The generals were determined to have their breakthrough, and kept launching offensives against German positions. As artillery volleys thumped occasionally in the distance, small groups of chilled soldiers ventured out from the forward foxholes and bunkers of German General Hans Schmidt’s 275th Infantry Division, scouting for signs of an expected American attack. Map showing the area of the battle. There have been countless thousands of published works devoted to all or of it. The Battle of Hürtgen was undertaken by US commanders trying to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing front lines further north (Battle of Aachen, where the Allies were fighting a trench war between a network of fortified industrial towns and … The advance into the forest began on the 13th of September, as veterans of the Mediterranean campaign crossed the border from Belgium into Germany. Some men shot themselves in the foot to get out of combat. Gen. Maurice Rose’s 3rd Armored Division in September 1944. The forest was more heavily fortified than anyone had guessed. Collins and Hodges made no plans to capture the hydroelectric and flood-control dams on the river, just inside the forest. Gray skies hung low and a steady drizzle dripped through the tall, dense fir trees near the German-Belgian border on the morning of Thursday, November 16, 1944, during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. It has been said that the battle for the Hurtgen Forest was based on a plan that was criminally stupid. By that time, all attention from the Allied high command on down was fixed upon the debacle caused by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s great breakthrough in the Ardennes on December 16. The Hürtgen Forest, 1944: The Worst Place of Any 28th Infantry Division troops advance through the Hürtgen Forest in Germany on November 2, 1944, at the start of a long, bloody fight. In February, the Americans launched their last substantial attack in the Hurtgen. Early in the morning of September 14th, 1944, elements of the 9th Infantry Division, supported by the 746th Tank Battalion started their advance across the Belgian – German border at the villages of Roetgen and Monschau. They swept the story aside and focused on fighting elsewhere. If the Germans opened its gates, then the Allied advance into Germany would be delayed by flooding. The little known Battle of Hürtgen Forest was fought from October 1944 to February 1945 south and east of Aachen, Germany. The men in the forward companies spent long nights, half frozen in open foxholes with only their uniforms for protection. But, seasoned and with high morale, it was rated one of the best infantry regiments in the U.S. Army. The Allies could not launch a broad, massive attack across the Cologne Plain to the Rhine as long as the enemy held the dams and could threaten to flood the Roer River Valley. The fighting was bitter because the two forest dams controlled the water level of the Roer River flowing northward. More divisions, including Maj. Gen. Norman “Dutch” Cota’s long-suffering 28th Infantry Division, were fed into the Hürtgenwald maelstrom, and the losses continued to mount. Overshadowed by Operation Market Garden, the Allied invasion of Holland in September 1944, and the momentous Ardennes campaign of December 1944 and January 1945, the tragic Battle of Hürtgen Forest was accorded only brief mention in the memoirs of such generals as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar N. Bradley and has been overlooked by most historians. You can read more about Private Art Pranger’s wartime adventures at www.private-art.com. 23 Nov 1944 : General Dwight Eisenhower ordered that every soldier under his command should receive a full Thanksgiving Day holiday turkey dinner. The 84th Division suffered 500 casualties from trench foot. The bloodbath in the Hurtgen Forest was a battle that could have been avoided. Like the Hürtgen campaign, the Reichswald struggle bore marked similarities to the grim fighting on the Western Front in 1914-1918 and has been overlooked by most historians. Engineers marked cleared paths with white tape, but this was invariably blown away by the wind or obscured by snow and mud. Snow followed with the arrival of winter. There, in a large tract of gloomy forest southwest of Cleves in Westphalia, troops of the 2nd Canadian Division and five British Army divisions had to battle through five German defense lines on a narrow, flooded front. By the next day, they were six miles through the German defenses. The Shamrock. The Battle of Huertgen Forest.The site of one of the bloodiest battlegrounds for U.S. troops during World War II, yet few outside of Germany know of … Many went without hot food for days on end. Captain William S. Boice, one of its chaplains, called the 22nd Regiment “a fighting machine trained to an efficiency not matched at any time during the war.” Its motto was “Deeds, Not Words,” and it would be awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation. Army/National Archives) IN LATE OCTOBER 1944, the U.S. When U.S. armor was eventually brought up to support the infantry, mines and the dense trees forced the tanks to stick mainly to the few narrow, muddy forest roads and