by Gerald Astor
“We started to dig holes but there were many slit trenches already. My first one had someone in it, but at another hole it was empty and I fell into it. When daylight came we found many GIs; they were already tagged but apparently Graves Registration had not picked them up.”
12
THANKSGIVING CELEBRATIONS
On the day after he was wounded but elected to remain with his G Company, Warren Eames of the 18th Infantry Regiment, along with his colleagues, was assigned to the second wave in a frontal attack, as they approached a village. “Shelling was fierce everywhere. We moved forward onto a hillside position, and the Germans were dug in on the next ridge beyond us. Off to the right flank, our Tennessee boys had made a wild attack on that section of the rough ridge, and using only entrenching tools—small picks and shovels—they were ‘braining’ the Germans and pulling them out of their holes by the hair. A lot of the German troops there were young fellows from the Hitler Youth and were too scared to shoot straight. I remember not being bothered by any rifle or machine gun fire from them, but the shelling was terrific.
“Down in the gully ahead of us, our old platoon sergeant was coolly directing the attack, pointing out which area was to be charged next and looking for all the world like an old farmer, his hands in his suspender straps and chewing on a piece of straw. Our group was lying on the ground about 100 feet behind all this, about as useless as we could be. Although we were the immediate reserve, we were far enough away from the Germans, so that they could shell us without hitting their own men, and we had no place to go, as we were out of our foxholes and lying on the frozen ground. All we could do was wait. One of our men appeared from the line ahead, carrying a carbine and with a German prisoner in front of him. [The German] still had his steel helmet on and was wearing the characteristic gray uniform. He had a terrible look on his face as he crossed right in front of me.
“Then what we dreaded started to happen, traversing mortar fire. Over to our right flank, there was a distant explosion, followed in a short while by another and then another nearer one. They were systematically trying to wipe [out] our second line, which was what we were. I lay on the ground and could determine the plot they were following, and it was coming right at us. A few more shells and they would be on top of us. I remember lying there waiting for death to arrive, since we could not move from the position without orders.
“Then I heard a tiny whirring whistle sound, the sound of a mortar shell coming in right on our position. There was a terrible explosion no more than a few feet from the right side of my head. This blast was nearly on top of me, and I instinctively knew that I must have been hit, but I did not feel a thing. Further back, twenty to forty feet away from me, almost all the men were wounded, and the scene of screaming wounded men was repeated from the day before.
“Mortar shells explode in an upward arc, and then the shrapnel rains down again. Since this shell hit the frozen ground, instead of being a tree burst, the men farther away from me were showered with shrapnel.” Something similar happened to Eames near Aachen, where, although closest to the burst, he was uninjured, while those more distant were wounded or killed. “I felt the rim of my helmet and the left side of my head and in my fingers were a little water and a slight trace of blood. I put my hand back to my left ear, and this time it was covered with blood. The third time my hand was soaked with blood, and I knew this was bad. Still, I had no pain. What upset me then was Izzy Cohen, who was lying on the ground facing me. Izzy’s face was contorted in a look of horror, and as he looked at me, he cried out, ‘Isn’t there anything anyone can do for him?’ Then I knew I was hit bad.
“By this time blood was running down all over the front of my combat jacket. I got up and hastened back toward the rear, struggling at the same time to take off my pack, which was impeding me. I threw it away and also my rifle. About seventy-five yards to the rear were three medical aid men. They had to pry my helmet off my head, as there was a large hole in the left side of it, and the sharp edges of the steel were sticking into my head and ear. The medics worked carefully and fast, and they put a large compress bandage over the whole left side of my head, although they were so scared their hands were shaking as they did it.
“Sergeant MacAulay was there, too, his face also a bloody mess. His jaw had been smashed in the shell burst. Back there on the ground lay our new replacement who looked like Abe Lincoln. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed, and he seemed to be completely at peace. I believe he had been killed outright in this, his first action.”
