The Battle of the Huertgen Forest
B. C. Massman (Maps) New York, N.Y. Modern Literary Editions Publishing Company, 1963. Presumed First Paperback Edition, First Printing. Mass market paperback. 320 pages. This is one of the Great Battle in History series. Cover was partially loosened and has been restrengthened with glue. Chapters include A Forest Out of Old Folk Tale; Stirrings in the German Camp; German Versus American; Prologue in the Siegfried Line; Prologue Continued; The Gloom and the Misery: The 9th Division; Schmidt and the Roer River Dams; Much to Learn in the Huertgen Forest; What to Do about the Huertgen Forest?; The 28th Division at Schmidt; Debacle at Vossenack and Kommerscheidt; To Break the Impasse; Breakthrough or Slugging Match?; The Gloom and the Misery: The 4th Division; The Village of Huertgen; The "Big Red One" in the Forest; "Only a Handful of Old Men Left"; An End to the Gloom, the Misery; The Tragedy of the Huertgen Forest. Also includes A Note on Sources and an Index, as well as maps of The Aachen Region and The Huertgen Forest. From September, 1944, to the middle of November (when the Battle of the Bulge stated a few miles south of the forest), almost one-quarter of the Americans in the VII Corps of the First Army were either killed, wounded, or evacuated with pneumonia or trench foot--a tragedy that could have been averted by the officers in command. Ernest Hemingway (who was there) called the battle "Passchendaele with tree burst." Charles B. MacDonald's account is a testament to the endurance and courage of the men who fought and died there. Charles B. MacDonald (November 23, 1922 – December 4, 1990) was a Deputy Chief Historian for the United States Army. He wrote several of the Army's official histories of WWII. Derived from a Kirkus review: This records one of the most critical, savage and casualty-ridden conflicts of World War II, the allied attempt to break into Germany at the Huertgen Forest in 1944. As such it is an admirable job, assembling facts and figures from a wide area of combat and welding them into an understandable history. The situation that autumn was a grave one- when an American army under Lt. General Hodges confronted the determined Nazi Seventh Army. For weeks the two forces probed, attacked, counterattacked, yet made no appreciable change in the forest battle line. By early November the American 28th Division had suffered nearly 7000 casualties and by November 15th another attempt at breakthrough had failed, though days later like the famous "Big Red One" finally managed to roll the Germans back. With casualties left behind, the Americans drove on into the Fatherland. The conclusion that the fight could have been avoided by capturing some dams has been suggested by earlier writings on this battle... Important as military history. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Huertgen Forest, 28th Division, Siegfried Line, 9th Division, Roer River Dams, Schmidt, Vossenack, Kommerscheidt, 4th Division, Big Red One, Aachen, Lawton Collins, Courtney Hodges, Weisser Weh Creek
[Book #81976]
Price: $15.00