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With the failure of the tanks to rescue the 28th, the Allied command called upon the 12th Infantry Regiment, which, on November 6, was attached to the besieged 28th Division and made its way into the Hürtgen bloodbath. Strewn with burned-out tanks and the bodies of the dead, the Kall Trail was a fearsome precursor of the weeks ahead. Yet the regiment dutifully took up its position on the forested plain, relieving the broken remnants of a unit that was at near collapse.

The original plan had been for the 12th Regiment to create and maintain an escape path for the members of the 28th Division who had survived. But once in the forest, leaders of the 28th Division ordered the regiment to divide itself into separate units, and the groups to simultaneously strike out from the forested plain into the Kall River Valley, imposing the same flawed strategy that had doomed the 28th. When officers of the 12th Regiment received the order, they protested, pointing out the folly of splitting up their men. Their objections fell on deaf ears. The 12th, now in segments, advanced unevenly, and its men soon became disoriented. Unable to communicate with one another, entire companies fell to the Germans. Others were lost in the forest for days and, as their supplies depleted, were forced to scavenge food from the bodies of the dead. Outnumbered four to one and short on ammunition, the soldiers were in a desperate situation. “God, it was cold. We were hungry and thirsty,” recalled a survivor. “That night we really prayed. In the morning, we found out that God had answered all our prayers. It snowed during the night, and the whole area was covered with fog—perfect for getting out. The supply line was littered with dead. The men that came out with me were so damned tired that they stepped on the bodies. They were too tired to step over them.”23

Within five days, the 12th Regiment had lost more than 500 men and were ordered to slip away to the rear and reorganize what little was left of them. But there was no “rear.” When the exhausted soldiers reached their previous encampments, they found their foxholes occupied by the Germans. The regiment commanders could stand no more. The 12th, depleted beyond repair, was detached from the 28th Infantry Division on November 11. Two days later, there would be nothing left of the 28th, except for a handful of broken and wounded men.

Still the men were not allowed to leave Hürtgen. After the annihilation of the 28th Division, all three regiments of the 4th Infantry Division were called upon to replace them. Despite their weakness and depleted numbers, Salinger and his fellow soldiers were expected to remain in the forest, support their sister regiments, and somehow maintain an offensive.

When Salinger entered the Hürtgen Forest, he crossed the threshold of a nightmare world. The most senseless carnage of World War II on the western front arguably took place at Hürtgen during the winter of 1944. But it was the day-to-day terror of the place that drove men to the brink of despair. Trapped in the gloom of the forest, death could come at any moment and from any direction. Here the enemy was invisible, requiring a constant supply of adrenaline that was impossible to sustain. Madness seeped up through the mud or poured down with the incessant rains.

The slaughter at Hürtgen was so great that the 12th Regiment was kept afloat only by an inadequate influx of replacements. By some unfathomable logic, commanders were required to place orders for troop replacements in advance of the need. As a result, there were never enough troops, increasing the burden on survivors such as Salinger, who had quickly become hardened veterans of war. When replacements did arrive, there was no time to orient them. Years later, one such soldier vividly remembered the brutal but efficient method used by the 12th Regiment to instruct its newest members:

We were a bunch of raw recruits sent up as replacements and didn’t know what