Hürtgen Forest: The Longest US Battle On German Soil DD

Late 1944, as weary Allied troops edge ever closer to the German border, they can all but taste the end of the war. But before victory is theirs, the Americans will fight the single longest battle on German soil. It’s one of the largest, bloodiest battles of World War II. Yet, it’s virtually unknown. It makes no tactical sense.

It would have been quicker to go around. This was the wrong fight to pick in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whole units are completely decimated and the responsibility has to be lane at the door of the senior commanders who are sending these units in to carry out completely impossible missions. It’s called the meat grinder.

So many lives are wasted ultimately for nothing, but very few people know anything about it. [Music] September 1944, the Allied pursuit of of the German army has slowed down due to the distance from supply lines and increased German resistance. Both the American and Russian armies have their sights set on Berlin.

The Soviets are coming in from the east. There’s desperation on the part of the Americans and the allies. You got to get to Berlin before the Red Army. Waiting would have cost them. That was the logic in in the fall of 1944 is that if we wait, you know, the Russians will be in Germany and even past Berlin and we won’t even be in the game.

From the western side, the next strategic objective is to move up the Ryan River and prepare to cross it. The Ryan River is a deep, cold, wide river. Hitler is ordered that the bridges be blown up. You got to get to the Ryan before the bridges are destroyed. The other sense of desperation is this war is exacting such a horrific toll.

Holocaust, civilians, starving soldiers dying on the battlefield. The sooner we can end the war, the better. But what General Courtney Hodes, who planned this, what he underestimated was the sense of desperation on the German side. Commander of the German 7th Army, General Eric Brandenburgger, favors falling back behind the Ryan River.

But Hitler himself has assured him that reinforcements are on the way and the Aken region instead becomes increasingly fortified. The US army faces two problems in its campaign through the Herkin. One, this is the first time it’s fighting on German soil and however tough the Germans have been, they are bound to up their game when it gets to defending Germany.

And the second problem is that they’re up against a formidable defensive system in a terrain they simply have no experience of. Located about 5 km east of the German Belgian border, the triangular-shaped Herkin Forest, known to the Germans as the Herkinva, is 140 km of stateowned forest. There are kind of straight lines because it’s a managed forest.

So, you know, even if you were trying to run and hide, the enemy can conceivably see you. In 1938, Herkin Forest is fortified by the Germans as part of their western wall, known to the Allies as the Sig Freed line. So, it forms a near perfect canopy under which you can build fortifications under which tanks and airplanes are inoperable.

But the man in command has extensive experience fighting through difficult terrain. General Courtney Hodgeges is a decorated World War I veteran and wellrespected commander. Hodgees definitely knew a lot about fighting this type of battle. He’s partially blinded during the First World War. He gets a purple heart for that action and he throws his purple heart out because he doesn’t think he deserves it.

This is the mentality of this man. He comes from quite a wellto-do Georgian background. It would have been natural for him to go into the army as an officer, but he joins up as an enlisted man. And so for him to go from that to left tenant general in 1944 is really pretty impressive. In August 1944, Hajes succeeds Omar Bradley as commander of the first army.

With a quarter of a million soldiers, it’s America’s largest fighting force, comprising 18 divisions, subdivided into brigades, battalions, and companies, all the way down to thousands of platoon of a few dozen men. On September 14th, 1944, the American 9th Infantry Division enters Herkin Forest. These few thousand men are the battleweary 39th, 47th, and 60th regiments commanded by Major General Lewis A. Craig.

The 9inth Infantry Division has been pretty battle tested for a very long time. Prior to Herkin, these units took part in long combat missions throughout North Africa and France and are severely depleted. These battle hardened troops have seen almost everything. and they know what to expect and now they’re being pushed into the Hurricane forest.

Most military science says that you don’t attack in a forest, especially an enemy who’s very well fortified and well defended, which is the great conundrum for anyone who studies tactics. Why doesn’t Hajis go around the forest is a question we still debate to this day. It showed the American determination to advance.

It told the Germans that they were not going to be able to scare the Allies away no matter what they did. This was also a resounding message to to the German high command. This is the mentality of one of General Haj’s closest advisers. Fellow World War I veteran Jay Lton Collins has distinguished himself at the Battle of Guadal Canal, and he’s earned the nickname Lightning Joe.

