magnifier
Original Document
magbottom
 
Original Document
General James M. Gavin, on the Battle of Huertgen in 1944

The Battle of the Bulge came to an end in the closing days of January, 1945. The combat divisions were immediately redeployed to resume the offensive into Germany, and the 82nd Airborne, which I commanded, was ordered into the Huertgen Forest, a densely wooded area astride the Siegfried Line, just inside the German border. In the fall of 1944 there had been many grim stories in the Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, about the fighting in the Huertgen. We were not looking forward to the assignment.

I opened the division command post in the midst of the forest in the small town of Rott on February 8, and a few hours later stopped at corps headquarters to get an outline of our next mission. Then, traveling by jeep, I started through the Huertgen Forest to the clearings on the far side where our jump-off positions would be. I learned my first lesson about the Huertgen. It could not be traversed by jeep. The mud was too deep and the jeep bellied down.

In addition the forest was heavily fortified and highly organized for defense. Although I had seen heavy pillbox fortifications in Sicily, they were nothing compared with those in the Huertgen Forest. In the Huertgen they were huge (frequently consisting of several rooms). They were dark, and landscaped to blend with the trees-so well covered by leaves and pine needles that they were hardly visible. I was startled when I first realized that I was looking right at one only a short distance away and hadn't realized that it was a pillbox. In, addition to the pillboxes, concertina barbed wire was stretched across the forest floor. This, with trip wires, antipersonnel mines, and antitank mines, reduced the fighting to its most primitive form: man against man at grenade distance.

Having been preoccupied with the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies had paid little attention to the Huertgen Forest for the past several months. I found a road that a jeep could travel on, and went to the town of Vossenack on reconnaissance without meeting any enemy. The Germans presumably had withdrawn to the Roer River or very close to it. I left my jeep in the town and started down the trail that crossed the Kall River valley. I was accompanied by the Division G-3, Colonel John Norton, and Sergeant Walker Woods. It really was a reconnaissance, since I did not know what the lay of the land would be, and what, if any, enemy might still be there.

Our orders for the following day were to attack across the Kall River valley from Vossenack and seize the town of Schmidt. By now most of the snow had melted and only small patches remained under the trees. I walked down the trail, which was obviously impassable for a jeep. It was a shambles of wrecked vehicles and abandoned tanks. The first tanks that had attempted to go down the trail evidently had slid off and thrown their tracks.

In some cases tanks had been pushed off the trail and toppled down the gorge among the trees. Between where the trail began outside of Vossenack and the bottom of the canyon there were four abandoned tank destroyers and five disabled and abandoned tanks. In addition, all along the sides of the trail there were many, many cadavers that had just emerged from the winter snow. Their gangrenous, broken, and torn bodies were rigid and grotesque, some of them with arms skyward, seemingly in supplication.

They were wearing the red keystone of the 28th Infantry Division, the "Bloody Bucket." It evidently had fought through there in the preceding fall, just before the heavy snows. I continued down the trail for about a half a mile to the bottom, where there was a tumbling mountain stream about six feet wide. A stone bridge that once had crossed it had long since been demolished, and a few planks were placed across the stone arches for the use of individual infantrymen. Nearby were dozens more dead men….

Toward the end of October General Hodges set the date of November 5 for the main attack that would take his 1st Army across the Roer and on to the Rhine. The principal effort was to be given to Joe Collins" VII Corps. His mission was to clear the Huertgen Forest and seize the high ground to the east. The dams were transferred to General Gerow's V Corps on Collins" right.

Hodges was anxious that the V Corps get started as soon as possible and he set the date of November first. Its mission was to clear the Vossenack-Schmidt-Lammersdorf triangle down to the headwaters of the Roer River, so as to protect the right flank of the 1st Army. To increase the V Corps" strength, it was given the 28th Division and a combat command of the 5th Armored Division.

The 28th was the Pennsylvania National Guard Division. It had made the Normandy assault and was fresh and experienced in every respect and ready for its difficult mission. By now, the Huertgen was recognized as a tough nut to crack. Considerable pressure was put on the 28th Division commander, Major General Norman D. Cota. His principal mission was to seize Vossenack, cross the Kall River gorge, seize Kommerscheidt, and then Schmidt, enabling the V Corps to command a position close to and overlooking the Schwammenauel Dam.

The 112th Infantry Regiment (of the 28th Division), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Carl L. Peterson, was assigned the central position. It was supported on its left by the 109th Infantry, which moved toward the village of Huertgen, and on the right by the 110th Infantry, which moved to the south in the direction of the village of Raffelsbrand. It should be noted that the three regiments diverged from the beginning and, in fact, uncovered the flanks of the middle regiment, the 112th Infantry, which had a difficult mission at best and one that could have been catastrophic if its flanks were attacked in the Kail River gorge. The division was opposed by the German 275th Division, which had proved its mettle against the 9th Division earlier.

By this time heavy autumn rains and dense fogs and mist plagued the attackers. Soon there would be snow. The infantry could expect little air support. The attack on Schmidt was launched on November second in characteristically bad weather. Despite poor conditions, however, both V Corps and VII Corps supported the forthcoming attack with artillery barrages. By H-hour the 28th Division artillery had fired 7,313 rounds. The high command had at last learned respect for the German defenses and they were taking no chances.

