Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 156 - Battle of Hurtgen Forest Part 2: Task Force Dick Ripple

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

The US keeps feeding soldiers into the death forest for no reason. Eventually win. support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast, your premier podcast for talking about Americans dying in a frozen forest in Germany. So keep your pants on. I'm Joe and with me today is my co-host, Nick. A sober Nick. Not hungover Nick, not spitting into a bottle. Is it a bottle? It sounds like a bottle. Today it's a sparkling ice orange mango bottle.

It's bad that we've been recording for so long. I'm trying to figure out what containment vessel you're spitting tobacco into. Back in the studio, we used to sit like face to face. It was whatever beer bottle is laying there. There's always a few. Yeah. There's a shit ton.

I currently have several cans of, uh, empty crush from 10 barrels sitting around me so i don't i don't dip anymore um oh god i haven't had crushing so long actually i've never dipped as long as we've been doing the show i quit like 10 years ago texas has the worst beer selection i don't know like they have like specialty stores and stuff hawaii's beer selection is actually pretty bad really yeah just because like we have uh on island brewers and stuff who are good beer selection is actually pretty bad. Really? Yeah, just because we have on-island brewers and stuff who are good.

Now, people from Hawaii who are listening to this, you have to understand I came from the Pacific Northwest. Everything is second tier to that. Amazing. The fact is a lot of those micro brews simply don't make it here because unless you're bought by a large corporation or distribution network, you simply can't afford it.

If I could find some of that shit that you gave me, like the apple pie. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, that was so fucking good. I mean, there's like Kona breweries here. They're good. They're fine. But it's certainly a step down from what I'm used to. Now, you know who actually, you you know who did have beer uh is the

soldiers fighting in the hurtkin forest because we're in part two i forgot that the last episode ended with a sergeant assaulting an objective and getting drunk i didn't it was awesome we were recording this one day apart uh that doesn't speak good things for my brain. Now, when we left you last week, the US Army decided to ignore all sense and tactics and throw themselves into the battle of the Hurtgen Forest, which had gone shockingly well for them as they quickly advanced

six miles in and took the town all without the Germans knowing what the fuck was going on. Yeah, you get alcohol, free watches, fucking robbing, looting like it's like the the the pyramid of a soldier's uh like you know how we have like the nutritional pyramid or whatever it's called oh yeah it that is um that's like the the soldiers except it's like 90 alcohol and the top part of just looted goods

uh now how many of those looted goods made it out alive not many unfortunately um i don't think um i'm gonna say uh i would not like to be anybody who got a sick i don't know german rolex i don't know the fuck makes german like 10 of them yeah just all it was elbows i got johnson's arm. It's just filled with Rolexes. That's how I know it's Johnson. I'll never forget you and how much you loved stolen watches. How much do you love time zones? Now, outside of the calm, noogity center

of the village of Shevenhut, whose name I am assuredly pronouncing incorrectly. The rest of the army was about to be thrown into one of the worst meat grinders in all of the Western Front of World War II. About nine miles south of Schevenhut,

the 39th Regiment launched an attack against the town of Lammersdorf, which was just on the edge of the forest. Unlike before, the Germans were not caught by surprise, and were ready and waiting to defend against their new American visitors.

The town was overlooked by a hill, which the Germans had dug into with concrete and log bunkers. It's not the type of bunkers I want to see. You'd never want to be attacking uphill, and you certainly never want to be attacking uphill in the middle of a forest at a fortified enemy position yeah they have the high ground with no air support no armor support either remember because like we talked about last

episode the tanks they're there they're just slow as fuck um so from these positions the germans could comfortably pour fire onto the unprotected American infantry. At this point, and at least normally by this point of the war, American forces would simply hunker down and wait for artillery and armor support, also air support, only moving forward when superiority was achieved, which was generally quite easy for the Americans to do by 1944. American infantry forces were not used to what amounted to a fist fight with other infantry forces if they could help it. It went against all doctrine

and command, and only a total fucking idiot would put them into this situation. I would fucking hate... If I get punched in the nose, I'm done for. That shit hurts. I don't like it. You seen my nose? I don't take shots there well. I take a lot of them, mind you, but I don't take shots there well. I've had it fractured. It's awful fucking sucks it never stops hurting like i've been i've had my nose

broken a few times you know what it sucks the same amount every time yeah i thought it was once oh several times uh actually you know what actually it looks like several two in my defense in the defense of the small person who broke my nose while playing Frisbee golf, or not Frisbee golf, Frisbee football. What was it? When they broke it the last time, they actually made it look much better. Oh, nice. Because it was broken very far to the left.

And when their head impacted my face, it was to the right. So, yeah. Shout out to that person, whose name i can't remember like a fucking 19th century fix to it yeah you fixed a face broken by violence with more violence yeah i will not attempt to fix it any further however um now like i said this fighting infantry with nothing but infantry was a bad idea and it was against all command and doctrine at the time. But in this situation, they found themselves in because they were led by just that specific

fucking idiot that would do it. So, stripped of any kind of support, the Americans would have to attempt to outmaneuver the German emplacements, you know, with like a flanking maneuver or whatever, which remember, flanking's for pussies, according to General Hodges. Clearly, obviously. And Hodges was smiling down on them that day

because flanking was impossible um for example normally like a weapon squad uh or you know a masked rifleman a group of riflemen would put down as much suppressing fire as they could onto these bunkers while another element would try to maneuver around it's like the most basic infantry maneuver you can imagine right right uh impossible so like you couldn't flank the hill was steep did they not have guns the one thing they did have was guns okay uh the hill was very very steep and the sheer number and density of trees slowed down any possible maneuvers and firing positions. Soldiers also discovered that when they finally did get close enough to the bunkers, they simply could not blow them up.

Their satchel charges popped uselessly against the steel and earth-reinforced concrete or logs. They were simply not powerful enough. Could you imagine how much of a downer that is? You may get all the way up there just to realize, oh, fuck, we're not high enough of a level for this boss fight. You've got to go back out to the woods and grind a bit. Get your infantry levels up and go back in. Fight some trash mobs.

