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The Battle of Hurtgen Forest ran from September 19 to December 16, 1944, the longest single battle fought on German soil and the second longest in U.S. Army history after Bataan. Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges of the First Army saw the 140-square-kilometer forest on the Belgian-German border as a route to protect his flank near Aachen and reach the Roer River dams, which the Germans could blow to flood any crossing. Field Marshal Walter Model defended it with depleted troops, West Wall bunkers and local foresters, buying time for the buildup in the Ardennes. Cloud cover grounded Allied aircraft, and tanks churned logging tracks into bottomless mud.

German artillery used fuses that burst shells in the treetops, turning trunks into showers of wooden splinters, so soldiers were safer hugging a tree than lying in a foxhole. Hodges directed the campaign from Spa, Belgium, about 30 miles away, and after the 9th Division was shattered near Schmidt he sent in Major General Norman Cota’s 28th Division. Cota skipped ground reconnaissance, relied on the narrow Kall Trail and left most of his armor behind, and his men in Schmidt were overrun by the 116th Panzer Division. The battle ended only when the Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, with some estimates of U.S. casualties at 55,000.

• Radioman George Barrett recalled shaking and sobbing in a shallow hole under loose brush during a barrage.
• German regimental doctor Günter Stüttgen arranged an unofficial truce at the Kall bridge from November 7 to 12 so medics could treat the wounded.
• Lieutenant Friedrich Lengfeld died from a mine while trying to rescue a wounded American from the minefield known as the Wild Sow.
• Veterans of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division placed a memorial to Lengfeld in the German military cemetery at Hürtgen.
• German casualties in the battle are put at roughly 28,000.