The medics instructed the walking wounded, Sergeant MacAulay and Eames, to hike down a fire lane to the battalion aid station in the rear. “We reached a spot where the lane forked. MacAulay thought battalion aid was over to the right; I thought it was to the left. We decided to go my way and I was wrong. We got lost and wandered through the forest. We were both groggy from loss of blood and head wounds. Meanwhile, the shelling from the Germans got more and more intense. Finally, hopelessly lost, we took shelter in a large shell crater in the dense woods. We lay there awhile, trying to decide what to do next. Suddenly, a second lieutenant with a carbine, followed by a radioman carrying a large field radio on his back, appeared. The lieutenant, a platoon leader, saw us from a distance and raised his carbine to fire at us. We stood right up with our hands way up, and he could see we were both wounded with bandages wrapped around our heads.
“He approached us warily and exclaimed, ‘What are you doing here?’ We told him we were from G Company and lost. ‘You certainly are lost,’ he said. ‘Do you know you are behind the German lines? I am the point man leading an attack. Don’t you know they are shooting all the prisoners out here?’”
The officer directed the pair to the correct route to battalion aid. After treatment there, Eames boarded an ambulance that carried him to a field hospital at the edge of the Huertgen. “We disembarked from the ambulance and walked down a muddy lane to the entrance. Lined up on both sides of the entrance were about a dozen German prisoners, who rushed forward to assist us walking wounded. Several anxiously ran up to me and tried to support me. But I couldn’t stand to have them touch me. I flung them away. I wanted to walk in by myself and I did so.”
Although the offensive faltered, the First Army expected the 8th Infantry Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Donald A. Stroh, to capture the villages of Huertgen and Kleinhau, along with a ridge that ran from Brandenberg to Bergstein. This area, formerly the objective of the 28th Division, was southeast of the battlefields that engaged the 1st and adjacent to the 4th Division’s drive toward Grosshau.
The situation on 20 November, according to Sylvan’s diary, seemed promising. He noted, “Substantial progress was reported all along the First Army front with the exception of the 4th Div. area. 104th Div. occupied Stolberg and … was sitting on the outskirts of Eschweiler. 1st Div. had stiffer going against heavy mortar and artillery fire, but 1st Bn. of 47th attacked and took Hill 187. 3d Bn. advanced almost a mile, Heistern was cleared by the 18th Inf. 4th Division again made little progress over rugged terrain stubbornly defended by the enemy. 1st Bn. of the 8th however made almost a mile, closed the gap between the 2d Bn. and the 26th Inf. and 2d Bn. of the 28th Inf. 121st Infantry of 8th Div. last night … moved into assembly area preparatory to its attack this morning. Gen. Hodges motored to see Gen. Stroh during the afternoon, came back extremely well pleased with the tactical planning which had evolved. Gen. Hodges especially noted that Gen. Stroh thought he was being particularly well supported by a remarkable amount, 18 bn of artillery, and was confident of success.
“Attack was to jump off at 9 o’clock. I heard Gen. Hodges say, wait until 11, it will be more favorable. … He was pinning much hope on the success of the 8th Div. attack tomorrow. If the attack should fail, advance of VII Corps to the north could be seriously hampered. Paid greatest compliment to Gen. Stroh’s tactical ability. With a halfway break in the weather, we could push the Boche back a good piece.”
The 8th Division
’s chief of staff, Col. Tom Cross, a native of upstate New York, had served on the Mexican border before World War I. He graduated from OCS in 1918 and with the 3d Division was shipped to France as a member of the American Expeditionary Forces. With the 8th Division, having fought from Normandy to the Siegfried Line, Cross had been at a newly opened recreation center for officers in Luxembourg when, around midnight of 13 November, he heard of a possible move north to relieve the 28th Division. In his diary, he noted that the 13th Regimental Combat Team (part of the 8th) moved at 0700 into the V Corps sector to relieve the 110th Infantry. “Reports indicate that our new sector is a tough one and has been the graveyard of two other divisions.”