Your squad sucks. You've got to re-rule this infantry squad's dog shit. It's like Company of Heroes. Every movie and book and piece of popular media shows, like, one person's futile last charge to get the satchel charged through the, like, or against the bunker only to find out that it's, like... Yeah, like Nicolas Cage in Windtalkers. It's, like, nothing. Like, oh, fuck. Oh, well, hopefully he's dead so he doesn't realize that he got wounded for nothing.

Maybe the concussion fucked him. So they decided, fuck it, they're going to call in artillery. Now, this is a problem. Their ability to call in artillery was very hampered. And the Germans had pre-bracketed every single kill zone that they had prepared with their own artillery. uh with their own artillery i remember like they all of they had pruned away all the trees uh in very specific areas so they could attack while the attackers were still looking upwards directly into a dense forest uh you know uh we would call these target reference points now probably i wasn't an artilleryman i don't know um and tanks you'd have trps uh in a

defensible position so like if you know you and an enemy went into an area you knew where it was going rather than like over there by the tree or whatever, you'd have TRP one, TRP two. That's an awful call out. Yeah. In a forest. Exactly.

Yeah. And the Germans had all of these advances pre-bracketed so they could just immediately call up their artillery. The artillery knew exactly where to attack and the Americans are getting turned into fucking bone shards. I would hate to get that call. They're outside!

Oh, okay. They're everywhere. And so the problem was that the US was so busy getting the shit shelled out of them, they couldn't call an artillery. Because they're too busy running away and trying to find cover. The battle at Lammersdorf turned into a stalemate within hours. The Americans couldn't evict the Germans and the Americans are simply too stupid and did not have orders to retreat. And also,

the Germans lacked the manpower for a proper counterattack. Because remember, they're meant to be defending. They're not going to leap out of their prepared defenses and fight this group that outnumbers them so they just sat there all day and waited for another frontal assault to come to try to kick them out of their positions which is exactly what happened a german officer said quote the enemy attacked five or six times the regularity was amazing the more so each time and was repulsed mostly with great losses for the latter reason the enemy requested a short one-day arm assist to recover the wounded and bury the dead this was granted nevertheless the attack was repeated the following day at the same time the same time same place see you tomorrow buddy that's some world war one shit like oh it's like 8 a.m here they

come to raid the trench or whatever like incredibly stupid decision making processes all around except the germans who just had to sit there and shoot at them as they came up to the fucking hill maybe fucking tbi fuck their fucking decision making now here is my theory on how badly this went and why now there's i was never an officer so like i'm not sure of how this exactly works i was a very low ranking nco for a short amount of time um job facebook yeah yeah um but here's my theory in leadership which is not necessarily history uh we've talked about leaders like this before like Cadorna, who just feed people into the battlefield equivalent of

a wood chipper without a care in the world. Classic. And for all of its flaws, and there's many flaws, this doesn't generally happen in American military history. Rarely do we catch ourselves in a Gallipoli or an Isanzo River.

Our quagmires are entire wars, not single battles. Yes. But I'll repeat myself a hundred goddamn times about this. This entire command structure and the ability to lead soldiers and how

they're leading these soldiers and their failure to do so falls squarely at Courtney Hodges. Someone out there probably disagrees. That's fine. I don't care. leading these soldiers and their failure to do so falls squarely at courtly courtney hodges um someone out there probably disagrees that's fine i don't care um the reason for this goes back to a joke that he that uh has made rounds on the internet for as long as the internet has been a thing this is not a real document and it's apocryphal at best um but i'll read it anyway because it actually makes very good sense. So a Nazi officer says,

quote, the reason the American military does so well is because war is chaos and the American military practices chaos on a daily basis. A Soviet officer says, quote, one of the serious problems with planning against American doctrine is that the Americans don't read their own manuals and feel no

need to follow their doctrine. And the American says, quote, if we don't know what we're doing, the enemy can't anticipate our future actions. Now, that sounds really good. Very accurate. And while this is obviously a joke, within that joke, kind of, is American military doctrine. And by that, I mean, we generally have a very loose idea of doctrine and leave how to accomplish those goals to junior leaders and other junior leaders on the ground, empowering much lower ranking people to make decisive choices in the heat of the moment. And as long as they accomplish that mission, generally, nobody gives a fuck on how they do it. It's like small unit leadership, right? We don't have a very top-heavy military. I've seen a little bit of that when I was in Japan. Japan is very much guilty of that, yes.

And they're not alone. It was not up to this scale. We were moving chairs. And it required three officers in order to do it. It took them forever just for us to move shit to the next building to figure out what was going on. Almost a whole day. Obviously, there is detrimental effects to this sometimes where junior leaders have much more power in the US military than they would in probably any other outside of some NATO countries

follow the same command structure whatever not going to get into it too much but what happened is all of that is kind of how the u.s won the western front right um or helped win the western front hodges crushed all of that um remember he if you question him in any way um you were fired you're out the fucking door and that kind of attitude had a trickle-down effect because the only kind of trickle-down that ever works is bad um you know that command climate that he built meant that if anybody acted independent of of hodge thought uh you're fucking done man your career's ruined probably yeah you get demoted i totally remember our guy that wanted some time off

for his kid to die yeah exactly like even the most minute shit if it required you to do something that he did not want you to do you're fucking done man and remember he thought the simple idea of flanking or not attacking every enemy that you see if it didn't have

a purpose was pussy shit for lack of a better term. So, like, he killed the whole... Like, he took American doctrine and throttled it back into World War I in Hurricane Forest. You know what was a great war? The last one we had. The one that we didn't do a whole lot in,

but also died by the tens of thousands within a year. So, yeah, like, this idea that like no we have to continually frontally assault this dug in german position every single day at the exact same time like that has to be fucking hodges is doing now say anybody was like hey guys i have like that meme where they're all like at the boardroom or that one guy has the idea and immediately gets thrown out the window like hey maybe we shouldn't throw our boys against a cliff face full of machine guns and nazis every day maybe like let's figure out a way to work around it maybe like attack in a different direction out they're defending they can't move they have fucking bunkers they're stuck there like you know the ball is literally in our court let's do something with this uh you'd immediately get fucking done you're fired sent off the line

yeah immediately yeeted out the window uh not to mention remember we talked about how hodges was a micromanager down to a fucking platoon so like there's no way that these divisional commanders were going to skirt around his plan of just ramming your head against the wall until something changed and him not know about it. Like, oh, how'd you achieve the objective? Oh, we flagged. Pack your shit. Get the fuck out. So one divisional commander actually had a pretty good idea on what happened here and how the command

climate he created poisoned an entire army. Because remember, he's an army commander. Right. So he said that he created a command climate of jumpy, scared yes-men who couldn't and wouldn't say his plan was definitely not working.

