As one eventually comes to know in the army, all really persistent rumors have at least some basis in fact. Word soon arrived officially that the 28th Division was to relieve us and we were to go north into the Huertgen Forest.
Captain McKenna promptly called the officers together.
“There’re a lot of rumors going around about this place called ‘Huertgen Forest,’” he said. “Most of them aren’t true. The area we go to is just a little more active than this one, but I doubt if we’ll be called on to attack. I want you to tell your men that, and I want you to do everything you can to keep them from speculating about what we’re getting into. If you don’t, they’ll be so keyed up when we get there nobody’ll be worth anything.”
It was sensible advice, but it was hard to adhere to, and particularly hard to convince the men that what we said was true. That night, for example, when an officer from the 28th Division’s 109th Infantry arrived at our company to serve as quartering officer, he was dirty, bearded, utterly fatigued—a man who obviously had arrived from no part of the front “just a little more active than this one.” His eyes were red-rimmed, his movements nervous, almost jerky. Looking around at our clean-shaven faces and our relatively comfortable positions, he obviously took us for a greenhorn outfit. While putting him straight on that score, we fed him well, and I relinquished my bedroll to permit him a decent night’s rest.
Before the officer turned in, we asked him what it was like, frankly, this Huertgen Forest.
“It’s hell,” he said flatly. “Pure, unadulterated hell. That’s the only word for it. It’s hell.” A kind of wild light seemed to come to his eyes. “You haven’t heard anything about it because they’re afraid to talk about it. That’s it, they’re afraid to talk about it. The Germans tore up our division. Tore it up. They kicked the crap out of a lot of other good outfits too. I’ve been with this division since we landed in France, and I never saw anything like it. It’s artillery, tanks, mines. Everywhere mines. Godalmighty, the mines. And Jerries. Everywhere stubborn, stubborn Jerries.”
When he finished, we sat quietly for a while, partly because we wanted to give him a chance to get to sleep but mainly be-cause his words produced sombre thoughts. As the candle burned low, I wrote a long letter home.
The next morning we sent a quartering party forward, my mortar section leader, Sergeant Andy Senuta, of Cleveland, Ohio, doing the job for Easy Company. Then we concentrated on get-ting our equipment ready as we were to leave the area that same afternoon. We took special pains to see that everybody had items of warm clothing—long underwear, overcoats, and perhaps most important of all, overshoes. It was not until we were almost ready to pull out that every man was outfitted, every man except one officer with big feet who could not find a pair of overshoes to fit him. The officer’s name was Boesch.
During the early part of the afternoon, Captain McKenna called me aside.
“Boesch,” he said, “battalion tells me the chaplain may not make it to us before we push off. I want you to hold a church service for the men.”
I gulped, but one look at the Captain’s face convinced me he was serious. Nevertheless, I had definite doubts that I could provide the words of comfort needed at a time like this; I needed someone to give me words of comfort myself. I was still leafing through the Bible and a GI church book, totally unprepared, when word arrived that the chaplain would be there in ten minutes.
Never have I received a more timely reprieve.
The appointed time for moving out was fast approaching when I made a last-minute check on my weapons platoon. The men were putting the guns together after a final cleaning. When I reached the barn where they were quartered, I found a bustle of activity. Everybody was on hands and knees searching through the hay.
“What in the world is the matter?” I asked.
“That stupid sonofabitch over there,” said Sergeant Abbott, “let the barrel plunger spring shoot the barrel plunger out into the hay and we can’t find it.”
Finding a needle in a haystack would have been nothing compared to finding the little two-inch machine gun part in the load of hay the men had been using for bedding. Yet we had to find it, for without it the machine gun was worthless, and now that we were to be on the move we would stand no chance of getting a replacement part.
“Wait a minute,” I shouted, convinced we had to use some kind of system or we had not a prayer. “Get some helmets over here and fill them with hay and burn the hay till we find it, even if you have to burn every last straw in the loft.”
