CHAPTER 11
”The first burst hit four of us before we could find cover in the ditch below the machine gun’s trajectory. Herrig was hit along the top of both shoulders, Friedenheimer was hit through the lung, I took a bullet in the back of my pack and was knocked down to my knees. Behind me was Milton Cohen, a private, one of the eighteen year old replacèments that had joined us two weeks earlier. He was hit in the teeth with the bullet exiting his head behind his right ear, and I will never forget his plaintive call for his mother.” John M. Nolan, Sergeant in U.S. 119th Infantry Regiment in January 1945.
THE RED ARMY GOES INTO ACTION
It is doubtful if even Hitler himself believed that a new blow against the Allies with a large reserve force of SS armor could be realized. Not because the opportunities were not available in the Ardennes, but because he sensed that the respite he had been granted by the Red Army’s pause to assemble its forces for a new attack in the east had hastily drawn to a close.
On 9 January 1945 the Führer was briefed about signs that a Soviet offensive on the Eastern Front probably was imminent. The same day he changed his orders regarding the SS reserve force: Instead of being held in readiness near Sankt Vith, this was now to be transferred to Germany, behind Heeresgruppe G’s front, in order to rest and replenish.1
In response to Churchill’s appeal to Stalin on 6 January to bring forward the Red Army’s winter offensive, Marshal Ivan Konyev, commanding the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian front, received a phone call on 8 January from the Soviet dictator who instructed the marshal to launch the attack more or less immediately.
The Ardennes Offensive’s fate was sealed at five o’clock in the morning on 12 January 1945, when the 1st Ukrainian Front’s 32,000 artillery pieces and heavy mortars—with a density of 500 barrels per mile—opened a terrible barrage against German 4. Panzerarmee’s positions in southern Poland. After several hours of bombardment, heavy Josef Stalin tanks—steel monsters equipped with a 122mm gun—rumbled toward the tattered German defense positions. In the evening a 25 mile wide and twelve mile deep gap yawned in the 4. Panzerarmee’s lines.
On the Western Front the Allied soldiers and generals received this news with great exhilaration. Now they knew that the end had come to the Germans! Combat morale, which had suffered so many trials in the past month, soared. The very next day, a beaming Patton wrote in his diary, ’Attitude of troops completely changed. They now have full confidence that they are pursuing a defeated enemy.’2
On 13 January the Soviet offensive was extended as the 3rd Belorussian Front attacked East Prussia, and the following day marshals Zhukov’s and Rokossovskiy’s 1st and 2nd Belorussian fronts struck on both sides of Warsaw. Just as during operation ’Bagration’ in the past summer, the German front fell completely apart. Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, Chief of the German Army General Staff, appealed to Hitler to give top priority to the Eastern Front—an absolutely superfluous request. As early as on 13 January, Hitler issued orders to send two infantry divisions (the 269. and 712.) from the Western to the Eastern Front, and the next day Dietrich’s 6. SS-Panzerarmee plus Volksartilleriekorps 405 and VAK 408 in Heeresgruppe B received similar orders.
On 14 January the Führer also granted Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt’s request to allow Heeresgruppe B to carry out an actually fairly drastic retreat. The new front line would run from Cherain (six miles northeast of Houffalize) towards the south-southwest to Bourcy (eight miles northeast of Bastogne), and another three miles southeastwards to Longvilly. This meant that not only to would Houffalize be evacuated, but—and this was really quite startling—that the Germans would also abandon the Bastogne Front.
On 15 January, Hitler held a last meeting with von Rundstedt and Model at the ’Eagle’s Nest,’ where he instructed them to hold the Western Allies at bay as long as possible. Then Hitler boarded his train and went to Berlin, never again to return to the Western Front. Within a week thereafter, the I. SS-Panzerkorps, the II. SS-Panzerkorps, Generalleutnant Karl Decker’s XXXIX. Panzerkorps, the Führer Begleit Brigade, the Führer Grenadier Brigade, two of the Army’s panzer divisions, one infantry division and two additional Volksartilleriekorps were ordered to regroup to the Eastern Front.3 To cover the 6. Panzerarmee’s rail transport, the III. Flak-Korps was also attachéd to this army, and eventually shifted to the Eastern Front. Meanwhile three fighter wings and a ground-attack wing—JG 1, JG 6 and JG 11, and SG 4—were immediately transferred from the West to the Eastern Front. During the next few days, these were accompanied by the majority of the German aviation in the West—JG 3, JG 4, JG 54, JG 77, JG 300, and JG 301. Overall it was a bloodletting that Heeresgruppe B never would recover from.
DELAYING ACTION
But even if the fate of the Ardennes Offensive was sealed, it was not over yet. General Hasso von Manteuffel now was—on his 48th birthday on 14 January—appointed to command the Ardennes sector, and with the utmost skill he organized a withdrawal to the recommended line in a way that would cost the Western Allies as much blood as possible. Von Manteuffel wrote, ’I informed the troops of my decision to fall back fighting delaying actions, stressing the fact that by their mutual co-operation, liaison within the army was to be maintained to prevent a breakthrough by the enemy within the zone of our army.’4 No decline in the German morale could yet be observed. ’The Germans north and northeast of Bastogne are resisting viciously in order to preserve their escape routes,’ Patton noted in his diary.5 When Combat Command B, 6th Armored Division on 13 January made another effort to recapture Mageret east of Bastogne, the Americans became embroiled in new hard battles with the 340. Volksgrenadier-Division. U.S. 50th Armored Infantry Battalion’s after action report reads:
’The enemy counter-attacked, re-entered the town, and fought savagely from house to house. Employing an unprecedented number of bazookas, they knocked out three of our tanks and battled throughout the nite with unabated fanaticism. It was not until the following morning that we were able to root the final fanatics from their last ditch positions, and “A” Company assisted “B” Company in this job. Although this vicious battle took a heavy toll in the ranks of the Battalion, it would be difficult to compute German losses since the fanatical enemy was sacrificing vast numbers of men and material in a desperate, reckless effort to stop our advance.’6
In the British sector northwest of Bastogne, a group of Panther tanks lay in wait in the village of Nisramont, four miles southeast of La Roche, when the 51st Highland Division’s main armored column came rumbling in on the afternoon of 13 January. In a quick exchange of fire, the Panthers destroyed four British tanks and then departed.7
Further north, U.S. VII Corps made desperate and very costly attempts to resume the advance. Having advanced four to five miles in five days, the 3rd Armored and 83rd Infantry divisions on the Corps’ left (eastern) flank were halted at Tailles, two miles south of the crossroads Baraque de Fraiture on 7 January. The Americans tried to circumvent this German stronghold and regrouped to Petite-Langlire, five miles farther to the east. Here the 3rd Armored Division and the 329th and 331st Infantry regiments of the 83rd Infantry Division, supported by the 774th Tank Battalion, made a concentrated attack on 10 January. This section of the German front had been held only by the weak 12. Volksgrenadier-Division, but by this time it had been bolstered through the recent arrival of the 9. SS Panzer-Division’s armored reconnaissance battalion. The German defense was facilitated by numerous dense fir copses, and additionally, the SS battalion had positioned an 88mm gun and two Panther tanks in such a way that they could dominate the entire area.8
This Sherman of the 6th Armored Division was knocked out by a hit—possibly from a Panzerschreck—above the tracks, during the bitter battle for Mageret on 13-14 January 1945. In the foreground a dead German soldier from the 340. Volksgrenadier-Division. (NARA, SC 199214)
The Americans, who advanced across open fields between the fir copses, became easy targets for the German guns and mortars. The situation is described in the 329th Infantry’s combat report, ’The opposition from the enemy consisted of all types of fire, but it was the fire from the enemy tanks which caused most casualties and which held up the advance. 5 or 6 enemy tanks were estimated to be in or near the objective, changing their positions from time to time, and they commanded the open terrain between the objective and our troops. This operation was proving to be the toughest since Normandy, because in addition to the battle casualties, which were beginning to mount up, the number of those with frozen feet was increasing.’9
Following three failed attack attempts, the Americans had to cancel all further efforts, having sustained grievous losses. The 774th Tank Battalion alone lost nine tanks and a tank destroyer.10 The 3rd Armored Division also was badly mauled. ’The heavy losses we had sustained so far in the Battle of the Bulge resulted in a series of critical shortages of tank crews,’ said Captain Belton Cooper of the 3rd Armored Division. ’The M4 Sherman normally had a five-man crew. […] As casualties became more acute, we first had to eliminate the assistance driver. This denied the tank the use of the ball-mount machine gun, which was particularly effective against infantry. Later on, we had to eliminate the assistant gunner, and the tank commander had to double as the loader.’11
But since the Germans, from 10 January and onward, pulled back to the line Dochamps - Longchamps, the elèments of the 2. SS-Panzer-Division, 560. Volksgrenadier-Division, SS-Panzer-Aufklarungs-Abteilung 9, and 12. Volksgrenadier-Division that faced U.S. 3rd Armored and 83rd Infantry divisions gradually became outflanked. When the stronghold at Samrée, four miles southwest of Tailles, fell on 11 January, and the Americans and British entered the town of La Roche another three miles farther to the southwest, U.S. 3rd Armored and 83rd Infantry division could finally ’get going.’
Through the capture of Samrée, Major General ’Lightning Joe’ Collins, the highly competent commander of VII Corps, was able to concentrate against Tailles -Petite-Langlire. On 12 January, he assaulted the German positions in this section with a hugely superior force—the 2nd Armored Division’s Combat Command B, and the 84th Infantry Division’s 333rd Infantry Regiment of the western flank, and practically the entire 3rd Armored and 83rd Infantry divisions on the eastern flank. The battle raged all day, costing both sides heavy casualties.
U.S. combat vehicles on fire and equipment of the 3rd Armored Division is lying scattered around near Petite-Langlire, where a U.S. attack on 10 January 1945 was repelled by an 88mm gun and two Panther tanks from SS-Panzer-Aufklarungs-Abteilung 9 under SS-Hauptsturmbannfuhrer Karl-Heinz Recke. (NARA, 111-SC-199019/Roberts)
At Tailles, Combat Command B, 2nd Armored Division and the 333rd Infantry Regiment faced the 2. SS-Panzer-Division’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 3 and its armored reconnaissance battalion, SS-Panzer-Aufklarung-Abteilung 2 under SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Ernst Krag, and—immediately to the left of these forces—the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division. The U.S. infantry which on the morning of 12 January attacked Tailles from the area south of Baraque de Fraiture, and, on the other side of the main road to Houffalize, attempted to advance across the open terrain toward the small village of Petites-Tailles, was hastily forced to turn back by a concentrated German fire. New attempts to attack were made continually, but this resulted in nothing but bloody losses to the attackers. Meanwhile American artillery transformed both villages into smoldering heaps of ruins.
Then, in the afternoon, the armor of Combat Command B, 2nd Armored Division was brought forward against Tailles. Although three U.S. tanks were destroyed by German tank destroyers, the American tanks managed to reach and enter the village.12 But here the Americans became tied down in bitter fighting with SS soldiers who barricaded themselves in house ruins, and behind garden walls and earth mounds.
To the left of the SS force, however, the weakened 560. Volksgrenadier-Division proved unable to withstand the 2nd Armored Division’s powerful attack. In Chabrehez, a mile to the west of Tailles, a command post was captured by American armor, whereby the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division lost two of the battalion staffs in Grenadier-Regiment 1129.13 Here the Americans took one hundred and forty prisoners.14 As Chabrehez is located on a hill just west of Tailles, the Americans could outflank the positions held by the SS.
On the evening of 12 January, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 3 and SS-Panzer-Aufklarungs-Abteilung 2 received orders to leave their positions in order to be withdrawn from combat altogether.15 At nine in the evening the battle was over. In Tailles the Americans found that the SS had left behind seventy foreign soldiers in German service, and these immediately surrendered.16
At Petite-Langlire on the eastern flank, the Germans also evacuated their positions hastily, having offered a frantic resistance all day long. The fighting at this place cost two platoons of ’C’ Company, U.S. 774th Tank Battalion a loss of seven of their ten tanks.17 However, the two Panther tanks at Petite-Langlire managed to slip away.18
As the Americans continued their advance through the Bois de Ronce forest in the south, they again were reminded of the fighting methods used by their enemy. The 774th Tank Battalion’s after action report recorded, ’One of our tanks after being hit by 88mm fire was not stopped but continued to advance. Shortly thereafter it was rendered immobile by AT shell fire, killing one of the crew. The remaining four crewmen after stripping the vehicle attempted to escape by foot. Their bodies were found 150 yards from the tank and as expected were completely searched and machine gunned. Each man was reported as being shot through the head with one shot.’19
By that time the situation was quite desperate for the German front units in this front sector. The 560. Volksgrenadier-Division had sustained such heavy losses that Grenadier-Regiment 1129 had to be disbanded, with the remaining troops transferred to a battalion that was subordinated to the division’s second regiment, Grenadier-Regiment 1130.20 In the 2. SS-Panzer-Division, the operations officer, SS-Obersturmbannführer Albert Stückler, wrote:
’Wherever [the opponent] achieved any breakthrough in forested areas, he gained terrain with surprising swiftness, while our own units, considerably weakened through severe losses, were able to hold a circle defense only with the greatest difficulty in daytime, and then at night to pull back to new but unprepared positions. Effective counter-attacks could be carried out only with tank support, and in general it gave nothing but temporary reliefs.
The men of the infantry units and all participating divisions performed amazingly well in the bitterest cold. But when the terrible weather conditions with constant temperature fluctuations around the freezing point were added to the opponent’s material superiority, the combat effectiveness of our inadequately equipped units declined rapidly. For instance, in our division the losses due to frostbite and disease were almost as high as the combat losses.’21
And still the German rearguard forces continued to offer a stiff resistance. U.S. 331st Infantry Regiment’s after action report on 13 January—a day that cost this regiment a loss of eighty-one men—reads, ’Attack was slowed down by dug-in tanks and infantry. […] Our tanks moved forward to meet the enemy and knocked out one tank and lost one Sherman.’22 On that day, the armor of ’C’ Company, 774th Tank Battalion carried on through the Bois de Ronce forest, heading towards the next village, Cherain, four miles further south. Suddenly two German soldiers appeared on the road. Holding their hands above their heads they approached the tank column. ‘Upon closer inspection,’ reported the commander of the leading U.S. tank, ‘they were found to be shielding a bazooka team. The sergeant fired one round of HE into the group annihilating the bazooka, crew and all.’23
Meanwhile on VII Corps’ western flank, 2nd Armored Division’s Combat Command A advanced towards the town of Houffalize, ten miles southeast of Samrée. The badly mauled German 116. Panzer-Division fell back, but received reinforcèments from elèments of the Panzer Lehr Division, the 2. Panzer-Division and the 3. Panzergrenadier-Division.24 This came in the last moment for the Germans, who were ordered to hold the line Nadrin - Wibrin - Nisramont, four to five miles northwest of Houffalize.