So instead of trying anything else, the regiment stayed there throwing themselves against a german position uphill for two weeks oh and even then the battle ended because the germans simply withdrew when their ammunition ran low and retreated to another supported fortified position you know that whole defense in depth thing, which Hodge should have known about because that was in world war one. And the Germans did just that to incredibly like horrible outcomes for the amount of dead and wounded. If this guy gets the after action report and he's just like,

yep, we won. Good one boys. Did we defeat the enemy? Uh, sure. They're not there anymore. It's exactly like Napoleon when he invaded Russia.

We took the field. Yeah, but the field was full of our corpses. We did it. The way I like it. Yeah. And unfortunately, the 39th Regiment would not be the only ones finding themselves being torn apart. the 39th regiment would not be the only ones finding themselves being torn apart a few miles away the 60th regiment

was sent to advance into the town of Simeroth again another name I apologize to the fine villagers of the Hurtgen forest for mispronouncing your town names and almost immediately upon advancing everything went to shit

Simeroth was defended by another ridge. Again, because the Germans knew how to defend. Like, find a high place to shoot from. They have to attack up here, and we can continue to shoot at them. It's not so much that the Germans were good at defending as literally anyone defending would have done this, and you should have thought about them doing this. This is what anyone would have done so upon attacking this fortified ridge the soldiers found something even worse that those

the last attacking unit did not have to worry about the radios didn't work oh that sucks those radios are awful i will say that those radios are awful. I will say that. Those radios are terrible. Yeah, I mean, I assume because like our radios today kind of fucking suck, right? Like military radios throughout history kind of blow. Like we have multi-million dollar satellite linked fucking encrypted radio sets now that cannot speak from one valley in afghanistan to another but if i pick up my cell phone it works perfectly fine good guys go how do i fill yeah can anybody fill you have to use the uh i know we used to use the ancd i know it's something newer now but like does anybody

know how to use this thing oh whatever fuck it we're leaving oh that fucking game boy thing that hooks up to it yeah oh yeah and, yeah. And we're talking about. Yeah. And I think I used it my last tour. And honestly, I didn't really know what I was doing. There's like 18 buttons on the fucking thing. They taught me how to use two. Now, obviously, military radio is, again, a crapshoot.

Roll the dice. But the dense tree growth made their shitty old timey radios even worse. Now, this is bad, obviously. You can't communicate. But it's actually worse than you think. So think of this at a small unit level. Normally, in a good situation, you call back to command. You tell them what's going on using your radio.

And tell them how your attack is going. Which, in my opinion, is actually not the most important thing a radio is good for. A radio is good for calling in support or organizing other units around you to organize an attack, right? You know, for inter-unit communication. Sounds good.

You know, say if you happen to be attacking up a fucking ridgeline. So, at this point, units attempted to disregard the radios because they're finding out that they don't work. And then going back to the old way of organizing over long distance, which is hand and arm signals, something that I don't know is taught anymore.

I know I learned it in 2005, but like I'm old. Um, now here comes problem. Number two, the trees again, they're so fucking thick that remember visibility is only limited to just a few feet

so as soon as platoons spread out to not make themselves such an easy target or to try to maneuver on this ridge line company commanders and all their subordinate commanders lost the ability to control their units because you couldn't even fucking see each other doing hand and arm signals

despite being like five feet away from one another. This fucking blows. Hello and welcome to Die Murder Forest. Yeah. Thankfully, a group of soldiers finally found a trail that they could

follow, which was away from the trees and could lead up to the ridgeline. And then they also found out to be so heavily mined they couldn't escape it yeah that sounds awful too like oh look the one trail this couldn't possibly be bad it's one of those things that you you see like this is too good to be true we should probably stay off the fucking road right right i mean you're pretty much i remember always being told like stay off the fucking hard ball roads you're an easy target also there's probably landmines on it and they always they

immediately started getting blown up uh and then the germans started firing what is people probably remember the most out of all of the um like letters and stuff that I read when it came to Veterans of the Hurricane Force. That is air-bursting artillery. So the artillery would blow up in midair, shattering trees into thousands of tiny splinters and then firing those splinters into the infantry. It turned the entire woods into a frag grenade. That's not a good time.

It's real, real bad. After reinforcements were slowed down so badly by the terrain that a distance that would normally only take a few hours or maybe a day instead took the better part of a week. Holy fuck. In order for tanks to advance through the forest,

soldiers had to manually chop down trees in front of them to make a path, which immediately opened them up for snipers and machine gun bullets. Because they're like, hey, look, they're clearing a path for the tanks. We should shoot them. Fucking losers. The German bunkers on this ridgeline were so heavily reinforced that when the Americans finally did get a chance to call in artillery,

didn't do shit to it. 155 millimeter artillery, you know generally it is not a um what's the way i've heard this explained it's not an a letter address specifically to you it's to a to whom it may concern type situation uh we're just like it you know it lands amongst the enemy and causes chaos, unless the artillery got a direct hit on a bunker, it did not damage or blow them up in any way. Which, if you've ever called an artillery, even in a simulator, getting a direct hit is fucking insanely hard to do.

Also, it's not skill as much as 100% luck. Because remember, these these guys radios really don't work so like walking in artillery again not even sure that's a thing they did all the time back then rather than just sending coordinates but like you have to like be very very good at being a forward

observer and also very very lucky in order to drop an artillery round directly onto a bunker that is you know maybe three people big. Right. Yeah, this doesn't sound so good. No, I do not like the idea of being here. I'm still not understanding

why they pull out. But then again, I do understand because the guy's kind of a dick. Yeah, he's not a good general there. Some people said that after it took like a dozen attempts of calling in artillery to actually land direct hits on these bunkers now unlike before the germans were not willing to pull back and you know to other defensible positions they actually sent reinforcements

forward to hold the positions and the americans weren't really sure why um like they're like I don't understand why do they continue to defend this place we clearly have them beating well like one commander even said they were so stupid they didn't know they were defeated and like honestly at this point I think this is like a Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man situation like you're both just savaging each other

in the fucking forest now it wasn't these guys are idiots it was now October. And from the 6th to the 16th, from the time between the 6th and the 16th, the 9th Division had gained a whopping 3,000 yards of forest. You want to guess how many people that cost them? 7,000.

