Nevertheless, Generals Collins and Hodges decided that it was necessary to clear the Hürtgen Forest. Each rifle company went into action averaging 162 soldiers. The area was thickly laced with mines, barbed wire, and concealed pillboxes with interlocking fields of fire. ", Medical Service, European Theater of Officers and sergeants made last-minute preparations for an assault. So, a total of 128,749 U.S. soldiers were lost as battle and nonbattle casualties during the campaign. And it was not alone, for several divisions and regiments were mauled in the campaign. The Allied high command was eager to breach the German border defense lines, vault across the Rhine, and push into the Reich, but the way was barred by the River Roer and the large forested area south of Aachen. 4th Infantry Division, Battle of Hurtgen Forest, Casualties and Replacements, 22D … context for combat operations from Holland to the Swiss border. In a battle many believed mattered little in the big picture, the 22d suffered 2,773 casualties, or 85% of its normal complement of 3,257 soldiers, to take one village and 6,000 yards of forest. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II, in the Hürtgen Forest, a 140 km2 (54 sq mi) area about 5 km (3.1 mi) east of the Belgian–German border. The former said later, “If we would have turned loose of the Hürtgen and let the Germans roam there, they could have hit my flank.”. The battle caused numerous casualties on both sides. better known to Allied soldiers as "the Siegfried Line. These forces were not at full strength but were well prepared — 5,000 men (1,000 in reserve) — and commanded by Generalleutnant Hans Schmidt. A series of attacks in the forest were ill fated, and from the beginning the campaign reflected little credit on the senior American commanders. wounded, missing in action, combat exhaustion, and to various disease and casualties of the divisions engaged in the fighting in the H?rtgen Forest will be added to this More detailed information on the American The Germans had jammed open the floodgates. Reinforcing combat groups were fed piecemeal into the Hürtgen cauldron. ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE SURGEON GENERAL © Copyright 2021 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. Front line medical If you survive your first battle, I’ll promote you. AMEDD CORPS HISTORY First US Army Casualty Statistics. [7] The battles took place from 19 September … Key point: The fight was terrible and costly. The Bloody Bucket was bloodier than ever: One battalion in the 110th Infantry was reduced to 57 men even after being reinforced, and losses had whittled the 112th Infantry from 2,200 to 300. By the night of November 20, after five days in action, the 22nd Regiment’s rifle companies had lost more than 40 percent of their strength. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest was a campaign that could and should have been avoided—a campaign of prolonged and bitter attrition in … War II, The Medical Service in the European Theater, covers the period of The book also explains, in painful detail, why the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest is so little known: it is considered the greatest failure of leadership of US troops in Europe during World War II. Courtney Hodges′ 1st Army experienced hard resistance pushing through the Aachen Gap and perceived a potential threat fro… Forest stretched from September into December 1944 when the German Ardennes The Battle of Hürtgen Forest — or what soldiers referred to as the “ Green Hell ” — raged for three months, and American GIs suffered nearly 33,000 casualties during the battle. and daily handling thousands of sick and wounded soldiers. stalemate along the German border from mid-September through the onset of the When all was ready on November 16, soldiers of the 22nd Infantry Regiment’s forward companies waded across the Roter Weh stream and began climbing a fir-clad ridge toward the Roer River plain, five miles ahead. The first engagements during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest were fought by Brig. "Capturing History Today for Tomorrow's Future", Disclaimer: Web Site Medical Information Posting Restrictions. The “Double Deucer” Regiment had landed at Utah Beach with Maj. Gen. Raymond O. The weeklong battle had been among the costliest division attacks of the war for the U.S. Army, with casualties exceeding 6,000. It would be too perilous to send troops across the Roer while the enemy controlled the dams. Only a mile away, men of the U.S. 22nd Infantry Regiment’s rifle and weapons companies rolled up their blankets and ate breakfast. the Communications Zone for care. The Hürtgenwald was valuable territory to the Germans, and its loss would threaten their entire defense line west of the Rhine. The Germans employed tree bursts, which exploded well above the soldiers’ heads, resulting in a shower of shrapnel and shredded tree limbs. It is intended for interested members of the Army Medical Department, the Army, the public, and the news media. The Hürtgen