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

by Gerald Astor

  Further efforts to reconnoiter the proposed line of departure only brought more casualties, including a KIA company commander. Peterson refused to commit Task Force Ripple to its assigned mission. Instead, he instructed the 110th’s 1st Battalion to consolidate its positions with those of the 112th until more armor, supplies, and troops could come forward.

  The onslaughts of the Germans, with guns and armor that overmatched the best the tankers and TDs could offer, and the inadequate defenses against the deadly missiles eroded soldierly discipline. Shermans, the tank destroyers, and bazookas disabled some of the enemy armor, but the Panzers methodically destroyed the American vehicles, some of which also shut down after throwing tracks or were hooked on the ever-present stumps. The GIs began to melt away from their posts.

  The 28th Division commander, unhappy with the performance of the battered 112th, decided to replace regimental commander Carl Peterson. The colonel, who, with several other officers, had frantically striven to prevent a total rout, received a radio message summoning him to the division command post. Peterson set off with a jeep driver and an enlisted man, leaving Colonel Ripple in charge of the sagging Kommerscheidt defenses, which continued to deteriorate.

  On 7 November, German Panzers and infantry attacked from Schmidt. GIs in forward positions knocked out a pair of tanks. Sergeant John Ostrowski, after felling three of the foot soldiers with his M1, lobbed a bazooka rocket at an oncoming tank. Black smoke poured from the Panther and it reversed course. Captain Clifford Hackard, a company commander, blasted a second tank with a bazooka shell. Lieutenant Richard Payne of the 707th’s Company A attempted to cut off an enemy tank seeking to outflank the Americans. On the previous day, shell fragments rendered Payne’s 75mm gun’s elevating mechanism inoperable, but Payne still scored a pair of hits on the Mark V turret. It charged on, however, and only the timely intervention of tank destroyers with their 90mms halted the Mark V. One Panzer clanked to within thirty yards of a TD before it succumbed to rounds from the tank destroyers, which claimed three additional victims.

  Ray Fleig reported that he and the sole other survivor from his platoon engaged a trio of enemy tanks and put down all three of them. But in the fight, a shell killed Fleig’s driver and assistant driver while setting the Sherman afire. The lieutenant and his turret crew boarded the tank commanded by Staff Sergeant Spooner.

  Peterson welcomed an opportunity to inform headquarters on the truly desperate state of the 112th while aware of rumors indicating that he would be relieved. As Peterson sought to find a safe route to the rear, Ripple tried to rally his forces for reinforcement of the soldiers still in Kommerscheidt. But the company commander whom he approached and his men did not respond, even when Ripple personally attempted to lead them forward. The 707th commander could only direct them to hold their positions.

  German tanks resumed their advance, wreaking physical and emotional havoc. Efforts to stop their rampage by the remaining American tanks and TDs petered out, as the enemy shells and the terrain reduced the armor to a single Sherman and two tank destroyers. The infantrymen of the 112th withdrew from Kommerscheidt under orders, but many refused to stop at the point where the officers tried to organize new lines.

  Peterson and his two companions encountered heavy fire along the Kall trail as they drove toward the rear. The enemy fusillades obliged them to abandon the jeep and continue on foot, passing other wrecked vehicles, some of which contained the corpses of GIs. Hoping to dodge the enemy patrols, Peterson and the enlisted men plunged into the woods in search of a way to cross the Kall upstream. But even when they reached the west bank, they found themselves subject to more shots.

  A brief firefight ended with the two Germans dead, but a rain of mortars inflicted a shrapnel wound in the colonel’s left leg. One of the men with him insisted on going ahead alone, against Peterson’s orders, to get help. He disappeared. As Peterson and the remaining GI, Pfc. Gus Seiler, crept forward, a burst from a machine pistol ripped into Seiler’s body, killing him. Another mortar round disabled the colonel’s right leg. He dragged himself on, fording the river to its east bank with the vague hope of discovering a more secure route to his destination. A trio of passing Germans saw him, but Peterson drove them off with a blast from his submachine gun.

