14-117 Garand Picture of the Day

[Snafu]

Pvt. John Lam examines a sign signaling the Hürtgen Forest front. The sign reads "Front line 500 yards ahead. Dismount and fight."

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[CINDERS]

Hurtgen forest another bloody battle you could not hide behind a tree or lay flat as the German mortar rounds burst in the tree tops so you were exposed unless you went UG atrocious weather and a dark and dangerous place almost as bad as Tarawa for the USA troops.

A good read is the Battle for Hurtgen Forest By Charles Whiting.
"The fifty square miles of dense forest on the Belgian/German border shares its name with the longest battle ever fought by the U S Army. Known simply as the Death Factory to the men that fought and died in it, it killed or wounded thirty thousand G.I's - one for every yard- for an objective that was not worth a single death."

[Bob Womack]

I'm forgetting where I read it but Patton toured the site of the Battle a short while later after his army relieved the 101st in Bastogne. The bodies were still there and frozen in place. He evaluated the action as an tragic, wasteful mistake that was a result of the commander, Norm Coda, being too far behind the lines, leading from a map. Patton felt that the slaughter would have been avoided if the commander had simply gone to the site. He would have seen that A) the terrain was absolutely perfect to support the efforts of the German defense and absolutely awful and at odds with the efforts of the advancing troops and B) there was no need to attack up the road into the Hürtgen because a nearby road with good protection from the surroundings skirted the forest and allowed an attack from the flank. THAT was the route that the attack should have followed. This fit in with Patton's style of "leading from where he could smell the battle."

Bob

[browningautorifle]

And this disaster was virtually unheard of because of the bulge developing and the Ardennes fight taking place same time. Entire units disappeared in this mess.