Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

Free Sample Chapters 289
became the cause of deep-seated anxiety among those of us who had
followed the largely unsuccessful pre-Bulge efforts by up to 120,000
Americans to secure this vital, densely wooded, frontier region.
Unfortunately for the many Americans who had tried and failed and the
many more of us who would try again, the capture of the Hurtgen forest
was absolutely essential to the contemplated broad-front Allied attack
across the Cologne plain to the Rhine River, the last important natural
barrier keeping us from Germany’s western heartland. The essential
features within the forest region were two massive hydroelectric dams,
the Urftallsperre and the Schwammenauel, that controlled the water level
of the north-flowing Roer River. If the Allies could not capture the dams
intact, the Germans could flood the Roer valley and deny us the broadfront
access to the Rhine that appeared essential to our strategic concept.
The previous fighting in the Hurtgen had been about the grim-mest
of the war in Western Europe. Not only had the Germans made a special
effort to plant mines and booby traps—they knew how important the
region was to us—they took special pleasure in firing their artillery into
the densely packed treetops in order to create exceptionally deadly sprays
of shrapnel and wood splinters against which infantrymen advancing in
the open could in no way defend themselves. Together with many
extremely complex, exten-sive, continuous, interlocking, and hardened
defensive sectors on the ground, these features had resulted in over nine
thousand casu-alties prior to the Bulge.
We were double annoyed with the news of our commitment to the
renewed Hurtgen drive because we felt we had narrowly evaded a
December commitment due to the onset of the German Ardennes
Offensive. I had already traveled through the American-held Hurtgen
region in the days immediately prior to the German offensive to review
the manner in which the 291st was to be employed in the effort to capture
the Roer dams. I had frankly hoped in the weeks after the Bulge that the
higher headquarters responsible for reduc-ing the Hurtgen defenses had
forgotten about the 291st’s prospec-tive commitment. As it turned out,
my wishes came to nothing.
To get set for the new Hurtgen drive, the entire battalion caravaned
from Meyerode to Walheim, a German town east of the Siegfried Line