[Chainmail]

Makes you wonder why our commanders back then thought that that place, that time was important enough to push unsupported and inexperienced troops into battle. As an officer, I was always trained to push until you find the hard center and then work around the edges to find soft points or gaps to get around behind them.

Bad weather or not, artillery is what you use against strongpoints - not bodies.

[jmacusa]

The somewhat vague objective to the Hurtgen forest campaign was to seize a series of hydro-elecrtic plants and dams in the Ruhr Valley ostensibly to cut off power to German munitions plants. So in mid October 1944, after having captured the city of Aachen, the Army's VI Corps made a right flank turn into a fifty by fifty mile dark and gloomy forest at a time of the year, in the words of German General Walter Model, ''It doesn't get light until seven in the morning and it gets dark at three in the afternoon.'' The Germans themselves couldn't understand why in the world the American Army choose to do this but they were happy to oblige by killing thousands of American soldier. The American High Command should have been court-martialed. The Hurtgen wasn't combat-- it was murder.