I don't fucking know. 4,500 men killed, wounded, or missing. Jesus Christ. I was joking about going higher than 1,000. If you quickly do the math in your head, you'll understand how insane the sentence is. Hodges was comfortable paying more than one man per yard gained because flanking was some wuss-ass shit.

Those forests had to be taken. Jesus Christ. Yes. It's just like so pantily nuts. Like, this is like Kedona shit or, you know, Saddam shit during the Iran-Iraq war. Absolutely. But those Courtney Hodges, he's American general,

retired. At least he's in a hotel. Yeah, he's at the spa-spa still. Someone said that at most he's in a hotel yeah he's he's at the spa spa still uh someone said that like at most he visited like a like a rear command position he never went even remotely close to the front why would i do that i have uh my government stipend of gin waiting for me well my excuse is calling now in some areas of the forest, Americans had broke through. I bet by breakthrough,

I don't mean it in the traditional sense of some victorious event where like, ha ha, we finally have them, boys. But instead, some American units had simply made it through the horrible line of bunkers, kind of tripped over their own dick, and the Germans didn't notice them. Really?

In one case, they got within three hours of the town of schmidt uh which the germans assumed was the american target because that was their entire center of operations in the area and where some dam controls happened to be because remember uh the the germans assume that they're coming for the the rurer dams and the the Americans are several months away from figuring out that those are important because it's only October that they don't, they don't figure out those are strategically important until December. Meant to do it. Yep.

The Germans assume the Americans are making a break for the dam controls. And in reality, they weren't, and they didn't give a shit. Army Intel had picked up a german plan once upon a time that threatened they could flood the forest and wreck everything below them however another intel report said it wouldn't cause a biblical flood like people were afraid but instead localized flooding that would take a couple days or a week to dissipate nothing that you really

have to worry about something they don't have have to construct an arc for? No. It wouldn't even hurt their advance. I mean, we're already invading the Ruhr Valley. Let's put a kibosh on it for a week. It's fine. All right. Corps of Engineers General Simpson told General Hodges that he should probably flank towards Schmidt to capture the dams.

But Hodges again refused to budge. He told Simpson that the dam reservoirs were half empty which was either a straight up lie or a willful misreading of the intel that said that they're rapidly refilling at a rate that would make them full within a few weeks

so he this guy's awesome yeah he he literally went with the glass half empty version of that like no it's fine it's still empty like yes but it's rapidly refilled. but it's not just flies out of his mouth. Yeah. That's what it seems like. Now at,

at the current course of the battle, that meant they would be very full, uh, before the Americans captured the area, if they ever did. Cause at this rate, remember 3000 yards. Um,

so, you know, it's a bit of a, not looking too good. Now, after the battle of the hurricane forest the general omar bradley just lied um about all of the plans and purpose of the battle saying that the entire point of the renewed october pushes into the forest

mostly the botched attack on that ridge line was to capture the dams it wouldn't be another month until uh hodges finally changed his plan to attempt to create a force specifically to capture the dam. A plan that Bradley would not approve until December. So, Omar Bradley is lying.

Cool. So people are okay with Hodges. I'm still just... He's not fired. He's absolutely... That's what I'm saying. People are just okay with this. That's fine. Yes, we understand that the tree of an entire forest of liberty must sometimes be

soaked and watered with the blood of patriots. And by patriots, I mean that entire regiment of infantry. That tree blew up. All of those trees exploded and now all of our men are dead. So even when Hodges did finally submit his plan to bradley to attack schmidt specifically it was not the flanking attack uh around it that the engineers uh the army corps of engineers general recommended uh it was again a massive frontal assault that's's what I would do.

By mid-October, the 9th Division was officially combat ineffective after losing thousands of people with the reward of less than two miles of absolutely devastated and useless force of no tactical importance. The 9th was then replaced by the 28th Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard.

Known as the Keystone, or i think they're also like the bloody bucket or whatever is that the red yeah that's the red one right yep i know what you're talking about now the i know a lot of people are probably curious about the national guard being involved in world war ii they were heavily involved in world war ii oh yeah most people don't understand that i mean also like also, every time I deployed, my replacement unit was a National Guard unit. So they're getting fucked up in dumb battles just like we are. They just have to leave their day job to do it.

I don't want to be associated with a unit known as the bloody bucket. Yeah, like whose blood is the bucket full of? Yeah. Good news. It's yours. Yeah. full of good news. It's yours.

Yeah. Now, the Pennsylvania National Guard unit had been fighting for months in other places. And while this normally means they would be combat hardened, like veterans, it actually didn't. The 28th had taken very heavy casualties. And while they

were at strength, that strength newly came from a bunch of freshly arrived replacements who were trained just fine but had no experience doing much of anything having something over here yeah like if you're in a unit where nobody actually remembers each other's names there's a problem oh yeah everybody who survived the last offensive is now a sergeant oh yeah everybody who survived the last offensive is now a sergeant now at not

having learned their lesson the 28th 5th Corps was reinforced with tanks from the 707th Tank Battalion a unit that would go down in history for being almost entirely destroyed during the Battle of the Bulge a different topic for a different series I thought that was going good like oh they're getting tanks that's good

well they try. For now, the 707 and the 28th would Voltron together and figure out how to overcome the German defenses that repulsed everybody else. Unfortunately, neither the tankers nor the grunts really knew how to work together.

Tank Commander Lieutenant Raymond Fleeg commented, quote, You never know we were in the same army we were married up with the infantry on the run there's no coordination or communication of the routes of attack whatsoever cool and this might

like be weird for some people but like I can speak for like the 21st century tank school where like we're not trained at all to operate with infantry like that's something you're just expected to learn on the fly or maybe training later on i assume tank school in 1944 was much more bare bones than that um and same goes for infantry school they almost certainly not taught how to work in hand-to-hand with tanks, except like hide behind them.

