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

by Gerald Astor

  “The second wave of enemy infantry attacked E, F, and G Companies with dogged determination, crawling and jumping over the bodies of their dead and wounded comrades. This attack was also stopped with severe losses to the enemy, E, F, and G suffering heavy casualties as well. During both of these engagements, our own artillery and mortars were constantly firing prepared defensive fires on dangerously close observed targets.

  “In spite of these defensive fires, the fanatical enemy continued to advance and were only stopped when they reached our final protective line of light and heavy machine guns. Through this engagement, the clatter of artillery, mortar, and small-arms fire was incessant, to such a point that commands had to be given by hand and arm signal, one not being able to be heard by voice.

  “The third wave of enemy attack was ferocious and intense, more so than the two previous ones, and came through mortar and artillery fire in their final bid to destroy our positions. They failed. However, due to the fact that we were maintaining a wide front and the casualties sustained caused gaps to exist on our lines, also because of the thickly wooded area and the limited fields of fire, the enemy was able at two points to penetrate our lines. However, they were not able to dislodge any of our men from their positions. Thus ended a second day’s engagement with our fanatical enemy.”

  On 13 October, the infantrymen of the 9th Division renewed their assault, but an ambush devastated L Company only 100 yards from where K Company successfully moved along a narrow front. Already below normal strength, the battalion lost the bulk of two entire platoons. Stumpf directed K Company to swivel about and deal with the enemy in ambush. A furious series of firefights ensued, enveloping all four of the battalion’s companies. Concentrations of mortar shells on the Germans drove off those who were not casualties. But the engagement ended any further progress by the 3d Battalion, which had been reduced to the equivalent of five rifle platoons instead of the requisite twenty.

  Two days later, the 1st Battalion renewed the challenge to the defenders. Enemy action had shrunk the American armor to a single tank destroyer and two tanks, one of which refused to start. The stalled tank blocked the way out of the woods. The foot soldiers stubbornly set about their task without any armor. To their surprise, they achieved more than on the earlier try. A company commander and two of his riflemen actually climbed atop one of the pillboxes. Perched out of range of the weapons of the fortification, they futilely sought to convince those inside to surrender. Nothing availed; the inhabitants kept themselves buttoned up, undeterred by what the Americans could throw at them. Unable to overcome the bastion, the attackers, who had been under fire for all but a few days since their first day in France, abandoned their quest and retired to their original positions, having suffered severe losses without any territorial gains.

  The defenders also absorbed appalling punishment. Hubert Gees, a seventeen-year-old runner for the 2d Company, Fusilier Battalion, in the Wehrmacht 275th Infantry Division, remembered being taught that “death on the battlefield is the most beautiful death. … To risk one’s life for the Fatherland was the greatest honor of a young man. Right would be on our side,… ‘Persevere, the new wonder weapons will soon be in mass production!’

  “In the morning of 7 October, we moved along a curving road into the valley of the Weisser Wehe to counterattack the Americans of the 39th Infantry Regiment, who had broken through the day before. Our 2d Company attacked behind the bridge … in a southerly direction on the west side of the valley. We did not reach the point where we were to retake the bunkers, but remained flat on the ground under mortar and artillery fire, which was supporting the American infantry.

  “The sad balance of the first day, thirty-five casualties, dead and wounded; more than one-third of our battle strength of 100 soldiers. Among the dead, my First Sergeant Zeppenfeld. In the days before I had shared quarters with him while we were in a rest area at the home of a farmer. He rests today in the Huertgen Soldiers Cemetery in Grave No. 584. After two or three days, Lieutenant Lengfeld took over our 2d Company.

  “By the afternoon of 7 October, we had withdrawn to a tree line and dug in there. On the 8th of October we were attacked there by two armored vehicles, which came over a small summit and hit us from the rear. A courageous soldier knocked out both of them with a panzerfaust.