When Hajes plans to halt for 2 days to allow reinforcements to catch up, Collins argues to begin recon immediately. He sets the pace of the offensive and they’re sent into the Hurricane to see who is in there, if anyone, and try to pierce out the other side and hit that Sigfried line. The Allies enter the forest with several goals.

Pin down German troops to prevent them from reinforcing their efforts further north at the Battle of Aken and capture the town of Schmidt. It was like a crossroads town. You can fan out into the countryside and it was a great place to have your communications as well. So Schmidt is a very very important position for either side to hold.

The 39th and 47th regiments are ordered to divide and conquer. A lot of military training is about following orders, doing what you’re told, getting to where you need to be. You don’t need to worry about what the goal is. You don’t need to worry about exactly what’s happening or what the overall situation is.

Here is your job. So, you’re starting off in that type of mentality. As long as you and your mates survived another day, it was a good day. The initial advance by the 47th Regiment goes smoothly. In fact, for two days, they don’t see anyone. And eventually, they spot a staff car with a German colonel in it, and they kind of report back, you know, this is what we’ve seen.

And they find a lone German officer trying to figure out what’s going on. So, what do these men do? They take him prisoner. They rob him and then they send him back to the German lines. They don’t even think they have time to deal with prisoners. The 39th attacks through the forest and meets resistance. They do not have as easy time as the 47th does.

The Germans have had time to recoup. They’re back behind their own front line and they are digging in. It’s one giant booby trap, but you’re probably not going to lay the booby trap right on the edge, the further western perimeter of the forest, are you? You’re going to bed in behind your own lines.

The 39th Regiment begin pressing forward at Lammersdorf at the edge of the forest. But unbeknownst to them, they are entering a deadly trap. The terrain and the forest itself is utterly impassible for the Americans to come in. The Germans had built defensive positions throughout, strewing mines all across the forest, building machine gun nests, bunkers.

They start taking casualties almost immediately. This makes them realize that this isn’t going to be a cakewalk through this wood lot. They don’t know where everyone is around them. They don’t know where the enemy is. The Germans do not expect the Allies attempt to breach the Herkin forest. The Germans were dumbfounded as to why the Americans would do such a maneuver.

They thought it was crazy. It was insane. And they could not believe their luck that someone would try this. It must have seemed odd to them that this fortified forest, impregnable is what we’d call it, impossible to pass through virtually, is going to be the focus of an American campaign which up until that point had relied on armor, mobility, and aircraft.

You can’t use any of those three things in a dense forest. This is like a gift to the Germans. I’m sure they were surprised. The density, the thickness of this forest also undermines the Americans in terms of communications. It’s hard to see and radar systems, more primitive radar back then aren’t working properly. One baker one.

This is bacon 6. At one point, the only sound coming over the radio is a German warning of Akung Akum as the nearby town of Zifel sounds their air raid sirens. As soon as the radio goes out, you’re in a feeling of isolation, that you don’t have any support, that you’re no longer part of the greater hole. Radios tended to malfunction regularly.

Sometimes a battery would die out. Sometimes a signal wouldn’t get over a hill. In fact, one officer said that he had to resort to the old hand signals that they were taught in basic training to move men around the field in front of him. What began as recon has turned into a full-fledged battle.

The Americans are on the defensive and wolffully under supplied. [Music] Americans and the allies have pushed in so quickly that they have outrun everything that they need. They don’t have water. Some men don’t have rations for days. You can’t deploy men into a force if they haven’t eaten for 2 or 3 days.

After two agonizing weeks, the 39th Division takes control of the town of Lamersdorf. huge losses for tiny gains, but the need to win, the need to advance was so overwhelming that these losses were deemed acceptable. General Hajes has these objectives. He wants this town or this key intersection or this part of the forest.

In hindsight, it seems rather arbitrary and he is not willing to change his mind. The problem is at what cost? and America. The Americans are suffering thousands of casualties for each seemingly arbitrary objective. By this point in the war, General Courtney Hajes expects the Germans to quickly surrender due to low morale, but this is absolutely not the case.

The Germans have every advantage with the forest fortifications. The way that I think most commanders would do it if they had a second chance was to to wait until you had full concentration of your supplies and then to bring the brunt of your highly favorable ratio of soldiers and and tanks and planes to bear and crush the Germans.