As smoke began to curl up from the helmets, I sent a messenger to tell Captain McKenna we would be there shortly. One helmet-full after another we burned, then carefully fingered the ashes. Smoke began to fill the barn and we began to cough and choke, but still no barrel plunger. Eventually, Captain McKenna sent a message that the company was waiting on us.
I was about to give the word to admit defeat when I heard a jubilant shout and a fat-faced private rushed toward me in triumph.
He held a smoky barrel plunger in his outstretched hand.
The men of the 28th Division had begun to arrive when with the weapons platoon I joined the rest of the company outside. Each of the newcomers was a replica of the tired, bearded officer who had arrived the night before. Lest our men be unduly impressed by the sight, I tried to remind them that they too had looked like this many times in Normandy and Brittany and that the Jerries the 28th had been fighting were no different than the Jerries we had met before and licked. Yet somehow I knew in my own mind that these men of the 28th Division were different. There was something about the way they carried themselves, dispirited, heavy, the way some of them flinched at the slightest untoward noise. Nobody could deny that these men had been through something terrible, something close to hell itself.
Relinquishing our warm houses and barns to these men, we moved into a nearby field to pitch our tents for the night. Captain McKenna went to Battalion to get the movement order. We were to load on trucks at daylight the next morning.
Orders many times appear to be issued only so they can be countermanded. This was the case that night. About midnight I gradually became conscious that somebody was nudging me, urging me to get up.
“Hey, Lootenant,” the man said, “we’re pulling out Tight away. Hey, Lootenant, get out a the sack.”
Even as I sought to shake off the stupefying effects of my short nap, I gathered my section leaders to alert them for the move. By one o’clock we were sitting in the backs of the trucks, a biting wind whipping cold rain around us. For what seemed an interminably long time we sat there. We had almost decided the orders had been changed again when the drivers began to warm up their motors.
It was pitch dark, the road deserted. Gone were the well-wishers and signs of welcome which had greeted us when we first arrived in Luxembourg. Now the towns seemed dead in the darkness and the noise of the heavy trucks rumbling over rough, cobblestone streets was mournful, depressing.
Through a long and sleepless night we tossed and shivered in the rear of the slowly-moving six-by-six truck. The weather could hardly have been worse. A biting wind raced mockingly through torn seams and patches in the tarpaulin which stretched above us. The rain pelted down, finding the same openings. As we moved farther north, the rain changed to snow. Hour after endless hour we huddled close, hoping only that the coming of day would bring some relief from the cold, but the dawn arrived reluctantly behind great gray clouds and did little to improve our lot.
But at least we could see where we were going—that is, more correctly, where we had been.
“Join the army and see the world through the rear end of a six-by-six,” quipped someone in disgust.
One man stood watch through a hole in the front of the truck to tell us when something of interest was coming up, then we all would strain to see it out the back of the truck as we passed.
One man, though, would have no part of it.
“What the hell is there to look at and what the hell good is it going to do you to see it?” he asked. “Does a guy that’s headed for the electric chair walk down the aisle making complimentary remarks about the paint job on the walls?”
It was a defeatist philosophy we had no choice but to try to ignore. Doggedly we continued to watch for things of interest. At least it made the time pass more quickly. That was important, for packed as we were in the truck we soon became uncomfortably stiff. The cramped condition when added to the cold made every minute seem incredibly longer than sixty seconds. Yet for all our misery we saw men behind us who would have traded places with us any time. They had drawn trucks with no tarpaulins on top.
Slowly, inexorably, the hours passed and so did the miles. Finally we crossed the border into Germany. Though no immediate change in the scenery was evident, we seemed to sense a kind of tension in the air. As we passed through a wide gap blasted in the dragon’s teeth of the Siegfried Line, I had the same feeling of gratitude to the men who had pierced this line as I had experienced when I first climbed the high bluff overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy. What was there in the vast, unpredictable lottery of assignment in the army which had accorded these tasks to someone other than me?
