with combat experience from the beaches to Huertgen were hard-pressed to understand the tactical wisdom of slogging it out in such an unforgiving environment instead of bypassing it.”

  Frank Gunn, the commander of the 2d Battalion of the 39th Regiment that captured Merode, said, “In retrospect, it seemed to me that the Huertgen Forest could have been contained rather than assaulted and a large flanking or encircling movement performed by corps. This would have reduced the casualties and still have accomplished the mission of capturing the dams on the Roer River.

  Although the reservoirs controlled by the dam system posed a potential for flooding the countryside, they were certainly not the original objectives of the offensive into the Huertgen, and the documents from army sources during the initial phases of the campaign do not even mention them. Had the area been bypassed, the consequences of opening the floodgates is problematical, and it could be argued that the most vulnerable segment of the American forces to inundation were the very GIs dispatched into the forest.

  J. Lawton Collins, the U.S. VII Corps commander, argued for the correctness of the plunge into the “green hell.” He insisted, “If we would have turned loose of the Huertgen and let the Germans roam there, they could have hit my flank.” In theory, the drive through the Stolberg corridor toward the Roer would have been menaced by an attack from the Huertgen on the right flank of Collins’s troops. However, Collins based his opinion on the potential of the enemy to strike at him from the forest. The evidence indicates otherwise.

  The Westwall was built strictly for defense. It did not provide a launching platform for an attack. The extensive minefields and dragon’s teeth were intended to stop invaders. The huge bunkers housed fixed, rather than mobile, guns. This was particularly true in the forest, except for lanes for machine guns that exploited the firebreaks in the cultivated woods. There were few roads built to accommodate the German tanks, which were much heavier than the Americans ones that bogged down in the muddy trails. Any attempt to move in a substantial column would have brought down the wrath of the Allied Air Forces, which ruled the sky. A strong Panzer spearhead, such as that which led the breakthrough in the Ardennes, was out of the question.

  Nothing better proved the effectiveness of the forest as a natural defensive redoubt than the experience of the 3d Battalion of the 9th Division’s 47th Infantry. As Chester Jordan, the platoon leader, testified, the outfit took over Schevenhutte, well inside the forest and held off strong German counterattacks from mid-September until two months later, when the 47th resumed its advance. No one in First Army, VII Corps, or V Corps appears to have noticed why the battalion was able to maintain its position. Like the German defenders, it capitalized on the forest terrain to defend itself against repeated attempts by the enemy to oust it.

  In an oral history, Collins, when asked about training, said, “I think if it is emphasized to the student the importance of terrain, it would be a good idea, because certainly there is no question in the world that you can’t always tell what the enemy is going to [do], but the terrain is there, and if you study it, you can make use of it and make the enemy conform to what you want to do.” Collins, his superiors—Hodges, Bradley, and even Eisenhower—the upper echelon strategists, and even the division commanders apparently relied on maps to define the battlefield. Theirs was a two-dimensional understanding of the terrain and the defenses. Aerial recon could not detect the true nature of the enemy emplacements. Dick Seitz, who commanded the 2d Battalion of the 517th, pointed out, “High echelon strategists can work from a map and aerial photos, but it is an axiom of military operations that battalions or companies should never advance without first-hand knowledge of the terrain.” And, like so many other units, he never was given the opportunity for such a reconnaissance because of the importunate demands of those in charge.

  Totally ignorant of the thickness of the forest and the absence of genuine roads through it, the top command sent men into battle. Perhaps because of the almost impenetrable vegetation, they knew nothing of widespread minefields, the artful tangles of booby-trapped barbed wire, and the plethora of massive pillboxes, impregnable to artillery and to attack from the air.

  As far as one can determine, the generals never inspected the area into which they dispatched troops. Not a single source whom this author interviewed recalls ever seeing any of them come forward to observe the killing grounds. Ed Uzemack mentioned getting a hand from the 28th Division CG, Norman Cota, when he left the assembly area, but that hardly put Cota in a position to appreciate what his troops faced. John Chernitsky, the antitank squad leader, complained that he never saw any of the brass near the front. The 28th’s assistant division commander, General Davis, was credited at First Army headquarters with having led men to safety but that occurred only after a disastrous attack and was not a substitute for careful inspection of the disputed turf. The same applies to the other divisional leaders. They compounded the problem with schedules that did not permit those expected to carry out the strategy to respond adequately.

  Too often, individuals well removed from t
he combat zone ignored the axiom cited by Seitz. In addition, they frequently dictated tactics. In an article in the July-August 1993 issue of Armor, Harry J. Schute, Jr., noted that when the 28th Division jumped off at the start of November, “There were no orders given for preoperation patrolling by any commander, at any echelon, to attempt to find enemy positions or strength or to ascertain the viability of the Kall trail as a division MSR [main supply route]. The absence of patrolling and intelligence gathering gave the enemy an unnecessary advantage by keeping their locations and strength unknown until the attack began.”

  In fact, the 28th commander, General Cota, had little or no input into the selection of objectives made by the V Corps leader, Gen. Leonard Gerow, and his staff. Cota was expected to contribute at most fine-tuning and to see to the execution of the plan. General officers, of course, cannot be expected to expose themselves to combat alongside their troops. Those in command must stay out of harm’s way in order to remain able to plot strategy, direct maneuvers, and maintain overall control of their forces. But that does not mean they should be so removed as to be unknowing of the conditions for which they devise the strategy. In fact, the German generals habitually came forward for a personal inspection before they committed their troops.

  In the battle for the Huertgen, American field grade officers, on the other hand, often came under fire while directing their troops, and the casualty rate for colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors was significant. All three of the battalion commanders of the 22d Infantry who led their soldiers into the Huertgen were either killed or wounded. The 309th Infantry lost two battalion COs at Kesternich. The 109th Infantry’s Howard Topping, whom platoon leader Peña had regarded as an overzealous martinet, won the admiration if not the affection of his subordinates. “We had to admit that this truculent man was a damn good front line officer.”