When Panzer Lehr’s task force—elèments of Kampfgruppe 902—arrived at Nadrin during the night of 13 January, it was found that there were no troops at all from the 116. Panzer-Division at this place.25 But the Germans, suffering a shortage of both ammunition and fuel, could not hope for more than to delay the U.S. advance slightly.26
In Wibrin, a mile or so farther to the east, a small task force from the 116. Panzer-Division took up defensive positions. On a hill in at the village’s southern edge, just behind the church, two Panthers and a tank destroyer were grouped to block the road into the village from the north. A couple of miles farther ahead, on the wooded hills north of Wibrin, the easternmost task force of U.S. 2nd Armored Division’s Combat Command A—Task Force B (the 66th Armored Regiment plus the 3rd Battalion of the 335th Infantry Regiment and a tank destroyer platoon)— meanwhile was being readied to assault the village.
On the morning of 14 January, the German tank crews at Wibrin caught sight of six green Sherman tanks that came struggling through the deep snow on the fields northeast of the village. The American tanks, which carried mounted infantry, were of the model Sherman III (M4A2), equipped with diesel engines, which the British had handed over to U.S. 2nd Armored Division to cover its previous losses. These stood no chance against the German tanks. When the Americans were almost upon the village, the Panther cannons opened fire. Four Shermans immediately burst into flames. The two remaining disappeared behind the first row of buildings along the village street. But when they showed up behind the church, the German tank destroyer, commanded by Leutnant Max-Dieter von Elterlein, opened fire. The American tanks were hit while they tried to run down the hill to the right of the church. One was immediately eliminated. The second one received a hit which bounced off the frontal armor and split the gun barrel open like a peeled banana. The next hit killed the entire crew. (This one still remains as a memorial below the church at Wibrin.)
A German anti-aircraft crew work to make an 88mm antiaircraft gun ready for departure for a new stage in the gradual retreat. The five painted rings on the barrel indicate as many destroyed tanks or shot down aircraft.
(BArch, Bild 101I-725-0194-21/Gdtz)
THE ALLIED AVIATION RETURNS
However, 14 January 1945 also was the day when the bad weather which had prevailed for so long finally relented. The sun shone from a clear sky, which meant that the Allied aircraft could venture into the battle at full strength. By now most, if not all, of the losses suffered by the Allied air through ’Bodenplatte’ had been replaced.
’The biggest thing of the news today was the fact that the fighter-bombers were able to get aloft again,’ was noted in Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges’ diary. On the German side, General Walter Lucht, commanding officer of the LXVI. Armeekorps, was less upbeat when he wrote on 14 January, ’A clear, cold day with a lively fighter-bomber activity.’27
To the Germans in Wibrin suddenly, as Leutnant von Elterleins put it, ’all hell broke loose.’28 No less than seven artillery observation planes appeared in the skies above the village. Soon large amounts of fighter-bombers also made their entrance, shooting and bombing any opposition in front of VII Corps into smithereens. War correspondent Ronald Monson of the Australian newspaper The Argus describes the scene as it looked when the Allied aircraft made their impressive appearance on this 14 January:
Outside the inn ’Le Lion’ in Houffalize, this German Sonderkraft-fahrzeug 250/1 has been knocked out by a U.S. air attack. (NARA C-56251 A.C. via Peter Björk)
’Vapour trails streaking across the sky from the west marked the coming of the vanguard of our air armada. Then gleaming silver planes raced into view. They came in scores and in hundreds until the blue of the heavens was agleam with them, and their spreading vapour trails swelled to the dimensions of a cloud belt that covered a vast swathe of the sky. There were heavy bombers, medium bombers, and rocket-firing Typhoons. They all had their targets. German troops struggling along icy side roads to get away from encroaching British and American troops caught it first.’29
German 116. Panzer-Division’s combat report reads:
’Following a powerful artillery fire, the enemy attacked Wibrin with tanks supported by low-flying aircraft. The weak garrison put up a brave fight but could not prevent the enemy from penetrating the village, and eventually—deprived of all connections to the right and the left—it had to retreat to the hills south of the village.’30
A bit farther to the west, in Nadrin, the task force of Kampfgruppe 902 found itself exposed to attacks not only frontally, but, according to Panzer Lehr’s divisional commander, Bayerlein, ’also on the sides from the northeast, i.e., from the area of Wibrin, by stronger forces (infantry and armor).’ Bayerlein continued, ’The envelopment resulted from the fact, that the 116. Panzer-Division had already yielded to the attack and so exposed the flank of Kampfgruppe 902. The enemy succeeded in capturing Nadrin at noon and Filly in the evening. By that, Kampfgruppe 902 lost a great number of personnel who were taken prisoners because they could not fight their way through the envelopment.’31
U.S. 2nd Armored Division was able to advance three miles.32 On the evening of 14 January, a weak force from Kampfgruppe 902 held positions at the small stream at Achouffe, two and a half miles southeast of Nadrin and two miles northwest of Houffalize, while Panzer Lehr’s armored reconnaissance battalion—which by then had a first-line strength of no more than about 150 troops with a handful of operational tanks—was positioned somewhat further back.33 A mile farther to the northeast, U.S. 3rd Armored and 83rd Infantry divisions meanwhile advanced from Petite-Langlire to Courtil—a distance of almost three miles. U.S. 331st Infantry Regiment’s after action report noted that the German artillery fire subsided as compared with the previous day.34
At 0930 am on 14 January, von Manteuffel’s staff in the 5. Panzerarmee reported that any movèment of troops was prevented by ’an extrèmely heavy fighter-bomber activity,’ and called for an urgent Luftwaffe fighter cover. The German Air Force’s II. Jagdkorps responded by directing 216 fighters to the Houffalize area alone until 1100 hrs. In fact, the Luftwaffe’s fighter force conducted another large-scale operation on this 14 January. However, at the front the German soldiers saw nothing of this. The explanation is simple: British Ultra decrypted the message from the II. Jagdkorps so that powerful Allied fighter formations could be despatched to intercept the German aircraft.35
The fighter groups II. and III. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 26 were attacked by at first seven 366th Fighter Group Thunderbolts, and then twenty-five Mustangs from the 78th Fighter Group before they had even entered Belgian airspace. Even though these German units were equipped with the modern Focke Wulf 190 D-9s, Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-14s and Bf 109 K-4s, in addition to their numerical superiority, they stood off badly against the American fighter pilots. The Americans shot down twelve German aircraft and forced the remainder to abort their mission to the Sankt Vith - Houffalize area, all at a cost of only two of their own aircraft lost.36 The next group of Jagdgeschwader 26 ’Schlageter,’ the I. Gruppe, had taken off with thirty Focke Wulf 190 D-9s as it was ambushed by the Royal Air Force’s Norwegian Spitfire squadrons, Nos. 331 and 332, and lost three planes.
American troops enter Foy. This heavily contested village was captured by the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment 13 January 1945, was recaptured by the Germans at dawn on 14 January, but was finally taken back by the Americans through an attack by Combat Command B, 11th Armored Division a few hours later. (NARA, US Signal Corps)
I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 1 was attacked by Spitfires from British Nos. 401 and 402 squadrons and lost eleven Focke Wulf 190s, with the result that this unit also failed to complete its mission.37 Jagdgeschwader 2 ’Richthofen’ had its formations ripped apart by other Spitfires and lost ten Focke Wulf 190 D-9s without being able to shoot down more than two of its opponent’s aircraft.38Jagdgeschwader 77 despatched two groups to cover their own ground troops at the front, but ran into the same fate and lost twelve planes.
While the Luftwaffe’s effort against the Houffalize sector thus was thwarted, the Allies launched large bomber formations against targets in Germany, forcing the German aviation to change priorities. RAF Bomber Command sent No. 3 Group with one hundred and thirty-four Lancaster bombers against Saarbrücken’s rail station. Powerful German fighter formations from Jagdgeschwaders 4, 11, and 53, roughly about two hundred aircraft, were directed against this formation. But these became embroiled in difficult fighting with U.S. fighters and failed to shoot down even a single bomber.
Since the clear weather over the front enabled U.S. 9th Air Force and British 2nd Tactical Air Force to be deployed at full scale, U.S. 8th Air Force could return to its strategic bombing. Nine hundred 8th Air Force heavy bombers, escorted by eight hundred fighters, marched across blue skies against various oil targets in Germany. Against this armada, the Luftwaffe launched IV. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 3 and IV. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 54, together with Jagdgeschwaders 300 and 301—the two latter fighter wings totaling one hundred and eighty-nine interceptors—plus a handful of Me 262 jet fighters from Jagdgeschwader 7. In the ensuing air battle, seven American bombers, eleven escort fighters and no less than one hundred and fourteen German fighters (including three Me 262s) were shot down. The Luftwaffe’s inability at this time to do anything against the Allied aviation once this was airborne, can not be more clearly illustrated.
Despite a massive effort of the German fighter force—probably at least in the order of 700 aircraft—U.S. 9th Air Force lost no more than eleven Thunderbolts and Marauder bombers on 14 January. In all, the Allies conducted four thousand combat sorties on 14 January, and of these about a quarter were made above the Ardennes.
The from the German point of view of failed air operations on this day would prove to be the Luftwaffe’s last major operation against the Western Allies. Shortly afterwards most of the German Air Force was regrouped to the Eastern Front.
Throughout 14 January Allied fighter-bombers struck down on German ground troops and vehicle columns as if there was no German Air Force, and the German soldiers on the ground did not see any of their own fighter planes. Battered German ground units were strafed and bombed during the retreat and had their vehicles shot to pieces. Burning vehicle wrecks were heaped in large quantities, particularly at the fords across creeks.39 The 9th Air Force was reported to have destroyed three hundred trucks, damaged between sixteen and thirty tanks and silenced thirty artillery positions. When Task Force B of Combat Command A, 2nd Armored Division on the next day, after the capture of Achouffe continued towards Houffalize two miles further southeast, the march was hampered by destroyed German vehicles and other equipment that cluttered the road to Houffalize, rather than German resistance.40 The situation looked the same to U.S. 3rd Armored Division, which reported the road south of Bihain completely blocked by German vehicles which had been destroyed by American aircraft and artillery.41
On the German side, what remained of the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division had to be pulled out of combat.42Instead, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of 9. SS-Panzer-Division was moved forward to Sterpigny, five miles northeast of Houffalize, with the task of holding back U.S. 3rd Armored Division and to prevent Houffalize from getting outflanked. The German troops were assigned with clear orders: ’Houffalize must be held!’43
But further south a dramatic turn of events took place. Generalmajor Denkert’s German 3. Panzergrenadier-Division had been asked to retake Flamierge, northwest of Bastogne, which had been captured by U.S. 17th Airborne Division on 12 January.44 Just as Denkert was about to launch his attack, U.S. 11th Armored Division appeared on his left flank. This armored division now had recovered its strength after the losses it had sustained in late December, and marched straight through Bastogne and attacked towards the north on 13 January. Combat Command A and Combat Command Reserve were deployed along the road that runs northwest from the town and through Longchamps towards Bertogne. This thrust was aimed at reaching Houffalize from the south.45 As this attack hit the German front four miles northeast of Flamierge, the 3. Panzergrenadier-Division hastily had to cancel its planned attack and instead fall back to Bertogne. However, during the following night, massive Allied air attacks forced the Germans to evacuate this place too, and to retreat further north and east.
But the 11th Armored Division’s Combat Command B was unable to participate in the American thrust to the northwest, since this force was needed northeast of Bastogne. Here a surprise attack by U.S. 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment on 13 January—immortalized through an episode of the TV series ’Band of Brothers’— had captured Foy, two miles northeast of Bastogne, on the main road to Houffalize. But Oberst Theodor Tolsdorff, C.O. of German 340. Volksgrenadier-Division, immediately organized a counter-attack, supported by the 9. Panzer-Division, which had been placed at the LVIII. Panzerkorps’ disposal.46 Faced with this superiority, the U.S. paratroopers were forced out of this so bitterly contested hamlet again at dawn on 14 January. But shortly afterwards both Combat Command B, 11th Armored Division and the U.S. aviation joined the fight for Foy. On this 14 January, Major General Weyland’s XIX Tactical Air Command directed no less than seven hundred and fifty fighter-bomber sorties in support of the northbound attack from the Bastogne sector. Afterwards this was described as’the biggest day since summer.’47 The after action report of Combat Command B, 11th Armored Division provides a vivid picture of the situation the German troops had to endure when the Allied aviation could operate freely:
’Following an artillery preparation, the armored task force attacked Recogne [a thousand yards northwest of Foy] and the infantry task force attacked Foy at 0930 [on 14 January]. Both towns were retaken against light enemy opposition. Maneuvering along the fringe of some woods on high ground to the west, the tank task force then attacked Cobru [a mile north of Foy] from the left rear with immediate success. Simultaneously the infantry task force pushed NE along the main highway. A German 9 tank counterattack from Vaux [slightly less than a mile north of Cobru] about 1500 was broken up by an air mission on Vaux, and artillery fire, again adjusted by an air operation, which destroyed 4 of the 9 advancing enemy tanks. […]
An artillery observation plane spotted the enemy counterattack against CCB from Vaux and adjusted mass fire in support of the action during the day. One Squadron air mission was obtained and turned over to CCB for bombardment and strafing of enemy tanks in Vaux.’48
A little farther east at the Bastogne front, U.S. 6th Armored Division was supported on 14 January by scores of American fighter-bombers that attacked German troops in Michamps, Oubourcy, and Longvilly with napalm and HE bombs.49 This enabled this division, which previously had faced such adversity, to finally ‘get going,’ and as darkness fell that day, it had recaptured not only the previously so heavily contested villages of Wardin and Mageret, but also Benonchamps, a mile southeast of Mageret. Thus, the front had moved three miles east of Bastogne, and the Americans could inspect the battlefield where the fighting had raged for four weeks. A U.S. Army officer recalls:
It was appalling to me to imagine the fighting that must have gone on there. Many bodies still lay where they’d fallen, partly covered by blankets of snow. One long, wide, gradual hillside was strewn with the carcasses of burned-out Shermans and a few German Tiger tanks. Evidently our losses had been several times greater than those of the enemy, probably because of the powerful 88s mounted on their tanks. Further on it seèmed that our Air Force had gotten in some good licks, for the fields were littered with the debris of German tanks and trucks. […] Standing nearby were several German tanks, apparently abandoned because they were out of gas. They seèmed undamaged, and even in respose they were fearsome, with those wicked 88mm rifles sticking out ten yards, it seèmed.50
The picture, which was taken in the vicinity of the villages of Wardin and Mageret, shows a pair of completely burnt out Sherman tanks. (US Army)
As we have seen, the planned withdrawal of the 2. and 9. SS-Panzer divisions had already been delayed because elèments of these divisions were being used as fire brigades in troubled sectors. On 14 January, Oberst Rèmer’s Führer Begleit Brigade was also called in, to be launched from Michamps, two miles east of Foy, in a counter-attack against U.S. 6th Armored Division. But the Germans immediately were beset by violent American air attacks and artillery fire, including the use of air burst shells. Oberst Rèmer wrote:
’The task force met infantry fire and increasingly well-aimed artillery fire from the deep right flank and had to defend itself against flanking counterthrusts. Thus the attack had become futile and had to be cancelled. Having suffered considerable losses from shells exploding in the tree-tops, the task force retreated from the forest. During the remainder of the day we held defensive positions southwest of Oubourcy against enemy counterattacks.’51
One of the American fighter-bomber formations erroneously attacked its own forces during the defensive battle against the Führer Begleit Brigade, and this cost the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment’s 3rd Battalion twelve killed and twenty wounded.52 Among those killed was the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Stopka.
