This book examines the combat performance of small units and their reaction to heavy losses using the US 22d Infantry Regiment and units of the opposing LXXIV Korps during the intense combat in the Hürtgen Forest.

Organizationally there are two issues. Although transient, the first is that a unit with combat experience had a significant initial advantage over ones without, no matter how well trained the latter. Second was the way in which combat losses were replaced - or not replaced – which made a great difference in combat effectiveness over the long term. A good replacement system enabled leaders at regiment and divisional level to learn the battlefield and the enemy before their unit had become ineffective though losses.

In the Hürtgenwald, the extraordinarily high casualties caused the ‘band of brothers’ type cohesion that effectively explains cohesion under most circumstances to disappear from squads and platoons. Nevertheless, there was some type of bond between soldiers, or the 22d Infantry Regiment would not have kept moving forward after the fifth day. This cohesion was situational in nature and imposed by circumstances and surroundings more so than by long-term association. It was this second type that was most prevalent in the Hürtgenwald.

The primary difference between U.S. and German units was that through constantly arriving replacements as well as returning casuals, U.S. infantry continued at more or less a constant strength, and remained organizationally sound. The 22d’s tenacity during the battle depended on the cohesiveness of the officers and enlisted men who had trained together in the United States and around whom the new replacements coalesced.

Conversely, the German divisions, time after time shrank to almost nothing, their staffs and specialists brought out of the line, the infantry units refilled with replacements and returned to combat after a month or possibly even less. However, the replacement system could not sustain the organization’s fighting strength and the typical infantry organization collapsed under the strain of heavy combat—although through accounting wizardry the paper strength remained acceptable. ( )

The author has a mission here, and it's not so much to write about the battle of the Hurtgen Forest, though you get enough of that through the lens of the experiences of the 22nd Infantry Regiment in this battle. The core of the book is really about the nuances of the procurement and replacement of personnel in combat units, as one might expect from an author who was a one-time command sergeant major in the U.S. Army. This means that Rush has issues with most of the theorists of men under fire (Marshall, van Creveld, Bartov, and Janowitz, etc.; but particularly van Creveld) and how units maintain cohesion under stress. In the end, Rush comes to the conclusion that it's not social ties, ideology, or training so much as having enough skilled cadres at the small-unit level that keeps a formation viable in combat. When those individuals are gone that unit is pretty much finished; barring coercion. If this story isn't grim enough, Rush essentially finishes his analysis by musing on exercises he participated in, and where his unit was held to be decimated. The question being where will the fairly small modern U.S. Army find the necessary replacements if locked into another meat-grinder campaign of attrition, and whether it will be reduced to amalgamating decimated unit after decimated unit until annihilation sets in; much as happened to the original cadre of the 22nd Infantry in Hurtgen and their opposite numbers in the German military. Rather prescient, considering this book was probably essentially done before the current U.S. adventure in Iraq was merely a gleam in the eyes of certain political activists. ( )