  Peterson crossed and recrossed the river again and entered the woods, where he saw two Americans capture a pair of Germans. He called out to them but they left the scene. Later, in delirium from his wounds, he cried out, “General Cota, Colonel Peterson.” GIs came to investigate and brought him to a site where he could receive medical attention.

  Peterson’s replacement, Col. Gustin M. Nelson, a recruit from the 5th Armored Division, started forward to his command of the 112th in Kommerscheidt. He tried four separate times but was frustrated, once because the guide could not locate the unit to accompany him, and on three occasions he turned back because of enemy shelling.

  The only success of the day came in Vossenack. There, the 146th Engineer Combat Battalion, a component of the 1171st Engineer Combat Group, took up the weapons of battle. During the morning of 7 November, under Lt. Col. Carl J. Isley, backed by artillery and mortars and supported with tanks from Company B of the 707th, the 146th people attacked with the objective of seizing the portions held by the enemy. The mission developed so hastily that the engineers operated without radios or telephone lines for communication. The only case of hand grenades brought forward lacked fuses. When the B Company Shermans reached Vossenack, they assisted the foot soldiers in a systematic, building-by-building assault. As they proceeded, self-propelled guns and perhaps tanks opened up on them. Captain Grainger, the commander of the B Company armor, requested an air strike against the enemy gun positions. The smoke from fires and the uncertain weather hindered visibility.

  John Marshall and Bea Wain were on the scene, and he remembered a communications officer whose precombat behavior marked him as a stickler for proper use of codes, by-the-book messages, and radio discipline. “In the Huertgen, he saw German tanks but while they were far out of the range of our guns, we were not out of range of their superior 88s. When his tank slid off the road into a ditch and a few German shells exploded near his tank, he started screaming for aerial support. ‘Tell them to bomb where my smoke shells hit; I’m seventy-five yards from the only church in town.’ He kept broadcasting that message. There were disabled tanks all over the area, abandoned by their crews, some now probably occupied by Germans listening to every transmission. When the P-47s and P-51s arrived about two hours later, we were enveloped in smoke. The Krauts were smoking us and our own planes were bombing our tanks and killing infantrymen. We finally waved them off by exposing ourselves to cover our tanks with identification panels. The communications officer abandoned his tank and men, ran back to an aid station, where a medic classified him as suffering from battle trauma, hung a tag on his neck, and shipped him back to a rest area. He never did come back to the company but probably got the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for heroism.”

  Most of the P-47s correctly spotted the target, but a pair of them bombed and strafed Vossenack itself. Guido Orlando had been in a Sherman that apparently struck a mine. He and his driver fled the tank and sought shelter inside a house. A 500-pounder struck the house, and Orlando grabbed his driver and dragged him down the stairs, only to discover the man was dead from wounds. Orlando, however, escaped injury. Several of the combat engineers were wounded by the errant aerial strikes.

  Despite their handicaps, the engineers killed, captured, and drove off the enemy, except for a stronghold at the extreme eastern end of the town, which would become known as “the rubbish pile.”

  During this period, Glen Vannatta, the executive officer of heavy weapons Company D in the 110th said, “I generally was ordered to send a machine gun section or two with the advancing rifle company, while I stayed with the battalion command group to control mortar fire. Lieutenant Harry Mason was a machine gun platoon leader in D Company. He took his platoon along with the
rifle company that was attacking in the Huertgen and came back like a beaten man, since he lost about half of the platoon in a futile effort.

  “On one occasion I was ordered to go to the CP of the front rifle company with a radioman and a mortar section leader and runner before dawn in preparation for a local attack to take a pillbox in the woods. A little snow was on the ground. We, a group of four, walked up a path in the woods toward the front and were prepared to be stopped by the CP guard. We were not halted, and in the first light of dawn unknowingly passed the CP, where the guard was asleep or not alert. I was second in line and the first man tripped a wire for a grenade from our rifle company attached to a tree at ankle height.

