infantrymen who advanced through France and Germany waged war in mud, rain, snow and fog. But if you have to do it every hour, day after day, it becomes debilitating on the psyche.' It's one thing if it's episodic - two or three minutes, an hour, then you can rest and recuperate. 'When you're shot at, and shooting back, you lose all sense of time. Army Center of Military History and author of the book 'Hell in Hurtgen Forest.' Rush, a former Army Ranger who is a historian at the U.S. 'I don't even think soldiers today have an understanding how bad it was,' said Robert S. Soldiers went into battle with no body armor, only helmets, and they sometimes came under artillery and mortar fire that seemed ceaseless. It was a war fought largely by young men who were drafted or enlisted fresh out of high school and who had few of the technological gadgets, protections and conveniences of modern warfare. Now, at the end of their lives, the opening of the National World War II Memorial is prodding many of them to recall harrowing days when they were young soldiers and afraid. The veterans of World War II are of a generation that never talked much about its experiences in combat. 'I feel guilty that I made it,' he said softly. Six decades later, the memory of his three weeks in the Hurtgen Forest still has the power to make Pennegar shudder and cry.

If it was their buddies, there wasn't much need for a medic.' Sometimes you'd hear the wounded yelling for a medic. But you could make out medics scurrying around. 'You'd look around, you couldn't see far because the forest was so dark. 'It was brutal,' said Pennegar, now a 79-year-old widower living outside Philadelphia. All he could do was wrap himself around a tree trunk being vertical left less of his body exposed than throwing himself on the ground. He came under shelling within minutes of joining his platoon - and realized that his M-1 rifle was useless against a relentless barrage of artillery timed to explode in the treetops and scatter a wide dome of shrapnel. So three months after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the 19-year-old from Pennsylvania stepped off a troop carrier bringing replacements to the Hurtgen Forest along the German-Belgian border.

Jacob 'Bud' Pennegar was a clerk in an army that desperately needed infantrymen. After the war he returned to Ocean County, New Jersey, becoming an attorney in Toms River.In 1944, Pvt. Six months later, in the Battle of HГјrtgen Forest, he would again distinguish himself, earning a Silver Star for his heroism and leadership as the 2nd Ranger Battalion captured and held Hill 400. Eisenhower - most responsible for the success of D-Day. Lomell was recognized by historian Stephen Ambrose as the single individual - other than Gen. Through skill, courage and 'pure luck,' Lomell found and quickly disabled all five guns. Unbeknownst to the Allied intelligence, the Germans had concealed the guns in an orchard, but left them operational and ready to fire.

Pointe du Hoc was the site of the German Army's largest coastal weapons, five 155-millimeter German guns with a 25-kilometer range that endangered the tens of thousands of troops landing on Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, and thousands of watercraft in the English Channel supporting the Normandy invasion. He is best known for his actions in the first hours of D-Day at Pointe du Hoc on the coast of Normandy, France.

'Bud' Lomell was a highly decorated former United States Army Ranger who served in World War II.

Battle for hill 400