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The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Donald Maurice Brener and Scott Brener.

Since their breakout from Normandy in August 1944, the Allied Armies had liberated France, Belgium, Luxembourg and part of Holland, covering over 450 km in less than a month. They had advanced in hours over the same ground that in the First World War had been fought over for years at cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties. They had been facing a thin line of the stubbornly retreating German Army that was unable to stand and fight against the overwhelming power of the Allied armor and air forces. They had also enjoyed good weather, excellent maps, aerial photography and free intelligence from friendly civilian populations all along the way who hated the "Bosche". Now all that was going to suddenly change as they tried to push their way across the border into the German homeland itself.
In September General Hodges stated that given ten days of good weather the war might well be over. On September 15, General Bradley's aide Maj. Chester Hanson wrote in his diary, "Brad and Patton agree neither would be too surprised if we are on the Rhine in a week. Prepared the general's map for the next phase of operations which extends from Rhine to the city of Berlin. General anxious to slam through to Berlin. Marked a bullseye on Berlin." Intelligence had reported much of H眉rtgen Forest was soldier-free and whatever units of the Wehrmacht might be found in it would be made up of recruits still in training and the "home-guard" of men unfit for to serve in combat duty elsewhere. They thought they Germans no longer had any tanks or artillery that could be used without being spotted and destroyed. They would be proven wrong.
The H眉rtgenwald ("Americanized" to the Huertgen or Hurtgen Forest) is a triangular shaped woods only 50 square miles in area on the German border near the point where Germany meets Belgium and the Netherlands, Ironically, it is nearly the same size as one of the "Happiest Places on Earth", Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL (47 sq. miles). The H眉rtgen had its own nickname: "The Death Factory."
Mostly it was a state-owned tree farm. Fir trees had been planted in rows 8 to 10 feet apart and were now 75 to 100 feet tall. Some of the rows were so close together that the mature trees formed an almost impenetrable wall. Their low hanging branches were interlocked so that it was only possible to walk stooped over and visibility could be limited to only a few feet in any direction. It was also covered with deep gorges, high ridges, streams and rivers. The few clearings, narrow firebreaks and trails were heavily mined, covered by interlocking machine-gun fire and zeroed in on by German artillery. Any concentration of soldiers would bring down a furious barrage of shells and mortars. The German shells were set to exploded up in the treetops showering deadly bursts of shrapnel and tree splinters down onto the helpless troops below.
The H眉rtgen also included two parts of the Westwall, known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line. Originally built from 1938-1939 by 500,000 workers as Germany's largest Public Works program, it was estimated to cost 3.5 billion marks. The Westwall was a hardened defensive system on Germany's western border averaging 4 km miles deep and stretching the whole 640 km of Germany's western borders with France, Luxembourg and Belgium. A German version of France's Maginot line, it started with the concrete "dragon's teeth" anti-tank barrier in a gray line snaking north from Switzerland and was fortified with 14,000 bunkers and pillboxes (over 22 per kilometer) These were put in clusters to provide covering fire for each other. They were built half underground and made of eight to ten feet of reinforced concrete. It was abandoned as unnecessary after Hitler's "blitzkrieg" flashed through the "impenetrable" Ardennes forest and around France's Maginot Line on 10 May 1940. Then in 1944 the Germans frantically refortified the Westwall as the German Army retreated eastward after the Allies broke out of Normandy. They put out rolls of barbed-wire, two rolls high in some places, booby-trapped in others. Machine guns and 37 mm cannon were put in the bunkers.
They also put in place thousands of landmines: Teller anti-tank mines, S-mines ("bouncing betties") and the infamous "Sh眉meinen" (powerful enough to remove a man's foot but no bigger than an ointment box and made of wood or glass to avoid mine detectors). There were even anti-lifting mines designed to catch anyone trying to remove mines. All anti-personnel mines are designed to injure and not kill. That way more men are required to help retrieve and aid the wounded leaving even fewer to fight. The German "sappers" were experts at creating "booby-traps". Trees were cut down and booby-trapped with mines. Shell craters were mined to catch anyone trying to take cover during an artillery barrage. Special deep mines were used that allowed the first tank to drive over without setting it off, then it would catch the next tank. One very large mine field named the "Wilde Sau" ("wild pig") was located in the woods north of Wittscheidt.
Aerial photos showed nothing but trees. Maps were nearly useless. Units became disoriented and disorganized almost immediately upon entering the woods. Maneuver and reconnaissance were just about impossible. Support both from artillery and the air was next to impossible since targets could not be spotted. American tanks could barely move on the trails and were easy targets for the Germans who knew where to hit the clearings and trails. If they did reach battle the American tanks and their cannon were no match at all for the German tanks' armor and firepower. It became a terrible battle of men against machine gun nests, mine fields, artillery barrages, tanks and the freezing weather. The burden fell to the infantry to clear the forest using only their M-1 rifles and hand grenades. They did their job but it came at a horrible price. The Germans succeeded too. They held up the advance of the Allies long enough to launch Hitler's surprise attack in the Ardennes on 26 December, the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge.
Over a period of ninety days, nine U.S. divisions were chewed up and spit out as the Allied High Command tried to push their way through the H眉rtgen with one failed frontal attack after another. The cost to the attacking U.S. First Army was put at 33,000 casualties (24,000 dead & wounded in combat plus another 9,000 victims of trench foot, disease or combat exhaustion). It compares with the casualties suffered by U.S. Marine Corps during their 36-day assault on the island of Iwo Jima, about 26,000.
J.F.K. once said, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan." So it was with this battle. No one was ever held accountable for the costly mistakes that were made here. This tragic battle that everyone wanted so badly to forget was quickly overshadowed by the victory at the Battle of the Bulge.
The American General Staff has been largely criticized by historians for this battle. This includes Lt. General Omar N. Bradley, Commander of the U.S. 12th Army Group, Lt. General Courtney H. Hodges, Commander of the U.S. First Army, Major General Leonard Gerow, Commanding Officer V Corps and Major General J. Lawton Collins, Commanding Officer VII Corps and , as well as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower himself. Their insistence that the forest be taken by a direct assault even after it proved impossible to provide their troops with artillery, armor or air support proved to have a very high price tag. Also Lt. General John C.H. Lee, head quartermaster for the entire ETO and safely encamped in his Paris hotel, failed to provide the front line soldiers with blankets, winter clothing, overshoes or dry socks. General Lee bears direct responsibility for the nine thousand casualties caused by trenchfoot during this battle.
In just the 18 days between 28 November and 16 December 1944, the 3rd Battalion of the 28th Regiment (Buck's unit) lost over 380 officers and men as casualties (43% of their normal strength of 871). But they took 139 prisoners and it was estimated over 700 Germans were killed and more than that were wounded. For their outstanding work in the H眉rtgen Forest the 3rd Battalion received a Presidential citation and are entitled to wear the Distinguished Unit Badge.

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