  “On the 9th of October, our company once again withdrew some 600 meters in a southerly direction from the bridge. A continuous front was built up, in all haste. We had to dig in deeply, for the greatest number of casualties we suffered was from tree bursts. All available entrenching tools, the saw, axes, pickaxes, and shovels were in the front lines. We in the company troop had to dig deeply with our shallow spades into the slate stone with great effort.

  “The main road toward Germeter was hell the entire day. Continuous infantry, artillery, and tank fire. The valley boomed in response. We received on a regular basis harassing artillery fire.”

  The Germans continued to adjust because of pressure from the Americans and the counterattacks by comrades. “Again we had to dig new foxholes in the slate stone with our primitive children’s spades in the shortest time. There at midday, the first artillery salvo hit us. Shell noise and deafening explosions in the treetops over us came together. Instinctively, we had thrown ourselves into our shallow foxholes. The strong smell of gunpowder smoke stood over us. Our medical aid man was killed by a fist-sized piece of shrapnel in the back. One asked sarcastically whether this was ‘the most beautiful death on the battlefield,’ which we had been taught to sing in the patriotic songs. However, not everyone who was hit had the good fortune to die so quickly and painlessly.

  “At twilight another artillery salvo hit us, during which a splinter went through a foot of our stretcher bearer. During the late evening a piece of shrapnel tore the lower thighbone of a comrade who was lying next to me in the foxhole. According to a medic from the aid station, he died the next morning of an embolism. An NCO did not return from the reconnaissance squad; shot in the stomach. Hardly a day without casualties.

  “Over the front line area in the direction to Todtenbruch [Deadman’s Moor], an American reconnaissance aircraft was constantly circling. We called them ‘Krabe’ [crows]. Its crew drew artillery fire on everything they saw on the roads or tree lanes. Our horse-drawn supply wagon was completely destroyed.

  “With leaflets and loudspeakers the Americans called upon us to surrender. Surrender? No, had we not sworn our fidelity to the Fatherland? However, the next morning the foxholes of some twenty replacements who had shordy before been attached to our company were found empty. These were soldiers of ‘Volksliste 3,’ more Polish than German.” During a pause, Gees wrote home, “I have really been lucky that I have come through without a scratch. Pray only that this good fortune continues to stand at my side. … How wonderful it would be if one could return to his home in peace and quiet.”

  In the American lines, as the badly stricken 39th Infantry struggled to hold its positions, handfuls of replacements appeared. Frank Randall, a former Maryland National Guardsman, draft exempt because of two enlistments, had quit a “good job” after Pearl Harbor and volunteered for the army. Awarded a commission in 1943, he entered the replacement pipeline and surfaced at Company B, 1st Battalion of the 39th, “just fifteen minutes before an attack.” Randall noted, “Fortunately, it was called off.” Randall felt an esprit almost instantly. “I was well received by both the officers and men. Practically all of the NCOS, the CO, and Executive O were veterans of two campaigns in Africa, then Sicily and the Utah Beach landing, followed by Normandy. But I was accepted and had no problems with the men. I gave them my background to explain that I had no authority on combat and was warned by the NCOs about overexposing myself.

  “I learned that this was a well-disciplined outfit, experienced and battle wise. The leadership was good at all levels, not only in the 39th, but throughout the 9th Infantry Division. The regiment had been led by a former classmate of General Patton’s Colonel Paddy [Harry]
Flint. He had been killed two months earlier while leading a company in Mortain. Colonel Flint had a motto for the regiment, ‘Anything, Anywhere, Anytime. Bar Nothing.’ He had it painted on the back of helmets and on vehicle bumpers. To the enlisted men, he was an idol.”

  Another replacement, Don Lavender, entered the army in 1943, as a draftee from Mason City, Illinois. Lavender, with one semester of junior college, entered an Air Corps flight training program after he completed infantry basic training. But in the spring of 1944, as anxiety about replacements grew, along with thousands of other cadets and men studying at colleges in the Army Specialized Training Program, Lavender abruptly received an assignment to the 78th Infantry Division.