But continued air strikes were essential to repel Oberst Rèmer’s forces. The chronicle of U.S. 68th Tank Battalion, which stood against the Führer Begleit Brigade southwest of Michamps, clearly illustrates this: ’On the morning of January 15th, we called for and received an air strike on the small woods that had been so bothersome. Then after the welcome P-47s had worked it over thoroughly by bombing and strafing, the woods was attacked and cleared; this job being accomplished with methodical efficiency on the doughs’ part, and took them most of the day.’53All day on 15 January, the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers from the 362nd Fighter Group flew in close-support of the 6th Armored Division, which thereby was able to push another thousand yards ahead to take Arloncourt and Oubourcy.54
With the eastern flank thus secured, Combat Command B, 11th Armored Division and the 101st Airborne Division’s 501st and 506th Parachute Infantry regiments attacked Noville, the next village on the main road from Bastogne to Houffalize, in the morning on 15 January. This is depicted in the 11th Armored Division’s combat report, ’After carefully registering each battalion, by air OP [observation planes], on its portion of the objective, massed artillery fires were brought down at 1100 to destroy or neutralize known enemy positions in the forward edges and on commanding terrain within the woods. That portion of the woods north of the Noville-Bourcy highway was also softened by an air strike. At 1145, bypassing Noville to the east, CCB launched its combined tank and infantry attack, and with closely coordinated supporting fires took their objective by 1530.’55_
Oberst Tolsdorff realized that the Allied air superiority made i t futile to try to hold the place, so he only left a smaller rearguard force with a couple of tanks from the 9. Panzer-Division to delay the Americans. One of the American paratroopers who went into Noville, First Sergeant Carwood Lipton, recalled:
’We were well past the center of the town and the first knocked-out Sherman tanks when, suddenly, a German tank roared out from behind a building on the 3rd Platoon side of the road and raced up the road toward us, firing its machine guns as it came. […] We in the 2nd Platoon jumped behind the buildings and dived under the knocked-out Sherman. The German tank then stopped dead and, swiveling its turret, put a shell into each of the knocked-out tanks to prevent anyone from using their guns to put a shell into him as he went by. When these shells hit the Sherman, it felt like they jumped a foot in the air. That didn’t save the German tank, though. When it roared on out of town and reached the higher grounds north of town, we saw one of our P-47 fighter planes strafe it and drop a five-hundred-pound bomb on it, finishing it off.’56
Noville after the battle. According to the U.S. caption, this Sturmge-schutz III and the armored vehicle across the street were knocked out by U.S. fighter-bombers in conjunction with artillery.
(NARA 55970 A.C. via Peter Björk)
Meanwhile the 11th Armored Division’s Combat Command A attacked in the sector northwest of Noville. This unit had taken Bertogne, barely three miles west of the main road Bastogne - Houffalize, on 14 January, and on the 15th it was deployed towards the east. Prior to the attack, the positions held by German Grenadier-Regiment 77 between Bertogne and the main road were exposed to a lengthy and powerful attack by fighter-bombers and artillery. When the 11th Armored Division a couple of hours later cleared the area, more than four hundred German prisoners could be taken.57
16 January 1945. Sherman tanks from Combat Command A, 11th Armored Division at Mabompré. A few hours earlier, in the dark, tanks from German 2. Panzer-Division had knocked out nine of that unit’s Shermans. (NARA, 111-SC-455221)
NEW TANK BATTLES AT BASTOGNE
But when darkness fell on 15 January and the American aircraft disappeared, the Germans counter-attacked with a group of 2. Panzer-Division tanks, temporarily ordered back to the front.58 They ambushed a column of tanks from Combat Command A, 11th Armored Division when these just after seven in the evening crossed the Vaux brook near Mabompré, two miles northwest of Noville. After a brief firefight in which nine Shermans were set burning, the Americans pulled back to the heights at Vellereu in the west.59 Private First Class William W. Fee of 55th Armored Infantry Battalion, 11th Armored Division described the following day’s advance through this area, ’As we drove down the road [east, to near Mabompré, according to the battalion history], we could see terrific damage on all sides. At least every 100 yards was a knocked-out tank, in the ratio of two U.S. to one German. Most of them were still smoking. You could see where the German tanks had been, waiting for the U.S. tanks to sweep around a corner. Some of the German tanks were on the edge of woods, others behind a single tree—for concealment from the air, I supposed. The US tanks had been hit in the road and had been hauled off to the side, to let other vehicles pass. There were no large groups of prisoners, so I wondered if anybody had survived the tank battle.’60
The Germans, however, concentrated their forces at Bastogne primarily to prevent the Americans from breaking through northeast of the town, which would otherwise threaten to cut off the important maintenance road from Dasburg. The fighting had already moved to Longvilly, six miles northeast of Bastogne. The German situation deteriorated when U.S. 6th Armored Division was reinforced with two infantry regiments and one armored battalion that could be released when the Harlange wedge was cleared up—the 35th Infantry Division’s 320th Infantry Regiment, and the 90th Infantry Division’s 359th Infantry Regiment and 712th Tank Battalion. This more than offset the withdrawal of U.S. 4th Armored Division on 10 January. In addition, half the 101st Airborne Division—the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment and the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment—already were engaged on this front section. The Führer Begleit Brigade and the 9. Panzer-Division were placed under the command of Oberst Tolsdorff, the 340. Volksgrenadier-Division’s C.O. He immediately positioned the Führer Begleit Brigade’s panzer regiment at Allerborn on the road between Bastogne and Clervaux.
This was the area where the 2. Panzer-Division had wiped out most of U.S. 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve one month earlier, and the clash on 16 January 1945, when the Führer Begleit Brigade attacked again, showed several similarities with this battle, as described by the brigade commander Rèmer:
’An assembly of enemy tanks just north of Longvilly was observed at dawn on 16 January. It was wiped out by our assault guns, which during the fueling had been moved up to firing range without being detected. Eleven of the enemy tanks were put out of action. This blow, which caused panic in the enemy camp, could not be exploited because the battalion in the area was still engaged in establishing a defensive position, and no other forces were available at that time. An enemy attack which temporarily reached a crossroads south of Moinet collapsed under combined heavy flak and artillery fire’61
So while U.S. 6th Armored Division was halted by the Führer Begleit Brigade on the road to Clervaux, the 101st Airborne Division pushed the Germans from Bourcy, three miles northwest of Longvilly. The role played by air support during the fight for Bourcy on 16 January is described by one of the participating American troops, Technician Fifth Grade Richard Kazinski, As we approached the top of the hill, we saw five Tiger Royals waiting for us. Our Sherman tanks were no match for them. Our tank shells bounced off the Royals like ping-pong balls. It was quite a show when the Air Corps came in to take care of them. We had front-row seats for the performance’62
This M36 Jackson has received a direct hit outside Bastogne and is completely burnt out. (NARA, 111-SC-198393/PFC William A. Newhouse)
German sources show that schwere Panzer-Abteilung 506 had to destroy two Königstiger after these had been made unserviceable. On the whole, schwere Panzer-Abteilung 506 failed to meet the expectations of this heavy armored battalion. To some extent, this was because it was used as a kind of fire brigade. Shortly after it had been employed at Arloncourt east of Bastogne on New Year’s Day, it was sent southwards, to defend Wiltz. Back at Bastogne on 13 January it lost a Königstiger through eight direct hits from a Sherman’s 76mm gun.63General von Manteuffel grew increasingly dissatisfied with the battalion’s accomplishments, and when the battalion commander Major Lange after the mishap in Bourcy complained that his armor had been committed piecèmeal, von Manteuffel relieved him of his command. Lange was replaced by Hauptmann Kurt Heiligenstadt, who apparently accomplished no better with the heavy armored battalion. Apart from the tank battle at Arloncourt on New Year’s Day, when almost an entire American Sherman company was wiped out, schwere Panzer-Abteilung 506 did not come particularly well off in the Ardennes.
RENDEZVOUS IN HOUFFALIZE
The Luftwaffe did its part again in trying to relieve the hard-pressed German ground forces on 16 January, but with the bulk of the aviation transferred to the Eastern Front, one hundred and seventy-five aircraft was all that could be brought into action. In the vicinity of Worms the fighter groups I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 2 and I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 4 clashed with Thunderbolts of 365th Fighter Group ’Hell Hawks’ When the combat had ended, six Focke Wulf 190 D-9s, three Bf 109 G -14s and K-4s and two Thunderbolts had gone down.64 Other German fighter units came off lighter (II. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 4, IV. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 53, and IV. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 300 lost one aircraft each), but the German ground troops still could not notice any relief from enemy air attacks—and neither did the majority of the Allied airmen notice any German air force effort. Three hundred and eleven 9th Air Force A -20, A-26, and B-26 medium bombers flew against road and rail bridges, communication hubs and vehicle workshops in the German rear area without losing a single aircraft to German fighters.
Meanwhile, the last German forces withdrew through Houffalize’s steep, winding streets and retreated to the southeast, towards Tavigny. The earlier order to hold Houffalize at any price had been drastically altered on 14 January, when Hitler issued the order to fall back to the line Cherain (six miles northeast of Houffalize) - Bourcy - Longvilly. U.S. 2nd Armored Division and 84th Infantry Division, in hot pursuit of the Germans, failed to annihilate them on the nortern side of River Ourthe, which had been the aim. A report from German 116. Panzer-Division recorded that only small rearguard forces were able to hold back the American forces long enough for the Germans to evacuate.65
At one o’clock on the night between 15 and 16 January, a reconnaissance force from Combat Command B, 2nd Armored Division rolled down the long hill which lead into Houffalize and established that the town was completely void of Germans.66 Since the German units that had faced U.S. 11th Armored Division now fell back eastwards in accordance with the retreat order, this American division— which now constituted the spearhead of Patton’s Third Army—could race northwards to link up with U.S. First Army’s 2nd Armored Division and 84th Infantry Division in Houffalize at 0930 am on 16 January.
The soldiers that marched into the heavily bombed city met an eerie sight: ’The stink of the charred heap of rubble hiding countless corpses in its twisted bowels sickened the soldiers. Still more upsetting was the sight of survivors drifting through the ruins like specters, their faces gaunt and ashen, and their eyes frighteningly hollow and empty. Some appeared to wander about aimlessly.’67
While American First Army was returned to Bradley’s 12th Army Group from Montgomery’s 21 Army Group (which, however, retained control of U.S. 9th Army), the Battle of the Ardennes went into its final phase. Both sides now saw the possibility to withdraw more of their severely battered units from the battle. The two U.S. armored divisions that met in Houffalize, the 2nd and the 11th, were among these. The previous two weeks of offensive had cost the 2nd Armored Division 1,196 casualties.68 By advancing to Houffalize, the 11th Armored Division had restored its honor after the setbacks in late December. However, the past four days of first-line service had not been without serious losses for this division, which between 13 and 16 January sustained 434 casualties and lost thirty-two tanks.69 All in all, the 11th Armored Division recorded the loss of eighty-six tanks— fifty-four Shermans and thirty-two Stuarts—between 30 December 1944 and 17 January1945.70_
After a month-long epic battle, the 101st Airborne Division ’The Screaming Eagles’ also was withdrawn from the Ardennes. Its losses at Bastogne amounted to 4,455 men in killed, wounded and missing.71
Field Marshal Montgomery also felt that British XXX Corps had completed its task in the Ardennes and regrouped the corps to the front in the southern Netherlands, where it would participate in the planned offensive against the Rhineland. The British corps had participated to a relatively limited extent in the Battle of the Ardennes, and its total losses were about fifteen hundred men.72
On the German side, the 2. SS-Panzer-Division, the 116. Panzer-Division, the 3. Panzergrenadier-Division, and the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division were among the units that now were withdrawn from first-line service. The 2. SS-Panzer-Division ’Das Reich’ recorded a loss of sixty-eight tanks (thirty-four Panzer IVs and twenty-eight Panthers) during the Ardennes Battle—quite high losses for a German panzer division—while claiming to have destroyed two hundred and twenty-four enemy tanks.73 Its personnel losses amounted to 3,437 killed, wounded and missing.74 The 116. Panzer-Division lost 1,055 men in killed, wounded and missing during the twelve days between 3 and 15 January alone, when the division fought a defensive battle against the Allied counter-offensive.75 The 3. Panzergrenadier-Division had lost over two thousand men, one quarter of its full strength, in just four weeks of battle in the Ardennes.76But no unit had been as battered as the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division, where 4,153 out of an original strength of 11,000 men had been killed, wounded or listed as missing since the opening of the Ardennes Offensive.77 This division was, according to German military terminology, totally consumed.’
By giving widespread publication to photos such as this, Allied propaganda tried to give the image of the meeting between U.S. First and Third armies in Houffalize as a great victory. Here, Technician Fifth Grade Ancel Casey in an M8 armored car of the Third Army’s 11th Armoured Division is shaking hands with Sergeant Rodney Himes and Private First Class Alfred Gernhardt, both from the First Army’s 84th Infantry Division, on 16 January 1945. However, this was a hollow victory. The encirclèment of German 5. Panzerarmee as sought by Eisenhower and Patton when they launched the offensive four weeks previously, had failed; the Germans had slipped out of the trap. (NARA, 111-SC-199155/ Hawkins)
But it was a hollow victory that the Allies had won at Houffalize. For four weeks, they had endeavored to link up the American Third and First armies in this town, with the intention of thereby enveloping large parts of German 5. Panzerarmee in the west, but when these two U.S. forces finally met, the German troops had successfully evacuated all territory west of Houffalize. And the battle was far from over. The Germans were not only outnumbered and outgunned, they also were tired and hungry, and they wore moist fatigues that froze on the body when the temperature dropped, but many of them still continued to offer an almost incomprehensibly furious resistance.
RIDGWAY’S PINCER OPERATION FAILS
The focus of the battle now shifted to the two flanks. In the north, Major General Ridgway’s American XVIII Airborne Corps had, as we have seen, managed to dislodge the Germans from the lower (northern) side of River Salm on 7 January, through a combined operation with the 82nd Airborne Division from the northwest and the 30th Infantry Division from the north. But then the American offensive stalled again—despite the relative weakness of the opposing German forces. Heinz Trammler, one of the soldiers of German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, wrote in his diary, ’We are beaten down to the last one-quarter of the company. If our enemy only knew how thin our lines are!’78
A major reason why the XVIII Airborne Corps was unable to keep advancing, was that the 82nd Airborne Division became so heavily decimated during the first days of the January offensive that it had to be pulled out of combat. In its place the 75th Infantry Division was ordered to assume positions on the western side of the Salm river, at Grand-Halleux and Vielsalm, six miles west of German-held Sankt Vith. This newly formed American division had been completely ’green’ when it was transferred to the VII Corps’ front section two days before Christmas 1944. During its first battle, the division was completely overthrown and driven out of Grandmenil west of Manhay by the 2. SS-Panzer-Division. Ridgway had a particularly bad first impression of the division, disregarding the fact that he was a personal friend of the divisional commander, Major General Fay B. Prickett. On Christmas Day, the 75th Infantry Division’s 289th Infantry Regiment had been temporarily shifted to the XVIII Airborne Corps for an attempt to retake Grandmenil. But this failed miserably. Instead, the men of the 75th Infantry Division were driven back again, which even enabled the Germans to take Sadzot, two miles west of Grandmenil. And now this ’green’ division, on which Ridgway already had low expectations, was about to relieve the veteran 82nd Airborne Division. In addition, it took the 75th Infantry Division quite some time to get into position for the attack, and this delayed its participation in the offensive.