It was a 5:1 tactical advantage in terms of military strength that the allies had. And it’s just wasted, utterly wasted. The Battle of Herkin Forest is intended to build upon the successful push that began with D-Day. The Allies attacked the coast of Normandy in a massive amphibious assault of 150,000 soldiers. They face resistance as they storm the beaches, achieving victory, finally on June 11th.

This changes the tide of the war and provides the launchpad to liberate France and Western Europe. We’ve got neverending resources. It’s just a matter of getting the resources up to the front. We’ve got almost 2 million Allied troops match fit and ready to go. The British second army liberates Brussels on September 3rd and Antworp on September 4th.

Hitler starts acting out in desperation. He appoints Field Marshal Carl Van Runstead as the commanderin-chief of the German army in the west and orders him to attack the advancing allies. Soldiers are called upon to fight to their death rather than surrender. So many committed Nazis go on fighting right to the end.

And I’m not just talking about the top like Gerbles. All the way down to the ordinary prison guards who will not let go of their authority and their murderous policies until literally the guns are taken from their hands. With German forces decimated, their approach is more deadly the closer they come to defeat. Hitler informed all of his commanders that if they gave up ground, many of them would be dead.

You weren’t supposed to give ground. You were supposed to hold your ground at all costs, especially when you got to the Sig Freed line because that’s German territory. So Hitler says that you will be killed if you fall back. On the German side, it’s desperate. There is no choice. You’re probably going to die fighting, but you fight cuz if not, you’re going to get a gun in your back or you’re going to be caught marshaled and killed.

And these little kids and these older men by now they’re recruiting middle-aged men as well. They’re going to damn well do what they’re told. This is Hitler’s Germany. You don’t have a choice. You know, you dig in and protect your country. The Americans decide to push through the northeast to capture the towns of Herkin and Kleinhow.

But the number of American soldiers in the Herkin is quickly depleting and the mood is grim. General Hodgees calls in tanks from the Third Armored Division to support the 39th and 60th regiments. The tanks must overcome fortifications known as Dragon’s Teeth just to reach the embattled troops. Armored divisions were trying to get into the forest to help out and support these American units.

And men had to have axes issued to them from the sides of the tanks to go out and physically chop the trees down because the trees were too large for the tank to run over and the tank couldn’t run over any of them. So these men have to go out there by hand and chop down a road. What was General Haj’s thinking when he was deploying the tanks? It’s not clear why such a decision was taken, but the tanks were a resource and they were deployed.

What you actually got in the forest of Herken are tanks being stranded in mud, broken down, being knocked out, and becoming a problem. You know, the tanks are attracting fire and causing casualties. Far from them being the solution to the problem, they actually make it worse. After you’ve lost a couple of divisions, you might consider rethinking the game plan.

But the danger is you think, “Well, I’ve already lost two divisions. I’m just going to keep going. You know, I’m going to reinforce that defeat. It’s a classic military error that so many make. Hodges ain’t the first and he won’t be the last. Despite continued heavy casualties, by September 20th, the Americans reached the Viser Valley, closing in on their objective, the Schmidt hub.

Schmidt is like a merrygoround. It’s like a it’s a kind of roundabout of death. All the villages, incidentally, have been evacuated. You know, you can’t live there. It’s not a place where you live any longer. It’s just a bunch of rubble. It’s just a place where you might get picked off by sniper fire if a pillbox isn’t taking you out first if you haven’t stumbled over a dragon’s tooth.

I mean, the whole place is like a landscape of terror. Can you imagine? You come out of the forest and you land up in Schmidt. It’s like, my god, who cooks up a place like that? The planning for the German defenses go back to 1938 when they construct the seed freed line. Now, it’s not used, of course, for most of the Second World War because the Germans are on the offense.

But when they do come on the defense, all these measures they put in place in 1938 suddenly come to fruition and are incredibly valuable. They’ve been building bunkers and pill boxes so that they create a kind of killing zone in which it’s going to be very difficult for you to to get past.

And yet, Hodgeges and other top brass all believe that Schmidt is an important town to capture. The question is, how do you get there? You’ve got to come through the wood, funneling you into a field of fire in which you’re going to find it very difficult to maneuver. The logic of attacking Schmidt gets completely removed when you think that a flanking attack could have done the same thing.

