Aachen - West Wall Battle

[Dan Caviness]

Everyone was starting to use those downwards proximity fuses, and indirect artillery was getting more and more deadly late war.

In the Hürtgenwald there was no place to hide, once the air bursts denuded all the foliage and turned the forest into a sea of burnt toothpicks.

The Yanks suffered ~ 45,000 casualties during the Hürtgenwald affair, which never really ended.

Wacht Am Rhein was what ended it.
Kind of "upstaged" it.
The poor GI's must have been happy to bleed somewhere else besides that damnable forest...(cue up Monte Python's "look on the bright side of life")