U.S. 30th Infantry Division, to the east of River Salm, two miles northeast of Grand-Halleux and directed towards the south, was far more experienced. This division had played a crucial role when SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper was annihilated at La Gleize on 22-24 December. In the first week of January 1945, the veterans in this division had ousted German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division from the villages of Wanne and Spineux in a two mile-deep and a mile and a half wide area on the eastern side of the lower (northern) Salm. But then even the 30th Infantry Division got stuck. Although the opposing 18. Volksgrenadier-Division was so run down that it only had the equivalence of a regiment’s strength, it was able to hold back the reinforced 30th Infantry Division through a very skillful use of the hilly terrain.
The precious time bought by the weakened 18. and 62. Volksgrenadier divisions through their embittered resistance, could be used to bring forward new German units to the XIII. Armeekorps under General Hans Felber, who coordinated the German defense on this front section. The 326. Volksgrenadier-Division went into position at Vielsalm.79 This division was by no means a rested unit— on the contrary, it arrived straight from the the Roer Front, where it had sustained severe losses, not least due to the first American use of air burst artillery shells. But any new addition to the heavily pressured Ardennes Front was much needed for the Germans. 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s even worse battered regiments were placed under the command of the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division. A mile and a half south of Vielsalm, at Provedroux, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 20 of the 9. SS-Panzer-Division arrived to take up positions. The U.S. forces that on 9 January made an attempt to attack from the bridgehead east of River Salm at Salmchâteau, halfway between Vielsalm and Provedroux, were completely crushed between these two German units.80’No Americans would pass here,’ 9. SS-Panzer-Division’s chronicler Wilhelm Tieke noted laconically.81
When Ridgway on 12 January ordered the XVIII Airborne Corps to resume the offensive, the Americans had lost much of the advantage acquired a few days earlier. By now, Felber’s German XIII. Armeekorps was firmly established in a semicircle defense from Provedroux in the south, north along the Salm river to Grand-Halleux, thence to Hinoûmont, slightly more than a mile northeast of the U.S. positions at Wanne.
German soldiers with panzerfaust anti-tank weapons and stick grenades thrust into their belts are getting ready for close combat with enemy tanks. The large age differences in the German Army at this time, in early 1945, is evident in this picture.
(BArch, Bild 183-H28150)
Ridgway’s plan was to carry out a pincer operation with the 75th Infantry Division from the west and two divisions from the north to envelop and annihilate Felber’s Corps. Ahead of the attack, the 30th Infantry Division moved to the east, to Malmedy, while the 106th Infantry Division went into position north and west of Hinoûmont. The 106th Infantry Division, which had been virtually wiped out in December, had been reformed through the addition of the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment to the division’s remaining infantry regiment, the 424th. The idea was to provide the 106th with an opportunity to revenge itself for the humiliating defeat on 16-18 December. On 7 January, the 424th Infantry Regiment arrived at Wanne and Wanneranval to replace the 112th Regimental Combat Team.
But when the 106th and 30th Infantry divisions went into action at dawn on 13 January, the 75th Infantry Division still was not ready. There could be no talk of a surprise attack. The heights just south of Hinoûmont dominate the lower lying landscape to the north, west and south. Here, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division had positioned Grenadier-Regiment 294. From this location one has a good view of Stavelot, down in the Amblève valley two miles further north, and in the west the Germans could keep the U.S. positions at Wanne and Wanneranval, a mile from Hinoûmont, under constant supervision.
During the night of 12 January the Americans established a bridgehead south of Amblève at Stavelot, and at half past four in the morning the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment began to work its way up the slopes to the south. Here they passed the snow-covered wrecks of burned half-tracks and other combat vehicles left behind by the 1. SS-Panzer-Division after the Battle of Stavelot four weeks earlier.
Barely three miles farther to the southwest, the 1st Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment meanwhile tried to circumvent Hinoûmont from the southwest; its soldiers laboriously toiled up the slippery western slope of the high ridge that rises from the landscape about a mile southwest of Hinoûmont. The Germans observed their movèments and waited until the Americans had reached the crest. Then they opened fire with artillery pieces that had already been directed toward this place. Next, tanks and assault guns attacked. The American battalion was inflicted terrible losses—including the battalion commander and his operations officer—and had to withdraw.
Meanwhile the men of the 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry Regiment were savagely cut down as they tried to move through the open, snow-covered valley west of Hinoûmont. A tank platoon that was supposed to have supported the attack, reported that it was unable to intervene due to a combination of mechanical failure, slippery roads and thick snow cover in the valley. What remained of the 3rd Battalion, 424th Infantry took refuge in among the bare trees in a small forest just west of Hinoûmont. Although they were subjected to a continued German mortar fire, the trees at least gave them protection from direct fire. Meanwhile the Americans paid back through their own very powerful artillery bombardment of Hinoûmont. Among the Germans who fell here on 13 January 1945, was Heinz Trammler.
Further east, U.S. 30th Infantry Division attacked southwards from Malmedy and the area immediately to the east of this town. Here the Americans faced German 3. Fallschirmjager-Division, which now had been subordinated to Generalleutnant Otto Hitzfeld’s LXVII. Armeekorps, which throughout the period was tasked to cover the northern flank of the German breakthrough in the Ardennes. When the I. SS-Panzerkorps in late December regrouped to the Bastogne sector, the LXVII. Armeekorps’ area of operations was extended to include the German Bulge’s front facing north. Apart from the 3. Fallschirmjager-Division, this Corps also mustered the 246. and 277. Volksgrenadier divisions.
Since 5 January, the 3. Fallschirmjager-Division again was commanded by its ordinary C.O., the highly experienced Generalleutnant Richard Schimpf, who now had recovered from the wounds he sustained in the Falaise pocket in August 1944. The former acting divisional commander, Generalmajor Walter Wadehn, was commissioned to lead the formation of a new paratroop division in Germany.
U.S. 119th Infantry Regiment, on the 30th Infantry Division’s right (western) flank, immediately ran into a stiff resistance from the German paratroopers ensconced atop the ridge that rises out of the landscape just south of Malmedy, north of the village of Bellevaux. What it looked like from the attacking American infantry’s perspective is described by one of the men of the 119th Infantry, Sergeant John M. Nolan:
Private First Class Cletus Herrig was the lead scout with Bob Friedenheimer the second scout. As the platoon approached the crest of the ridge Herrig spotted German soldiers in foxholes and yelled back that they were dug-in some thirty yards ahead. Cletus could speak German so we told him to call to them and demand that they surrender. I thought I could fire a rifle grenade into their position, but when it landed the deep snow cushioned the impact and it failed to explode.
Cletus kept trying to talk them into surrender, when suddenly all hell broke loose! No one who has ever heard the sound of a MG 42 German machine gun open fire will ever forget it. This machine gun was pointed down toward the ditch line where we were crouched spraying us with bullets. The first burst hit four of us before we could find cover in the ditch below the machine gun’s trajectory. Herrig was hit along the top of both shoulders, Friedenheimer was hit through the lung, I took a bullet in the back of my pack and was knocked down to my knees. Behind me was Milton Cohen, a private, one of the eighteen year old replacèments that had joined us two weeks earlier. He was hit in the teeth with the bullet exiting his head behind his right ear, and I will never forget his plaintive call for his mother.
Two German soldiers in firing positions with an MG 42 machine gun and a Sturmgewehr. The MG 42 had the somewhat incredible rate of fire of 1,500 rounds per minute. Owing to a mechanism that allowed the barrel to be replaced in no more than a few seconds, a single MG 42 was capable of holding down a large group of enemy soldiers for a long time, and to inflict terrible losses on them.
(BArch, Bild 101I-691-0244-11/Leher)
The ’Jerries’ had us pinned down and we could not move forward in the face of their machine gun fire on the road and ditch line. The phrase ’all hell broke loose’ again applied to our situation when the Germans began to drop 81mm mortar rounds on our position. There are few things more fearful to an exposed infantryman than incoming mortar or artillery fire. To compound this fear the ’jerries’ included in their barrage ’screaming meemies,’ enemy rockets that made a horrendous noise, and caught us unprepared as targets for this form of artillery. When they came in on us I perceived their sound was comparable to a railroad boxcar flying sideways through the air with both of its doors open.
During this combat, ’G’ Company, 119th Infantry Regiment was reduced from a strength of one hundred and forty-one (one hundred and thirty-four enlisted and seven officers) to eighty men (seventy-eight enlisted and three officers).82
The 119th Infantry Regiment managed to overcome the German resistance only after tanks and artillery had been employed. John Nolan said, ’Each tank’s main gun, its machine gun, the BARs, and the M-l rifles of the third platoon created a sheet of fire concentrated on the enemy position at the crest of the hill. There was no way the third platoon could be stopped by any counter fire from the entrenched German troops. [Sergeant Frank] Wease and his men, with their tank support, surged through the enemy line along the trees on the ridge. The German troops that were still alive immediately surrendered.’83
The 117th Infantry, in the center of the 30th Infantry Division’s attack front, encountered only slight resistance as it advanced south along the road from Malmedy, and in the evening of 13 January its troops established positions at Baugnez, the site of the infamous massacre of American prisoners of war in December 1944. On the following day the Americans made the grisly discovery that the frozen corpses of the dead prisoners still remained on the ground where they had been shot; since Baugnez had been in noman’s land for four weeks, no one had been able to bury them.
But the hardest battles were those the 120th Infantry Regiment, on the far left of the 30th Infantry Division’s front, became embroiled in. At Thirimont, three miles southeast of Malmedy, this regiment clashed with the westernmost battalion of Fallschirmjager-Regiment 9, the I. Bataillon, on 13 January. The 120th Regiment advanced on a thousand-yard wide front just to the left (east) of the 119th Regiment. On the 120th Regiment’s western flank, its 2nd Battalion made a first attempt to take Thirimont through an attack straight from the north on the morning of 13 January. But the German battalion’s 2. Kompanie had taken up positions in Gros Bois—a dense mixed forest a thousand yards north of Thirimont, just a stone’s throw east of Baugnez. When the American soldiers came marching on both sides of the road south, the paratroopers opened a furious fire from within the forest. Caught in the middle of wide-open, snow-covered fields, the Americans had no possibility of escaping. It was a new veritable massacre. While their comrades fell to the right and left, the survivors fled. They left behind a field strewn with bodies in the bloodstained snow. Companies ’E’ and ’F’ were most hardly hit; no more than nine men in each company remained after the German ambush.84 But ’G’ Company, which had been at the forefront of the American battalion, managed to get through and stormed in full career down the hill and into the northern part of Thirimont, where the soldiers managed to capture some of the village’s sturdy stone houses and take fifty German prisoners. But the German paratroopers soon assembled for a counter-attack, and with the support of half a dozen assault guns they took back the terrain north of Thirimont. Thus the American ’G’ Company was surrounded. The men were ordered to break out, and under the cover of darkness some of them managed to make their way back to the own lines, but at that point one hundred men were missing in ’G’ Company.
With the 2nd Battalion’slaughtered’—as Private First Class Howard J. Melker of the 120th Infantry Regiment put it—the 1st Battalion was called upon to try to take Thirimont in a night attack. The soldiers plodded through knee-deep snow on both sides of the small country road that wound across the fields northwest of Thirimont. By striking at night time—something the Germans did not anticipate—the Americans managed to get almost up to Thirimont. But just as they were about to sneak into the village, they were detected and subjected to a murderous machine gun fire from the wooded height Hauts Sarts just west of Thirimont. The battle raged for several hours at dawn on 14 January. ’The company had the job of taking ten farm houses on the outskirts of town,’ recalled Private First Class Melker. ’The battle was fierce; we were fighting the Nazi’s best. Herman Göring’s paratroopers and Hitler’s SS troopers. Casualties were high, stretchers going to the rear were ambushed, killing bearers and wounded. Running out of stretchers doors of houses were used.’85 At dawn the 1st Battalion was forced onto the defensive northwest of the village.
An attempt by the 3rd Battalion to assault the Hauts Sarts from the west on 14 January was also repulsed. It was only through an overwhelming American deployment of artillery, tanks and tank destroyers that the Germans could be blasted out of Thirimont and Hauts Sarts over the course of 15 January. ’The artillery laid in a trèmendous barrage and slaughtered the enemy and saved us all,’ commented Howard J. Melker.86 Still, the battle raged until the evening of 15 January. Another of the men who fought the battle of Thirimont, Sergeant Francis S. Currey from ’K’ Company, 120th Infantry Regiment, talks about how a group of American soldiers at one point was on the ground floor of one of the houses in Thirimont, whereas Germans were barricaded on the upper floor, ’We were lobbing grenades at them, and they were lobbing grenades at us.’87The fight for this little village cost the 120th Infantry Regiment a loss of no less than four hundred and fifty men in killed, wounded or missing. The German losses are not known.
’The battle for the town of Thirimont,’ Michael Collins and Martin King, authors of Voices of the Bulge, commented, ’is one in the history of the Battle of the Bulge that is rarely rèmembered, except by the divisions who fought against one another.’88
By holding U.S. 120th Infantry Regiment in Thirimont for three days, the German paratroopers made it difficult for the other two regiments of the 30th Infantry Division to advance much further south—unless they would run the risk of getting outflanked and possibly even enveloped. The 117th Infantry Regiment, in the center, met no other resistance than from weak German rearguard forces but contented itself by moving forward from Baugnez to Ligneuville on 14 January. Thus German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division was able to withdraw its Grenadier-Regiment 294 from Hinoûmont (five miles west-southwest of Ligneuville) in good order during the night of 13 January. It had fulfilled its task at this place by holding back U.S. 106th Infantry Division to save German 326. Volksgrenadier-Division on River Salm in the west from being cut off. In the woods a few miles farther to the southwest, between Grand-Halleux in the west and Recht in the east, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division established new defensive positions. Nowhere did Ridgway’s plans to encircle the German divisions meet with any success.