October 6th marks the Americans first attack on Schmidt. Between October 6th to 16th, the 9th Infantry Division gains 3,000 m at a cost of 4 1/2,000 casualties. This is First World War numbers. This is this is losing a man for every meter and a half. It’s a crazy number to think. How can this persist? [Music] [Music] How can you have all these losses and not see that we have a problem? Bullets and tree shrapnel decimate the 9inth division.

Those kind of losses that the Americans absorb in Schmidt are um monstrous. So, you waste thousands of lives uh over a multi-day fight for nothing. Schmidt’s importance to the overall offensive on the Ves fall, but not at that cost. The battle to take Schmidt is a failure, but despite the beatings, the Americans do advance to the crucial supply hub of Manchow, but again, they pay a high price.

The 9inth Infantry Division is reduced to a small fraction of itself and cannot continue fighting in the forest. On October 16th, the nearly obliterated 9inth Division gets some relief. First Army Commander Courtney Hodes calls on Major General Norman Dutch Cota to renew the drive toward Schmidt.

The 28th Infantry Division arrives in Herkin and they dive into the woods. These are men of the Old Pennsylvania National Guard and they are sent into the woods to try to break this stalemate. They think they’re going to be able to do it. They’re battle hardened. They’re ready to go. They get into the woods and they see the destruction from months of terrible fighting.

You are literally stepping on the bodies of men who died a week beforehand. It hits you in the psyche when you think about what these men are treading on, laying upon, being around every single day in the hurricane. Fresh from his triumph at Omaha Beach, Dutch Kota has become accustomed to victory. But the German defenses here are surprisingly strong.

Pillbox attacks prove to be deadly. American losses reached the thousands in a matter of days. For those who were in her forest, the entire world is reduced to basically a green inferno, a meat grinder. On October 18th, a battalion from the 28th Infantry Division arrives in Aen as reinforcements. And after a brutal battle, the Germans capitulate on October [Music] 21st.

After a is captured, the 28th Infantry breach the Sigreed line in the Stolberg corridor. General Haj’s men are to press forward 10 miles to the Roar River, capture the town of Duran before continuing to Cologne and the Rine. The war at this point from an Allied point of view is we need the Germans to surrender.

We need them to realize the war’s over. If Germany doesn’t have access to its industrial heartlands, then it’s hobbled. It will have to capitulate. So that’s a very clear clean target really. So there is this huge push to move forward into the roar. A lot of the power plants are located down river. It runs Germany. If you can take out that area, you can seal off that asset.

If you don’t do that, Germany still has a lifeline. But General Hajes continues to pursue other less productive goals. He insists on repeated attempts to capture the town of Schmidt, an ongoing goal that is as elusive as it is deadly. It becomes sort of myopic obsession to capture it and then guess what? To recapture it.

You know, if you’ve got compromised supply lines, it’s very difficult to hold a place like Schmidt. You’re making incremental gains and you’re losing them again. One step forward, two back. One step forward, two back. and it’s losses on a scale that the Americans weren’t used to. On November 2nd, the Americans begin their second attack on Schmidt, led by the 28th Division.

There’s no way that they didn’t know how bloody and painful it was after the first group went in. If you were a new battalion coming in, you saw thousands coming back out as 300. The Americans spent much of October uh in desperation trying to take this small village of of Schmidt and suffered thousands of casualties.

What do they do? They try it again in November. On November 3rd, the first and third battalions of the 112th Infantry Regiment move across the K Valley in hopes of capturing Commerite and Schmidt and cutting the Germans off from their supplies. However, the terrain of the call trail makes movement of any kind very difficult. One particular unit, 2,000 strong, is eventually battered down to just 300 men.

You know, can you imagine a couple of days in which 70% are casualties? You know, how do you rebuild the, you know, the morale of that unit? It’s almost impossible. After their first loss at Schmidt, the Germans rely heavily on Panzer tanks. On November 4th, the 166th Panzer Division tanks unload their fire on the third battalion at dawn, ejecting them from Schmidt and leaving them unable to counterattack.

The battalion descends into chaos. 133 are captured by the Germans. And again, you have to remember the Germans have had time to fortify. They’ve got back behind their natural defensive barriers. They’ve been given time to regroup. They’ve laid their hands on anything they can that goes up in a puff of smoke.