At the town of Roetgen, we followed orders we had received before starting and donned our field packs. Roetgen, we had been told, was near where we were going. At any time now we had to be prepared to get out of the trucks with little or no warning.
Beyond Roetgen our progress slowed considerably as we deserted the main highways for back roads and trails. Incessant rain had made quagmires of the roads. In some places engineers, hard at work trying to drain off the water and keep the roads serviceable, had to stand aside to let us past.
At one of these bottlenecks, a group of engineers was laboring with pick and shovel trying to get enough gravel into a hole in the road to allow us to get through. A young lieutenant carried on a fierce tirade of bitching about the work, the weather, the war, everything in general. When he tired of ranting at his own men, he turned toward us with his indignant monologue.
I interrupted him.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, “would you like to change places with us? We’d be glad to get out and fix your road for you.”
He looked hard at us, huddled together for warmth like so many cattle. For the first time he seemed really to see us.
“What are you,” he asked hesitantly, “infantry?”
“You’re damned right we’re infantry,” shouted one of my men before I could reply.
“No thanks,” the lieutenant mumbled. “No thanks.”
With this he turned slowly and went about his business, this time in silence.
Minutes later we became aware we were approaching a vast forest of evergreens stretching away to the east as far as we could see. Daylight already was fading fast, even in the open, but as we entered the woods, night rushed at us with gloomy and alarming suddenness. On either side of the narrow road big evergreens with thick, dripping branches almost engulfed us. It was cold, eerie, uninviting. For the first time the truck we had cursed all night and day seemed warm and friendly. We were loathe to leap from it into this forbidding unknown.
Though we had been expecting the order to detruck for miles, it caught us by surprise when it came. I had to force myself to get down from the truck, and the shock of 220 pounds landing on legs that had been cramped for interminably long hours was sharp and painful.
Some units, we noted, were already bivouacked under the trees —men who looked depressingly wet and cold as they sought to force the inhospitable forest to provide them some measure of protection from the elements. We set out past these men in a long, ragged file, stiff-legged at first but gradually walking with more ease as exercise restored our circulation. Finally we turned off the road into the thick of the woods where we found my mortar section leader, Sergeant Senuta, who had preceded us with the quartering party.
Andy waited until I had dropped my musette bag to the ground before he tried to tell me what was in store for us.
“We jump off, lieutenant,” he said, hushing his voice so the others would not hear, “at nine in the morning.”
Nine in the morning! The news hit me with a revolting shock. I personally had suspected, despite Captain McKenna’s repeated insistence otherwise, that we were not moving into the Huertgen Forest to sit on our rears in defensive positions. But to learn that we must attack so quickly after arrival from a long, arduous journey was something totally unexpected. I could hardly believe it. Surely somebody was mistaken.
“Well,” I said, deciding to borrow a leaf from Captain Mc-Kenna’s book, “don’t spread the word until I can get some facts and let everybody have it straight.”
While awaiting further information, I tried to speed the issuing of rations in order that the men might have a chance to heat their food before it got too dark for any kind of fires, but company headquarters informed me a hot meal was on the way.
“That’s well enough,” I told Lieutenant Von Keller, the executive officer, “but who the hell wants to stumble around in the dark to eat hot food when he could be heating up a K-ration right now?”
“Orders, friend Boesch, orders,” said the big Russian in his thick accent. “You know what’s best, I know what’s best, the men know what’s best. But the General says we got to get fed hot food, and we get fed hot food, whether we like it or not. You know that.”
Utter darkness soon enveloped us. It was a clinging, impenetrable darkness. Lights of any kind were forbidden so each of us stayed right on top of his pack lest we lose our equipment. When word at last came that chow was ready, we groped into some kind of formation that resembled many things more than it did a chow line, but by holding to each other’s belts and following the voices that called us, we eventually arrived at the spot where Easy Company’s cooks were dishing out the meal.