The 326. Volksgrenadier-Division (including the since 9 January subordinated remains of the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division) thus had its back free when U.S. 75th Infantry Division opened its attack at River Salm farther to the southwest.89 This was the real baptism of fire for the American division commander, Major General Fay B. Prickett. During the 75th Infantry Division’s fighting in late December, elèments of the unit had been subordinated to other divisions, such as the 3rd Armored. But now, 51-year-old Prickett led the attack operation. His previous combat experience was limited to the Mexican Expedition of 19161917, in order to capture the revolutionary ’Pancho’ Villa. That enterprise ended in failure, but the enemy Prickett now, twenty-seven years later, faced, was considerably more dangerous.
Ridgway had assigned Prickett with the task of encircling the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division, which held positions east of River Salm on both sides of the town of Vielsalm. For this purpose Prickett despatched two regiments in a pincer operation—one south of Vielsalm and one at Grand-Halleux, about three miles north of Vielsalm. The plan was that the 75th Infantry Division then would continue eastwards to link up with the 30th Infantry Division, thereby enveloping also the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division. But nothing of this would succeed.
In fact, Prickett’s division ran into troubles straight from the onset. As we saw earlier, the Allied aviation drove off most of the Luftwaffe from the combat zone during the great air battles on 14 January, but a lone German plane managed to break through and at 1930 hours bombed the 75th Infantry Division’s command post, with several staff officers getting killed.90
A few hours later, during the night of the 14th, the 75th Infantry Division began its attack. It was opened by the 289th Infantry Regiment. At three in the morning its 2nd Battalion crossed icy bridges across the Salm near Provedroux just south of Salmchâteau.91 Before dawn, the whole regiment established a bridgehead in the woods on the other side of the river. By that time, 9th SS Panzer Division’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 20, which had held these positions a few days earlier, had been withdrawn. The Americans attacked just at the seam between the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Grenadier-Regiment 164 at Salmchâteau and the 326th Volksgrenadier-Division’s Grenadier-Regiment 751 further south. Since the attack was carried out in darkness—what the Germans did not expect—the Americans managed to establish a foothold around the small village of Beche, just east of Salmchâteau (mainly located on the river’s western side). But the success was short-lived. Prickett’s opponents, the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division’s commander, Generalmajor Dr. Erwin Kaschner, was a very experienced unit commander who had been in service on the Eastern Front for several years, and then at Normandy. Kaschner immediately despatched Grenadier-Regiment 164—one of the subordinated units of 62. Volksgrenadier-Division—from the north. At that stage, this regiment mustered a first-line strength of only 229 men (with another 208 in the rear area and 282 lightly wounded).92 But—as we have seen before— the excellent regimental commander, Oak Leaves holder Oberst Arthur Jüttner, was one of the most prominent German unit commanders in the Ardennes. Jüttner quickly organized defense positions, which, supported by artillery, halted the less experienced Americans.93
The 75th Infantry Division’s 291st Infantry Regiment, which would form the northern arm of the pincer operation, fared worse. This regiment launched its attack at Grand-Halleux, where the 82nd Airborne Division had managed to establish a bridgehead across River Salm just before this division was withdrawn from combat. But at this place, Kaschner had positioned Grenadier-Regiment 190—also of the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division—in well-fortified defensive positions.
U.S. soldiers from the 75th Infantry Division on the march to the front in January 1945. (NARA, 111-SC-199406)
On the right flank of the American attack, at Hourt in the southern outskirts of Grand-Halleux, the Germans had barricaded themselves in well-masked pillboxes of thick timber—each with three to four men with automatic weapons—perched on heights with a perfect view of the river gorge below, where the American infantry launched their attack.94 Here the American regiment’s 1st Battalion was halted already in its jump-off positions.
To the east of Grand-Halleux the American attack was preceded by a half-hour’s artillery fire against the German positions. At seven thirty in the morning, while it was still dark, the American 2nd Battalion attacked, in terribly cold weather and 18 to 24 inches of snow, straight across an open field, against a forest about five hundred yards further ahead—where the Germans lay in position. ’As soon as we started the attack, the whole tree line opened up with machine guns, grenades, mortar fire and all the fire power they had,’ rèmembers one of the American soldiers who were involved in the attack, John Graber.95
Within a short time, seventy-two men of ’G’ Company had been mowed down, and ’E’ Company lost sixty-five men. ’Our OD clothing made us look like ducks on a pond,’ said Technical Sergeant Robert H. Justice from ‘E’ Company. ’With the entire area covered with snow [the Germans] could detect every movèment we made from their positions in the woods. We were pinned down by automatic weapons fire and had no communication to reach anyone to ask for any type of mortar or artillery fire.’96
In that stage, the Americans despatched tanks from the 750th Tank Battalion, but these were also driven back. One of the survivors of ’G’ Company, Private Peter G. Dounis, recalls, ’I heard a U.S. tank approaching. I ran out and motioned it to stop, because the road ahead was possibly mined. The tank men told me to get out of the way. After 75-100 yards, they hit a mine!’97 A platoon of tanks almost managed to reach the German positions, but was close to being cut off since it lacked infantry support, and had to fight its way back to its own lines.98 ’The action went on all day and well into the night with relentless firing of many rifles and automatic weapons as well as interdiction and interspersing of tracer bullets directed in the open field or delivering ammo,’ rèmembers Peter G. Dounis.99
For some reason, this 15 January 1945 is officially regarded as the end of what is called the Battle of the Bulge, the Ardennes Battle.100 This is a notion hardly shared by the surviving veterans of the 75th Infantry Division’s 291st Infantry Regiment, who instead know the day as the ’Black Monday.’ Of the original six officers and 187 enlisted men in ’G’ Company, 2nd Battalion, only one officer and 35 enlisted men remained.
With the 75th Infantry Division ground to a halt more or less in its jump-off positions, and the 30th Infantry Division tied down in three days of fierce battle at Thirimont, Major General Ridgway was extrèmely frustrated. This was noted by Lieutenant General Hodges, First Army’s commander, when he that same day visited the XVIII Airborne Corps’ headquarters in Francorchamps near Spa. ’According to General Ridgway,’ Hodges’ diary reads, ’resistance is nowhere near as stiff as the soldiers would have people believe.’101
Ridgway was particularly disappointed with Major General Prickett and his 75th Infantry Division. Hodges regarded this division as ’tired and exhausted’ and sarcastically described it as ’not one of the First Army’s best divisions.’102 This was especially heavy for Ridgway, because, as we have seen, he was a close friend of Prickett. The next day, on 16 January, Ridgway visited him at the 75th Infantry Division’s headquarters. When the tough C.O. of the Airborne Corps asked Prickett what the Corps could do to help him, Prickett replied, according to Ridgway’s memoirs, ‘Just pray for me!’103
THE 3RD ARMORED DIVISION IS PULLED OUT
When Prickett attacked, there had been the hope that the mighty 3rd Armored Division, which advancing in a southeasterly direction approximately six miles southwest of the 75th Infantry Division’s section, would be able to determine the situation to the Americans’ advantage. This was a ’heavy armored division,’ i.e. it had a roughly 50 percent greater strength than the standard American armored division, and the divisional commander, Major General Maurice Rose, was one of the toughest American officers in the Ardennes. If the 3rd Armored Division would manage to seize the German positions six miles southwest of Salmchâteau, the armored division would be able to roll up the entire German front from the south between River Salm and Sankt Vith. But on the German side, Model had at the last minute ordered up an SS armored force to counter the American thrust.
At first everything seèmed to go well for Rose’s division. In the clear flight weather on 14 January, Thunderbolt planes from the 366th Fighter Group bombed the two villages of Montleban and Bâclain. Meanwhile the 3rd Armored Division’s spearhead—Task Force Lovelady of Combat Command B—surged ahead across the farm fields between these villages, towards Cherain, about a mile farther to the south.
The thirty houses which constituted Cherain, six miles west-southwest of Vielsalm, lined one of the few highways that ran from the west to the east in the Ardennes. If the Americans took Cherain and the neighboring village Sterpigny—on the other side of a three hundred-yard field to the east of Cherain—the road would lay open to the area south of Sankt Vith. From Cherain and Sterpigny, the Americans would also be able to roll up the whole Salm section in front of the 75th Infantry Division. Ultimately, this could lead to Felber’s XIII. Armeekorps getting cut off from the south. To the Germans it was imperative that the 3rd Armored Division and the supporting 83rd Infantry Division was held back, at least until the German troops in the north could conduct an orderly retreat.
The exhausted troops of the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division and SS-Panzer Division ’Das Reich,’ who had fought a ten-day delaying action against these two divisions of U.S. VII Corps, had by then been taken out of combat. In their place arrived elèments of the 9. SS Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen.’ To this division’s III. Bataillon/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19, SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, and II. Abteilung/ SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 19 the time in the reserve became quite short: On 14 January, they arrived at Cherain and Sterpigny—the northern cornerstone of the new German front line against U.S. VII Corps. They barely had time to take up positions until American tanks appeared on the rural road north of Cherain. This was Task Force Lovelady with supporting infantry from the 3rd Battalion of the 83rd Infantry Division’s 330th Infantry Regiment. The American infantry regiment’s after action report describes the ensuing combat:
Left: barely concealed behind spruce boughs, this German 88mm anti-aircraft gun is deployed against enemy tanks.
(BArch, Bild 101I-152-1805-19/Tritschler)
Apparently suffering from the harsh winter cold, this German tank commander stands in the turret of his Panzer IV.
(BArch, Bild 101I-277-0843-19A/Jacob)
Left: On 16 January 1945, this M7 SPG of B’ Battery, 54th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Armored Division explodes after receiving a direct hit during the Battle of Cherain and Sterpigny. (NARA, SC 199151)
A Panther tank and two Bergepanther armoured recovery vehicles at the front in January 1945. (BArch, Bild 183-R98066)
’The column got within 1220 yards of Cherain where the advance was halted by high-velocity fire. At 1300 [on 14 January 1945], the attack was resumed against heavy artillery and direct fire weapons. After advancing 300 yards, the tanks were forced to withdraw after having lost tanks to high-velocity guns located in and around Cherain.’104
Task Force Lovelady pulled back about a thousand yards north of the village.105 There preparations were made for another attempt to break through with a considerable concentration of forces, as outlined in the American report: ’The plan for the day of 15 January called for Task Force Orr and Task Force Miller (Combat Command A) to take over Bâclain [1 mile N Cherain] and Mont le Ban [1 mile NW Cherain]; Task Force Kane to pass through [Task Force] Yeomans and take the high ground south of Brisy [1½ miles SW. Cherain]; Task Force Welborn (Formerly Task Force Walker) to attack through Sterpigny, thence to Retigny [1 miles SE Cherain], allowing Lovelady to come into Cherain under reduced pressure.’106
The attack on Cherain on 15 January, which would mean the end of Task Force Lovelady’s tanks, is depicted from a participating American unit’s perspective:
The road which touched Cherain had to be cut and, come hell or AT guns, snow or ice, the 3rd Armored Division intended to do the job. Lt. Glen M. Alford led one company in an attack. He had eight tanks, or, as the saying goes—first there were eight… Alford’s company had barely moved out when a German Mark IV was sighted and knocked out. Immediately afterward, Lt. Sheldon C. Picard observed a column of self-propelled 88mm artillery pieces and directed artillery fire on it. The mission had begun well, but the fortunes of war turned suddenly hostile. Alford’s tank hit a mine and was immobilized. He was unhurt. A wicked cross fire caught two more of the force. That left five. Desperately trying to hold the vital road, Jerry threw everything in his anti-tank book at the advancing armor. Lt. Picard’s tank was knocked out along with another of the force. And now there were three! Sgt. Maurice L. Humphries assumed command and resolutely continued to drive forward. German fire lanced out from flanks and direct front. The enemy was well dug in and camouflaged. ’Can’t see a damned thing,’ muttered Corporal Octaviano Carrion, ’excepting for one Heinie, and I blew him right out of his hole.’ The ambush was nearly complete. An armor piercing round crashed through Carrion’s tank. Hot metal splashed the gunner’s face. Humphries, searching wildly for a target, spotted a Mark V. His gunner, Corporal Leslie Underwood, bounced five rounds off the heavy enemy vehicle. The Panther’s return fire sent one round through the turret, another into the final drive. It was bail out or die! As Humphries went over the side he noted bitterly that all of his small command had been stopped. Sgt. Bill Burton’s Sherman had all hatches open and that meant only one thing—a hit.107
The 330th Infantry Regiment’s after action report summarizes the attack against Cherain on 15 January: ’The attack progressed to the stream where the infantry came under extrèmely accurate machine gun and mortar fire. All of the supporting tanks were put out of action by anti-tank fire. The attack was unsuccessful. The infantrymen were forced to take cover in the water of the streams to escape the enemy fire.’108 At 1530 hrs, Task Force Lovelady reported the loss of all of its tanks.109 ’I,’ ’K,’ and ’L’ companies of the 330th Regiment’s 3rd Battalion were reduced to a combined strength of two officers and seventeen enlisted men.110
Colonel John C. Welborn’s Task Force Welborn, which simultaneously attacked the adjacent village of Sterpigny, fared no better, as the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment’s after action report for 15 January shows:
’At 12:10: Companies ”D” and “E” [of the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment] with the 1st Battalion 33rd Armored Regiment [3rd Armored Division] attacked Sterpigny. Dug in enemy infantry along the axis of advance, mine fields, and direct fire from tanks on both flanks stopped the advance after short gains. Heavy smoke was laid down and the attack resumed. Upon reaching the town several Mark V tanks opened up and quickly knocked out ten light tanks and the infantry of both ”D” and “E” were cut off. The situation was critical. Company ”F” was on a road block east of Bâclain where they remained for this period.’111
The open hatches on this Sherman indicate that it has been knocked out. The crew has bailed out. (NARA, US Signal Corps)
Task Force McGeorge met a similar fate when it was called in to reinforce the attack on Sterpigny. Staff Sergeant James K. Cullen was part of the infantry from the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment which had been assembled to support Task Force McGeorge. He explains:
We attacked Sterpigny from a wooded hill to the Northwest of the village. ’D’ Company was with us as part of Task Force McGeorge, but the combined companies didn’t add up to a full platoon. My squad consisted of Roy Plummer, Wesley Pitzer, Reuben Kline, Earl Cordell, Vernon Spores and me. […] We approached the edge of town through a severe shelling when we crossed the fields. We picked up a tank from the 33rd Armored Regiment and followed it into town as it crept behind some of the buildings to the right of the road. Flat trajectory gunfire cracked near us as we moved slowly forward. From that we knew that there was an anti-tank gun or a tank aiming at us. Later we learned that it was a Panther.
Our tank went into a space between two buildings to try for a shot at the German Panther. He moved forward with my squad right behind him. I had my hand on the hull of the Sherman when there was a trèmendous crack and a cloud of dust. The crew of the Sherman bailed out. The Panther had put a shell through the corner of the building and into the Sherman, knocking it out. It was our last tank.
I decided to take my group to the other side of the street then to work our way up to where the Panther was sitting. To cross the road, we waited until their tank fired a burst of machine gun fire, then we ran over. He had been firing down the street at intervals. I guess just to let us know he was there.
Once on the other side, we met more of our task force from ’D’ Company. and a number of tankers who had lost their tanks in the field above Sterpigny and Cherain.112
The attacks carried out by Task Force Kane and Task Force Yeoman also broke down in the concentrated German fire. Task Force Hogan fared slightly better, but had to fight for thirty hours until it finally was able to take the three farms in Cherain’s western outskirts that go by the name of Vaux.