It’s just do what you need to do. Keep them away. Stop them getting across. Keep them out of the fatherland. Whatever it takes. Meanwhile, the US 109th Division is tasked with capturing the area north of Gera. But within 300 yards, they meet an unexpected horror. I don’t know that any minefield is a pleasant place to be, but that one was just uh horrific, almost impossible to navigate through.

So navigating minefields, pill boxes, trench imp placements, heavy guns, all becomes a a grinder. It becomes the meat grinder. The wild pig or wild sa minefield is one of the largest minefields on the western front. Mines every 2 m stretch over a span of 3 km. Now, how are you going to get through that? It’s impenetrable.

So they literally have to crawl through and try to find these mines, diffuse them, and keep moving while being shot at. Ultimately, they have to resort to rolling trees through the forest to try to detonate the mines. That’s time consuming. It’s not practical. And in a forest that’s this dense and thick of of trees, it takes forever.

Even after all of those losses and that loss of territory, machines, men, material, it’s still crazy that Hajes doesn’t understand the totality of the loss. It is it is a loss at that time. How are you going to overcome that loss and go back at the enemy is another thing. Ultimately, General Hajes comes to his senses and approves the withdrawal of American troops from this little hub, this little village of Schmidt.

With Schmidt lost yet again, the focus returns to the Roar industrial area and the Roar River. There are seven dams at the Roar River headwater for flood control, drinking water, and hydroelectric power. The Schwab Manal and the Earth dams hold up to 40 billion gallons of water between the two of them. That’s a huge amount of water.

I mean, if that had been released, it’s it’s a nightmare scenario. If the Germans had exploded the dams, the advance through Germany would have become not just difficult, but might have become a near impossibility. On November 5th, General Hodgeges receives a top secret memo from General Simpson of the 9th Army. He is to refocus on securing the Roar River dams before the Germans unleash a catastrophic flood.

Hodgeges insists that the best path to get there is to continue to press through the deadly forest. General Hajes yet again ignores the concerns of his officers and the intelligence that the Germans are considering blowing the dams to flood the entire region. His response is damn the dams. One of the justifications for going through the forest is to get to the rur dams.

There were seven of them and two in particular are so big in terms of the lakes that they’ve created that the feeling is if they’re if they’re blown by the Germans uh they’re going to unleash a flood tide that’s going to really slow down the advance to the Ryan River and this is going to really impede Allied uh communication. So we need to get to these dams and we need to take them before the Germans blow them.

But that doesn’t explain the logic of going through the forest. Yes, the raw dams are at the back of the forest, but they’re not in the forest. What I don’t understand is why they don’t go round to the southeast if you look at the map and then work your way downstream so that you incrementally pick off each dam that the Germans could have flooded you with.

Hajes created this subobjective. I can do the dams, but I have to get to this point first. And that’s where I see this real disconnect. When you’re making a decision and you have a goal, you tend to plan to get to that goal. Most people want to plan to get to that goal with the least steps possible. Hajes is planning to get to that goal by adding additional intermediary steps.

And the only reason that he’s doing that is because those were the steps he took when he was successful in World War I. You take the towns, you move the line. And that’s what he was trained in. That’s what he was successful with. And that’s what he’s repeating here. At age 57, Hajes is not the man he once was mentally or physically.

Because of his disconnection from those around him, he’s not hearing alternate plans or alternate viewpoints, which is leading into tunnel vision for his overall strategy. Hodges, he misunderstands his soldiers. I think there’s almost a kind of a failure of empathy at this point. For him to to keep to keep asking this of them and to not step back, it’s a profound failure on his part on a human level.

Hajes is an interesting character when it comes to casualties. He’s very hard as a commander and likes to drive and keep moving and keep moving. But his men often say that they’ve watched him break down when he goes to the hospitals. Any other time he’s hard as a rock. But when he goes into the medical tents and sees the men, he breaks down and cries.

But meanwhile, the Americans are having a horrible time in the call trail. Sending in tanks is not a good idea. It’s an even worse idea when the weather conditions worsen. You get a lot of rain coming in. There’s a morass on the on the floor of the forest and the tanks are just incapable of moving and operating.

You either got to get past them, you’ve got to go and rescue people out of them. Amidst heavy casualties on both sides, a small glimmer of humanity comes from an unexpected place. German troop doctor Gunter Stoutkin has a history of treating enemy wounded at his field hospitals. On November 7th, he makes contact with American medical personnel and negotiates what will become the first of three ceasefires.