Subsequently, he listed the mission of the division’s 121st Infantry Regiment as an attack supported by division artillery and rocket guns to capture Huertgen and Kleinhau. “Then [it would] protect against counterattacks for the north, east, and southeast. Then the 22d and 12th Regiments to capture the woods north and east plus attack by CCR of the 5th Armored division, which will make the main effort followed by the 121st.”
But because the brutal introduction of the 4th Division’s 12th Infantry to the Huertgen had left that unit palpably damaged, instead of an orderly transition, the First Army hastily dispatched the 8th Division’s 121st Infantry from its base in Luxembourg, 107 miles away. From his command post, General Stroh issued urgent instructions to the 121st commander, Col. John R. Jeter, telling him to move his men “at the earliest practicable time.”
Jeter’s battalions, beginning on 19 November, traveled through rain, sleet, and snow in largely uncovered trucks, and for some men the journey lasted throughout the night. They had little time to orient themselves to the peculiarities of the forest when they passed through the lines of the tattered 12th Infantry to take their places for the 21 November offensive.
Cross remarked, “Only one battalion [the 3d] of the 121st arrived in time for a good night’s rest and to make essential dispositions for the attack. The 1st and 2d Battalions arrived late. The last one was not in position until 0330. Men had not slept in two nights. The attack should have been postponed for twenty-four hours and time devoted to resting the men and for company and platoon commanders to make reconnaissance. The battalion commanders of the 121st so recommended, which I passed onto the commanding general without gaining approval.”
Among the veterans of the 121st was Stephen “Roddy” Wofford, a student at Texas A&M at the time of Pearl Harbor. He signed up with the enlisted reserve in June 1942, which enabled him to continue his education for another nine months before being called to active duty. He completed the OCS program at Fort Benning. “I thought our training was top notch. I feel my ROTC experience at A&M gave me a real edge in understanding what leadership really was and how to get along with people. I believe I would have been better prepared for combat had we been given more ‘live fire’ exercises.”
Assigned to a rifle company as a platoon leader with the 80th Division, he was dispatched with many other second lieutenants shipped overseas as replacements. He landed on Utah Beach on 16 July. “A couple of days later, I joined A Company, 121st Regiment, and was in my first combat. That first day, even though I was in reserve, I lost every NCO except one. That was my baptism of combat, and I was mortally terrified. My brain seemed to function independently of my body. I saw my first casualties.
“I had absolutely no idea of what was involved in our movement to the Huertgen. I had no personal contact with anyone from the 28th but saw many of them in trucks as they were being evacuated. I didn’t think they looked any better or worse than any other troops who had been in combat. I heard ‘You’ll be sorry’ several times while we were passing, but that was normal for combat troops.
“I think our Company A was at about full strength on going into the Huertgen. We had been in a quiet sector in Luxembourg and had been able to build gradually to full strength. We had no opportunity to reconnoiter the position we were to occupy. We went into it at night, taking the same position as the company we relieved. I suppose this was done at night because of the urgency, and also because this position was in a fire lane in the forest and the Germans could see us in the daytime.
“I’ll never forget the flash of the artillery that night. It was continuous and gave us some light to see the foxholes that the 28th had been using. What disheartened and demoralized some of our men was finding corpses in the holes they were trying to occupy. It was a terrible way to start any operation. To be truthful, I never knew where the artillery was coming from. I assumed it was German, and it was dangerous because of the tree bursts. My main impression was that we were ‘fresh fodder,’ and it didn’t seem we had much choice about anything.”
Norris K. Maxwell, a Texan, like Wofford, attended the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy for two years, before he went on active duty through mobilization of his National Guard unit. “I graduated in the first OCS class at Fort Benning, 27 September 1941, and the commissions were presented by an unknown brigadier named Omar Bradley.”
