When Trumpets Fade is a 1998 HBO television movie directed by John Irvin and starring Ron Eldard, Frank Whaley, Zak Orth, and Dylan Bruno.

[1] Private David Manning of the 28th Infantry Division survives the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest and is given a battlefield promotion to sergeant, with a new platoon of green recruits.

Manning then tries to back out of responsibility by asking to be discharged under Section 8 (designating him mentally unfit due to combat stress), to no avail.

When the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel George Rickman, asks him about the status of his platoon, a traumatized Lukas snaps and assaults him.

Despite Manning's insubordination, Rickman has no choice but to promote him again, this time to lieutenant, and order him to take the disgraced Lukas' position as platoon leader.

Manning clears a minefield and cuts a barbed wire obstacle, enabling the group to continue on, before they destroy the tanks with a bazooka.

An epilogue states that after three months of heavy combat, the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest claimed more than 24,000 dead and wounded and most historians today agree that there was little to no strategic justification for so great a sacrifice because German reinforcements ultimately thwarted the American offensive.

John Irvin won the Silver FIPA Award for Best Director for the film at the Biarritz International Festival in 1999 [citation needed].