the tanks were committed in support of the infantry regiments. Due to the poor weather and heavy forests, the tanks were limited to the narrow trails through the Hürtgen Forest. These were the object of carefully ranged artillery and repeated mining, as Germans would infiltrate the area at night and lay new mines. Numerous tanks were lost to mines, with the crews targeted by mortars and artillery as they abandoned or worked on their disabled tanks. The battalion suffered 8 killed and 39 wounded in three weeks of combat in the Hürtgen Forest, with 10 tanks lost and another 8 damaged due to enemy fire and mines. It was only when the infantry were able to push through to the eastern and northern reaches of the forest that the tanks could once again maneuver in reasonably open terrain. However, the division and the 70th Tank Battalion were so exhausted and depleted that they were instead withdrawn from the line beginning on 3 December and relocated over the next eight days to the vicinity of Luxembourg. Battle of the Bulge Luxembourg was not a fortuitous site to relocate. Within a week of the battalion's arrival, the Germans began their last desperate counteroffensive into the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge began on 16 December, and the 70th Tank Battalion was located on the southern flank of the German penetration, with only eleven of its 54 medium tanks in operating condition. On 16 December 1944, elements of the battalion were sent forward with infantrymen of the 12th Infantry Regiment mounted on their tanks in order to reach elements of the regiment which had been overrun and isolated near Echternach, Berdorf, Lauterborn, Osweiler, and Dickweiler, in the northeastern part of Luxembourg. Until 24 December, platoon size detachments of tanks, supported by no more than five infantrymen mounted on each tank, operated as mobile strike forces to repel any German thrusts toward Luxembourg city. Thinly as the 70th Tank Battalion's operational tanks were spread, their presence, reinforced by combined arms task forces from the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions is credited with defeating superior numbers of German infantry. The battalion had lost another 5 men killed, 14 wounded, and 4 missing in just a week in the Ardennes. After the unrelenting combat and movement since coming ashore at Utah Beach, the 70th Tank Battalion had nearly a month from Christmas Day 1944 until 21