November Footnote 1: "Hurtgen Forest"

"Entering the Huertgen Forest, thick with dark green fir trees seventy-five to a hundred feet tall, so densely interwoven that they obscure the sky, a man might experience for the first time the stifling embrace of the kind of forests he had heard or read about in old German folk tales. Like Hansel and Gretel, he might be inclined to drop things behind him to mark his path." Charles MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest, 5.

"Behind them and in front of them, surrounding them on all sides, they saw dark rain-saturated forest. It had the feel of some nether region, foul with the offal of war. The broken muddy trails were pock-marked and heavily cratered by shells and mines. The splintered trees added to the sense of ruin. Rotting, sodden garments clung to hideous scraps of green flesh that yet bore an obscene resemblance to the living. tins, helmets, boots, tools, spent cartridges and old mines lay about in the dark and muddied confusion. In it there seemed the breath of despair." R. W. Thompson, The Battle for the Rhineland, 35.

"No one could have known it at the time, but this battalion was destined to fight here for almost a week and to lose most of its men in the process." Charles MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest, 74.

Return to HQ Company: 112th Infantry: November 1944