Battle of the Hrtgen Forest Hurtgenwald

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Battle of the Hürtgen Forest (Hurtgenwald)
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• Battle of Hürtgen Forest is name given to series
  of battles fought in the Hurtgen Forest,
  afterwards known to both Americans and Germans
  simply as the Hurtgenwald.

The snow hit us as we hit Hurtgen.
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• The Battle of Hürtgen Forest was overshadowed by
  the American victory in the Battle of the Bulge,
  and as a result, few books and articles have been
  written about it. 

Looks pretty but it ain't.
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• The American High Command was flush with success
  after the breakout at Normandy and the race to
  Germany, and therefore overconfident.

Gen. Oliver, Gen Bradley, Lt. Col. MacFarland,
Gen. Eisenhower, Col. Cole, Lt. Col. Entrekin,
Lt. Col.Foss confer near Zweifall, Germany.
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• The Battle of  Hürtgen Forest was fought in an
  area of heavy forestation between September 13,
  1944, through February 10, 1945.  

November 2, 1944.  G.I.'s of CO E, 110th IR/28th
ID moving through the forest near the
Raffelsbrand road junction.
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• The Hürtgen Forest, was described by those who
  were there, as a "weird and wild" place.  It was
  not a ancient forest but it was hand planted in
  modern times at the order of the Army to take the
  most advantage of every hill and valley using the
  spruce and balsams thick squat limbs like
  football linemen challenging advance.  Here "the
  near one hundred foot tall dark pine trees and
  dense tree-tops gave the place, even in daytime,
  a somber appearance.  

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• It was like a green cave, always dripping water,
  the firs interlocked their lower limbs so that
  everyone had to stoop, all the time. The forest
  floor, always in darkness, had no underbrush. Add
  to this gloom, a mixture of sleet, snow, rain,
  cold, fog and almost knee deep mud. This was to
  be setting for the most tragic battle of World
  War II.

This mine exploder on a tank didn't last long
enough.
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• And it was fought in a corridor barely 50 square
  miles in an area that begins about 5 miles south
  and east of Aachen, Germany and falls into a
  triangle outlined by Aachen, Duren and Monchau on
  the border of Germany.

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• Although the battle did not officially end until
  February of 1945, the major part of the Battle
  of  Hürtgen Forest was fought during the 3 wet,
  cold, miserable months of  mid-September through
  mid-December 1944.  The battle claimed 24,000
  Americans killed, missing, captured and wounded,
  plus another 9,000 who succumbed to trench foot,
  respiratory diseases and combat fatigue

But we couldn't keep them dry..
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• The Germans were delighted that the Americans
  wanted to throw their weight into an attack
  against dug-in troops in a forest where the
  American preponderance of artillery and command
  of the air would be of little value.  Also,
  delighting the Germans was that the Hürtgen
  Forest was of little military value and, if lost
  to the Americans, could be flooded since the
  Germans held flood control dams above the level
  of the forest. It was a battle that the Germans
  really couldn't lose.

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• The battles were characterized by the American
  High Command not recognizing the true objectives
  of the forest, the dams that controlled the
  height of the Roer River, until December.

Brandenburg and Bergstein are representative of
the edge of the Hurtgen Forest near the Roer
River. The high ground on the north side of the
Roer permitted observation for the enemy
artillery and mortar fires even after the Germans
had been forced across the stream.The area of
the Roer River dams can be seen in the distance.
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• Had the Germans blown the dams, they could have
  flooded a region far to the south, delaying
  American advances. Multiple divisions were sent
  in, only to be wrecked and replaced by still more
  divisions.

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• British General Horrocks (one of the few
  generals, if not the only general to do so) made
  a surprise front line visit to the 84th division
  and he was disturbed by the failure of American
  commanders and their staffs to ever visit the
  front lines.  He was greatly concerned to find
  that the men were not even getting hot meals
  brought up from the rear, in contrast to the
  forward divisions in the British line.  He
  reported that not even battalion commanders were
  going to the front.  Senior officers and staff
  didn't know what they were ordering their rifle
  companies to do.  They did their work from maps
  and over radios and telephones.  And unlike the
  company and platoon leaders, who had to be
  replaced every few weeks at best, or every few
  days at worst, the staff officers took few
  casualties, so the same men stayed at the same
  job, doing it badly.

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• Air, artillery, and armor, all advantages of the
  Americans at this time were nullified because of
  the terrain, and the Germans were happy to delay
  the much stronger force using smaller numbers and
  good defensive positions.

This one came into Gergstein and was captured.
A German self-propelled 75 mm
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When American troops who had fought in Sicily,
Italy, Normandy and Holland, finally took the
forest, they said they had never seen anything
that could compare to this for the amount of
shattered military equipment scattered throughout
and the countless American bodies.. 
Recovery of American bodies for American Graves
Registration
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End