Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Thoughts on the Huertgen Forest

...The infantry, free from the claustrophobia of the Huertgen Forest, went on, but behind them they left their dead, and the forest will stink with deadness long after the last body is removed. The forest will bear the scars of our advance long after our own scars have healed, and the Infantry has scars that will never heal.

For Huertgen was agony, and there was no glory in it except the glory of courageous men--the MP whose testicles were hit by shrapnel and who said, "okay, Doc, I can take it"; the man who walked forward firing Tommy guns with both hands until his arm was blown off and then kept firing the other Tommy gun until he disappeared in a mortar burst...

--Sgt. Mack Morriss