Customer Reviews

The Bloody Forest

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a must buy. With ony a few great book on the the Hurtgen Forrest campaign (by Mac Donald, and Miller, both hard to get), this work will stand out as being one of the best. This book is pure Astor, gripping first person accounts (US point of view), and historical detail will keep you reading cover to cover. As a fan of Astor, I rate this ahead of some of this others (The Greatest War, Operation Iceberg, and a Blood Dimmed Tide), for the simple reason that he wrote on a battle that has often been ignored. Astor also takes you in to Roer campaign as well. If you like Astor, The Hurtgen, or the movie "When Trumpets Fade" buy this book.

This book is a terrific addition to any World War II library. The story is about a little known battle that my father took part in. Although his specific unit was mentioned on only one page, the interviews conducted by the author added a personal accounting of the battle that sent shivers down my spine. I am continually amazed that my father survived the battle at all. I wish I had known that the author was writing it; I could have added some of my father's memories: killing a woman dressed in a German soldier's uniform; seeing his buddy walk on a land mine, his body thrown up in the air to have only his belt buckle return to earth! Battles like these need to be written about more, not so much to underscore the heroism and courage of those who participated, but to keep us from making the same mistakes.

While this book did captivate me, especially on a personal level, my grandfather fought in the Huertegen, I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars. It is certainly well written, and enjoyable, but the first hand accounts are broken and choppy and in my opinion, Astor should have given the veterans more space.

Astor's book does convey a forboding feeling for the darkness and terror of the forest and attempts to provide the German perspective as well for completeness. The language just didn't feel as rich as some other books (even Astor's own "A Blood Dimmed Tide") and came across as very flat even when describing horrific details and events.

The maps provided were limited and not of much use. The photographs also seemed very limited and didn't aid the text. It is hard to believe that there aren't better photographs from this campaign. Even modern photographs of the Huertegen would have been more instructive than some of the photo's included.

The Huertegen campaign was a horrible, bloody affair that revealed poor strategic decision making coming from SHAEF and it has not recieved much scholarly attention and for that we should thank Astor. This text is well worth the read, but it is not the definitive book on the campaign.

Mr. Astor does it again. Blending history with first-person accounts in a seamless fashion, Gerald Astor gives us an outstanding read. What makes it more gripping is the fact that not much else has been written on the Huertgen Forest battles. I could not put this book down. This is a must read for any World War II history buff.

"The dead man, nameless to us, was one of the thousands of callow replacements...who were fed into the maws of the Huertgen and became dead meat almost immediately". This quote, from medic Paul Treatman (p. 198), aptly sums up what was possibly the most brutal and costly fight waged by the US Army in the Western Front of WW2.

Not many Americans know about the Battle for the Huertgen forest; most accounts of American military operations in western Europe prefer to give it much less attention than D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, or the crossing of the Rhine.

"The Bloody Forest" is a good addition to the literature on this campaign. Gerald Astor is an experienced historian and writer, and he chooses to let the GIs who were involved in the battle do the storytelling in this oral history.

The book covers the entire Huertgen campaign, from the beginning of September 1944, to early February 1945, and concludes with a `post mortem' chapter in which Astor muses on the reasons why the American commanders continued to order assaults on such a well-defended redoubt. Astor is quite a bit less caustic in his views about the senior US Army command than Charles Whiting is in his book "The Battle of the Huertgen Forest", but reaches much the same conclusion: the battle was the result of some of the most atrocious decision-making by rear-echelon operators in the entire European theatre.

The book includes several maps and a section of photographs. The inclusion of some more maps, particularly ones dealing with the latter months of the battle, would have been helpful. Overall, however, this is a good history of the Huertgen campaign and should be of interest to readers looking for the GI's point of view of the war in western Europe.

The Bloody Forest is an account of the battle of the Huertgen Forest, which took place during the fall of 1944. As with all of Astor's books, this is an "oral history". This means it's really a book based on the recollections by participants more than a scholarly and objective analysis of the battles. Indeed, there is no analysis or critical thinking; no historically important questions are raised or answered. Like Stephen Ambrose, Astor does not write history, but merely chronology spiced with personal accounts. Of course, this is not the point of the book, but if you are looking for an assessment of the Huertgen campaign, this is not the book you're looking for (instead, try Miller's A Dark and Bloody Ground, which is not "hard to get" as another reviewer claims).

