Posted on 11/25/2021 7:52:50 AM PST by Kartographer
Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23, 1944: more dreary freezing rain saturated the Hurtgen forest. Rhineland rivers overflowed their banks, and U.S. Army vehicles skidded on muddy roads. War-weary 26th Regiment infantrymen — many of whom had been in near-constant combat since the Normandy landing in June — spent this soggy day crouched in their foxholes, as always, on alert.
Also on this day, several combat patrols captured exhausted German soldiers willing to be taken prisoner and shipped out to the comfort and protection of one of 511 POW camps in America. The prisoners were brought to the company command post, where they were temporarily put to work as stretcher bearers hauling numerous American dead and wounded to evacuation vehicles.
Before those on patrol returned to their foxholes, they were instructed to spread the word that every GI on the line would receive a hot turkey dinner. Most of the GI’s didn’t even realize it was Thanksgiving.
Hoping to boost sagging morale, Mess Officer Howard Wilcox oversaw the roasting of hundreds of turkeys with all the trimmings. Frightened cooks and bakers unaccustomed to perilous front-line duty delivered them to every foxhole.
(Excerpt) Read more at thepilot.com ...
He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and ended the war in occupying Austria.
77 years now...
Among our Bravest generation. God bless them
“German soldiers willing to be taken prisoner and shipped out to the comfort and protection of one of 511 POW camps in America”
I recall watching an interview with a German soldier who got sent to a POW camp in Texas and he knew the Allies and the Americans were going to win the war when he as a POW ate better than he did before he was captured or surrendered.
People should have been relieved of their command over this fight.
Amen.
Was expecting a ‘tale’ from “Deep in the Hurtgen Forest” poster ...
Bttt.
5.56mm
Tell us of your exploits, that day.....
To everyone else: This is someone who actually was THERE, in the Hurtgen Forest, during that troubled Thanksgiving Day.
Pay your tributes to this hero!
Watch “When Trumpets Fade”. Thankfully America is no longer worth such sacrifice. Twisted irony.
They were fighting in a forest, and in West Germany, the skies in late November are overcast more often than not (I have lived there), so close air support might not have been all that effective.
My father, John W. Edwards, was there.
He was rotated in to the 26th as a replacement, arriving in France in August, just in time to join in marching under the Arc de Triomphe after the liberation of Paris.
He fought in the Hurtgen Forest, until they were rotated to the Ardennes for “rest.” He led a few of the patrols that brought back intelligence that the Germans were massing for an attack—intelligence that was ignored.
His unit was entirely overrun at the start of the battle of the Bulge. He was captured and force-marched to a prisoner of war camp in central Germany where he spent the next 5 or so months (and lost half his body weight).
He had two kinds of war stories: those he would tell while sober, and those he would tell only if he had had a few. For the rest of his life, if there were loud noises at night, he would wake up thinking he was being shelled.
He passed away in 2004 at the ripe old age of 84.
Look! A thread dedicated to our old friend, “Deep In The Hurtgen Forest”! Let us remember this hero!
Anyone remember DITHF?
The Battle of the Bulge commenced about 25 days after the Thanksgiving, November 1944..I hope that they had a good one before the big show began.
Laz does!
Laz, I recall that dude. He was freaking hysterical.
Every time he posted, FReepers would converge and destroy him, rather like a cluster of white blood cells attacking a virus.
DITHF.
As the article points out, however, there were options other than simply staying there.
In his book "A Bright Shining Lie", Neil Sheehan made reference to several battles during WWII that were completely unnecessary; he cited Peleliu, Tarawa, and Cape Gloucester. The intelligence about the sites had been incorrect and the errors were not discovered until the battles had commenced or after their completion. Interestingly, he wrote, "But in the end, the victory redeemed them all." (In other words, as long as we won the war, we would simply justify the loss of American lives as being somehow necessary for the greater cause of the American victory at the end.)
I've read several articles about the Hurtgen Forest fight; I know that there are tours in Germany where one can see the battlefield (and pull shrapnel from the trees). But to Neil Sheehan's list, I would add the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest.
Me too.
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