They stop bullets. Yeah. As the 28th entered the battlefield, everyone is excited. Officers and NCOs noted that the soldiers were glad they got to be the ones, they believed anyway, to be the unit that finally would knock the Germans out of the fight in the hurricane forest. Oh man.

And you could tell by my laughter that that does an excitement that quickly faded when they got to the positions to relieve the ninth which had to look like absolute shit by this point now thankfully we have a firsthand account uh according to sergeant earl berghart uh the dead and dying had been abandoned in the open in the field where they still lay amongst the debris of thousands of shattered trees and all of the grass and dirt

had been churned black by the fire of artillery. They're literally walking into scorched hell. Like, yay boys, let's go too. Oh shit,

let's get the fuck out of here. Home by Christmas, fuck yeah, we got this. However, the Germans' main weapon, that being the terrain, had been effectively nullified in the sector. They had shelled the hell out of the 9th for so long

they blew down huge swaths of the forest, opening paths for tanks to advance directly through them for the first time since the battle had started. At least they don't get to hand chop shit. This is like legitimately like the Homer, like you ever watch the Simpsons episode where Homer learned how to box? Oh yeah, he just takes fucking hits. Yeah, he just gets punched in the face continuously until the enemy gets tired then nudges them over.

This is what just happened. Like, ha ha, you've shelled us so hard, you have nothing more to blow us up with because all the trees are already inside our dead and wounded. Got you right where we want you. Weird flex. As they assaulted towards the hamlet of Vosinek, the tankers learned a horrible, horrible lesson. Their guns couldn't destroy the German bunkers either.

That's a fucking letdown. You think you're gonna do fucking leaps and bounds through this forest with all these new guys. Satchels don't work. Ah, shit. Oh, we got tanks. Those don't fucking work. Come on, guys. We're gonna do tanker shit. Oh, no.

So they actually life hack. They figured out something they could do. Drive directly up to the bunkers and put the barrel to the bunker and pull the trigger, which did work. I would fucking hate to be in that bunker just to see that. Like, guys, it's still coming. Just like fucking the bunkers open hole with a tank gun and pumping around into it this finally imagine that just like sitting down in the

hole reloading maybe talking to your guys like hey this is going pretty well sticks through it like oh man no it's like Jurassic Park if you don't move they can't see you tanker's vision is motion based clever girl this did if you don't move they can't see you yeah tanker's vision is motion based uh

uh this did work uh but unfortunately blowing up these bunkers one at a time wasn't a back breaking attack by any means instead the germans did what they always did they simply withdrew to another position i'm surprised the tanks didn't get fucked up doing this they probably did almost certainly

you can't point blank someone with a main gun of a tank without doing some kind of damage to the tank itself i imagine and like even the crew that had to hurt because like there's no not really should explain this there's like no buffer between the open barrel and the inside of a tank like you lower the breach to put a round in and that's just like an open conduit to the outside. Like a cannon is to this day not a very high tech piece of technology. So like by firing that, I feel like the overpressure rushing back into the barrel probably fucking hurt.

I don't know. Absolutely. I agree. I mean, these guns are much smaller than what I'm used to, but I still don't want to experience that. No, and Shermans aren't comfortable at all. No, even before you're getting blown up, they already suck. Now, the

Americans also learned that the ridge along Vossenack where they had set up shop was badly exposed. And the Germans did know that because they began employing the tried and true defense in depth strategy. So they pulled back and unleashed an artillery bombardment against the men who had

assaulted the ridge in Vosinak. That would last for 90 hours. Oh. Now, the reason that the Americans didn't retreat or move off of that ridge was they were supposed to secure the flank for soldiers making a push towards Schmidt, which

was captured without much of a fight, actually. Oh, good on them. Unlike Vosnak, which had the trees blown apart, making it easy for armor to support them, Schmidt was still intact. This meant they had a largely infantry force in the town that stormed in, who were then supposed to await armored reinforcements

as, I assume, like civilization characters, they slowly nipped away at the forest with hand axes but they were moving so slowly there's just no way they could make it the one thing that the army could do was send an M29 weasels

are you familiar with those? oh my god so for people who aren't armored nerds like us it's a very small tracked vehicle with no armor whatsoever um they were used to ferry weapons uh ammo and food up to the defenders but like they were not fighting platforms and i imagine uh people this thing is very small yeah it's not it's not even bringing a ton of food or ammo like it can't be um no it's like i think it only seats three people it's like using a humvee to

bring food and ammo like okay sure but also that's not that much like we need a flat it's like those people that go that's a tank because it's tracked this is as this is as much of a tank as if you put tracks at a golf cart they look they look kind of like if i went to tank school they're like you're driving the weasel i just fucking shoot myself in the foot um oh that would be sucky like you go to like you're going to tank school this isn't that oh yeah the sherman suite they assign you the weasel i mean it's exactly what happened to me except after i graduated like you have to go to striker school now like no which thankfully i never had a fucking use um so yeah the the most armor support that the troops in uh schmidt could hope to get is a tracked golf cart with i guess

aluminum siding for armor. Now, the next morning, knowing the Americans were probably still trying to reinforce the positions and also knowing that their tanks couldn't be there yet, the Germans launch a massive counterattack, which you know what they brought? They brought armor. Oh, they had that

in there? Oh, yeah. That sucks. Which the Americans found out in a horrible timing of events that their bazookas and landmines did nothing against the Mark V Panther tank. All right. They found out that bazookas are widespread, so it was anti-tank mines. But they're like, even in the best of circumstances, you're not supposed to deploy a bazooka against the front armor of a tank.

That is the most armored part of a tank side still not great preferably the rear right um ass end and that's still the case today or the top which is why like the javelin exists um but they found out that no matter what they did

with their bazooka it wouldn't do shit except maybe blow the tracks off of it which has to be really disheartening when you're just like tink and it just bounces off like oh fuck i didn't think they'd use their tank i thought they'd put them in like stationary uh they uh they usually did use them as emplacements but they also really wanted to retake schmidt so they're like all right roll the tanks out oh okay gotcha i mean i didn't think they'd do that. The best anti-tank weapon, at least in this era, is another

tank. And they don't have any of those. So they knew, like, we can rush in with our armor, kick them out of Schmidt, and maybe pull them back, or, you know, set them back into static defense. But when this happened, there was no orderly withdrawal in the American ranks.

