Lost in the Forest
A medic's death in a forgotten battle, 80 years ago today
Paul Kristan’s grave in the Henri-Chapelle Military Cemetery, Belgium.
November 19, 1944 was the fourth day of an offensive launched to break a stalemate in the Hürtgen Forest, south of Aachen in a far western corner of Nazi Germany. It was preceded by an enormous bombing effort and an artillery barrage using over 50,000 shells.
It didn’t work.
Historian Charles B. McDonald tells what the 26th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division was up to that day:
Like many another unit that fought full within the Hürgen Forest, the 26th Infantry engaged from the first in an almost unalloyed small-arms battle. Limited observation severely restricted the effectiveness of artillery support, and the mud and a dearth of roads denied help from tanks and tank destroyers. The inevitable hazards of forest fighting - shell bursts in the trees and open flanks - plagued the regiment from the start. As always, the Germans gave ground grudgingly from log bunkers and log-covered foxholes cleverly camouflaged among the trees…
Then, on the fourth day, November 19, a battalion of Max Bork’s 47th Volks Grenadier Division… launched a sharp counterattack.
The offensive bogged down. Somewhere in the fighting that day, a 20-year old medic, already decorated for rescuing a wounded soldier under heavy fire, was killed.
Paul Kristan was my dad’s first cousin. He was on the side of the family that still runs a funeral home in the Chicago suburbs. He was only one of 450 casualties of the 26th infantry in the four days of fighting leading up to November 19.
The Hürtgen Forest fighting is remembered only by hard-core World War II nerds. Maybe it’s because it was a bloody debacle that one would just as soon forget. There were an estimated 33,000 U.S. casualties out of around 120,000 men engaged - a casualty rate of over 25%. Of those, 9,000 were killed. For the Normandy campaign starting on D-Day, by comparison, the U.S. casualty rate was around 11%. It fizzled out when the Ardennes offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, began, requiring the American command to focus on dealing with the German breakthrough.
I usually think of WWII history in terms of turning point battles - D-Day, the Normandy breakout, the Battle of the Bulge, Stalingrad, and so on. Paul Kristan’s story is a reminder of the rest of the war, the countless fights and untold terror and pain that nobody writes about. Rest in peace, cousin.
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