  Some four months later, he and some companions went to a replacement pool slated for overseas. He spent little more than a day in England before he stepped onto the floating dock off Omaha Beach. Lavender traveled east by train in the forty-and-eights—forty men, or eight horses.

  “On an early October evening in 1944,” said Lavender, “I arrived at Company I of the 39th Infantry with four other replacements. Darkness prevailed because it had been a dull day and the towering pines of the Huertgen Forest kept out any existing light. A jeep had already gone up to the line with hot chow, and we were to stay at the kitchen until the following morning.

  “We bedded down quite early, for it had been a long tiring day on the trucks that brought us up to this area. Not long after, our artillery began firing from a short distance behind our area. We rested very uneasily, and one of the boys with us jumped completely out from his canvas cover when the firing began.

  “Morning came almost too soon. We had a warm breakfast at the kitchen tent. Our first day in combat was just like every other day in the Huertgen—dark and rainy, damp and cold. A short time before noon, we started up the muddy road to the line in a jeep. The distance was only about three miles, but it seemed much further.

  “When we reached the company area, we waited by the road, and our new company commander made it plain to us that this was the real thing—combat. He then directed us to our platoon leader, and we started the remaining distance on foot. As we walked, the platoon leader told us how lucky we were to join the company while they were in a holding position. He was interrupted by a burst of fire from the far hill, and he informed us that it was Jerry burp gun.

  “The lieutenant was a slight man of dark complexion with a small mustache. He had a habit of pausing as he spoke to lick his mustache. A Georgian, he would hesitate at intervals and say, ‘Ya hear? Ya hear now?’ Men of the platoon questioned his nerve and some of them nicknamed him ‘Foxhole Pete.’ At a later day, he proved himself, however, and was wounded seriously in doing so.”

  At his platoon sector, Lavender met his squad leader and entered into the Huertgen life. “Most of the foxholes in this situation were prone shelters. They were long enough to lie down in and were covered with pine logs and dirt. Some of them had very small openings and could be entered only by lying down on the ground and crawling in head first. We spent the day getting oriented on the situation and asking questions. When we got the schedule for guard set-up, we stretched wires to the next foxhole so we could locate it in the dark. It rained that night as usual. There were two of us in our foxhole. When the man came to call us for guard, it was so dark he fell in on top of us. Our only guard pastime was to listen to the ‘chop-chop’ of our 60mm mortars as they dropped an irregular barrage on an unguarded draw to our front. It seemed like morning would never come.

  “The dark of night in the forest was almost beyond description. A man couldn’t even step out of his foxhole to relieve himself with any certainty that he would find his way back. Trees less than five feet away were not visible. It was not possible to throw a grenade at night without fear that it would bounce off a tree and come back into the foxhole. Resourceful GIs overcame this problem by placing stones on the edge of the hole in daylight so they could tell by feel the direction of a safe throwing lane in the dark.

  “That evening, we were overjoyed to see the sun, but it only lasted for about an hour. We all shouted praise as a squadron of P-47s did a rumbling dive-bombing job somewhere to our front. Our liaison artillery Cubs were up too. The boys had many different names for them. They called them, ‘Little Joe,’ ‘Sea Biscuit,’ and several other names. The Germans never caused much trouble with their artillery when ‘Little Joe’ was up there.

  “After about four days of the dampness in soaking foxholes, we were relieved for a one-night stand about 800 yards to the rear. It wasn’t much better, except that we could put up a pup tent that kept us a bit dryer, and we were able to have small fires during the daylight hours. The little relief was hardly long enough, however, and the next day found us holding down our position on the line. It still continued to rain, and we were so well soaked that we couldn’t find a dry match among us.

  “Before combat, I had wondered if anyone would have to tell me to take cover when an artillery barrage first came in. I soon had the answer and found myself flat on my face with others when two 88 shells hit nearby. Everyone dug a little faster. We weren’t quite as fortunate in these positions, as the approach route to our position was open to enemy observation, and we were forced to eat C and K rations. They could not bring up hot chow.

