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

by Gerald Astor

  “Unfortunately, there were many, many of our buddies that were not as lucky as Wayne and I. The screams and moans of the wounded in that dark, eerie forest is hard to wipe out of your mind. Usually there was so little that we could do for them, except give them comfort and some minor first aid until the medics took care of them.”

  For all of their travail, the 110th Infantry GIs could do little to carry out the strategy dictated by V Corps. “During the next eight or nine days we were there in the forest,” said Myers, “we were not able to move very far. The Germans had us pinned down with their small-arms and machine gun fire, but the worst of it was the constant fire from the mortars and artillery, with the devastating tree bursts that chewed up the men, and I suppose kept the battalion off guard and not able to fight our way out. We made some night patrols, and at least once during that time, we were supposed to go on the attack, but they couldn’t muster enough able-bodied men in the company to make the attack. Most of the time, it was sit in your foxhole and watch for the Germans to attack, when the tree bursts were not too close to you.

  “When we replacements left the assembly area, we were taken by huge piles of K rations and boxes of M1 bandoliers. We were told they had no idea how long we would be up there without more supplies, so we should take all we cared to carry. I filled my musette bag with K rations and hung several bandoliers of ammo over my shoulder.

  “My buddy and I ran out of K rations before we were relieved. I don’t remember how long we were without food but well remember when we got some. It was well past midnight. Newman was asleep while it was my turn to keep watch. I heard a loud whisper, ‘Hey, Mack, where is your hole?’ It was one of our company KPs. He crawled to our hole and handed me two thick sandwiches of corned beef—the best sandwich I had ever eaten.

  “I was quite disappointed in a certain officer and a couple of noncoms. One night we were under a heavy artillery attack. A foxhole some fifty yards or more from ours received a direct or near-direct hit. A man was screaming for the medic. I waited as long as I could stand it, then told Wayne that I was going to see if I could find a medic for him. It was a totally dark night, but I had no trouble finding the wounded man. His leg was badly severed. I could only bind it with his belt and went after the medic. In a large, log-covered foxhole, I found not only the medic but an officer and two noncoms huddled there. The hole was closer to the screaming, injured man than ours. I asked the medic, ‘Couldn’t you hear his screaming?’ He reluctantly went with me to aid the man.”

  Al Burghardt, the mortar squad sergeant in the 110th, spent his final days in the forest on the reverse slopes outside of Kommer-scheidt. “With what was left of the 3d Battalion, we dug in and waited for the word to renew the attack on Schmidt, but because of the problems that the Kall trail presented, the attack was delayed. No tanks or supplies were getting through. The Germans could not shell our position with their regular artillery because of the reverse slope, but they were able to use mortars, due to the higher trajectory. We hadn’t eaten in three days, except for a roll of Lifesavers, which I shared with a friend. There wasn’t any part of me that wasn’t cold, wet, or damp. While in this position outside of Kommerscheidt, the wounded increased at an alarming rate, and they could not get proper treatment. Our medics negotiated a temporary truce. I was told by our medics that the Germans checked each stretcher to make sure that only the most seriously wounded were being evacuated.

  “Sometime on the 8th of November, word was radioed that we were trapped and our troops would not be able to break through to us. We were to abandon our position and all our machine guns and mortars were to be destroyed. We were to break up into small groups and get back to our original areas. Since I was in charge of a 60mm mortar, I destroyed the mortar sight with the butt of my rifle and buried the base plate, bipod, and the mortar tube in different spots and camouflaged the area.

  “When the group I was with took off late that night, we went down the Kall trail and across the stone bridge over the Kall River. It was guarded by troops. We came upon it very quickly, and it was very dark and raining. My platoon sergeant and I, discussing this years later, are sure the troops were Germans, but since our group was larger than theirs, and this happened fast, no action resulted. After crossing the bridge, we went cross-country out of the Kall Valley, up some very steep slopes suitable only for mountain goats. Everyone was very quiet and we received no incoming fire. The Germans apparently had no idea that we had left our position. During this time, someone lost his helmet. It went crashing down the rocky slope to the bottom of the valley, making a tremendous amount of noise.

  “When we arrived at the top of this valley, we came to a flat area, where we were challenged in English by a sentry. Whoever was leading us satisfied the outpost that we were GIs, and we passed through to our company area. We were too tired to dig in. We just laid down and went to sleep. At first light, when I awoke, I was covered with the first snow of the season. The medics arrived and were checking everyone. When they came to me, they asked how I was, and I said, other than being cold, wet, and hungry, I was okay. They asked how my feet were. I said okay and proceeded to take my M1 and hit my left foot with the butt of my rifle. I felt nothing. They had me take my boots off and examined my feet. They were as white as the new snow.

  The medics wrote out a casualty tag and put it on me. They brought up a stretcher and told me to get on it, which I thought was great, until the circulation started to try to get back into my legs and feet. When they took my M1, I saw for the first time that six inches of the barrel were missing, probably removed by shrapnel. I had no idea when this happened because my rifle was always within my reach. This started me on my way to the States, through numerous hospitals in France and England and onto a hospital ship to the States.