In war and in peace I have eaten many a meal in many parts of the world and under many conditions, but this one remains unique. Until you have stood in a long line of muddy, tired, disgruntled men, holding onto the belt of the man in front of you and feeling the tug of another man at your own belt; until you have stood before a cook you cannot see and who cannot see you, who cannot see even the pot from which he is serving nor the messkit he is supposed to fill; until then, you cannot know the full foul sensation of this meal.
None of us had any idea what we were being served, and by the time we had groped our way to some spot where we could squat on the ground, the food was cold and soggy from rain. In seeking some place to settle, each of us stumbled over other men who had gone ahead of us. In the end we had to give up and take the food in our filthy hands and cram it in chunks into our mouths. Few of us would argue with the theory that before an attack a man should have a hot meal, but neither would we endorse a hot meal under any circumstances, least of all these under which we found ourselves. A crust of bread and a little water would have been preferable to that uncertain, unpalatable repast in the darkness of the Huertgen Forest.
While we were attempting to eat, Captain McKenna was at battalion headquarters for a briefing on the job ahead. Returning just about the time I stumbled back from chow, he called a meeting of company officers. Somehow I found my way to his side.
“I think some of you already know,” he said, soberly, “that we attack at nine in the morning. We relieve elements of the 12th Infantry of the 4th Division tonight, then jump off from there.”
Then it was true what Sergeant Senuta had said. I still found it hard to believe. I was so stunned that I involuntarily interrupted.
“You mean we occupy their positions on a black night like this and jump off first thing in the morning with never a chance to see where we’re going?”
“That’s right, Boesch. And I know what you’re thinking. I voiced the same objections and raised the same questions at battalion. I have no doubt Colonel Casey did the same at regiment. But we were supposed to arrive here early today. The fact that somebody goofed some place and we got here late hasn’t changed the original plan.”
As he went on with his instructions, I could not even make out the outline of his helmet. Lifting my hand in front of my face, I literally could not see it, and only when my cold fingers touched my dripping nose could I be positive my hand was there. Yet we were going to move forward through the woods in this blackness, right in the face of the Germans, and then try to drive the Germans back with no more preparation than a loathesome all-night march after a miserable night and day on the road from Luxembourg. I thought of the things the army had gone to great pains to teach us—that relief of a unit at night in close contact with the enemy is tricky and hazardous under any circumstances and must be prefaced by detailed and careful daylight reconnaissance, with guides and markers posted so the relieving column would not get lost, blunder into the enemy, degenerate into noise, confusion, even panic. If the enemy hears you, he may counterattack, hitting when you are thoroughly disorganized and incapable of fighting back.
But after my abortive objection, none of us said a word. This was the way things were, this is the way they would be. It was as inevitable as the night that enveloped us, clung to us.
We were, it turned out, to move immediately, for we still had six or seven miles to walk before we reached the positions held by the 12th Infantry. As soon as I could find my way back to my platoon, I issued instructions quickly, then set out to find the jeeps which had brought our mortars, machine guns, and ammunition from Luxembourg. To my astonishment, I found the vehicles readily, but satisfaction left me when I discovered both jeeps were mired deep in clinging mud. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t budge them. Knee deep in gurgling slime, we pushed, pulled, and puffed, but to no avail.
Reluctantly, I sent for my platoon and gave the unwelcome order that we would have to carry the heavy weapons and equipment by hand. It would make the long trek through the wet and the dark even more arduous, but machine guns and mortars were vital and my platoon would be of no use in the attack without them. We had no choice but to write off the jeeps as a luxury we could no longer afford. With considerable effort, we hoisted the weapons and ammunition to our shoulders. Holding fast to the man ahead, we slowly, painfully made our way to where the rest of the company had assembled on the road.