For someone looking for a book that focuses on personal experiences of individual combatants, the book does an adequate job of providing this. The personal stories are gripping, the descriptions of being shelled in the forest and suffering airbursts are vivid, and the tales of exhaustion, frustration, and sheer terror are both pointed and poignant. I particularly liked the stories which reflected the frustrations of command during the battles. Many focused on the problems at the company level, where the predominant issues were company and platoon comander losses, causalties in general, and the poor training and integration of the green replacements. Occasionally there are also tales of battalion or regiment HQs being so out of touch with what was happening at the front lines that orders were completely rediculous and lead to serious defeats.

The book, despite these interesting tales of failures of command, is not great, due to a number of problems. First, the stories and experiences reported in the book get repetitive very quickly. They all are about artillery and airbusts, foxholes, and mines. Granted, these were key themes of the battles, but after the first 10 or 15 stories, the reader gets the point that covering your foxhole with logs was imperitive to avoid getting nailed by airbusts. Astor does a poor job of editing these comments so that the reader isn't bored. This is a major failing by Astor, as it cheapens the effectiveness of the combatants' tales of their experiences. Instead of being exciting throughout, the book plods on and on (the reader starts to think "...let me guess, this guy will dig a foxhole, cover it with logs, and then complain about mortar fire and how wet his feet are"). This isn't fair to the vets who are relating their experiences.

Furthermore, huge sections of George Wilson's If You Survive were quoted. Although the material was appropriate (Wilson's personal accounts of his exeperience in the Huertgen Forest are very interesting), I found this to be annoying. I have read Wilson's book and I was annoyed to find out that I was going to read it again instead of Astor actually providing something new. Furthermore, it is a failure on the part of the author when whole sections of another text must be quoted verbatim to carry the story along. At least Astor properly, legally, and ethically quotes the material and documents the source. Perhaps ... Stephen Ambrose should take note.

Another problem is that Astor does not provide useful maps. There are only two for the entire book. One is a broad overview map, showing the entire region of the Westwall south of Aachen. As such, it isn't useful to pick out the locations of individual towns where battles took place. The other is a more detailed map, but it only covers the portion of the Huertgen Forest that was initially invaded in the early parts of the battle. It doesn't even include Schmidt! This lack of maps was extrodinarily frustrating, even though I've read other books on the subject and am familiar with the geography of the region.

Finally, the book is very choppy. Instead of seamlessly blending the personal stories of the combatants with a tight chronology of the battle, Astor jumps around both in terms of time and space. Several pages will be devoted to a battle in one location at a certain time, and then without warning (i.e. with nothing more than a new paragraph) Astor will jump to a new location miles away and cover a different battle that took place a day earlier. This is very frustrating, particularly when there aren't supporting maps to help the reader.

In the end, the book is a disappointment if read on its own. If you are going to read only one book on the Huertgen Forest, this is not the one to read. Instead, read Miller's A Dark and Bloody Ground for a tight history as well as analysis, then read this book to add the color and grit of the peronsal accounts.

In a nutshell: A potentially great book ruined by a bad writer.

This book certainly provides the reader with an understanding of the front-line soldier during the Battle for the Huertgen. However, Mr. Astor fails to provide a larger context in which this struggle can be understood. I had difficulty understanding how the local village battles related to one another or to the Corps or Army level for example.

The oral history is good but the "big picture" is missing.

The strength of Gerald Astor's book lies in his oral history narrative. As a work of history, however, Astor breaks no new ground. The standard arguments: the Roer River Dams should have been the American's prime objective; the Hurtgen Forest should have been avoided; the American numerical advantage, armor and air supremacy were nullified in the confines of the forest, are repeated once again in Astor's work. Astor tries to represent as many units that took part in the fighting as possible. Good oral history, no new analysis.

I don't believe Mr. Astor's account of the Huertgen Forest campaign flows as well as his Blood Dimmed Tide book about the Battle of the Bulge. I have read and also written about this campaign and find Mr. Astor's book authentic and reliable in its facts. It can be used as a source book to other writers.