  “We saw the pop-flash and dived to the other side of the path. Luckily none of us got a wound. This alerted the rifle company men, and I raised hell with the CO for what it was worth. Then we prepared for an advance of the rifle squads. I was in a foxhole with my radioman, ready to direct mortar fire when needed. Immediately, on the first move, German machine gun fire along fire lanes made movement impossible, and I could do nothing about our own mortars. The attack stalled before it got started. I huddled in the foxhole for several hours while intermittent enemy fire made movement suicidal. I joked to my radioman that by putting my little finger above the foxhole and daring the Germans to shoot it off, I could get out of the Huertgen hell. Finally, I was able to get back to D Company and Capt. Andrew Carter, the CO, said we four were lucky we all made it back.”

  The destruction of the 3d Battalion of the 112th Infantry unnerved its commander, Lt. Col. Albert Flood, whom a subordinate described as “pretty well exhausted.” Regimental commander Peterson, Flood’s superior, with his wounds treated, requested an opportunity to speak to Cota. The latter astounded the colonel, telling him he had never ordered Peterson to report to the CP. In fact, he believed that the 112th’s commander had deserted his troops. Subsequently, Cota accepted that someone had indeed sent the message to Peterson. The traumatized Peterson could only relate in rather incoherent fashion the situation at Kommerscheidt, but Cota and Davis, digesting the news from Ripple, hearing firsthand what Peterson had eyewitnessed, and the frustrations of Nelson, finally recognized the appalling state of affairs for their men. They recommended to V Corps that all Americans withdraw west of the Kall River, leaving Kommerscheidt totally in German hands, while holding onto the Vossenack ridge west of the stream.

  During the final day of the debacle, Hodges traveled to Luxembourg to testify before the Joint Chiefs of Staff on reorganization of U.S. forces for the national defense. Upon his return, Sylvan noted, he found “the 28th Division situation going from bad to worse. The 112th Inf. completely relieved the 109th, while the 109th moved down to assist the 2nd Bn. of the 112th in vicinity of Vossenack, which the enemy is now in possession of. The remainder of the 112th and the 3d Bn. of 110th were forced back 500 yards to the high ground northeast of Kommerscheidt.” In his clipped reporting, Sylvan spoke of “very heavy pressure and continual counterattacks.” He also wrote, “Reports from the 28th indicate that never has enemy artillery along our front been so heavy. The Gen. insists the battalions cannot be properly deployed or dug in. He said that no matter how heavy enemy art. was, casualties would not be high nor ground be lost. He is rather worried tonight about the general situation since full employment of his other divisions in the drive toward the Rhine rest to a certain extent upon the success of the 28th. A possibility some personnel changes may be made.”

  The strategists now accepted that they could not break through the Huertgen with the forces committed and started to commit additional units. The 9th Division, less the 47th Infantry, still stubbornly entrenched at Schevenhutte, was to be completely relieved by the 4th Division, another regular army unit, which had first cleared Utah Beach and fought in the Cotentin Peninsula before reaching the Westwall.

  The changes specifically detailed the 12th Infantry of the 4th Division to relieve the 109th. Although the badly battered survivors savored a brief respite that brought hot meals and resupply of rations and ammunition, they soon moved out to what were essentially defensive positions. The 2d Battalion checked in at Vossenack to replace the GIs of the 112th and the 146th Engineer Battalion. The 3d Battalion assumed responsibility for securing the Kall River trail, protecting the retreat of what was left of the 112th. Some rear echelon strategist consigned the 1st Battalion to Task Force Davis, a paper operation, for another assault on Schmidt.

  Even as the decision was being made to replace the 109th with the 4th Division’s 12th, the former organization received infusions of men. James Reed, who at age twenty-nine had enlisted in 1942 in Texas and graduated from OCS, held a slot as an infantry training officer until shipped to Europe. “I was assigned to I Company, 109th Infantry [Bill Peña’s outfit] on the 8th of November. Myself and other replacement officers were trucked to regiment, where we were addressed by Colonel Gibney. He stressed to us that when we were with our troops, we were to set an example by behaving in a courageous manner. The example he gave was that if enemy artillery came into our area, we were to remain cool and not show any signs of fear. After this inspiring talk, we all noticed how carefully Colonel Gibney managed to stay safely within the entrance of the pillbox from which he addressed us.”