It was a panic route through the woods. An entire battalion... With mines in it still? Some of them, yeah. Yeah, that's awful. I imagine as some people panic, like sprinting for their life through the woods, they just happened to find one

that nobody else had found at that point. Which has to be like... Maybe it doesn't matter because you can't tell the difference because you're dead but like it also like i'm away from the tanks thank god there goes your leg yeah now like i just to underline this was not like oh we're getting pushed back we need to leave this is like as much of a panic withdrawal as I've seen in American forces during World War II. An entire battalion abandoned and like they're wounded and stuff behind leave in like people that just couldn't keep up and left over 100 of them to be captured. Oh, fuck.

That sucks. I don't have to outrun the Germans. I just have to outrun you. Absolutely. have to outrun the Germans. I just have to outrun you. Absolutely. Now, about a mile away, the German counterattack hit the advanced American position near the Kall River,

which did have armor on it. There was only about three German tanks that managed to pull up and reinforce the infantry, as five more had broken down along the way, which tracks. The tanks were commanded by Ray Flieg, who was

ordered to move up and engage the oncoming German armor mostly worried that if they continued withdrawing the Germans would just keep pushing and pushing until the Americans are pushed completely out of the forest they succeeded sounds like a win yeah now Ray Fleeg succeeded only because a badly

trained German tank crew happened to be the tank he came up against. So, for instance, he fired a high explosive shell on accident rather than an armor piercing shell. When the high explosive shell impacted on the front of, I believe it was a Mark V, it created a bright flash from the explosion. The German tank crew assumed that they were on fire and jumped out. When in reality, he actually didn't damage the tank at all.

And they actually attempted to jump back in the tank when they realized what was happening. But by then, Fleeg's loader had switched to armor piercing and fucked it up. I would have just stayed out at that point. Yeah, don't jump back in the tank.

I just think it's incredible that the the tank crew's like i saw something shiny we gotta go yeah that's what i'm saying fleeks over there like yeah first try i'm going to assume this late in the war these are definitely not veteran german tank crews those guys are probably all dead or yet to die on the eastern front oh absolutely um absolutely. To the south of the tank battle, the 110th infantry moved into an orchard in the middle of night under strict orders not to break light discipline, including

lighting cigarettes. You want to guess what happened next? I'm assuming some nicotine fiends decided to end that. Yep, it happened within minutes. Giving their position away. I love it. I smoked when I wasn't supposed to, like on

night patrols and stuff, but there's ways that you smoke that don't give up your position. And I didn't have to fight the fucking German military to figure that out. I was only worried about the fucking Taliban. Even I was like, hey, maybe I should cup this in my hand. Right. That happened within minutes. about the fucking taliban even i was like hey maybe i should cup this in my hand right but

yeah uh that happened within minutes so of course uh the germans saw the light and began hammering them with mortar fire most of the units replacements were killed or wounded outright as they froze rather than trying to escape the orchard their survivors frantically dug in with with whatever they could hold uh onto to include like one person said they used the barrel of their own rifle to just jab holes into the ground which seems bad I wouldn't do that as a massive German

counterattack came down on them now this counterattack eventually did retake Schmidt if that wasn't obvious enough of how successful it was being oh yeah I imagine. An American counterattack to retake the town made it only 300 yards before grinding to another halt. Despite all of this, the 1st Army Command,

that being Hodges, repeatedly ordered the forces on the ground to attempt to secure a different route to retake the village, which required a force to cross the Kall Valley and link up with the 112th Infantry. To do that, they formed task force ripple. Now I'm only pointing out this name because it was commanded by wait for it. Lieutenant Colonel Dick ripple.

It's such a fucking world war two name. That's a fucking name that exists. You know, and like even back that, that name had to be funny. Like, I don't want to be a part of a task force that's we're gonna ripple no i want to be a fucking wave if you called it task force a dick ripple i'll sign up for it because it's funny i want to be a tsunami task force dick tsunami yeah i don't want to be dick ripple fortunately unfortunately dick tsunami was deployed to the Pacific Theater.

Oh, okay. Makes sense. Now, this task force was slapped together with whatever they could find, in which case this was nine surviving medium tanks, a company of light tanks, and about 200 men, whose morale was described as, quote, shattered. Oh, in the dirt. Gotcha. I know when I want to gather a whole bunch

of soldiers together to do something, I want them to be described as shattered. However, that isn't what division command saw, as they only saw unit sizes on paper, which labeled Task Force Ripple as a force with two companies of armor and a brigade of infantry,

none of which was actually true. Things began to fall apart as soon as they stepped out for one the light tanks never even showed up now the reason for it is actually better than you think like obviously it's bad that like a whole company of tanks didn't show up but uh their company commander was so against the task force plan he simply never ordered his his unit to move out knowing that they would all be killed which we found the one good officer good job man yeah like no fuck dick ripple i'm staying here uh unfortunately for the rest of task force dick ripple uh which i will say as many times as i can i assure you um the rest of the task force moved out into the valley um now this valley was from all accounts that i've read kind of turned into

a several mile long ambush oh almost immediately uh when the task force, Dick Ripple, entered the valley, 15 men were killed immediately as well as two of their commanding officers. And they continued to be ambushed the entire way as they pushed through the valley. Now, once they finally did make it through the valley, because they they linked up with the 112th infantry at that point the 112th infantry commander Colonel Peterson took one look at the task force Dick Ripple and knew that they were so fucked up from their push

to the valley there's no way he could use them to take the town with these as his reinforcements why'd you guys even come yeah like congratulations all of that was for nothing the fighting around the call was so bad that german regimental dr gunther stuken managed to talk both sides into an unofficial truce so he could work together with medics from the other side on both sides wounded and dying saving dozens of people like this this whole thing is so bad

that the only two officers worth a shit is one guy who just didn't show up to work and a nazi well done you are counseling okay fuck it like how the fuck is this offensive so bad that the two best-looking people is a nazi and a guy who just didn't show up to work congratulations general hodges well done now meanwhile uh maybe hodges or bradley should have seen that their plan wasn't working they actually doubled down. Hodges sent more and more men into the forest. Soldiers were loaded up from trucks from the Battle of Aachen

and sent into the forest without telling them where they were going or what they would be doing. Jesus Christ. Get into the truck. You have your gun? Good. You're ready.

