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To: jmacusa

The Whiting book “The Battle of the Hurtgen Forest” is the one you are thinking of.

I absolutely agree with you on what a disaster the Huertgen Forest battles were. General Courtney Hodges should have, in my opinion, been relieved of his command for continuously sending in individual divisions to be ground up in that forest. When the Germans counter-attacked during the Ardennes Offensive, Hodges was so taken aback by forces cutting through his thin line on that part of the front that he took to his bed. It was his chief of staff, a General William Kean who gave out the initial orders to try and stop the flow of German troops.

Another good book which has a section that covers Huertgen and General Hodges failings there is “Patton’s Peers” by John English.


76 posted on 11/09/2013 6:00:50 PM PST by CougarGA7 ("War is an outcome based activity" - Dr. Robert Citino)
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To: CougarGA7

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll get a copy. In the book on the Hurtgen Whiting makes a very prescient point that just as the Army sent infantry into a dense forest at a time of year that was rainy, foggy and cold, and darkness comes at about four in the afternoon, US troops were unable to use their main heavy assets,air cover, artillery and tanks. Something he said the US Army would repeat some twenty years later sending young American infantrymen into the jungles and rice paddies of South Vietnam.


79 posted on 11/09/2013 6:36:42 PM PST by jmacusa (I don't think so, but I doubt it.)
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