Combat stops for several hours so wounded can be retrieved and enemy patients exchanged. Hundreds of men survive the Herkin forest who would have otherwise been left to die. Years later, Stutkin was honored for his actions, which he explained came from respect that only soldiers who know the horror of war can have for one another.

But in November 44, after the briefest of pauses, those horrors continue unabated. The weather works to the advantage of the Nazis as well. It becomes brutally cold. It snows. The Germans laid thousands of mines down. the Americans couldn’t see or detect. So everything about the forest worked to the advantage of the Nazis and worked against the American invaders.

The American offensive force begins to be affected by a defensive mentality. And they’re going to be holding their ground, staying still, being in a covered position. You get that that difference between being aggressive and offensive versus a very defensive type reaction where you’re just trying to survive. This reaction extends to some of the highest ranking officers.

General Ralph Hubner leads the legendary first division known as the big red one. He makes the mistake when reporting to Major General Jay Lton Collins of using the phrase keeping the enemy in check. Collins is furious at the lack of forward momentum and orders Hubner to ramp up the attacks. For Collins and his superior Courtney Hodes, it’s forward momentum or nothing.

But by mid- November, there is plenty of blame to go around. And much of it is laid at the feet of General Norman Dutch Kota. His 28th Infantry Division is relieved of duty and the eighth infantry division is brought in. On November 16th, Operation Queen begins. The Herkin Forest campaign really occurs in a couple phases.

The first one begins in September of 1944 and that’s an unmitigated disaster. Finally, later in November, a second phase, Operation Queen. It’s most of the same tactics, which again don’t work. However, they want to try to use American air superiority, which ordinarily would make sense. But the forest is so dense, so thick that it renders bombers and warplanes completely ineffective.

With no end in sight, the situation is reported on by one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century. Ernest Hemingway reporting from the front for Collier’s magazine witnesses some of this fighting and he’s completely horrified. Ernest Hemingway spent 18 days embedded with the 3,000 men of the fourth division.

You have a a kind of chronicler of of the madness on a very personal level. One of the grimace actions is in late November when a when a regiment is sent to take the uh the village of Gracau. And in attempting to do so, it loses almost 2,700 of its 3,000 troops. That’s over 90% casualties. And of the futility of the tactics being used by the Americans, Hemingway quipped that it would save everybody a lot of trouble if they just shot them as soon as they got out of the trucks and describes it as Passion Dale with tree bursts. That pretty much says

it all. You got shrapnel starting off the branches above your head. So if you’re not hit directly, you’re going to be hit with something raining down on you that’s not just freezing wintry water from God’s skies. I mean, it’s a nightmare. It’s a hell on earth. He’s reminding people back in America that this ain’t just headlines.

Oh, Paris, Antwora, Brussels, Aran. The city of Aken was so well restored that refugees from the nearby internment camp were allowed to return to their homes in the city. The military government section went to work establishing order. No passion tree bursts. You know, let’s break up that narrative, that success story, and remind people success at a cost.

Hemingway will eventually write a novel about what he witnesses. Across the river and into the trees, it’s called. A more direct literary account comes from a former professional wrestler. The machine gun platoon leader of Company G of the 121st Infantry. That amazing character, Lieutenant Paul Bush, writes a great book about it afterwards.

incredibly visceral descriptions of what he’d gone through, what his men were going through. Lieutenant Bosch’s memoir captures the horror as he leads the 121st Infantry Regiment through the thick forest. Bosch sets up a command post and a carrying party to move rations, water, and ammunition for the regiment. German machine gunners catch them in a brutal crossfire, reigning mortars and artillery.

Bearing witness to the horrors of the forest, the 121st spends Thanksgiving in hell. Thanksgiving in the Hurricane is a lot different than what you see on any other part of the line. It is business as usual. On November 23rd, Lieutenant Bosch receives a message that a hot turkey dinner is on its way to every man in the outfit.

They were looking to build morale, but it’s also a way to remind people what they’re fighting for. The world is going to be safe, and your family and friends are going to be able to have Thanksgivings because of what you’re doing here. Bosch objects. The positions they are in are nearly right on top of the Germans. A terrible time to eat a hot meal.

and they’ll know where we are and they’re going to shoot at us and let’s, you know, let’s stay low and keep safe. Despite his protests and appeal to reason, the Thanksgiving dinners are sent in on orders from headquarters. Privates are called back to distribute the meals. Hodgeges is playing for a headline game really.

