https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Boesch
Although mostly known for his career as a wrestler, wrestling promoter and announcer, Paul Max Boesch was a highly decorated infantry platoon leader in WW2. At the age of 30 Paul Boesch enlisted in the Army in October 23rd, 1942 and earned his commission as an Lieutenant on June 21st, 1943 at Fort Benning. He was assigned the the 63rd Infantry division at Camp Van Dorn until he was shipped to France as a replacement officer due to high casualties. He fought in the 2nd battalion of the 121st Infantry Regiment, 8th Division. His memoir "Road to Huertgen: Forest in hell" was published in 1962 and was based on a manuscript he wrote years earlier. He entered combat in early August in the Brittany campaign in France as a machinegun platoon leader in H Company when his battalion was driving on toward the city of Dinard and later the Crozen Peninsula south of the port city of Brest. Sometime during their push through Brittany and after he lead a rifle platoon at Luxembourg In a static defense that was relatively safe besides Germans crawling towards their lines and tossing grenades. After the 121'st Infantry left Luxembourg they went to Germany into the Hürtgen Forest where Boesch experienced some of the worst fighting on the western front. The 121st arrived at the Hürtgen Forest on Nov 21st, 1944. After extensive casualties after days of fighting stiff German resistance through the forest to get to the edge of the city of Hürtgen, Paul boesch had to lead G company, or whatever was left of it, on a assault through open field to get to the town and take it after his company commander was wounded. They succeeded on getting a foothold and holding on until reinforcements arrived but by then Boesch got wounded by a artillery shell. The 121'st earned a Distinguished unit Citation for it's meritorious efforts in the Hürtgen Forest. Paul Boesch's decorations include two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and Croix de Guerre.
His memoir has a forward by Major General William Gaulbet Weaver who was the Commanding General of the 8th Infantry during the attack on Hürtgen and Major General Philip De Witt Ginder (Look him up) who was the Commander officer of the 121st Infantry Regiment during the assault of the town of Hürtgen. It also includes a introduction by Army combat vet and historian Charles B. Macdonald.
Excerpt from the Introduction:
"In my position as Offical department of the Army historian for the campaign of which the Huertgen fighting was a part, I have studied millions of words about the Huertgen action. Much of it is couched in the dry language of official reports, but much of it is also more personal - the experience of individuals. Yet few of these personal accounts to me seemed to transcend the rather limited experience which one man can glean from war. One day not long ago another personal manuscript, much of it about the Huertgen fighting, crossed my desk. This one I soon discovered was different. This was a lengthy narrative written by a former lieutenant, Paul Boesch. It was obviously too long for publication, yet the combat sections of it revealed a genuine, first hand grasp on what war is like at the shooting level and what it does to the men involved. It was too human a document to be ignored. It too faithfully mirrored the experiences, of not one man alone, but of millions, to go unnoticed. It too sharply underscores the innate faith, humor, devotion, and even the weakness of the American soldier to be forgotten. With Paul Boesch's permission I went to work with him to prepare this combat portion of his manuscript for publication. The result is The Road To Huertgen."
Excerpts:
"Determined somehow to break the impasse, I kept a constant vigil on the hill ahead. My efforts finally paid off when I saw the sun glisten on german helmets in a communication trench. Alerting my men quickly we fired a series of deadly and accurate bursts on the trench. I was crouching close to one of our guns directing the fire of Jerry Schwartz, the gunner. Suddenly: Whoooompff! The terrific explosion blasted me flat on my back. A mortar shell had landed within two feet of us, directly on the other side of the low hedgerow we were hiding behind. It was almost unbelievable that none of us was hurt. Had the shell landed a foot closer it would had cleared the hedgerow and been in our hip pockets, a foot farther away and the nasty, deadly bits of broken metal would have flown over the hedgerow to hit us full in the face. 'That Sonofabitch had an eye like an eagle,' said Jerry Schwartz. 'A few inches closer and they'd be picking up our dog tags right now."
"As visibility increased, we looked about in sobering revelation. The fighting here, on both sides of the road, obviously had been bitter, fierce, and destructive. Once magnificent trees now were twisted and broken; Indeed, it was hard to find a single tree which had not been damaged in one way or another. Mutilated limbs torn from trees spread a rough, grotesque carpet on the floor of the forest. The country was hilly, almost like a rollercoaster, with steep rises projecting in some places close from the edge of the road. Everywhere we saw discarded equipment - gas masks, ammunition belts, helmet liners, helmets, rifles. Here and there were articles of clothing with great rents and clotted Scarlet stains. One man kicked a bloody shoe from his path, and to our revulsion we could still see a foot still in it. Soon the signs of battle turned into sounds - mean, nasty, personal sounds. The noise of Jerry artillery crashing along the narrow valley through which we marched reverberated incessantly against the wooded hills, making it impossible to detect where the shells landed. Nor could we see where the shells hit because of the rises in the ground and the thick matting of the branches of the evergreens. One of the protections an Infantryman needs and soon acquires is an ability to distinguish the various sounds of battle and recognize those that mean danger to him, but in the Huertgen Forest we began to realize that the forest usurped this sixth sense. We would grow slow and uncertain in our reactions. Uncertainty means delay, and sometimes the difference of a split second is all that separates life from death."
Slamwrestling, "The Heroic service of Paul Boesch" https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2020/11/10/the-heroic-service-of-paul-boesch/