Down the narrow trail of a road between towering trees on either side we moved. The night seemed to get even blacker if that was possible, and the rain came in great wind-driven sheets, drenching every thread of our clothes.
It was not easy to hold onto the belt of the man in front while slipping and slithering forward under the weight of a machine gun tripod or a mortar tube. I constantly patrolled the wavering line of men to patch up the inevitable breaks. Whenever I found a gap, I would rush to the rear until I came upon the man heading the broken segment, then urge him on to greater efforts so that we might catch up with the man he had lost.
The only light to pierce the blackness came from artillery pieces located in clearings in the forest. The big guns belched their shells with thunderous, unannounced, ear-splitting roars that reverberated against wooded hills and echoed and re-echoed until it seemed we were caught in the middle of some giant cauldron with hundreds of Satanic monsters banging sledge-hammers against the sides with fiendish glee. For an instant as each gun fired, the sky would light up with a blinding flash. After the sudden, brilliant burst of light, it was hard to adjust your vision again to the darkness. Circles and stars danced before your eyes, and you had to struggle to keep from losing your balance. Far off on the horizon answering reports from the enemy’s big guns appeared like quick little flickers of heat lightning.
We had no breaks or rests as we marched, just the maddening accordion action of the long, single-file column. At times we would come to an abrupt, complete stop, whereupon you sought to take advantage of it to adjust your burdens, only to have the man ahead of you invariably take off with never a word of warning. In turn you generally reacted by bounding forward at a run, leaving the man behind you to do the same. Up and down the line the exasperating process was repeated over and over, yet there seemed no solution.
The road was full of holes, and the holes were full of water and rocks, and it was almost impossible to keep your feet at times as you stumbled on the rocks or stepped with no warning into a deep hole. Men slipped and fell. As they fought to regain their footing, they knocked into others. One minute we were standing and marching, the next we were sprawled on the muddy road cursing in language that elegantly fitted the situation, some of it invented on the spur of the sodden moment.
For hours we fought for breath and struggled to maintain the exhausting pace. The knowledge that at the end of the march we faced the ticklish problem of relief in the face of the enemy, then attack, dragged at our feet at first; but as time passed we welcomed even this prospect as a way to end this nightmare walkathon.
Suddenly the line halted. Though we braced ourselves for the usual accordion motion, the men ahead did not move. One man turned his head toward us.
“This is as far as we go tonight,” he said. “Pull off the road and get some sleep. Pass the word along.”
I turned and repeated the message, then worked my way forward to check that it was authentic. Lieutenant Weinberger confirmed it.
“Captain McKenna said we still have to jump off at nine in the morning,” he said, “but they’ve decided it’s impossible to make the relief tonight. We’ve got to fall back in on the road just as soon as it’s light enough to see anything.”
Thanking him, I returned to my platoon.
“Okay,” I said with little conviction, “just get far enough off the road so you’ll be dry and not get run over. As soon as it’s light, we move out again. Try to get some sleep, you’ll need it.”
Sleep? The rain pelted down with a fury. Several inches of sloppy mud covered the ground. The perspiration we had worked up on the march quickly dried and made us colder than ever.
I elected to bunk with my section leaders, Sergeant Abbott and Sergeant Senuta, so they would be at hand when the order came to get moving. We made no effort to establish any kind of defense, no guards, no password. I simply made sure the squad leaders knew where their own men were, then spread my raincoat on the ground. Abbott and Senuta lay down with me on my raincoat and we pulled theirs over us.
It was a thoroughly miserable night. Puddles of rain quickly formed in the folds and dents of the raincoats, so that any move brought water pouring into our faces and down our necks. Though we tried pulling the raincoats over our heads, this merely exposed more of our legs and feet. The coldness of the ground soon added to the other chill so that our teeth began to chatter, and I could feel my companions press close against me in futile expectation that my big frame might exude some measure of warmth.
It was a forlorn and frozen hope.