On 16 January, the Americans resumed their attack. Task Force Lovelady now had been replaced by Task Force Bailey (a company of Sherman tanks and an infantry company from Combat Command A, 3rd Armored Division), and Task Force Hogan joined Task Force Kane. The final battle of Sterpigny is described from the German perspective:
’In the end, the defenders are pushed out from Sterpigny. But at the small bridge over the creek just behind the village the American attack is halted again. This bottleneck is dominated by German tanks and a few serviceable artillery pieces from II. Abteilung/ SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 9. By nightfall, 20 tanks of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division have been destroyed at this one place. To the right of the III. Bataillon/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 20 has moved into position on both sides of Courtil [three miles northeast of Sterpigny], where it holds back the American 83rd Infantry Division.’113
When the 9. SS Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen’ from 16 January onward withdrew, this was just as much due to an order to definitively leave the Western Front and transfer to the Eastern Front, as due to the pressure from U.S. 3rd Armored Division. The exact numbers of the American losses at Cherain - Sterpigny on 14-17 January 1945 are not known, but Task Force Lovelady alone lost all its tanks, Task Force Welborn lost ten tanks, and Task Force Hogan was reduced to twelve Shermans and ten Stuarts, while Task Force Kane only had eleven Shermans and seventeen Stuarts left.114 The 3rd Armored Division’s operational branch recorded a loss of 125 Shermans and 38 Stuarts between 16 December 1944 and 16 January 1945.115Since the division recorded the loss of 44 Shermans between 16 and 31 December, more than 80 would hence have been lost between 1 and 16 January1945.116
On the German side it was reported that SS-Oberscharführer Gussnerlach, a tank commander in the ’Hohenstaufen Division,’ destroyed 14 American tanks and two armored reconnaissance vehicles in two days of the battle.117
With the 9. SS-Panzer-Division, another of the German armored units disappeared from the Ardennes. Four weeks of fighting had cost the division a loss of over 2,000 men in killed, wounded and missing, but of its original 66 tanks, 39 still remained. In its last combat against the Americans, the 9. SS-Panzer-Division had inflicted the 3rd Armored Division such heavy losses that it was pulled away from the front three days after the Battle of Cherain -Sterpigny.
MONTGOMERY BRINGS IN THE V CORPS
By despatching the 9. SS-Panzer-Division against American 3rd Armored Division, Model managed to prevent a total collapse of his army group’s northern flank. This certainly was a skilled operation and a clever use of the scarce resources at hand, but it only gave a temporary relief. When Montgomery on 15 January—at the height of the Battle of Cherain and Sterpigny—launched yet another division in the offensive, 1st Infantry Division of U.S. V Corps, Model had no choice but to allow the withdrawal of Felber’s embattled XIII. Armeekorps.
The 1st Infantry Division ’Big Red One,’ was one of the American Army’s most combat experienced units in Europe. The name The Big Red One was derived from the red color of the dressing epaulettes. The division took part in the American Army’s very first battles against the Germans in North Africa in November 1942, and when the Allies planned the landing in Sicily in July 1943, Patton made a special request for the 1st Infantry Division to take the lead. On 6 June 1944, The Big Red One again was in the forefront during the landing in Normandy. Since late 1943, the division had been commanded by the austere but highly capable Major General Clarence R. Huebner, who personally had enhanced the unit’s combat value. But when German 6. SS-Panzerarmee broke through in the Ardennes in December 1944, Huebner had—as late as on 13 December—been transferred to the V Corps’ headquarters. Brigadier General Clift Andrus, artillery commander in the 1st Infantry Division since the landings in Algeria in November 1942, was appointed to become the division’s new commander—a task he handled brilliantly. The 1st Infantry Division—part of U.S. First Army’s V Corps—was deployed to block the SS Panzer Army’s front to the north. It was mainly the work of the Big Red One that had repelled the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ with such bloody losses at Domane Bütgenbach on 19-22 December 1944.
The former divisional commander Huebner received a new task as on 15 January 1945 he was assigned to lead the V Corps—on the very same day as this corps began its counter-offensive from the north.* Supported by the 2nd Infantry Division’s 23rd Infantry Regiment, the 1st Infantry Division attacked due south on 15 January, to the left (east) of U.S. 30th Infantry Division, between Waimes and Bütgenbach. The goal was Sankt Vith, about ten miles farther to the south. But German 3. Fallschirmjager-Division fought hard to prevent the Americans from severing the XIII. Armeekorps’ supply lines. In Faymonville, about a mile southeast of Waimes, the II. Bataillon/ Fallschirmjager Regiment 9 held the Americans at bay for two days. This was two miles northeast of Thirimont, where the 30th Infantry Division meanwhile was fighting for the third consecutive day to break the German paratroop division’s westernmost positions.
U.S. soldiers from ‘G’ Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division take cover from machine gun fire from German paratroopers of the III. Bataillon/ Fallschirmjager-Regiment 9 outside of Ondenval on 16 January 1945. (NARA, 111-SC-199162)
The battle for Faymonville raged in bitter cold— the temperature dropped below five degrees. Leonard E. Richardson, who served as a First Lieutenant in the 16th Infantry Regiment, one of the regiments of the 1st Infantry Division, recalls that up to half of the infantry weapons froze and would not fire. On a single day twenty-one men of Richardson’s ‘E’ Company were evacuated with frostbite, and some platoons were down to a strength of five fighting men.118 The American advance was additionally hampered by knee-deep snow, and the German paratroopers’ firepower in Faymonville was enhanced by the 37mm gun of a captured American M8 armored car.
Two miles farther to the east, the German parachute division’s 5th and 8th regiments held positions on the heights south of Bütgenbach. At this place, the American 16th and 18th Infantry regiments advanced across the fields where the 12. SS-Panzer-Division four weeks previously had taken such bloody losses. The Americans passed snow-covered wrecks of the ’Hitler Jugend’s’ abandoned tanks and tank destroyers, which still remained where they had been shot up, but now the roles were reversed. Neither the men of the 1st Infantry Division nor the 23rd Infantry Regiment would agree that the Battle of the Bulge was over on 15 January 1945.
It was only when the 23rd Infantry Regiment on 16 January—in cooperation with the 30th Infantry Division’s 117th Infantry Regiment from the southwest—managed to squeeze the III. Bataillon of Fallschirmjager-Regiment 9 out from Ondenval, just east of Thirimont, that the Germans retreated from Faymonville in the northeast. This allowed the Americans to make their way to the outskirts of the village of Schoppen—a mile southeast of Faymonville— which was defended by Fallschirmjager-Regiment 8.
On 16 January, the Germans held a nearly eighteen-mile long coherent front from Büllingen in the east, through Schoppen and the wooded area south of Ligneuville, to Grand-Halleux at River Salm in the southwest. Ligneuville had been evacuated on the day before. On the western edge of this front, U.S. 75th Infantry Division still was held back, and on the eastern flank the Americans were prevented from moving forward across the old battlefield south of Bütgenbach. But coordinated with the withdrawal of the 9. SS-Panzer-Division from Cherain farther to the southwest, German 326. and 62. Volksgrenadier divisions were pulled back from the positions at River Salm during the following night, so that the depleted U.S. 75th Infantry Division finally was able to march into Vielsalm and Petit-Thier, two miles farther to the northeast. With this German retreat, the completely worn-down 62. Volksgrenadier-Division departed from the front and started its march back to the German border.
At that time, the sky once again clouded in, and a heavy snowfall reduced visibility so much that any Allied air effort became totally impossible. The American ground forces had to do without ’the Air.’
German paratroopers in firing position with a sniper rifle.(Bild 101I-554-0854-06A/Staaf)
While what remained of the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division marched past the snow-covered ruins of Sankt Vith, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division took up positions four miles northwest of the town—on the wooded hills south of Kaiserbaracke, where the north-south highway from Malmedy to Sankt Vith crosses the dual track railway that runs from Born in the east to Recht in the west. Here the Germans repelled the 30th Infantry Division when its forces came rolling down the road from the north on 17 January.
Meanwhile, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s right (northeastern) flank was secured by Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9, which tied down U.S. 23rd Infantry Regiment in fierce fighting in the Wolfsbusch, ’the Wolf Forest’—the deep spruce forest that begins just south of Thirimont and extends down to Kaiserbaracke, three miles further south. Here, the troops of the 23rd Infantry Regiment had to fight their way up the slippery wooded slopes, exposed to constant assaults by small groups of masterfully disguised German paratroopers. ’Slow progress by 1st Div which was having its hands full with last ditch elements of the 3rd Para Div who have reputed themselves for being such tough cookies,’ was noted in Lieutenant General Hodges’ diary.119 Hodges also complained about the ’uniformly slow’ advance of the XVIII Airborne Corps, and met Major General Ridgway to discuss the situation. Ridgway was upset at ’the general lack of aggressiveness and good leadership especially in the case of the 75th Infantry Division.’120
As we have seen, the ordinary ’G.I. Joe’ fought with great bravery and even was prepared to perform virtually suicidal tasks when circumstances demanded. As the Germans saw it, the U.S. Army often carried out its field operations in a rigid manner, which favored the Germans in many situations. Oberstleutnant Moll, operations officer of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, describes this: ’Our division’s combat strength constantly declined, but despite the enemy’s great material superiority, he was not able to accomplish more than limited local successes. This was mainly because the enemy fought his battle in a most schematic manner. The enemy never attacked before 0900 am, and “went to sleep”? at 1700 hrs. Owing to the enemy’s stereotypical approach, we were able to overcome several seemingly hopeless situations because our soldiers could regroup undisturbed during night time.’121
On 17 January Model decided to submit Felber’s XIII. Armeekorps to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee. Sepp Dietrich immediately ordered both artillery and a handful of tanks from his four SS panzer divisions to support the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division. On the next day—while Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 5 still held U.S. 18th Infantry Regiment down at Bütgenbach—Fallschirmjäger Regiment 8 launched a counter-attack in the forests northeast of Kaiserbaracke. ’The heaviest kind of hand-to-hand fighting went on all during the day,’ was noted in Lieutenant General Hodges’ diary. ’The enemy efforts were contained [but] little progress was made in clearing the defile itself.’122 On 19 January, Oberstleutnant Reichhelm, operations officer in Heeresgruppe B, reported that the American thrust towards Sankt Vith had been ’sealed off’ with the support of tanks from the 9. SS-Panzer-Division.123
By holding out on both flanks the Germans could conduct an orderly retreat from the advanced positions at rivers Salm and Amblève—where Major General Ridgway had intended to encircle them. On 20 January, they held a coherent front line from the sector south of Bütgenbach and to the southwest, through Born and the forested area south of Poteau, three miles west of Sankt Vith. All that U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps managed to accomplish through a week’s offensive was to push back the German lines between two and five miles in a southeasterly direction. On that day Ridgway and Hodges met again to discuss the situation. Hodges’ diary entries for 20 January 1945 reads:
’It has now been recommended that both the CG [Major General Prickett] and Art Commander [Brigadier General Albert C. Stanford] of the 75th Div be relieved from their command to revert to the rank of Colonel, although this action has not yet taken place pending approval of higher headquarters.’124
Three days later the proposed actions against generals Prickett and Stanford were executed, except that Prickett escaped being demoted. Instead he was assigned as the deputy commander of the XXI Corps and after the war he had his honor restored by leading the Mauthausen War Criminal Tribunal against Nazi concentration camp guards. Brigadier General Albert Charles Stanford fared less well. A veteran of the First World War, Stanford had been artillery commander in the 34th Infantry Division in North Africa and Italy (participating in the battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio) when he shortly before the Invasion of Normandy was appointed artillery commander in the 75th Infantry Division. Demoted and humiliated, Stanford returned to the USA, where he a few months later retired with the rank of colonel. He passed away in 1952, at the age of fifty-seven.
THE BATTLE OF OBERWAMPACH
Following the American capture of Houffalize on 16 January and the tank battle at Cherain - Sterpigny on 1417 January, the fighting on the entire central sector of the Ardennes Front—from the Sâlmchateau section in the north to Bastogne in the south—virtually ceased. As we have seen, the two American armored divisions in the VII Corps, the 2nd and the 3rd, were withdrawn from combat. Most of the 83rd Infantry Division, the infantry division that operated in support of the 3rd Armored Division, also was pulled out, as was the 774th Tank Battalion.125 Only one of the 83rd Infantry Division’s regiments, the 329th, was left remaining at the front in order to cover the 75th Infantry Division from the south. The 329th Infantry Regiment cautiously pursued the retreating Germans and on 19 January reached Bovigny, two miles south of Sâlmchateau. There the Americans paused for three days.126 Farther to the southwest, the 84th Infantry Division, which had supported U.S. 2nd Armored Division, remained passive at Houffalize for five days.127 Through the American inactivity on this front section, the Germans were able withdraw the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division and transfer it to the Roermond section, forty miles north of the Ardennes Front, where Montgomery attacked with British 2nd Army.128
The northernmost of U.S. Third Army’s corps, Major General Troy Middleton’s VIII Corps, also was instructed to suspend its further advance. Patton’s plan was to try to hold the Germans in the area north of Bastogne while his own units were launched to the northeast from Bastogne in order to cut off the German supply lines. However, as previously depicted, U.S. 6th Armored Division was unable to break through the Führer Begleit Brigade’s defensive positions at Allerborn on the road between Bastogne and Clervaux in the northeast.
Two miles farther to the southwest, however, U.S. 90th Infantry Division, which marched up south of the 6th Armored Division, succeeded in capturing Oberwampach on 16 January. At that point nothing but weak and demoralized remnants of German 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division stood at this place.129 The American conquest of Oberwampach was the beginning of a terribly bloody battle. The obstinacy with which the Germans tried to recapture this small village, clearly illustrates the amazing fighting spirit of the German soldier even at such a late stage of the war.
The first German attack was carried out by no more than forty SS soldiers from 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2, supported by a tank and three Sturmgeschütz IIIs. This was the remains of SS-Kampfgruppe Keil, which under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Rupprecht Keil had not yet been withdrawn from the area.130 The after action report for U.S. 90th Infantry Division’s 358th Infantry Regiment on 17 January reads:
’At 0330 the Germans suddenly attacked Oberwampach. Some 40 men of 1st SS Division, one tank and three assault guns entered the town firing their weapons and yelling at the top of their voices. Unfortunately for them the first few buildings were unoccupied and the ẞnoise served only to further alert the waiting infantryman of the 1st Battalion who called for prepared fires and quickly repulsed the attack. The enemy tanks and survivors withdrew. At daylight the Battalion found 22 dead SS and 3 wounded who were promptly captured.’131
When this attack had failed, German 2. Panzer-Division—on the march back to Germany—was ordered to deploy a task force to block any further American advance in this area.132 Moreover, a pair of Tiger I tanks from schwere Panzer-Abteilung 301, subordinated to the 9. Panzer-Division, were vectored towards Oberwampach.133
At nine in the morning on 17 January, a larger German force came dashing down the snow-covered hills northeast of the small village. This was 2. Panzer-Division’sKampfgruppe Gutmann, consisting of eleven Panzer IVs, two Panthers and three StuG IIIs, plus the infantry of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2.134 Led by Oberst Joachim Gutmann, this was the most powerful formation the 2. Panzer-Division could mount at that time. Gutmann’s task was clear: Take Oberwampach and defend it with the three StuG IIIs and five 120mm mortars.135
But the American defenders proved to be too much for the Germans. U.S. 358th Infantry Regiment, grouped in Oberwampach, was supported not only by ’A’ Company of the 712th Tank Battalion and the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, but also by no less than fourteen artillery battalions. During the previous night, these had been preparing a Time on Target volley (TOT). The simultaneous impact of hundreds of artillery shells had an absolutely devastating effect on the German attack formations, which retreated, leaving behind a large number of dead in the by now completely blackened and plowed up hills. An attempt to repeat the attack ninety minutes later was shattered by yet another TOT volley.