  “During the dull damp hours of the day, we gathered in small groups, talking of anything that would get our thoughts away from our unpleasant situation. Frequently, we dwelt on rumors that we were to be relieved. The miserable weather and the apparent hopelessness of the situation led to a morbid feeling.”

  There is a curious absence of substantial entries in Sylvan’s diary concerning the rebuff of the 9th Division during the first two weeks of October. While the troops of the 9th Division fought, bled, and died in the Huertgen, First Army Headquarters dealt with visits from VIPs and press interviews. On 14 October, when it should have been apparent that the offensive had broken down, Hodges acted as host for a visit from the king of England, Dwight Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley. Subsequently, other celebrities dropped by: Count and Countess DePinto and actor Tim McCoy. Sylvan remarked on hard fighting elsewhere, reporting a stiff counterattack launched against the 1st Division’s 16th and 18th Infantries that brought heavy losses to the enemy around Aachen.

  When the exhausted and chewed-up two regiments of the 9th Division sank back on their haunches on 16 October, the GIs had advanced less than two miles, for which they paid in the blood of 4,500 casualties. The dead, wounded, and missing included replacements who had fallen or disappeared even before anyone could call them by their names. After a week to ten days, the 9th Division soldiers welcomed their relief by the 28th Division.

  6

  SCHMIDT AGAIN

  By the middle of October, Omar Bradley no longer believed in a quick victory, and he spoke of a “time of utmost frustration in the Allied ground command.” He noted, “Every day that passed gave the Germans more time and opportunity to build defenses.” The only good news was that after a month-long siege, Aachen had fallen to the combined efforts of the 1st and 30th Divisions, with more than 9,000 prisoners taken in the city and its environs. However, both of the American outfits had suffered heavy casualties and would need a month to recuperate, refit, and replace.

  On 18 October, with the offensive spearheaded by the two regiments of the 9th Division toward Schmidt all but shut down, Eisenhower held a strategy conference in Brussels. Having conceded the failure of the First Army’s October push, Eisenhower, according to Bradley, informed the commanders of the American and British armies that he faced two options. He could order his fifty-four Allied divisions spread across a 500-mile-long front that started at the North Sea and ran to Switzerland, and to dig in and simply hold what they had. By spring many more American units would have disembarked in France to join the GIs at the front. Vast amounts of gasoline, food, ammunition, weapons, armor, and the other accoutrements of war should then be in hand. At the time of the Brussels meeting, British and Canad
ian troops were still struggling to oust the Germans from the Schelde estuary. Although the Canadian First Army, aided by a British division, ultimately overwhelmed the garrison that obstructed safe passage of the water route on 9 November, the mines sown in the estuary delayed for two more weeks the assurance that the route from Antwerp to the front was clear.

  The alternative, said Eisenhower, was to fire up a November offensive relying on the manpower and materials on hand or available through the existing pipelines. Bradley asserted, “No one entertained seriously the proposal that we bed down for the winter.” The fighting around Aachen, the abysmal results in the Huertgen, and the paucity of Siegfried Line penetrations testified to the determination and power still manifested by the Nazi government. There was a growing dread that, given any respite, the Panzers would multiply in unpleasant numbers, the battered troops would recover, the home guard units would become better trained, and the number of pillboxes and bunkers would be more numerous and defiant of Allied fire. The American Air Corps chief in Europe, Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, expressed anxiety over the ability of German industry to mass produce their new jet fighters, which posed a severe threat to his bombers. His fear implied that four years of British “area bombing” and two and a half of American strategic bombing had not sufficiently diminished the capacity of the Third Reich’s aircraft plants.

  Beyond the battlefield, a political factor influenced the decision. A stagnant, inactive front, said Bradley, would undoubtedly provoke Soviet ire, a reasonable assumption because the war on the eastern front showed no signs of abatement. In addition, the notion of a pause probably clashed with the traditional American preference for taking an action rather than sitting still.