“there Was Combat Enough For Everyone …” (June/July 1980 | Volume: 31, Issue: 4)

“there Was Combat Enough For Everyone …”

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June/July 1980 | Volume 31, Issue 4


General James M. Gavin’s “Bloody Huertgen: The Battle That Should Never Have Been Fought” (December, 1979) inspired a letter from Dominic F. O’Donnell of Fairfax, Virginia:

“General Gavin states that the town of Schmidt was taken by the 82nd Airborne Division. This is not true. I was a member of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 310th Infantry, 78th Division, and the 3rd Battalion was the combat unit that attacked and captured the town of Schmidt.… I was there, and remember many events that took place on that memorable occasion. One is that I ran out of bazooka ammunition trying to blow the doors off a concrete bunker blocking our approach to Schmidt. …

“General Gavin also says, as the article title would imply, that this [Huertgen] was a battle that should never have been fought. This conclusion, coming from a senior officer and division commander during the period, surprises me, to say the least. The battle was not fought in order to capture a few small towns in the Huertgen Forest area, but to capture and hold the high dams on the Roer River to prevent the Germans from blowing up these dams, which would have caused massive flooding downriver. …”

The reasons why General Gavin thought the forest battle should never have been fought were succinctly outlined in his article: “Obviously, the attack on Schmidt should have been made straight down the ridge from Lammersdorf. Lammersdorf and Schmidt are connected by a paved road, the terrain was a mixture of woods and open farm land—good tank country—and it would have been a much simpler tactical undertaking than crossing the Kail River. The question in my mind was how in the world did they ever get involved in attacking across the Kail River valley in the first place? Why not stick to the high ground, bypassing the Germans in the valley, and then go on to the Roer River? I raised this question with a corps staff officer present, but he brushed it aside.”

As to which unit was responsible for the taking of Schmidt, General Gavin has replied directly to Mr. O’Donnell: “The first effort to seize Schmidt was made by the 28th Infantry Division. It moved out into the attack on November 2, 1944. Meeting unexpected success, it had one battalion in Kommerscheidt and another battalion ‘astride the division objective’ in Schmidt the evening of November 3,1944. The following day a heavy German attack supported by armor drove the battalion out of Schmidt. No successful attempt to retake Schmidt was made until the following February, when the 82nd was ordered to move across the Kail River valley and seize Kommerscheidt and Schmidt. …”

“From the 82nd’s point of view, it contacted members of the 309th Infantry of the 78th Division in Kommerscheidt and then went on to Schmidt. It reported it was in Schmidt, then turned to the northeast, paralleling the Kail River gorge,