The Germans responded with a prolonged artillery and mortar shelling of Oberwampach. In the meantime, a pincer attack involving both 2. Panzer-Division and 1. SS-Panzer-Division was prepared. At 1300 hrs on 17 January, Kampfgruppe Gutmann again came across the bloodstained hills northeast of Oberwampach. This time, however, the panzers were accompanied by no more than one hundred and fifty panzer grenadiers from Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2, with four Hanomag half-track vehicles.136 U.S. 358th Infantry Regiment’s after action report describes the ensuing combat:
This U.S. soldier is posing next to a neutralized German Sturmgeschütz III in the Ardennes in January 1945. (NARA, 56251 A.C. via Peter Björk)
’No fire hindered their approach until the enemy were close to the village when they were met by point blank fire from tanks, Tank Destroyers and riflemen. The lead vehicle—an armored scout car containing the infantry CO—was pierced at 10 yard range by one of our tanks. The leader took cover, leaving his command without direction as he was subsequently captured. Five enemy tanks were set afire. As the enemy turned to flee his routes of withdrawal were covered by our armor and further tanks were destroyed. Enemy personnel casualties were heavy.’137
Obviously the coordination between the Wehrmacht and the SS did not work so well. In any case, the SS troops attacked only a couple of hours later, when the 2. Panzer-Division already had been repulsed. Despite the fact that they only had one of their StuG IIIs left remaining, the SS soldiers performed a completely death-defying attack and managed to penetrate southeastern Oberwampach, where they captured an American tank destroyer and occupied four houses. But that was just as far as they managed to get.138 SS-Oberscharführer Willi Detering, who participated in the attack, recalled:
We began our assault on Oberwampach after dark, at around seven in the evening. Approximately one hundred yards in front of Oberwampach we were subjected to infantry fire from the windows in the first houses in the community. We immediately returned the fire. After a Sturmgeschütz III had taken up positions and opened fire on the houses, these were quickly abandoned by the Americans. When we entered the village our Untersturmführer and a couple of soldiers were hit and wounded. But the American gunfire soon subsided and we could work our way up to about the center of Oberwampach. Where the street turns to the right, we suddenly were exposed to fire from an anti-tank gun. Our Sturmgeschütz pulled back slightly and a light machine gun and two gunners were grouped to cover this.
At midnight, we heard the sound of two tanks from the American side. They subjected us to such a heavy fire that we were unable to leave our positions. At dawn the Americans intensified their fire and then launched a counter-attack. We were then forced to retreat from Oberwampach. We went into position outside the village and saw how the Americans re-occupied the houses which they had previously abandoned. There was no chance for us to get any reinforcements, especially regarding tank destroyers. When darkness fell again, we withdrew to Keil’s command post.139
While the SS soldiers and the Americans fought inside the village, the Wehrmacht unit launched yet another attack. Oberst Gutmann’s place was taken by Oberst von Puttkamer, and by this time two heavy Tiger I tanks from schwere Panzer-Abteilung 301, and a task force from the Führer Begleit Brigade, had arrived at positions to the east of the village. ’The day was scarcely an hour old when the Germans swarmed like angry bees on Oberwampach,’ reads the American regiment’s after action report. ’They came from the northeast, east and southeast with tanks in support and harried the town with fire until finally repulsed about 0330. Two tanks which accompanied them were hit. One burned but the other limped off into the darkness. When light came the Germans held seven houses of the southeast end of Oberwampach. Supporting tanks and TDs maneuvered to position for direct fire at the enemy-held houses. Directed by a forward observer who crawled to where he was finally pinned by enemy fire, artillery crashed down on the stronghold. The Germans withdrew to a barn on the outskirts leaving a Tiger tank as lone sentinel to guard their retreat. Two PWs were captured—huge men from the Remer Brigade.’140
U.S. 344th Field Artillery Battalion alone fired six thousand shells during the Battle of Oberwampach. One of the men in ’B’ Company, 773rd Tank Battalion, Lieutenant Leon M. Wood, who led the 2nd Platoon, was reported to have knocked out five German tanks with his M10 tank destroyer.141 The German losses were terrible. Included among these was one of the Tiger Is which schwere Panzer-Abteilung 301 had been forced to leave behind at Oberwampach since it had been made unable to move.142But through these counter-attacks, the Germans had also halted U.S. 90th Infantry Division.
XII CORPS GETS ANOTHER CHANCE
For nearly a month, Patton had been frustrated in his efforts to reach the Our’s river crossings in the area east of Bastogne, in order to ’slam a steel door’ behind German 5. Panzerarmee. In December 1944, U.S. XII Corps tried to advance northwards parallel to the river, but this failed due to a combination of German resistance and rugged terrain. Probably the most favorable moment had been when 26th and 80th Infantry divisions of the III Corps on 22 December launched their surprising thrust northwards towards Wiltz. But because of an exaggerated caution on behalf of these two divisions, the Americans lost the element of surprise, and since Christmas time, the front had not moved more than three miles north in the direction of Wiltz, which remained in German hands. When all efforts by the 6th Armored Division, the 35th Infantry Division, and the 90th Infantry Division to break through to the northeast from the area east of Bastogne also failed, Patton again turned to Major General Eddy’s XII Corps and instructed this to resume its offensive from the south.
American medics push an assault boat loaded with medical equipment down to River Sûre. (US Army)
In view of the extremely difficult terrain of the area—high, forested mountain peaks rose sharply, intersected by steep ravines and countless waterways, and snow and ice hampered the accessibility further—this may be regarded as a rather desperate move. But Patton realized that everything had to be put at stake to envelop and destroy as large German units as possible west of River Our, so that his men would be spared from facing them when they later advanced into Germany itself. ’I know you’re tired,’ he told his troops on 17 January, ’but you’ll have to keep fighting!’143The next morning the new offensive began.
River Sûre flows eastwards from the hills in southeastern Belgium and into Luxembourg, cleaving the duchy in half. A short distance southeast of Wiltz, the river bends south down to Ettelbrück, five miles farther to the south, and there it turns east again, to unite with River Our on the border with Germany. Patton instructed the 80th Infantry Division to attack eastwards in the area between Wiltz and Ettelbrück, while the 4th and 5th Infantry divisions further southeast would cross the Sûre from the south to the north between Ettelbrück and the border with Germany in the east.
At three in the morning of January 18, while still pitch black, the 4th and 5th Infantry divisions put their small assault boats and rubber rafts in the river’s icy waters. By now, the Americans had learned from the Germans and crossed the river with the same infiltration tactics as their opponents had applied on 16 December 1944. Quietly, without the artillery firing a single shell, thousands of men paddled across to the north bank of the river. This eight-mile-wide sector was held by not more than a single German division—the battered 352. Volksgrenadier-Division, which at this time was reduced to less than a regiment’s size. Only at one place—just east of Diekirch—was one of the assault boat groups detected and fired upon by German machine guns, and here the Americans quickly pulled back and crossed the river a little bit away.144
A few hours later, the 80th Infantry Division under Major General Horace McBride struck the German western flank on a one-mile-wide front from Ettelbrück in the south and up to the area just south of Wiltz. This was indeed a gamble. The 80th Infantry Division was faced by the entire LIII. Armeekorps under General Rothkirch, with 79. Volksgrenadier-Division to the left and the 276. Volksgrenadier-division to the right. Although both of these divisions had been decimated during the preceding weeks of fighting—which certainly also was true for the 80th Infantry Division—the 276. Volksgrenadier-Division (which recently had been transferred from the LXXX. Armeekorps) still had about seventy percent of its original strength.145
While the LIII. Armeekorps largely managed to hold out against McBride’s flank attack, the 352. Volksgrenadier-Division proved unable to withstand the powerful onslaught from the 4th and 5th Infantry divisions. Diekirch was abandoned almost without a fight. Here the Americans took one hundred fifty-eight prisoners from Grenadier-Regiment 914—’some of them very young, exhausted, frozen and half-starved,’ as reported by the commander of the 3rd Battalion of 5th Infantry Division’s 2nd Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Connor.146
But the German commanders reacted swiftly and decisively to the American attack. Already on 18 January, General Brandenberger, C.O. of the 7. Armee, ordered the LIII. Armeekorps to transfer the bulk of its artillery to the LXXX. Armeekorps and the 352. Volksgrenadier-Division.Meanwhile Generalfeldmarschall Model regrouped strong armored forces to the threatened sector. He ordered the2. Panzer-Division to abandon its positions northeast of Oberwampach, and instead march southwards. Then he contacted Generalleutnant Bayerlein, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, and ordered him to deploy a task force to Diekirch. Bayerlein immediately issued marching orders to Kampfgruppe 902.147
The weather still did not permit any large-scale Allied air support, for which the Germans were infinitely grateful. But soon it would be too much of a good thing. The light snowfall that started at dawn on 18 January, soon developed into a blizzard that would rage for three whole days. Within a few hours, all roads in the area had been covered with thick snow drifts. The situation was complicated by the fact that many of the roads now hidden under up to five feet deep snow, ran along cliff edges where one wrong move could be fatal. To the Germans, who lacked fuel for their plow trucks, it was a disaster. Generalleutnant Bayerlein, who on 18 January made it to the 79. Volksgrenadier-Division’s command post to acquaint himself with the situation, realized that it would take days rather than hours for his motorized units to reach the combat zone.
German artillerymen are making a Nebelwerfer ready to fire another volley of rockets. (BArch, Bild 101I-277-0840-33/Jacob)
U.S. 4th and 5th Infantry divisions were able to continue the advance northward throughout the next day. Although these two units also were stalled by the snowstorm, they stood in Bastendorf, two miles from their starting positions, on the evening of the 19th. Thus, the 79. Volksgrenadier-Division, German LIII. Armeekorps’ southernmost division, was threatened with being outflanked from the east. During the following night this division withdrew eastwards across the Sûre, this without being noticed by the Americans. Next day, the amazed American soldiers of the 80th Infantry Division’s 318th Infantry Regiment were able to enter Burden, on the western side of the Sûre, without encountering any resistance. Squatting, and with their nerves on edge, the Americans searched the small village from house to house. They had no illusions concerning the Germans. Six days earlier, they had been exposed to a minor German attack that emanated from Burden. Thereby, the American regimental commander, Colonel Lansing McVicker, was taken prisoner. Shortly afterward, the Americans carried out a counter-attack and took back the ground they had lost. There, they encountered Colonel McVickers body. He had been killed by a bayonet stab, not far from the place where he was captured.148
The 4th and 5th Infantry divisions’ advance soon also ground to a halt. On 20 January, the 5th Infantry Division reached Brandenburg, about two miles northwest of Bastendorf, but there the division decided to revert to the defense; there seemed to be indications that the Germans were preparing a counter-attack from Vianden, three miles farther to the northeast.149
Patton tried to improve the situation by ordering the III Corps to resume its attack in a northeasterly direction east and northeast of Bastogne on that same day. But the American forces once again were halted by the German armored forces, as before. At Wincrange, a mile southwest of Antoniushof on the road between Bastogne and Clervaux, the German task force which had assembled under Oberst Remer, thwarted all U.S. attempts to get through.150
Then, when U.S. 80th Infantry Division’s 318th Infantry Regiment attacked across the Sûre at Dirbach, four miles northwest of Burden, on the morning of 21 January, the first armored units from Panzer Lehr had arrived, and these struck the U.S. infantry regiment with a terrible impact.151This is described in a report from the 318th Infantry, ’The 2nd Battalion became ’boxed”? in a deep gorge south of the river. What had appeared as a steep slope on the 1/50,000 map actually was found to be a perpendicular cliff. The 2nd Battalion, unable to descend to the river, became a target for some very heavy artillery fire. Lt Col William Boydston, C.O. of the 2nd Battalion, was killed by Nebelwerfer fire.’152_
Percy Smith, at that time a First Sergeant of the American battalion’s ’G’ Company, remembers the terrible scenes during the German artillery and Nebelwerfer bombardment:
’The bodies of soldiers and equipment were scattered over the ground. Parts of bodies dangled from tree limbs. Wounded members of the headquarters staff wandered around dazed and incoherent. A soldier was holding his intestines; another was looking at his arm laying on the ground. Colonel Boydston was reclining in a half sitting position at the base of a tree … Colonel Boydston beckoned to Lieutenant Coupto (his aide). He spit out a mouthful of blood and told him to deliver a message to his family. Colonel Boydston’s eyes grew filmy then closed. He expired in the arms of the bitterly weeping LieutenantCoupto.’153
At the same time, German 9. Volksgrenadier-Division, which on 16 January had been released at the front by 276. Vo lksgrenadier-Division, was ordered to return to the Our’s western side to establish a solid defense line between Vianden and Brandenburg.154 There, the Germans managed to halt and reverse U.S. 4th Infantry Division as it tried to advance towards Vianden on 21 January.155
That evening, exactly one month had passed since Patton had launched his offensive, aimed at determining the Battle of the Ardennes. It was now 21 January 1945, and it stood perfectly clear to the Third Army’s commander that he once again had failed to sever the 5. Panzerarmee’s lines of communication. At the front, shivering and frustrated U.S. soldiers looked up against the gray sky and asked themselves, ’Where is the Air Force?’156
RIDGWAY IS HALTED IN FRONT OF SANKT VITH
On the northern side of the German Bulge, Major General Ridgway, the commander of U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, tried to get the advance running again on 20 January. As we have seen, his attempt to outflank the German forces in the area through a pincer movement had failed, and on 20 January, the Germans held a line from the area south of Bütgenbach and southwestwards up to a forested area south of Poteau, three miles west of Sankt Vith. But now Ridgway brought forward Major General Robert Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division, which had been held in reserve since it was taken out of action just before the end of the year.* This was the division that had been dealt the stinging defeat at Sankt Vith a month earlier, and now the idea was that it would have the honor to recapture the town. In order to complete this task, the armored division received the support of the independent units 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment and 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion.
