J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [61]
Even the company camps were dangerous places. Salinger had been taught to hit the ground facedown when being shelled, to avoid horizontally flying debris. At Hürtgen, the Germans employed tree bursts, which exploded well above the soldiers’ heads, resulting in a shower of shrapnel and shredded tree limbs that poured down like a thousand spears. Jerry quickly learned to “hug a tree” at the first sound of an explosion and to cover his foxhole with as many tree branches as possible.
Nearly half of the 2,517 casualties suffered by the 12th Infantry Regiment in Hürtgen were due to the elements.25 Men froze to death in their foxholes or lost limbs to frostbite. The filth of the place was inescapable, and the weather was either drenching wet or burning cold. For more than a month, Salinger and his men were forced to sleep in muddy or frozen holes with no chance to wash or change their clothes. A successful attempt was made to obtain additional blankets, woolen underwear, and overcoats.* But overshoes and sleeping bags were still impossible to secure even though the division had been requesting them since the beginning of September.26
The soldiers wore boots that acted like sponges, soaking up the rain, and trench foot decimated the ranks. Salinger was fortunate. He later recalled how he managed to keep his feet dry. His mother had fallen into the habit of knitting him woolen socks. Each week he would receive a package from home, containing yet another pair of socks. Such indulgence might have made him smile in July, but in November, it helped keep him alive.27
The great tragedy of Hürtgen was the pointlessness of it all. Why the Allied command so stubbornly insisted upon fighting for this useless piece of ground under such impossible conditions is incomprehensible. The Germans fought to hold the place mainly in order to control the dams, prizes that could have been taken with greater ease by simply going around the forest rather than through it. Even when the significance of the dams finally began to seep into the consciousness of the Allied commanders, they refused to alter their course, electing to seize the small towns controlling the dams by taking the most direct route possible—straight through Hürtgen into the Kall River Valley, where they were completely at the mercy of the Germans.
For these reasons, Hürtgen is viewed by historians as a military failure and a waste of human life. It was among the greatest Allied debacles of the war. Yet great strides were made within the forest by the 4th Infantry Division, measures that later allowed the dams to be wrested away from Hitler, but at a terrible cost. Those gains were almost exclusively due to the valor of the common soldiers. During the long winter of 1944, not a single division commander or staff member set foot upon Hürtgen soil.
The blackness of Hürtgen did permit Salinger a rare glimpse of solace. During the battle for the forest, Hemingway was serving as a correspondent and briefly stationed with the 22nd Regiment, just a mile from Salinger’s encampment.
One night during a lull in the fighting, Salinger turned to fellow soldier Werner Kleeman, a translator for the 12th Regiment he had befriended while training in England. “Let’s go,” Salinger urged, “let’s go see Hemingway.”28 The two men donned their heaviest coats, gathered together their guns and flashlights, and made their way through the forest. A mile later, they reached Hemingway’s quarters, a small cabin lighted by the extraordinary luxury of its own generator.
The visit lasted two or three hours. They drank celebratory champagne from aluminum canteen cups, and Kleeman listened as Salinger and Hemingway talked of literature. It was a singular moment in the forest, one that left Salinger refreshed and Kleeman impressed. When recalling the visit in a letter five months later, Salinger