November 10, 1944 - Hurtgen Forest, Germany In the most ill advised Allied campaign in Europe, the second phase of the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest begins. The American high command were all at fault for this badly planned, poorly executed offensive, from 28th Division Commander Norman Cota (a heretofore outstanding combat commander, who would soon receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic, inspirational leadership on D-Day at Omaha Beach), to Corps Commander Leonard Gerow, Army Commander Courtney Hodges, Army Group Commander Omar Bradley, and, finally, Theater Commander Dwight Eisenhower. All the important elements of tactical intelligence, Enemy, Weather, and Terrain were ignored or misunderstood. The numbers of German troops, artillery, and tanks available to defend the area were grossly underestimated, as was their determination to fight to defend their Homeland. The continual rain and low clouds (which greatly interfered with allied air support) was not considered. The thickly forested terrain with its few narrow trails, deep in mud and difficult for any vehicle to cross, was ignored. Officers with a historical view point compared it to the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness where the Armies of Grant and Lee fought some of the most savage and costly battles of the Civil War in the second growth scrub forests of northern Virginia . Another factor was the poor quality of the replacements sent to veteran front line divisions like the 28th. Due to severe supply shortages, new divisions (with trained Infantrymen) could not be placed on line. Instead, raw, untrained replacements were fed into the units depleted by combat. The results were disastrous. As celebrity war correspondent Ernest Hemingway wrote, it would have been more efficient just to shoot the replacements as they debarked from their trucks, than to send them directly into combat. The result was over 33,000 U.S. casualties (out of 120,000 participants), wrecking the combat power of four veteran divisions, with little to nothing to show for their efforts. The coming Battle of the Bulge would soon overshadow the Hurtgen Campaign, which would become a forgotten footnote in the war, except to the men who fought here.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 14:47:51 +0000