Some of the deadliest things in the forest, I have read, were the shrapnel-like shards of wood that rained down from artillery rounds going off in treetops.
That was only one of the horrors. The Germans had planted anti-personal mines, which for some strange reason American GI’s called ‘’de-ball lockers’’. These were mines that acted on a spring mechanism and exploded at waist height(and groin height, hence the odd nick name I guess). The Hurtgen was a horrible place. The Germans were dug in , had everything pre-sited. Imagine a dark wet forest, an unseen enemy who opens fire with machines guns and mortars. Men hit the ground only to be hit with shrapnel. Flatten up against a tree and machine gun fire hits you at waist height and metal and wood shrapnel rains down on you from above. Causalities were horrendous. The weather was awful. Cold, wet, scant daylight and long hours of darkness. Some men, many of them simply broke down. Others went mad.