  On the drive to battalion headquarters, Reed saw a small truck loaded with steel helmets, mute testimony that the wounded and dead no longer needed protective headgear. Howard Topping provided a brief orientation about the general situation as well as some comments about his lost units.

  When they left for I Company, Topping accompanied the party. “We soon left the road and entered the forest. Every once in a while Major Topping would stop and cut one of the many wires that seemed to be everywhere. I inquired why he was doing this. He explained the [lines were] German telephone wire, and he was cutting it just in case it was still active. Later on, he signaled for us to halt. He said he had spotted a German soldier. We were to lay down and be quiet while he reduced the German army by one. Like an Indian, he crept forward, took careful aim, squeezed the trigger, and fired. He missed. He was not at all pleased. We found ourselves following a cart path in some sort of a valley. Later I realized it must have been the Kall River valley.”

  Darkness began to smother the woods. Reed and his companion replacements took refuge with engineers fighting as infantrymen, while Topping returned to his battalion headquarters. “The training I had received at Fort Benning in no way prepared me for the night that lay ahead. My first night in a combat area was a lonely feeling, although all around me there were other GIs in their holes. Although I was tired and hungry, the newness of the situation kept me wide awake. I had a strange feeling this was all a bad dream, that soon I would awake. After I had been there a few hours, the Germans began an artillery barrage. It was the most terrifying night of my life. The Germans seemed right on target, the noise was unbelievable. I was ashamed of myself and of my behavior as I cried, prayed, and cringed in the bottom of my hole. I was grateful there was no one to witness my shame. I tried to remind myself that I was an officer, supposedly a leader, and it was my duty to set an example for those who served under me.

  “The firing seemed to go on forever. It would stop and then after a short time it would begin again. Some of the people in the holes around me were wounded and in severe pain. They were calling for help, and I lacked the courage to leave my hole to help them.

  “As time went on, bit by bit, my common sense began to assert itself, I began to observe and analyze the German fire. I soon realized they were firing a pattern and not every round would hit close to my area. After a while, I was able to predict when a shell would hit somewhere close. With my new confidence, I finally relaxed enough that I was able to fall asleep and slept as well as could be expected.” When dawn broke and the artillery ceased, Reed left his foxhole and learned that an officer who had come up with him, along with several of the engineers, had been wounded.

  Shells began to fall as a Compa
ny I patrol led him on a dead run to the unit’s position. Bruce Paul, the company commander in a foxhole, directed the newcomer, “Get the hell over to that hole and join the man in it.” Reed settled down for the night with a nervous noncom. “The following morning, the sergeant [with him] said in an emotional voice that he was tired of relieving himself in a ration carton and throwing it out [of] the foxhole. He said he was going to get out and take care of his needs on the outside. I tried to convince him that it was too dangerous but he insisted. Once outside, he unbuckled his trousers, squatted. As soon as he did this, the Jerry gunner opened fire. I heard the shell explode and the sergeant scream. I came flying out of the hole to find him in shock and pain. His trousers were down around his ankles, his buttocks were bare, and on the side facing me was a large, bloody, gaping hole. It appeared to go through to the other side. I managed to get a medic, and in short order he had treated the wound and started the evacuation of the sergeant to our aid station.” Forward observers for the enemy constantly pinpointed such targets.

  On the day that Reed joined the 109th, the First Army chief lunched at the V Corps and held a brief “chat” with Collins. Eisenhower, Bradley, and Gerow visited with Cota. “Pleasantries were passed until the official party left,” wrote the diarist Sylvan, “then Gen. Hodges drew Gen. Cota aside for a short, sharp conference on the lack of progress made by the 28th Div. The Gen.’s chief complaint seemed to be that the Division HQ had no precise knowledge of the location of their units and was doing nothing to obtain it. Since 8 o’clock that morning they had no word of Gen. Davis, and two armored cars that had set out for Kommerscheidt to lead back and disengage from action the 1st and 3d bns of the 112th and the 3d bn of the 110th. Gen. Hodges is extremely disappointed over the 28th Div. showing. His feelings were shared by Gen. Thorson and Gen. Keith, both of whom served a long time with this division.”