In November 1944, the 28th Infantry Division, under inept commanders, was ordered to attack the Germans in the Hurtgen Forest near the Siegfried Line. Resistance was fierce. The American infantrymen, though courageous, were demoralized by cold, hunger, exhaustion, and fear. They broke and ran. Ten percent losses would have been considered unacceptably high, but American casualties climbed to seventy-five percent. Now, from access to recently declassified documents and with first-hand testimony from both German and American survivors, the virtual destruction of an American division in one of World War II's most costly and useless attacks is revealed in detail to the general public for the first time.

Book club edition (AISO)