  “I never did find out who led us out of the trap. Whoever did was one hell of a soldier. The night was so dark that you couldn’t see four feet in any direction. In my group there were eighteen of us. We were lucky. Some groups didn’t make it, but we did.

  “At a regimental reunion, many years later, I asked my platoon sergeant who the hell lost his helmet that night. His face turned red, and he confessed that it was him. We had a good laugh.”

  Although Burghardt was one of hundreds of soldiers disabled by trench foot, VII Corps commander J. Lawton Collins insisted that the malady was never a serious problem. During this rather static but deadly period, John Chernitsky’s antitank platoon manned a position that covered the bridge over the Kall River, which had been blown up to prevent an attack by the enemy. “Our targets were German engineers who tried to repair the bridge or put up a pontoon bridge. We only fired twice. There were no enemy tanks and ours could not move around the bend. Engineers tried to widen the roads, which were made of stone. We laughed at the maps, which showed roads—they were cow trails without cows.

  “None of the brass ever came forward to our position; we were too far up front for them. I had the distinction of bringing up replacements. They’d call me and say we’ve got twelve men for E Company and G Company, which were about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. The replacements had no discipline, couldn’t keep their mouths shut. We had to try to get word to the companies to meet us. Very few of the replacements survived.

  “I had never seen such destruction to forest land. The German artillery kept firing at the tops of trees and artillery bursts hit the trees—the shrapnel fell just like rain and the artillery was constant—day and night. The casualties in the 110th were heavy. Very noticeable in the Huertgen Forest was the movement of medics and ambulances. When they had a chance they picked up the dead. The German losses were heavy also, but we never could figure out what happened to the Germans who were wounded or dead.”

  Replacement Jerry Alexis, dragooned into an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon after his Company B had departed their positions without notifying him, was released back to the company around 8 or 9 November near the settlement of Simonskall. “Day and night we got direct f
ire from the German 88s anytime we moved in or out of our foxholes. On November 11 we moved a few hundred yards to join what was left of the battalion to go into another attack down into the Kall Valley, about a mile south of Simonskall. We were so understrength however, that the battalion commander received permission to abort the attack.

  “Early on the 11th, a sergeant assigned me and another GI to the outpost line [OPL] about fifty yards in front of the main line of resistance [MLR], where what was left of the 1st Battalion was digging in. The sergeant showed us the spot where he wanted us to put our foxhole. I immediately protested, because it was several hundred yards behind the military crest of the hill on which we were located, which meant it dropped off at that point. We wouldn’t be able to see anyone coming up the hill until they were practically looking down our throats. My arguments were to no avail, since he insisted we were already further forward than he wanted us to be anyhow. Right then I knew we were probably on a suicide mission if the Germans decided to attack, because there was little or no cover between us and the MLR to hide our movement to the rear. The role of the combat outpost is to give an early warning of the enemy’s approach, laying down as much fire as possible to deceive him of the actual position of the MLR, and then get back and reinforce the rest of the unit.

  “We started to dig in. Fortunately, the ground wasn’t very hard, so we made good progress, despite the many roots and stones we encountered. The availability of logs for cover against tree bursts was limited, so we made do with smaller branches, which served more as camouflage than as any real protection.

  “We spent the night there, and the next day continued to do what we could to improve our hole. About noon, we settled down to await what the Germans might have in store for us. It wasn’t long in coming.

  “About three o’clock in the afternoon, I could hear guttural voices in front of us, and the coal-scuttle helmets popped over the military crest. As was customary in attacks by the Germans, each of the half dozen or so point men were armed with machine pistols, burp guns, as they were known for their staccato bursts of rapid fire. I began to fire my M1 rifle as rapidly as I could squeeze the shots off, but I noticed that my partner was huddled down in the bottom of the hole. I swore at him to get going or at least hand me his loaded rifle when my clip was exhausted. He didn’t move, so I was left to try to change clips as quickly as possible, while the attackers ran from tree to tree over the last few yards, firing bursts as they ran.

  “Then it was all over. From the side of the hole there appeared over us a German with his gun pointed down at us, shouting, ‘Raus mit du!’ [Get out!] As my partner came up from the bottom of the hole, I noticed he had been nicked by a shot across the forehead, just enough to draw blood, but apparently not too serious. By this time, several other GIs on the OPL had been captured and lined up by two guards. As the firefight had now moved toward the MLR, we were getting stray shots around us and things were pretty hairy. Then, whether from an aimed shot or a ricochet or a stray, the guard standing about two yards from me was hit squarely in the stomach and went down screaming. I could just see us getting mowed down in retaliation, but the only reaction of the other guard was to shout something unintelligible to us, which we interpreted to mean, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ We ran pell-mell over the hill, but in a column so he wouldn’t have any excuse for thinking we were trying to escape. We quickly arrived at a huge concrete bunker at the bottom of the hill, which was evidently serving as a command post for the attackers.

  “An English-speaking noncom there wisecracked to us that there really wasn’t any need to interrogate us, because they knew we were the 1st Battalion of the 110th Infantry, 28th Division, and that fifty or so who were still fighting at the top of the hill would soon join us as kriegsgefangener, my introduction to a word that would soon be a part of daily life—prisoner of war.

