Brutal Battle In the Forest

Psychologists say that one way humans cope with the tremendous strain of combat is through the sense of shared experience. Camaraderie makes the ordeal more bearable.

But in Hurtgen Forest, many soldiers came to consider it a waste of emotion to bother learning the names of those they fought with; chances were that most would not live through the day's combat. So many fell, and so many replacements were rushed in to take their places, that some companies had casualty rates technically exceeding 100 percent.

When Staff Sgt. Frank Kusnir joined the 28th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit mobilized from Pennsylvania, he knew everyone in his unit. While battling in Europe, the division started getting replacement infantrymen from other units. By the time it got to the Hurtgen Forest, it was taking anyone who walked.

"Eventually, we had cooks and mechanics coming out," said Kusnir, 87, who lives in Harrisburg, Pa. "When there were replacements, you didn't get to know their names. If they survived, then you got to know them."

Bob Frisby, who was just a sergeant, became a de facto company commander for three days when every superior officer was wounded or killed in an artillery attack.

Replacements who made it through a week's combat sometimes found themselves the veterans in their companies. Others never made it to combat at all.

"Before you ever knew who they were or could assign them to a platoon, they were hit," recalled Frisby, 81, of York, Pa.

He hasn't thought about a lot of this for many years, and his voice grows weary when he describes what combat was like.

"It didn't pay to make close friends," he said. "You missed them all the more. That wasn't good."

For Pennegar, World War II ended in the Hurtgen Forest. The day he was wounded, he was on patrol with the three other surviving men in his squad of 12. They were in a diamond formation, Pennegar in the rear, when a shell landed in the middle.

He woke up in a field hospital three days later and learned that the other three had been killed. One day not long after that, he heard a voice call out to him with a simple mention of the devastated company he had left: "Charlie Company." A soldier who recognized Pennegar's face grabbed his hand and told him, "We're the only ones left."

Tomorrow: How the war changed Washington.