Minefield "Wilde Sau"

 Second World War 1939-1945, military

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Giant antipersonnel minefield laid by an entire German engineering corps over a 4 day period to deny road access to Hürtgen during the battle of Hürtgen Forest. The name was chosen because traditional rules of density and layout were ignored; given the imminent attack, the engineers laid every kind of mine available to them in the largest possible numbers in no particular organization on both sides of the road. Schumine-42s and bouncing S-Mines proliferated and were sown far thicker than normal.

So many mines were laid in so small an area that usually 4 or 5 would sympathetically detonate when one was stepped on (actually an inefficient use of mines, but capable of vaporizing an entire squad at once).

It was one of the largest minefields laid on the Western Front of WWII, and combined with fighting positions on both sides and heavy roadblocks on the road completely cut off Hürtgen from attacks from the south. It was not reconnoitered properly by the US forces prior to the attempts to seize Vossenack and Hürtgen, and thus many US infantrymen (mostly from the 109th Infantry Battalion) died here in fruitless advances. At least 100 German civilians and conscripted POWs were also killed after the war just clearing this small patch of ground, including the Mayor of Vossenack. A German Lieutenant famously went into this minefield to try and rescue a trapped American and was killed within 15 yards of entering.