  “We were relieved of what few items we had in our wallets. In my case, my social security card, some family pictures, and military scrip money. Surprisingly, we were allowed to keep our watches and rings. It wasn’t long before another noncom came into the room, and after a short conversation with the interpreter, announced that we would carry some litter patients back to an aid station. We went to another bunker, where some medics were cleaning wounds and bandaging wounded Germans.

  “We picked up two patients, one of who was in especially bad shape. His back had been made into hamburger by shrapnel and his bandages were blood-soaked. As we lifted him and started to carry him outside, he was alternately screaming in pain or crying. We went just a few yards down a path, which led to the Kall River, really just a small stream at this point. There was a swinging bridge across it, but it was too narrow for us to use with the stretcher. We were ready to move down the riverbank and into the water when suddenly an artillery round roared in and exploded not more than twenty yards away, followed by others in the immediate vicinity. Our litter case nearly went wild as he screamed for us to put him down. As soon as he was on the ground, he began to crawl as quickly as possible to a nearby depression in the ground. The rest of us jumped for whatever little protection we could find around the bases of the trees and in previous shell holes.

  “As quickly and as abruptly as the barrage started, it ended. The German NCO had us get our patients back on litters, and we took off through the river. We nearly went into shock ourselves as the swift, icy water rose up to our waists. It was a job to keep our litter above the water and our feet from slipping, but we made it to the opposite side and onto a fairly decent road that soon led to another pillbox, where the evacuation station was located.”

  Alexis and about a dozen other prisoners ate a small amount of food given to them and then began a hike to the rear. “It wasn’t long before the combination of the cold night air and our wet clothes had us in agony with every step we took. For a while we were going up a steep road, and we began to retch from the exertion, our dry mouths, and the mental trauma of captivity. Day one of my POW experience came to an end as we arrived around midnight at a small village, where we were herded into a one-room schoolhouse along with some GIs already lying with their coats wrapped around themselves. Those nearest the two stoves made room for us to get warmed. Most of the group immediately began to take off their shoes and socks to reveal badly swollen feet, which they put close to the stoves.

  “Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled a medic’s lecture in training camp warning about the danger of this, so I kept my boots on despite my pain. This was one of the smartest things I did in my POW days, because by the next morning those who had put their uncovered feet near the stoves woke up to find them ballooned to twice their normal size. Some had already begun to turn all shades of red, black, and blue. I could walk with a great deal of pain, which was more than most could do. The Germans sent in some medics, but all they could do was shake their heads and mutter something that must have meant ‘Too bad!’” Within a few days Alexis joined a growing number of GIs in the stalags.

  While the enemy destroyed the 28th and its attached units, the 3d Battalion of the 9th Division’s 47th Infantry continued to maintain its grasp of Schevenhutte. Chester Jordan, as a platoon leader in K Company, survived two full months in the hills overlooking the town. He and his colleagues had taken up residence about 16 September.

  “Our new positions were well established just inside the woods facing a cutover area. The Germans were just as well established in the woods on the other side of the clearing. There was a fringe of woods on the east side of this clearing that connected the warring parties.

  “After hearing about the vicarious thrill of watching your enemy doing exactly what you are doing, I decided I had better have a look. I went alone. I was crawling through the needles when I saw right in front of my nose a Luger pistol. It was lying on the top of its barrel with the grip pointing straight up. It surely had to be placed like that, but why. Was it a booby trap? It had to be, but it was too damn intriguing to pass up, so I started lifting needles one
at a time to expose the area around the gun. The gun had absolutely no rust on it, so it could not have been there very long. I finally got down to bare earth and there was no trip wire. It evidently had just fallen from the pocket of a careless Kraut. I crawled on and spent some time watching a couple of soldiers shooting the breeze, but this was anticlimactic. After the Luger incident, I could have shot them easily but who wants to stir up the hornets.

  “My CP was in a crude hut made of rocks stacked in the bottom of a quarry. Although it was not tall enough to stand in, it made a snug little hole to sleep in. One day, I was lounging in the hut, talking to a sergeant standing in the door. A mortar shell landed right on top of him, and he was blown all over me. This period in Schevenhutte sticks in my mind as a period of relative inaction, but the company was replaced over twice while we were there.

  “The 39th and 60th Regiments of the 9th plus several other divisions were getting the shit kicked out of them just southwest of us in the same Huertgen Forest. They were fighting for the same woods we had walked through. I don’t know what the rest of the 47th was doing, I just know they were not in our village. Schevenhutte remained the deepest Allied penetration into Germany for over two months, but, to my knowledge, no one said as much as ‘Good job.’”

  The substitution of the 4th Division for the ill-fated 28th continued during the first two weeks of November. The 8th and 22d Infantry Regiments traveled north to take their places in the forest and prepare to participate in the great offensive that would include the 1st Infantry Division. Theoretically, it had recovered from its first encounter with the Siegfried Line and the edges of the Huertgen. On the left flank of the endeavor, the 104th Division would assume responsibility for the Stolberg corridor, and the 90th Division would in turn carry the First Army offensive beyond there.