Let's go. Where are we going? You're Get into the truck. You have your gun? Good. You're ready. Let's go. Where are we going? You're going into the forest that has that evil aura around it. It hasn't had enough blood yet. Now, these guys are part of what's known as Operation Queen. Now, this is a larger attack over the Rhine River into Germany. Now, these soldiers in particular were part of a secret attack from the north of the forest,

so secret that nobody bothered to tell the soldiers what in the fuck they would be doing or what their mission was. When the attack began, it immediately fell apart because nobody knew what they were doing. Soldiers found every open area of the forest, even in the direction that was supposed to be a surprise, was mined and strung up with razor wire.

So the Germans 100% knew they were coming. Because, like, it's not that they cracked any codes or anything. It's like, you know, eventually they're probably going to come from the north. We should probably set some mines up there. These idiots are eventually going to work their way around us i can't imagine how the germans feel like wow these guys are fucking stupid they're still coming and soldiers found an additional surprise like you know razor wire is easy to deal with you cut it or you just lay something over the top of it and walk over it right yeah like a dead body well yeah like the

dead bodies are laying around there's plenty them. This whole place is lousy with dead people. They also found that the wire had been rigged with mines, so pressure would set them off. What? That's fucked. And as soon as the mines started being triggered, the

Germans knew that they were attacking, and they called an accurate artillery fire. Soldiers scattered and got lost in the thick forest and tripped over more mines that were waiting for them in every direction. As this was going on, Germans got up from their defensive positions and moved around paths they knew were safe to travel.

And then they took up position in the attacking soldiers' old foxholes. So while they were retreating, when they finally got back to their original position, they found it occupied by Germans who were also shooting at them. So they had to assault through their own foxholes in order to get to safety,

which at this point was probably not many of them. Oh, man. Within three days of Hodge's planned master stroke of the northern attack it had failed command and control completely broke down soldiers were forced to hand carry supplies leading

to a shortage in everything from food to ammo a guy named Colonel Silbert of the 2nd Battalion 12th Infantry Regiment said quote God it was cold. We were hungry and thirsty. That night, we really prayed. In the morning, we found out that God had answered all of our prayers.

It had snowed during the night, and the whole area was covered with fog. It was perfect for escaping. The supply line was littered with the dead, and the men that came with me were so damn tired, they stepped on their bodies, having too tired to even bother stepping over them. This is a colonel. Jesus

Christ. This fucking blows. In other areas men had become so broken by the constant shelling and combat they had to be ordered to eat or drink water. Spending the rest of the time crying or staring off into space one man said, quote,

the days were so terrible I'd pray for the darkness and then the nights were so bad I'd pray for the daylight. Oh. Yeah, that's fucking nuts. I knew going into this that Hurricane is a pretty awful battle. I didn't know it was this bad. I didn't either.

I picked this battle because it's a fuck up it's obviously that's our bread and butter and we occasionally stray away from whenever i see something shiny you know it's just under like it's a battle that's almost unheard of in american military history and it kind of gets glossed over because you know the greatest generation beat the nazis which like cool but also like this one what about this one yeah um yeah and it's like i knew it was bad um mostly because i knew about one particular story about the battle that being joseph slovak um and i worked my way backwards how bad it could be and i was every page of sources i used i was like more and more horrified because like it really did

seem like some eastern front shit or some world war one shit not like end of world war ii u.s military shit it was kind of incredible and i and i understand everybody's like oh the army's dumb blah i get it you also have to understand i already recognized my personal bias in regards to american military history and how world war ii is portrayed in popular media chipping away at that folks it's why we're here does not mean that we are uh immune to that ourselves by no means so in another area of an attack it was an old monastery uh that was being attacked by the eighth regiment and it went so badly that in the opening minutes every company commander was killed which i don't know how the fuck that happens company commander stand in the line and go first yeah which actually

like just that in the whole regiment that was like come on boys follow me it's like that scene from uh we were soldiers come on boys and like let's go it's immediately or like when they're all in the overgrowth and stand up and every officer gets machine gun one at a time i'll get us out of here uh and then soon afterwards pretty much every platoon leader and nco oh god at this point, some corporals are like, fuck it, I'm standing up. Fuck this shit. I'm going to die. I'm fucking done with this shit.

One officer that didn't die was Major George Mabry, a D-Day veteran who managed to pick his way through a minefield while under fire using only a knife, digging blindly through a foot of snow and opening a path for his soldiers behind him. Which like, Jesus Christ.

I imagine he was like, wow, the beach is cooler. Yeah, like, God, I wish this was fucking Normandy. Now, after surviving that, he suicide charged three different German bunkers, taking them out one at a time and walking away only slightly wounded. See, that's what the company commanders wanted to do. Yeah, he

knew that the Germans could only kill so many commanders, and he simply waited his turn. Exactly. But Mabry turning into an 80s action movie hero didn't quite change anything about the battle. Hodges was throwing hundreds and thousands of his men into a buzzsaw without rest.

Nobody gained any ground, and units were given explicit orders to advance regardless of losses and have been annihilated. At no point did Hodges ever figure out logistics like food, water, ammo, and fuel began to run insured everywhere else. The few tanks that they did have began to break down from overuse and lack of spare parts or lack of fuel or people or you know thankfully that's one thing about tank crews is generally if the tank is still running it's because the people inside are still alive that's good normally one breaks along with the other instead of like slowing the advance to let his logistics catch up or which would still be like a bad choice to make he just continued to commit more and more and more people into the fight which had been lost

and pointless ever since it began there has to be someone like one of his aides telling him like that he's doing a great job and he just keeps going with it every like week omar bradley comes buying a jeep to give him a gold star at a fucking homework report. You're doing great! Every single new unit ran into the same problem as the unit they replaced. The 8th Infantry Division was the next to be sent into the forest. The first unit

in on November 22nd was the 121st Infantry Regiment. And as was the case of its predecessors, the 121st jumped off with no intelligence on any positions or adequate maps. Colonel Tom Cross, executive officer of the divisions,

said that the attacks were not successful. Quote, Each time they attempted to move, a rain of mortar and anti-tank shells dropped down on them. All fire breaks in the woods were mined and apparently communications from the forward positions to the guns and mortar positions were perfect.

