Bruyeres and the Vosges
Rescue of the Lost Battalion · October 1944 · Vosges, France
21 contours at 10 m, traced from SRTM 30 m elevation data. Every 5th line is drawn heavier.
What happened
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team - Japanese American soldiers, many with families in US internment camps - took Bruyeres and then fought five days through the Vosges to reach 211 surrounded Texans of the 141st Infantry. The 442nd took several hundred casualties doing it and became the most decorated unit of its size in US Army history.
Why the ground mattered
The Vosges in October is steep, densely forested and permanently wet, and the Germans had spent weeks preparing it. Armour could not leave the roads and the roads were mined and cratered, so the advance had to go uphill through the trees on foot, into log bunkers sited on the ridgelines. Tree bursts - shells detonating in the canopy - turned every barrage into a rain of splinters with no cover overhead. The last push to the Lost Battalion was made straight up a wooded slope into machine gun fire because there was no flank left to find.
Watch
American's Samurai - The 442nd Infantry - Most Decorated Unit of WW2
The 442nd's whole record, the Lost Battalion rescue in these woods included, and the circumstances the men volunteered from.
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