Maxwell became a captain specializing in communications. He was working in the replacement system in England when he volunteered to substitute for a captain stricken with “foxhole fever.” Assigned to the 8th Division, which he joined before the Saint-Lô breakout, he took over A Company of the 121st, an outfit temporarily under command of Roddy Wofford, then a second lieutenant. Maxwell remarked, “I had never taken a field exercise with a rifle company. My first infantry exercise was against the German army at Brest. We took our objective and captured prisoners; it’s what’s known as on-the-job-training.”
His memory of the trip to the Huertgen is similar to that of Wofford. “We detrucked in a cold, driving rain and attempted to feed a hot meal. It got dark and a guide from the 12th Infantry came to lead us forward. It was a nightmare. You couldn’t see, just hold onto the pack of the man in front. We finally stopped to get some rest. I had the impression I was sleeping in a creek, cold running water. Daylight and we took over the foxholes of the 12th, who got the hell out of there fast.”
Paul Boesch, a first lieutenant and executive officer of Company E in the 121st’s 2d Battalion, recalled the words of an officer from the 28th Division’s 109th Regiment when he arrived to arrange quarters for the troops being pulled back to the 121st bivouac and was asked about conditions in the forest. “It’s hell. Pure, unadulterated hell. That’s the only word for it. It’s hell. You haven’t heard anything about it, because they’re afraid to talk about it. That’s it, they’re afraid to talk about it. The Germans tore up our division. Tore it up. They kicked the crap out of a lot of other good outfits too. I’ve been with this division since we landed in France, and I never saw anything like it. It’s artillery, tanks, mines. Everywhere mines. God-almighty, the mines. And Jerries. Everywhere stubborn, stubborn Jerries.” The sight of the defeated soldiers of the 28th conveyed to Boesch, a 220-pound, former professional wrestler and free spirit, an ominous foreboding of the coming combat.
Boesch’s battalion entered the forest and the positions of the 12th Infantry in the dead of night. The executive officer could hardly believe his company commander when he told him the attack would begin at 9 A.M., without any opportunity to study the terrain or mount intelligence patrols.
As a member of the 56th Field Artillery for the 8th Division, Arthur Wagenseil discovered how difficult it would be to carry out missions. “We were amazed how little space there was for our gun positions. At the same time, we noticed a small reconnaissance tank on the perimeter of the woods, where a downed ME-109 was still smoldering. I went over to look and saw two boots with feet still in them up to the shinbones. The rest of the body, what was left, was covered with dirt. The tankers started up, turned their radio on, and left. Within several minutes, the 88s came zipping in and everyone hit the dirt, crawling to the foxholes.”
Troops from all three battalions of the 121st slogged forward after the opening salvos of artillery, which continued to thunder overhead as the f
oot soldiers and their associates in armored units, according to the division and corps blueprints, closed on the enemy defenses.
Maxwell scoffed at the notion of a carefully plotted operation. “Briefing before Huertgen? None! We knew nothing about the forest or what was facing us, intelligence on the enemy, and the fortifications. There was no formal meeting of company commanders with a briefing by the staff and orders from the battalion commander. The only words were ‘go, go, go!’ Reconnaissance? That happens only at service schools. Orders were to attack straight ahead, exact orders, ‘Follow those tanks.’ The tanks bogged down way back of the front. No trucks, jeeps, or any other vehicles, just mud and riflemen. No boundaries were designated. My flanks were wide open. I could see the Huertgen-Germeter road on our right. B Company, 121, was on our left but there was no contact. There was no fire support—no heavy machine guns or 81mm mortars from D Company. No forward observer from the artillery. The only artillery was incoming, and it was accurate and heavy.”
All three elements of the 121st encountered the same obdurate Wehrmacht defenders, deadly minefields, tangled masses of barbed wire, machine gun nests, and a wicked rain from artillery pieces and mortars. Net gains for a day in the killing fields were registered in figures such as fifty yards. Efforts to bring forward tanks failed, either because of the morass of wire and mines or skilled use of the panzerfaust.