Morale of the troops is very poor. Other regiments have been chewed to pieces in this area. Within three days, the 121st counted to 50 killed and almost 600 wounded, a loss of nearly 20% of their unit. It's just casualty numbers that are just unheard of. The toll for the 4th Division alone added up to close to 4,000. In spite of the appalling casualties, the GIs kept being ordered to attack. The 1st Army upped its ante, bringing on the 5th Armored Division, the 83rd Infantry Division, the 2nd Ranger Battalion, and ultimately portions of the 82nd Airborne. In less than three months, six U.S. Army divisions would be fed

into the forest monster. All of them would be torn to shreds and spit back out combat ineffective. Six? Six. What the fuck

is going through this guy's head? It's incredible he wasn't fired. And like that, that's the thing is like it has to come down to the fact that

Omar Bradley liked him too much. And I mean, Omar Bradley is a dumbass himself because I mean, this is ultimately his his attack. Right. He's the ultimate authority on this. So technically, I guess Eisenhower over him. But still, like he could have stopped this whenever he wanted. He could have told the Hodges that was enough. hodges that was enough right the non-stop attacks finally came to a halt in december not because american commanders finally got a fucking clue but because germans launched operation watch on the rhine better known as the battle of the bulge the topic i think i've said before will eventually come an entire series to at some point but even when the german offensive uh watch on the rhine broke down the americans once again began attacking through the forest, even after getting their shit kicked in and their last major hurrah of the German war machine died.

The German defenders of the forest refused to budge. And now the attacking Americans are fighting through snow drifts that were knee high in some places, making everything suck a million times more. Oh, finally by February, it was all over. in some places, making everything suck a million times more. Finally, by February, it was all over.

The German defenders... February? Yeah. The German defenders, vastly outnumbered, but without the constant stream of new reinforcements that their enemies had, were finally driven out of the forest. The newly composed U.S. 78th Division was sent into the forest and it was the straw that broke the camel. The newly composed U.S. 78th Division was sent into the forest and it was the straw that broke the

camel's back in this case. They advanced over the territory that every U.S. force had died taking and losing for months, finding hundreds of booby-trapped bodies along the way that had been left behind. Schmidt fell for the last time as the Germans forced the Americans to fight

them room by room cellar by cellar over the controls of the dam that the americans again didn't even care about but and one last fuck you the germans blew the last dam they controlled anyway billions of gallons of water mixed with snow and rain made the rurer uncrossable 15 divisions of the u.s army Army, meant to drive to Berlin, sat on the other side of the river for two more weeks, waiting for the floodwaters to die down. This meant that at the end of the day,

the entire offensive and the entire battle plan was completely in vain and pointless, because it happened anyway. Good move. The Germans themselves were astounded at how bad the american battle plan was saying in a captured german document that quote in combat and wooded areas the americans showed himself completely unfit so after five months of pointless struggle the american suffered 24 000 dead wounded captured or missing in action plus another 9 000 disabled by non-combat injuries now for your um comparison here

u.s military casualties in world war ii as uh this is so if anybody's wondering this is by the national world war ii museum army and air force since they were one at the time so this is actually a little bit higher than you know on the ground since the army air force or the army air corps rather suffered horrible casualties oh they got fucked up uh according to this the u.s army and air air force had 318,000 killed and another almost 600,000 wounded. Now, 24,000 of these are from Hurtgen Forest, which is, in comparison

to any other battle, is grossly higher. Now, if you compare that to the entire Siegfried line campaign, 33,000 of those dead are from that so like even the entire campaign the vast majority of the casualties came from the hirken forest and it's it is hard to find another battle that churned up more army casualties in totality in

comparison to the the end number than the battle of the hurricane force which i cannot say enough here was pointless it was like absolutely pointless right i'm still in shock holy fuck now german losses are questionable nobody's entirely sure um it's thought to, um, they lost, you know, less than 30,000 killed and wounded. Um, but they also committed significantly less to the battle, but their numbers are prior to come by. So that is the battle of the Hurtgen Forest, but we will have a part three. Part three will be released as a bonus episode next month in May. That is the case of Eddie Slovic, the only

US soldier to be executed for desertion since the Civil War. And it came... Jesus. And it came out during... It's all related to the Battle of the Hercan Forest. So, it's a downer, but very important episode

to pair with this series. So... I don't blame him. I have a hell of an episode for you, my friend. Now, that will be available to everybody at the $5 level on Patreon. But for people at any level of the Patreon, we have questions from the Legion. See, I'm getting better at this. Nice. And today's question of the legion actually

ties in pretty well to this um and i feel like the only reason they didn't use courtney hodges as an example simply because this episode isn't out yet um but if you had a choice and you have to pick one who would you want to serve under uh before oh this has to do with high casualties, huh? Oh, yeah. Between Napoleon in Russia, Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War, or Luigi Cadorna. I'll go ahead and start it off. I'd rather be under Saddam. I don't know. I want to

see the Wizards. I feel like, I mean, you're an NCO. I was. I feel like we're not high enough up to get an audience with the wizard fuck you're right and for anybody who is um new to this episode if anybody's new to this this podcast um you're missing if you don't understand the wizard you're missing a lot of deep podcast lore from years ago go listen to our an iraq war series it'll take you about 10 hours one of the best shirts i wear um i would pick napoleon for obvious reasons is that a bias it's

absolutely a bias yes um mostly because i think i have a better chance of living actually i think statistically probably the uh whoever picks whoever picks Iraq has the best chance of surviving well either way with my luck if I pick any of them I'm dead yeah maybe I think I would just feel better that I fought for Napoleon rather than

Hussein so yeah no I'd do something stupid like right when we're about to sp i'd fucking trip die i mean that's better than getting gassed and choking on your own fluid your your own internal juices absolutely so nick thank you for joining me for part two. You'll obviously be joining me for part three. I hope everybody else does too. Until next time, don't

get blown up near trees. Stay away from the forest. Stay away from the forest. It's fueled by human blood.