Rudder: From Leader to Legend

11. Huertgen Forest, 1944

On November 1, 1944, Rudder was told to move the 2nd Ranger Battalion immediately up to the Belgian frontier with Germany and keep it in a state of readiness to enter combat on short notice. The five-mile move was a clear signal that the Rangers’ six-week recess from combat would soon end. His men were ready and rested. They had new clothing. Their weapons were cleaned and oiled. They trained every day with emphasis on physical conditioning , and their mood was buoyant. Rudder got these new instructions in a briefing at U.S. Army V Corps headquarters in Eupen, Belgium. As usual, Capt. Harvey Cook accompanied him because Rudder relied on Cook in planning and implementing orders for the six rifle companies of the battalion. The briefing concerned an American attack that would start the next day to force the enemy from Schmidt, a ridge-top farming community in Germany about twenty miles southeast of Aachen.1 After the Americans had taken Aachen on October 21, no one, not even the German generals, was surprised they would continue to push into Germany. However, the German generals were flabbergasted that Americans would attack through the rugged terrain and dense woods of the Huertgen Forest, where they could not capitalize on their superior mobility with tanks and self-propelled artillery or bring to bear their vastly overwhelming tactical air support. It was an error that German strategists would never understand , although they would soon see that its purpose was to protect the main American offensive from Aachen eastward to the city of Duren on the Roer River. Actually, the American strategists hoped to go thirty miles further and reach the Rhine south of Cologne. The attack through the Huertgen Forest was intended to prevent a German counterattack into the right flank of their drive toward the Rhine. The attack on Schmidt, however, was in German minds a greater threat than the Americans realized, and the Germans’ fierce resistance took them aback. The Americans had not analyzed their strategy from the German perspective , and this flaw contributed to making the Battle of the Huertgen Forest one of the most difficult and futile of the European war. CHAPTER 11 HUERTGEN FOREST NOVEMBER 5–DECEMBER 7, 1944 HUERTGEN FOREST 201 Before it was over, more than 120,000 Americans, plus more thousands of replacements, would fight in the Huertgen Forest. Of these, at least 24,000 would be killed, wounded, captured, or declared missing. In the cold, wet, and depressing woodland, another 9,000 succumbed to foot infections, respiratory sickness, and psychological disorders. The casualty rate exceeded 25 percent in a war where 10 percent was considered high. German losses were at least as great but can only be estimated, because records were lost.2 American strategists did not fully discern the factors that made the fighting in the Huertgen Forest extraordinarily difficult and futile, namely the complicated and restrictive topography, the innumerable small tactical moves dictated by higher headquarters, and the piecemeal commitment of assets to the battle. Rudder’s briefing at V Corps headquarters was a prelude to his most frustrating period of the war. In the subsequent five weeks he had the least flexibility ever in commanding his battalion, which absorbed heavy casualties and was usually kept in fixed positions that were exactly contrary to the Rangers’ training and purpose. Rudder’s staff believed he protested the assignment of the battalion to static defenses. Eventually his superiors tasked the Rangers with an objective more fitting to their talents: an assault to gain control of an important enemy stronghold called Hill 400 that overlooked much of the battlefield. But first the Rangers would endure other hardships in the depressing Huertgen Forest. As Cook and Rudder looked on, the briefing officer outlined the forest on a map as an irregular area between Aachen and Schmidt that was extensively eroded by gorges and ravines with steep slopes. The Huertgen Forest was part of a much larger woodland of dense fir trees, typically 75 to 150 feet high with lateral branches to near ground level, that extended into Belgium. The forest was an evergreen wildwood, too thick to walk through without stooping, meandering, or crawling. On ridges between the gorges and ravines , villages had developed over hundreds of years with nearby clearings for agriculture. Only a few hard-surfaced roads plus a multitude of primitive trails and firebreaks crisscrossed the forest. The deepest and widest gorge was formed by the Roer River, which defined...