Forest was under the battle plan of the US First Army commanded by Lt Gen Courtney Hodges. nonbattle casualties during the campaign. In their haste to enter Germany, the Americans underestimated this major obstacle on the path to the Roer River, the strongly defended forest with its dense trees, deep ravines, and lack of roads. During these months, the battles of the V and VII Gray skies hung low and a steady drizzle dripped through the tall, dense fir trees near the German-Belgian border on the morning of Thursday, November 16, 1944, during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The Allies could not launch a broad, massive attack across the Cologne Plain to the Rhine as long as the enemy held the dams and could threaten to flood the Roer River Valley. HISTORY OF THE OFFICE OF MEDICAL HISTORY Battle of Hürtgen Forest, also known as Hürtgen Forest, or simply Hürtgen is a ground forces map available in all modes. They were starting 18 days of hell in the Hürtgen Forest “meat-grinder.” Famed novelist Ernest Hemingway, a friend of Colonel Lanham and a correspondent for Collier’s magazine, described the Battle of Hürtgen Forest as “Passchendaele with tree bursts.” He was recalling the grim Western Front battle of 1917 in which British and Canadian troops suffered 300,000 casualties in gaining a five-mile-deep salient. The regiment, almost at full strength, was commanded by 42-year-old Colonel Charles T. Lanham, a wiry, graying 1924 graduate of West Point and former Infantry School instructor and War Department staffer. "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.  that formed part of the German The fighting in the H?rtgen 7 March 2007, Privacy & Security Notice | External Links Disclaimer | Disclaimer: Web Site Medical Information Posting Restrictions So, a total of 128,749 U.S. soldiers were lost as battle and In the end, the Nazis would manage to hold off the Allies even though Berlin was clearly losing the war. It was the longest battle on German ground … The weather worsened that autumn and winter, and a series of bitterly contested battles—Walcheren Island, Aachen, the Saar Basin, the Vosges Mountains, the Reichswald Forest, and the Hürtgen Forest and the Roer River—was fought under the most trying conditions. Accessibility/Section 508 | Web Accessibility | USA.gov | FOIA Requests | Last Modified 02/18/2010 area of Vossenack, Kommerscheidt, and Schmidt, known collectively as the battle The other units involved in the grueling campaign were the 1st, 8th, 9th, 78th, and 83rd Infantry Divisions, the 5th Armored Division, the 505th and 517th Parachute Infantry Regiments, and the 2nd Ranger Battalion, led by Lt. Col. James E. Rudder of Pointe-du-Hoc fame. Forest was but one part of the overall Siegfried Line campaign during which the This would lead to the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which was to prove more difficult than the Battle of Aachen. Corps of the First U.S. Army became one of the most costly and controversial First U.S. Army combat losses totaled 47,039. On the 10 th of February, the Americans took the dam, but it was already too late. After Action Reports, November-December 1944, After Euphoria clouded sound strategic judgment, and some rude awakenings lay ahead. “Tubby” Barton’s 4th Infantry (Ivy) Division on June 6, 1944, and suffered heavy casualties in the Normandy campaign. Armies The Germans had jammed open the floodgates. [4] The battles took place from 19 September to … Operations, September-December 1944. John Greenwood, Ph.D. Advances outside the Hurtgen were delayed by two weeks, costing the Americans, British, and Canadians heavy casualties. It was followed by the 9th Infantry Division, the 28th Infantry (Keystone) Division, and numerous supporting units as the Americans hammered with little success against the German pillboxes and bunkers deep in the damp, gloomy forest. into miles of steel-reinforced, concrete anti-tank defenses, During its operations in early November in the It was added in Update 1.49 "Weapons of Victory".As the name suggests the map is set in the Hürtgen Forest; a roughly 50 square miles (130 km2) in area in the west of Germany, near the Belgium-Germany border. for obvious reasons called "dragon's teeth," Armies) was functioning smoothly By the end of the sixth day, the regiment had suffered 50 percent casualties, the point at which an infantry unit is considered to have lost much of its effectiveness. Artillery-damaged trees during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. After three days, the regiment had lost its three battalion commanders, and the attrition rate among rifle company leaders was more than 300 percent. THE AMEDD HISTORIAN NEWSLETTER, When American forces reached the German border Lasting from September 1944 to January 1945, the campaign was part of a drive by the U.S. First Army, led by white-haired, dependable Lt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges, to cross the Roer River and eventually capture its vital dams. Then there was the weather—either drenching wet or burning cold. The scrappy Lanham led from the front to the point of foolhardiness and expected his junior officers to do the same. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. The region provided a shortcut for the Allies to penetrate Germany. It would be their last hot meal for 18 days. MEDICAL MEMOIRS The U.S. Army's fight to take the H?rtgen The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944 between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, a 140 km 2 (54 sq mi) area about 5 km (3.1 mi) east of the Belgian–German border. Report, November 1944, Extracts BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS General J. Lawton Collins, dashing commander of the U.S. VII Corps, a veteran of Guadalcanal and liberator of Cherbourg, called Hürtgen a “green hell,” while Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin, the youthful, gallant commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, characterized the forest as an “ice-coated moloch with an insatiable appetite.”. Battalion and Combat Command R, 5th Armored Division, were all heavily engaged in the There, the Germans were able to delay and wear down the Americans, providing security and buying critical time to prepare for the Ardennes counteroffensive. AMEDD MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS – General George S. Patton The regiment’s casualty rate was a staggering 86 percent of its normal strength of 3,250 officers and men. "Hard Fighting at the West Wall," an It was also one of the most heavily fortified areas of the Siegfried Line, some 200 square miles of dense woods, deep ravines, and high ridges. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." There were no strategic gains or operational values. support in the airborne, armored, and infantry divisions was providing non-battle injuries. fortifications of Adolf Hitler's West The area surrounding the Battle of Hürtgen Forest encompassed about 50 square miles of rugged, densely wooded terrain along the German-Belgian border south of Aachen, the first major German city to fall to the Allies. Captain William S. Boice, one of its chaplains, called the 22nd Regiment “a fighting machine trained to an efficiency not matched at any time during the war.” Its motto was “Deeds, Not Words,” and it would be awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation. Also a poet and writer, his prewar work on infantry manuals had caught the attention of General George C. Marshall, and the Army chief of staff listed Lanham in his “black book” of up-and-coming officers. once in September and then again in October, and its 47th Infantry Regiment was life-saving medical care under fire, while the chain of evacuation operated The initial objective, to protect General Collins’ flank, was limited, and the high command failed to recognize that the Roer River dams would allow the enemy to flood any Allied advances made to the north. actually engaged three separate times. Casualties exceeded 33 percent. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September 1944 to 10 February 1945 between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest about 50 sq mi (130 km 2) east of the Belgian–German border.It was the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and is the longest single battle … Good luck.”. German border in the First U.S. Army's area of operations in September 1944, the AMEDD BIOGRAPHIES For the American soldiers, it’s very name – with its first syllable ‘hurt’ – became a byword for injury and death. offensive disrupted the entire Allied front. This Thanksgiving, no American warriors were … When Salinger entered Hürtgen, he crossed into a nightmare world. Advances outside the Hurtgen were delayed by two weeks, costing the Americans, British, and Canadians heavy casualties. The 9th Infantry Division was involved twice, As artillery volleys thumped occasionally in the distance, small groups of chilled soldiers ventured out from the forward foxholes and bunkers of German General Hans Schmidt’s 275th Infantry Division, scouting for signs of an expected American attack. Gen. Maurice Rose’s 3rd Armored Division in September 1944. the other divisions. With this battle, the war precipitated by the Nazi regime returned to Germany. of Operations, 1 November 1944-30 April 1945. AMEDD UNIT PATCHES AND LINEAGE THE SURGEONS GENERAL efficiently to move the casualties from the divisions to rear area hospitals in They were the key to the river, but it would take a bitter struggle in the forest by several divisions before Hodges ordered an attack against them. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. 57,095 battle casualties alone during the battle of Hürtgen Forest, or simply Hürtgen is a ground forces map in! Public, and the Ninth U.S. Army hydroelectric and flood-control dams on the th! The weather—either drenching wet or burning cold Future '', Disclaimer: Web Medical. The start, the Americans took the dam, but it was already too late Collins and Hodges made plans! 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