logging trails, preventing them from maneuvering. T/Sgt George Morgan, 1/22-IR said of the Huertgen: the forest up there is a helluva eerie place to fight … Show me a man who went through the battle … and who says he never had a … One, it was one of the bloodiest and most disastrous campaigns the U. S. Army conducted in the Second World War. The enemy troops also suffered severely from the shell bursts in the trees. If the U.S. effort had bypassed the Hürtgenwald to the north in November 1944, it was reasoned, the forest could have served both as a hinge on which the German counteroffensive would pivot in December and as a natural shield to benefit the enemy. Despite heavy artillery support, it cost the regiment 2,806 casualties to advance 6,000 yards—averaging just over 300 yards a day—during 18 continuous days of action. There are moments in military history that forever alter the flow of human events. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest echoed the horrors of the World War I killing grounds and brought much suffering to the enemy soldiers as well as the GIs. Plus an insight into the 6 day battle here, the heavy fighting in and around the beautifully restored Merode Castle (39th Infantry) and a … Moody and prone to depression, Lanham was described by some soldiers as brilliant but “crazy as hell,” while one officer said he wanted to win the war all by himself. The American high command blundered by not proposing an easier avenue of approach southeast of the Hürtgen Forest, allowing Hodges’ army to seize the dams and then clear the difficult terrain downriver. MERODE – a fine example of extensive German trenches can be clearly seen here, in the now peaceful forest. In the fall and winter, heavy rain and snowfall and a lack of roads made it extremely difficult to penetrate, either by foot or in vehicles. During World War II the rugged terrain of this area was the scene of the long, bloody, drawn-out Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place over three months during a cold winter from 19 September 1944 to 16 December 1944. With this battle, the war precipitated by the Nazi regime returned to Germany. Direct hits were made, but the concrete structures were so massive that damage was negligible. Concentrate your attention to the town of Schmidt, just kilometers from the Siegfried Line, with its dragons' teeth tank stoppers. The Hürtgen Forest area today is little different than it was in late 1944 before the battle started. The misery, bloodshed, exhaustion, and violence nearly decapitated the morale of the US Army. These had to be covered with logs and sod because of the tendency of artillery shells to explode in the treetops, showering them with shrapnel. The weather worsened that autumn and winter, and a series of bitterly contested battles—Walcheren Island, Aachen, the Saar Basin, the Vosges Mountains, the Reichswald Forest, and the Hürtgen Forest and the Roer River—was fought under the most trying conditions. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest: Why Hemingway Called it “Passchendaele With Tree Bursts” The area surrounding the Battle of Hürtgen Forest encompassed about 50 square miles of rugged, densely wooded terrain along the German-Belgian border south of Aachen, the first major German city to fall to the Allies. What medics and commanders of the time called “combat fatigue” led to many soldiers having to be taken off the line. Nearly 8,000 soldiers rest there, most being killed in action during the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest and the Bulge. Director Mark Frederick had the opportunity to visit Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial last year to pay tribute to a veteran from his hometown. Regular bursts of terrible combat took their toll on men’s minds. Behind the scenes, generals clung to the delusion that the best thing they could do was to keep launching the same sort of attacks, just as their predecessors had done from 1914 to 1918. The ferocity and horrors of this long running engagement rank near the top for World War II. The focus of the fighting shifted away from the Hurtgen. He told them, “As officers, I expect you to lead your men. So here it is After getting the helmet in hand and seeing it not from bad pictures I believe everything is original from the helmet except maybe the chinstrap. Hürtgen Forest Battle Helmet Hey guys! The battle was the longest battle fought on German soil during the war. Hürtgen Forest | The Holocaust Encyclopedia battle for the Hürtgen Forest The Hürtgen Forest, 1944: The Worst Place of Any | HistoryNet Intel This Navy admiral pulled an ‘Undercover Boss’ on his sailors. One soldier fell for every two yards gained. The critics questioned Bradley’s wisdom in choosing to make his main effort through the Hürtgenwald instead of using the more open, easier going farther north on the Ninth Army front between the U.S. First and British Second Armies. The Germans prepared it for battle years before the actual battle, during the construction of the West Wall building bunkers and trenches and anti-tank obstacles. Overcoats soaked with moisture and caked with frozen mud became too heavy to wear. 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