You know, the men were fed on Thanksgiving. You know, it’s a note home to mom. You know, I had hot hot hot turkey or whatever it is. You eat cranberry sauce. You know, there’s a kind of um there’s a superficiality to his thinking there. Did he really think a gimmick like that was worth any life? The Germans are lurking closely, and the hot meal service draws attention to Bosch’s men.

[Music] Seven men are wounded and three killed for a dinner no one wanted to eat. The 121st must move on after Thanksgiving in hell. But their journey deeper into the woods proves even more deadly. In only 3 days, the 121st regiment loses 20% of their manpower. 50 killed, 600 wounded. You’ve got mines going off.

You’ve got trees exploding. How many times can you jump? How many times can you have that adrenaline rush before you’ve wiped it out? You just don’t have the resources anymore to engage with it. But throughout this vicious string of close-range firefights, Lieutenant Bosch leads his platoon in the village of Herkin amidst heavy enemy fire.

He and his men take cover and abandoned houses while automatic weapons clatter and buildings explode. In a brutal struggle, Lieutenant Bosch and Company G managed to take the town of Herkin, taking 350 German PS, bodies of both American and German soldiers littered the streets. For his role in the strategic victory, Lieutenant Bosch is awarded the Silver Star, his second one.

The victory at Herkin allows American troops to begin to make their way to the village of Kleinhow, the next objective. The 121st gains in Herkin finally place the troops in decent proximity to the Roar River Dams. The objective all along of Supreme Commander Eisenhower, but the horrible cost to get there is barely reflected upon.

You’ve got this command structure. So, there’s this distributed lack of accountability for what’s going on here. Nobody is saying, “Why are you doing this this way?” Even Eisenhower, who wants the dams protected, doesn’t seem to get involved in how to get there. And maybe that’s not part of his command, but somebody should have been tracking just how many lives were lost.

Instead of dwelling on the casualties, the first army commanders seize on this momentum. November 29th, orders from General Hodgees come in to take the Brandenburgg Burststein Ridge, securing a launch position for the US First Army to make a direct attack and secure the Roar River dams. After enduring weeks of heavy fighting, the 28th and 121st regiments clear the approach for the tanks to begin their advance toward Brandenburgg Burstein.

The 28th and 121st infantry reach the ridge, but the Germans have a major defensive advantage. Positions on Castle Hill. Castle Hill is one of the high points of the fight, and that’s with no pun intended because Castle Hill is high and it’s a great vantage point. With only 11 tanks and 140 infantry men left, reinforcements are needed to protect hard one American gains.

The second Ranger battalion shows up. Very good, well-trained troops. And this is where you get into the differences between special forces and general infantry where there is more uh independence and decision-m where you can adjust on the fly to meet a goal or objective without a very clear plan necessarily on how to get there.

And so you find special forces training tends to be very different in terms of initiative. The second rangers begin their advance. They quickly overwhelm parts of the German defenses and they will engage very violently and quickly with the Germans who are trying to defend Castle Hill. The Germans fire on the Rangers with increasing intensity, but Company D takes the top of the hill.

The Germans were utilizing it to rain fire down on the Americans, and now it’s in the hands of the Second Ranger Battalion. Of the Ranger reinforcements, only 22 are still able to walk on their own after this battle. 19 are killed, 107 wounded, and four men are missing. But due to their sacrifice from Castle Hill, the Americans concede the Roar River Dams.

On December 16th, the battered Rangers on Castle Hill are relieved by the 13th Regiment. But swapping special forces back to regular troops will prove costly. And then they weren’t using special forces. They were using standard infantry troopers who were trained to do what they were told, but they’re doing it in an environment that is really biased against them.

The 13th are unable to hold on to this victory, but the struggle to control the Herkin forest is about to be eclipsed by an even bigger challenge. And the Americans won’t retake the hill until February of 1945. One of the reasons the Germans fight as effectively as they do is because they are prepping for what will become the Battle of the Bulge, a position to the south of the Herkin Forest.

Of course, the bigger story is going to be the center of attention. The Battle of the Bulge became that center of attention. December 16th, the Germans launched their last ditch offensive into the Arden. The Allied planners are completely caught off guard. They were not expecting this overwhelming German regrouping.

