The deadly Huertgen campaign, which lasted for nearly five months beginning in mid-September of 1944, led to the death of some 33,000
Americans and is generally remembered with particular bitterness. In this oral history of the entire campaign, participants from soldiers to
generals recount their experiences. Includes several pages of b&w photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

John Wingfield (J7Wing8@pacbell.net), A reviewer, 11/15/2000
Huertgen Forest: Where death did not take a holiday.
Gerald Astors book, The Bloody Forest: The battle for the Huertgen, is the best I have read on this perticuler battle.Astor, through G.I.'s,
tells it all, from the miserable condition's in the forest to the stupidity of senior Commanders. A must read for those who wish to learn more
about this bloody battle.

Also recommended: A Dark and Bloody Ground
The interrogators arrived the next day and interrogated all of the hostages.   The company saddled up and walked out of the ville about
noon.  It was a terrible hump because we had been up all night and we got a late start to try to get far enough away from the ville that we
would not get attack that night 

---

  Annotation
The first complete account of the longest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army which took place during World War II on the Belgian-German border.

From The Critics
Publishers Weekly
From September 1944 to February '45, in the longest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army, division after division were sent into the Hurtgen Forest
on the Belgian-German border. By the time the smoke cleared, nearly 30,000 GIs had been killed or wounded. Whiting makes it painfully clear that
the battle of Hurtgen was unnecessary and had more to do with the maintenance of high-level reputations than strategic imperatives. He argues
that Hurtgen was the forerunner of an attitude that became pervasive in Vietnam, where ``generals were still throwing away the lives of their young
soliders with the same careless abandon.'' Whiting ( Bloody Aachen ) describes the battle with a sure hand; there is plenty of heroism on these
pages, but little glory. As he points out, the only soldier of Hurtgen remembered today is ``the one who ran away'': Pvt. Eddie Slovik, the first
American soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War. Photos. (Apr.)

Library Journal
Thirty thousand American troops, many of them green recruits, were killed or wounded during the bitter six-month battle for the Hurtgen
Forest in 1944-45. Ten American divisions were decimated in the 50-square mile dank, freezing forest, which was thickly sown with German
defenses and troops. Yet the battle was unnecessary; the forest had no strategic or military value. American generals, most of whom had never
bothered to view the battlefield, had made a terrible error. But in order to save their reputations and careers, they sent thousands of young men
to their deaths. Whiting, a first-rate military historian and writer, has finally exposed this 40-year coverup. Essential for World War II collections.
-- Stanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, N.Y.