14-117 Garand Picture of the Day

[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