Hurtgen.

My dad was in the Hurtgen Forest during the war. The Hurtgen Forest is a dense woods on the border of Belgium and Germany. In the winter of 1944 the Americans fought the Germans there, and some people say it was the worst killing field there ever was between two armies.

My dad never talked about the Hurtgen Forest at all until a few years ago, when right after we said grace over the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner he got up and went out in the backyard and knelt down in the snow and cried. We thought he was going out in the kitchen to get salt or something, but I heard the back door click and he was gone. I went out in the yard to see if he was OK, and there he was on his knees crying like a child.

That's a hell of a thing for a son to see.

After a while I got him to come back in. His knees were all wet and he went and changed his pants. No one said anything. After dinner people drifted off here and there, but my dad started to talk about the Hurtgen Forest.

We were all just boys, that's the first thing to know, he said. Just boys. I was all of 19 and there were none of us older than 20. There were 10 of us to begin with. That was the coldest, darkest forest there ever was. The Germans were in there waiting for us. They knew we were coming. It was so cold you wouldn't believe it. Everything was wet. The trees were wet, our socks were wet, our rifles were wet. Our sergeant was 20. He was a good guy. He got shot about 10 seconds after we went in the woods. We all dove for cover. It was so dark you wouldn't believe it. You couldn't see a thing. One guy got up to run to a bigger tree and he got shot. He was carrying the radio, so another guy went to get the radio, which we were trained to do, and he got shot, and a guy went to help him and he got shot. So now there are six of us. We can't see a thing, and we are scared out of our minds.

We had one guy, 17 years old, who lied to get in the army because he thought his girlfriend was pregnant, which it turned out she wasn't, but she told him she was anyway. This guy, he was a Mormon, a little skinny guy, he lost it, and he and another guy, who was older, they couldn't stand it, and they jump up to run back out of the woods, a lot of guys did that in Hurtgen Forest, you don't see the army history books talking about that, but the second they stand up they get shot to pieces. There's brains all over. No one writes that down.

So now there are four of us: me and two brothers and another guy. The brothers start digging holes with their hands, figuring we are going to be here for a long time, and the older brother, they were from Boston, he reaches for his shovel just as a shell blows up in the trees right above us, and his arm gets blown off, and the kid brother, he screams and screams as his brother bleeds to death about five inches away.

Then the third guy, not the kid brother, he says well, we can't do a thing sitting here, boys, and he jumps up and runs right at the Germans firing his rifle, and he gets shot.

After a while I crawl over to the kid brother and get him to stop screaming. We figure we're done for. But the Germans never come after us, for some reason, and after a few hours some other guys come into the forest and get us out. We're all covered in blood, so they take us to medical. When we get there a doctor says, hey, it's Thanksgiving, Ike issued an order that every guy gets a hot turkey dinner today no matter what, can you believe that? Is today your lucky day or what?

About a year later my dad died and at his funeral there were a few guys who had been with him in the war. I looked at those guys, they were all standing together in the back of the church, and tried to figure out which one could be the guy who had been the kid brother in the Hurtgen Forest that day, but I couldn't tell. They were all sort of the same age, you know, the way men get to be after 50 or so.

But then at the house afterwards, when people were sitting around drinking coffee and talking quietly and telling stories about my dad and hugging my mom, a guy came up to me and said, Can I talk to you a minute? And it turned out he was the guy, the kid whose brother bled to death in the woods.

The guy says quietly, Listen, your dad told me that he told you about Hurtgen, and I know this isn't the time or place to tell you what else happened that day, but I'd like to talk to you, whereas I don't have any kids and I am not going to live forever, and you young people should know some things, you know?

I say I know what he means because I have little kids now, and already I have thought that there are some things I have to tell them to make sure they don't get lost, primarily for example about my dad, who they didn't really know except as Grampy, who could be remote as a mountain to them sometimes, to tell you the truth.

So a day later the guy comes over to the house and we sit down over coffee and talk.

The first thing I should tell you is that your dad was a really good guy, he says. I mean you know that, but still. All of us respected him. We were all just kids, but still.

Anyways, the thing is, you know what happened that day, how 10 of us went in and only two came out, and how my brother Billy died next to me, and how Joey Lemma ran right at the Germans shooting at them but they nailed him, but the part your dad didn't tell you was what happened between when he crawled over and when some guys came to get us out a long time later. That was a lifetime of a time.

All my dad said was that it was a few hours.

Seven hours, says the guy. We went in about noon and it was dusk when some guys from the Second Battalion got us out. Seven hours. We were wet and cold and bloody and Billy was dead. His eyes stayed open, you know. Like he was still looking after me. I think I went nuts probably. But your dad crawled over and started talking. That's what I want to tell you, OK? Your dad told me stories. He just kept telling stories. All kinds of stories. Stories about kings and wizards and all, and stories about football and baseball, and stories about girls he knew, and stories guys had told him about girls they knew, and stories about animals and birds and stuff, and stories he read when he was a kid, and stories from different religions and all, and stories his dad had told him, all kinds of stories. He never stopped telling me stories, that's what I wanted to say. I don't have anything heroic and all to say. lust that. His voice telling stories, you know? Just that. But without those stories I don't get out of there alive, you know? It's important that you know that about your dad. Tell your kids that, OK?

OK, I say, and he gets up to go, and we shake hands and all, and he goes, but a while later he sent me some photographs, one of which was him and my dad when they had just started being soldiers and were skinny as sticks. Wars are fought by kids most of whom a good wind would blow over, and that's a fact.

BRIAN DOYLE is editor of Portland magazine at the University of Portland and author of The Wet Engine (Paraclete Press, 2005).