When Hitler orders the counterattack, the tanks concentrate their power in just one section of the line, which is an age-old military tactic. And if you can bust through that one section, it compromises the entire line. They pushed a bulge out roughly 60 miles in in the American line, thus giving it the nickname the Battle of the Bulge.

On December 27th, the 83rd Division in Herkin Forest enters the Battle of the Bulge. Both sides sustain horrific uh casualties. It’s also one of the coldest periods of the entire war. The weather claims lives also. But in contrast to the Herkin Forest debacle, Allied forces are now well organized and well supported.

By Christmas, you know, we’ve got our act together. You’re even seeing a change in the law in Britain where women are drafted overseas. We need to back up the boys. You need to feed the boys. You need to supply the boys. You need to administer the boys. And that’s what wins the Battle of the Bulge is this extra manpower, this oomph.

Eisenhower comes up to the front. You know, there’s another 200,000 plus men. How can the Germans fight that? Ultimately, Hitler’s last ditch gamble fails. The Americans win. That’s really one of the last ditch efforts by Hitler and the Germans to hold the American line. The Battle of the Bulge is officially won on January 25th, 1945. But it comes at a high cost.

Of the 500,000 Americans who fight, 19,000 are killed in action, 47,500 wounded and 23,000 or more are missing. The Battle of the Bulge is a major turning point and it is heroic. Churchill’s right to call it a great victory, but you can’t help but to think that at least in part there’s that horrible moment of Herkin Forest that that kind of haunts them.

Finally, after five grueling months, there is still unfinished business in the Hurricane forest. On February 10th, 1945, at long last, the Roar Dam is taken by the American forces. This gives them control of the Earth Dam and 20 billion gallons of water. However, the Germans rally around the Schwabanel Dam and blow the valves open to flood the area.

The Germans do exactly what Intel was hoping they wouldn’t do. They blew the [Music] dams. But when the dams blew, it wasn’t this overwhelming tidal wave of water coming down through the area like Intel thought it would be. It caused localized flooding. It slowed down some of the movements of divisions through the area, but it didn’t cause this huge tidal wave of water.

It was much to do about nothing for many of the planners. On February 17th, the forest is cleared by the 82nd Airborne Division when they reach the Roar River. The Americans are finally finished in the forest of hell, which claims between 35,000 and 60,000 soldiers missing, wounded, or dead. The Americans use their position at the roar to support an Allied attack on the city of Cologne.

On March 7th, the Americans cross the Rine as their troops pushed forward to Berlin. Two months later, the war in Europe ends. On May 8th, 1945, the war in Europe is officially over as Berlin is captured and Germany surrenders. Hurricane Forest is difficult when you think about the sacrifices made by the soldiers. On one hand, men died seemingly for nothing, but all this fighting, it did serve a role in the larger scheme of the Second World War.

and ultimately the allies made it to Berlin and won the war. What’s most telling about this battle in terms of the embarrassment and the way which it was fought is the amount of space that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, gave it in his memoirs. It is a story of the Nazi defeat on the Western Front. He devoted under 70 words to a battle that went on for 5 months and resulted in between 35 and 60,000 casualties.

Supreme Commander Eisenhower has political ambitions. He becomes the 34th President of the United States and lives to the age of 78. General Courtney Hodgeges continues to be held in high regard until he retires from the military in 1949. I think history has diminished his narrative because he he’s he’s not the hero that we’ve come to expect of great American military leaders.

But I don’t think we can put it all on Hodger’s shoulders. Jay Lton Collins continues in the military for another decade and survives to the ripe old age of 91. General Norman Dutch Kota is denied further promotions. He’s eventually pushed out of the military due to failing health. Lieutenant Paul Bosch survives the viciousness of Herkin Forest.

His memoir and other written accounts provides a tenuous connection to this largely forgotten chapter of history. The entire history of the Second World War has many omissions. Herden Forest is one of the most significant ones and it should definitely be more studied and more understood by everyone. For a lot of the men who came out of Herkin, it impacted them for years afterwards where they would talk about the bursting trees or they would talk about the minefields or talk about losing a friend in Herkin.

Why is that important? Why should we learn from this defeat of the US Army? Look at the men who were on the ground. I think it would shed a lot of light on what warfare was like, how destructive it could be, and how when you go into something maybe with not as good a plan as you thought you had, that it could have disastrous consequences.