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CHAPTER 5 In Battle in Europe As described by Edward G. Miller in “A Dark and Bloody Ground,” in late 1944 U.S. forces advanced into the heavily wooded Hurtgen Forest, which was located southwest of Aachen, Germany. The forest covered about thirty square miles. Without a clear-cut reason for attacking the Germans through the forest, U.S. commanders still ordered seven divisions into the Hurtgen Forest, only to be overrun by superior numbers of German infantry and artillery. Small U.S. units found themselves cut off by the rugged terrain and densely growing fir trees. Because of this landscape, they were unable to protect themselves by employing their tanks or artillery effectively. In addition , the troops were exposed to one of the coldest winters experienced in Germany in a century, without proper winter clothing. In spite of these unfavorable conditions, U.S. troops were ordered to attack entrenched and camouflaged Germans in the woods. This was disastrous, resulting in many companies’ suffering huge numbers of casualties, approximately fifty-five thousand killed or wounded. For many years after the war the full extent of the disaster of the Hurtgen Forest campaign was not discussed or even well known outside army circles. Only in the last decade have military historians begun to look at the fighting that took place there. Our engagement in the Hurtgen Forest campaign began on November 3, 1944—just several hours after our arrival in the firing zone. The purpose of the campaign was to occupy the western, industrial portion of Germany known as the Ruhr Pocket. This battle would constitute our participation in the Kohlscheid penetration; and as we arrived, it was already raging on the front line less than a mile away. It began from our position in Richterich, with the objective of reaching the Roer River. During the time of our location in Richterich, we functioned in support of the 30th Infantry Division. The forward element of this division was to attack the first German towns and cities leading into the Ruhr Pocket and the Hurtgen Forest for one week. By the time we arrived, the division’s efforts had already exacted a heavy toll in both lives and wounded. In Battle in Europe 59 We received our first real baptism by fire during the savage offensive action against German bastions in the Jülich section of the Kohlscheid front on November 3. Accounts of the kind of fight we put up at such a bitterly contested town as Richterich became favorite topics of discussion among hard-bitten soldiers whose day-to-day lives were filled with the whiplash of the sudden terror of enemy mortar and artillery fire and the sickly penetrating odor of newly spilled blood. Since the beginning of our battalion’s engagement there, more than three thousand rounds of our artillery had been fired. When we entered the Kohlscheid penetration scene, it was strangely reminiscent of a Hollywood movie set. Its surreal look included sleek black-and-white Holstein cattle, which the Germans had confiscated from throughout conquered Europe, grazing in the vast valley just below us and stopping at times to raise their heads and stare curiously at us. However, the firing of our first adjustment rounds sent these beasts stampeding down the valley, where they disappeared. Although they had grazed there quietly just minutes before, like rational beasts, they pocketed their pride and ran in search of safety. As we advanced our firing position at daybreak, bodies of German soldiers littered the landscape, a testament to our first night in combat on the western front. At the same time, in the flatlands just beside us, I saw German women plowing, breaking the half-frozen ground for winter planting. They waded ankle deep in mud, their shoulders hunched against the uneven padding of the white oxen pulling the plows, as there was no fuel for mechanical plowing. Their hands were locked hard on the plow handles, with no hope of relief until they had completed the job of turning the hard soil. Farther down as we moved along to our next firing position, to my left, a young farm boy tended a flock of sheep in a pasture at the edge of a forest. I was certain that this was a firing position for German artillery just two days ago. An aged woman lingered disconsolately among the wreckage of a bombed-out farmhouse in the back of my gun position. It may have been her home...

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