The attack went off on schedule and the second battalion of the 112th Infantry captured Vossenack by early afternoon and soon were digging foxholes on the forward slopes overlooking the forested valleys below. The two remaining battalions of the 112th Infantry moved through Vossenack down the trail across the Kall River gorge, virtually unopposed, until they were all the way across the Kall and crossing the open farm country in sight of Kommerscheidt.

Kommerscheidt and Schmidt, in turn, were seized with little opposition. There was elation in the 28th Division Headquarters, and the division commander, General Cota, was to say later that he felt like "a little Napoleon." But the elation was short-lived. Actually, the Germans were in the process of replacing the forces that had been defending Schmidt. The following day the Germans counterattacked with armor and drove the defenders from their water-filled, icy foxholes around Schmidt back on Kommerscheidt, and later pushed the survivors of Kommerscheidt to the edge of the Kall River gorge.

In addition, they attacked all along the gorge, thus cutting off the remnants of the two attacking battalions that had just been driven from Schmidt and Kommerscheidt. Repeated orders by the 28th Division to recapture Schmidt were meaningless, as the survivors were incapable of mounting an attack. The regimental commander was directed to report to division headquarters.

Although he was physically exhausted and twice had been wounded by artillery fire, he started down the trail of the Kail River gorge. He was in bad physical shape when the engineers on the trail found him, put him in a jeep, and started him back. He must have been a sight to see when he walked in on General Cota. At the sight of him, Cota fainted. Before the engagement was through, the 28th Division suffered over six thousand casualties.

The 28th was followed in turn by the 4th, the 8th, and the 83rd infantry divisions, and a combat command of the 5th Armored Division. Tragically, before it was over, not only were the casualties frightful, but the real objective turned out to be not the Huertgen Forest itself but the dams over the Roer River on the far side of it.

Over twenty-four thousand Americans were killed, missing and captured, or wounded in the fighting in the Huertgen and another nine thousand succumbed to the wet and cold with trench foot and respiratory diseases, for a total cost of thirty-three thousand men. In retrospect it was a battle that should not have been fought. Once we were in it, the higher command did not seem to appreciate the incredible conditions under which the infantrymen had to fight. Unlike other battles in Europe up to that time, we sacrificed our ground mobility and our tactical air support, and we chose to fight the Germans under conditions entirely to their own advantage, in which they fought from strong fortifications on ground they knew very well.

In an interview after the war, General Major Rudolph Gersdorff, chief of staff of the German 7th Army, said, "The German Command could not understand the reason for the strong American attacks in the Huertgen forest... the fighting in the wooded area denied the American troops the advantages offered them by their air and armored forces, the superiority of which had been decisive in all the battles waged before, etc." But the Huertgen was over and I think it fair to say that little was learned from it and less understood.

From October until mid-December the Germans had fought hard to protect the assembly of the armies that Hitler had earmarked for his great counteroffensive-the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans had fought with skill and courage and took heavy casualties. The Allies had no idea of the coming counteroffensive, so one must judge the German defense as having been entirely successful. On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched three field armies against the Allied center, on a seventy-mile front. At once the Huertgen lost its importance as all attention was focused on the Ardennes.

Military critics have argued about the battle of the Huertgen Forest ever since World War II. Today, at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, it is presented by the faculty to each new incoming class as a case history. Particular emphasis is placed upon the attack of the 28th Infantry Division across the Kall River gorge, and on to Kommerscheidt and Schmidt. They point out the disastrous consequences that can befall a command when the generals do not know the environment in which the troops must fight. A troublesome aspect of the Huertgen battle is that it was fought by experienced, courageous battle leaders who made few other mistakes during the war in Europe. So why did it happen?

In the first place there was the optimism that was so pervasive throughout all echelons of the Allied forces in the late summer of 1944. It seemed clear that the Germans were beaten, badly beaten. Then there was the unbelievably poor intelligence of the Allied high command. Up to the fall of 1944 the Allies depended heavily upon ULTRA SECRET, that priceless information that came to them from radio intercepts of German communications to and from tactical headquarters.

When the intercepts were suddenly brought to a stop by Hitler's ban on all radio communications, no one seems to have questioned what was going on. Hitler therefore was able to assemble twenty-one combat divisions, including eight Panzers, without the Allies knowing anything about it. In retrospect, this seems unbelievable, but all three events were closely related-the unbridled optimism of the high command, the discontinuance of the radio traffic of the German formations, and their ability to organize a major counteroffensive. Thus, to the Germans, the battle of the Huertgen Forest was Phase One of the Battle of the Bulge.

That battle was Hitler's last gamble. The bitter, costly fighting by the Germans in the Huertgen Forest in October and November of 1944 was essential to their chance of success. But for us, Huertgen was one of the most costly, most unproductive, and most ill-advised battles that our army has ever fought.


Credit: From General James M. Gavin "Bloody Huertgen: The Battle That Should Never Have Been Fought," American Heritage Magazine 31:1 (December 1979).
Back to Top