Sherman tanks of the 7th Armored Division on the advance towards Sankt Vith in January 1945. (NARA, 111-SC-199467)
Against Ridgway’s 30th Infantry Division, 7th Armored Division, and 75th Infantry Division, stood the German 18. and 326. Volksgrenadier divisions (both of which had been badly mauled), and the 246. Volksgrenadier-Division, which just had arrived from the Monschau area in the northeast. Furthermore, the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division held the northern flank, against U.S. 1st Infantry Division and a regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division. Had it not been for the support given to these German units by SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 under SS-Sturmbannführer Siegfried Müller, plus a couple of tank platoons from the 1., 9., and 12. SS-Panzer divisions, which served as fire brigades on this section, it is doubtful that the Germans would have been able to hold their positions for so long.
The 7th Armored attacked to the east of the highway from Malmedy to Sankt Vith. Combat Command A—17th Tank Battalion and 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion—rolled off at 0930 in the morning on 20 January, with the backing of the paratroopers of 2nd Battalion, 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The morning was cold and a light snowfall reduced visibility slightly. A formation of fighter-bombers from the IX Tactical Air Command were deployed to support the offensive, but the operation had to be aborted since the pilots were unable to see anything to attack on the ground. The small village of Deidenberg, about five miles north of Sankt Vith, proved to be occupied by no more than a handful of Germans who quickly took off when the tanks came rumbling across the snow-covered fields.157
But when Combat Command B at noon on 20 January approached Born, a stone’s throw from the road to Sankt Vith, things looked different. From the wooded hill west of the village, a couple of hundred German soldiers from the 18. Volksgrenadier and 3. Fallschirmjäger divisions—supported by three tanks and tank destroyers from the 12. SS-Panzer-Division—effectively blocked the highway.158 When the American tanks came out of the Wolfsbusch forest in the north, along with the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, they were met by a raging fire. A German tank destroyer knocked out two Shermans in quick succession, while mortar fire was directed against the infantry. The Americans were forced to pull back into the forest again.
During the rest of the afternoon, the German positions and the village was bombarded with mortars and anti-tank guns. When the German return fire slowed, the Americans resumed their attack. This was at 1645 hrs, and there was only thirty minutes left until darkness set in. Supported by the troops of the American parachute infantry battalion’s ’B’ Company, two Shermans surged forward on the eastern flank, and a few hundred yards farther to the left, three other Shermans and soldiers of the para battalion’s ’A’ Company advanced across the snow-covered fields. Meanwhile, a Sherman and a platoon of paratroopers cautiously moved along the road furthest to the west.
At 1655 the headquarters received a radio call from Captain Leslie D. Winship, commander of the parachute infantry battalion’s ’B’ Company, ’Continuing advance against slight resistance.’ Five minutes later his agitated voice was heard on the radio again, ’Am meeting stiff resistance!’159Then the broadcast stopped, but intense gunfire was heard from his unit’s direction.
A German tank destroyer had knocked out the leading Sherman, and Winship had been badly wounded. While a paramedic gave the company commander first aid, a huge German tank suddenly appeared up behind a small grove of trees, and a group of German soldiers in snow oversuits captured the Americans. This was one of four German tanks that made a surprising entrance. Another five Shermans were knocked out, and the American infantry had to abandon the houses they had managed to occupy in Born.
Again the Americans were back inside the dark, cold forest. As usual, their artillery took over. Between 2300 and 2345 Born was subjected to the fire of no less than thirteen artillery battalions. Then the Americans attacked again, and this time it was no problem to overpower the by now completely shell-shocked German defenders. The Americans assembled fifteen hundred prisoners plus a rich war booty, much of which, however, was more or less badly damaged by the bombardment. Captain Winship’s dead body also was found.
A German soldier leaves his cover, armed with a stick grenade in one hand and a so-called Hohlhaftladung to fight an enemy tank in close-combat. The Hohlhaftladung was a kind of magnetic mine with a 3.5 to 1.7-kilo explosive with a shaped charge effect. According to German veterans, this weapon had great penetration capabilities even on quite thick armor. However, the attacking soldier had to take cover quickly once the charge was primed, because it detonated within five seconds. (BArch, Bild 101I-709-0337-30/Gerhard Gronefeld)
Major General Ridgway was anything but satisfied, which he demonstrated with all the clarity one could wish for. To the First Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Hodges, he expressed the view that the 7th Armored Division had become ’sluggish.’ Ridgway even made direct contact with the C.O. of the armored division’s Combat Command B, which had been slowed down at Born, and told him that if his unit could not handle this small village on its own, the rest of the armored division would haveto intervene. Then he informed the armored division’s commander, Hasbrouck, that if he could not get ’the get the job done’ Ridgway would instead despatch the 30th Infantry Division to take Sankt Vith.160
Captain George King of the 365th Fighter Group ‘Hell Hawks’ starts his P-47 Thunderbolt with two 500lb. bombs under the wings for a new combat mission over the Ardennes. This P-47D30 was a brand new aircraft received by the 365th Fighter Group to replenish the unit after the severe losses during Operation ‘Bodenplatte.’ When the weather cleared on Monday 22 January 1945, the ‘Hell Hawks’ had the opportunity to pay back. (NARA, 3A-5146)
Hodges also did not seem particularly pleased with the results of the first day of the attack. His diary reads, ’XVIII Corps continued the attack; resistance was extremely heavy in Born which was finally cleared after six o’clock; 165 armored reconnaissance vehicles, 8 assault guns, and 4 tanks were captured and over one hundred dead Boche were found in the town. We lost 8 tanks, 5 of which can be repaired.’161
On the German side, Generalfeldmarschall Model ordered all available forces to be launched in a counterattack north of Sankt Vith on the morning of 21 January. Soldiers from the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, an infantry battalion from the 246. Volksgrenadier-Division, and a handful of tanks from the 9. SS-Panzer-Division attacked from Nieder-Emmels, two miles southwest of Born.162 The Germans managed to overpower a few American infantry positions, but when they entered the Bois d’Emmels—the mixed forest between Nieder-Emmels and Born—the American artillery had zeroed in on their targets. ’After an initial success the attack was halted in the woods,’ reported Oberstleutnant Moll, operations officer in the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division. ’Our forces had to be pulled back.’163
MASSACRE FROM THE AIR
On this day, 20 January 1945, the weather began to improve slightly. U.S. 9th Air Force was able to despatch 166 twin-engine B-26 Marauder, A-26 Invader, and A-20 Havoc bombers and attack bombers against a railway viaduct and a bridge at Euskirchen and railway yards in Mayen in the rear area of the German Ardennes Front. Even more directly relevant at the front was the fact that several Thunderbolt and Lightning fighter-bombers appeared to drop bombs and strafe the Germans at Sankt Vith.*
This coincided in time with worsening news from the Eastern Front reaching the German first-line troops in the West. These had previously heard that battles were fought in the borderlands of both East Prussia and Silesia. On 21 January the German Wehrmachtsbericht mentioned two cities in East Prussia: ’Gumbinnen … bitter street fighting rages in the city … Following heavy fighting, the enemy managed to penetrate Tilsit.’ Such news had a great drain on the morale of the German troops on the Western Front. One man who really received a strong impact from the reports from the Eastern Front was Adolf Hitler. On the night of 19 January he told Oberbefehlshaber West, Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, to be prepared that ’the entire 6. Panzerarmee, including the four SS Panzer divisions and the two Führer brigades could be ordered to the Eastern Front’164Decision on the matter would, Hitler added, be taken the next afternoon. The following day, the Soviet forces broke through the German defense in East Prussia. At 1855 hrs on 20 January came the order from Hitler: The SS armor shall promptly shift to the Eastern Front!165
The Allies soon were informed about it. On the evening of 20 January, the Ultra code breakers at Bletchley Park intercepted German radioed orders to the 3. Jagd-Division to deploy all available fighters to seal off a particular area from the Allied aviation.166 Given the dilapidated state of the German aviation in the West, this was a sign that something big was in the offing. In the evening the next day the Ultra intercepted a message in which Generalfeldmarschall Model announced that the 5. Panzerarmee from 1200 hrs on 22 January would take over command of all units on the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s former front section, ’except the SS formations which will be pulled out’167 This was the final death knell for the German Ardennes operations.
Just as the road to the river crossings at the Our were cluttered with withdrawing vehicles, the cloud cover dispersed. On Monday 22 January 1945, the sun shone over a sparkling winter landscape. The Allied planes were up early. At dawn, Captain Wilfred B. Crutchfield from the 362nd Fighter Group swept in over the German border in his P-47 Thunderbolt, nicknamed ’Kentucky Colonel,’ and saw something truly amazing: From the river crossing at Dasburg a huge vehicle column wound almost all the way to the town of Prüm, some twenty miles farther to the northeast—there was everything from tanks to horse-drawn wagons.168 ’This discovery,’ wrote 9th Air Force historian Kenn C. Rust, ’was one part in the beginning of one of the greatest days in the history of the 9th Air Force’169
At around the same time, Lieutenant Howard Nichols from the XIX TAC’s 10th Photo Reconnaissance Group, spotted a huge traffic jam on the other side of the river. At least four hundred vehicles were standing almost still along the narrow road that winds down the forested mountain slope towards the bridge across the Our’s river gorge at Dasburg. The traffic was barely visibly moving through the narrow bottleneck. Nichols immediately radioed ground control and called for ’a massive airstrike’170
Similar reports came in from elsewhere in the Ardennes. An American report from 22 January 1945, reads, ’Air reconnaissance showed at almost any hour of the day great columns of vehicles of all descriptions leaving the bulge on all roads that lead back to Germany’171 A soldier from the Führer Begleit Brigade gives the German perspective:
22 January 1945. The road is filled with all kinds of troops— soldiers on foot, baggage vehicles, 7.5cm anti-tank guns, tanks from various units, heavy artillery pieces, each drawn by sixteen draft horses. We admire the gunners who manage the transport on these narrow roads with its tight curves, but feel sorry for the nags. The column becomes increasingly compressed because the soldiers on foot determine the marching pace. Just as it starts to turn light at dawn, the column stands in front of a fairly deep river gorge. The road descends in hairpin curves. At the bottom the Our River flows, but still it is not sufficiently light to be able to see it. First the trucks and the tanks move down the hill. Then follows the large artillery pieces, whose eight different spans are able to get through the hairpin curves only with great difficulty. It is with the greatest difficulty that the gunners manage to prevent the extremely heavy pieces from just crashing down the steep hill. We hear their cries: ’Stop! Stop! Whoa! Whoa!’ - And everything stops.
By now the trucks at the front of the column have arrived down to the bridge, but it appears to be damaged by bombs. We need the bridge because the river gorge is too steep. But the biggest problem is that the road is so incredibly narrow. It is impossible to overtake or turn back, otherwise at least the tanks might have been able to cross the river, but now they can not get past the trucks. We soon realize that the enemy fighter-bombers have us caught in a mouse trap. It feels like it turns light too fast, and this turns out to be one of those beautiful winter days with clear blue skies, as so often is when it is as cold as this. Now we have to look out for airplanes!
Soon, the first formations of fighter-bombers appeared— Thunderbolts and Lightnings, weighted down by bombs. The German soldier continues his story from Dasburg, ’Someone yells, “Abandon vehicles!”? Everyone but the wagon drivers hurl themselves to cover. In the same moment they pop up behind the ridge—at first it looks like a swarm of bees, but we know it is fighter-bombers. They carry out their attack methodically, starting with the part of the column at the top of the mountain. Two or three artillery pieces, each with sixteen horses, plunge down the slope. Further down trucks are crushed and tanks get stuck. One artillery piece after another is destroyed by bombs. The last ones are disconnected from their limbers and the panicked horses rear. The fighter-bombers continue to drop their bombs, farther and farther down the road. When they are rid of their bombs, they turn loose on us with their heavy machine guns. The attack continues for about half an hour. Afterwards, not the slightest movement can be seen. We only hear the cries of the wounded men and the horrific screams from horses.’
The 362nd Fighter Group, to which Captain Crutchfield belonged, was in the lead. Over the course of six hours its pilots made incessant low-level attacks against the German vehicle columns and claimed to have destroyed seven tanks, seven half-tracked vehicles, and another 315 motor vehicles, plus fifteen horse-drawn carriages of various kinds. The price for this success was five shot down Thunderbolts, with only one of the pilots being able to save himself by parachute.
Meanwhile the bombers of the 9th Air Force were made ready. Two formations of twin-engine Marauders from the 387th and 394th Bomb groups headed for the bridge at Dasburg. They were guided by four Marauder pathfinders. At 1200 hrs, the leading pathfinder aircraft with Lieutenant Edward B. Fitch as the pilot dropped its marking bombs.
They hit exaclty on target on the bridge. Two minutes later, twenty-seven Marauders from the 387th Bomb Group unloaded one hundred and eight 1,000lb bombs. The result was, according to the report,’ excellent and superior.’172 At 1212 hrs, the 394th Bomb Group bombed from 12,000 feet. The bridge at Dasburg—the 5. Panzerarmee’s lifeline—was totally obscured in smoke and fire. Afterwards it turned out that it still hung in its abutments, but large parts of the bridge itself had been destroyed by bomb hits. The entire bridge and the road on both sides of the river was filled with burning and destroyed vehicles, and dead or wounded soldiers and horses.
The bulk of the 9th Air Force’s fighter-bombers now concentrated against the German vehicle and troop columns. The worst affected were those on the river’s west side, where tightly packed columns of vehicles remainedstuck between five-foot high snow banks on the narrow road. All three Tactical Air commands in the 9th Air Force were in action, and at 1300 hrs the British 2nd Tactical Air Force was also called in.173 Douglas A-26 Invader attack bombers from the 416th Bomb Group also joined in during the course of the afternoon to strafe the German columns.174The nose armament on these twin-engine aircraft, eight .50in (12.7mm) machine guns, had a devastating effect on the vehicle columns.
The result of an American fighter-bomber attack against a German vehicle column. (NARA, 111-SC-199253)
Concentrated bombing also was directed against the tightly packed vehicle columns that tried to cross the bridge at Obereisenbach a little further south. Generalmajor Triepel, artillery commander of German LVIII. Panzerkorps, reported, ’The road Marnach -Dasburg - Daleiden was totally blocked. Bombing had resulted in the crossing point at Dasburg being so ploughed up that it took a considerable time to prepare a crossing for vehicles. The vehicles stood in a long row, one close behind the other, all the way from Dasburg to Marnach. Using bombs and guns, fighter-bombers constantly attacked these congestions. The results were fairly grisly. On the road Hosingen - Obereisenbach a column had also been totally wiped out by pattern bombing.’175
Not only the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s transport columns were affected by these air strikes. General Rothkirch’s LIII. Armeekorps, which was about to retreat across the Sûre’s western branch, was torn to pieces. This also applied to the vehicles of Panzer Lehr and the 2. Panzer-Division which were about to face the offensive by U.S. XII Corps in the south. When the commander of Panzer Lehr, Generalleutnant Bayerlein, tried to reach Hosingen on the evening of 22 January, he barely was able to get through because of all the burning or burnt out vehicles, overturned artillery pieces, horse carcasses, and all sorts of dispersed material. Bayerlein counted at least three hundred wrecked vehicles on this road section alone. There were obvious signs of panic. Several of the vehicles apparently had been driven off the road, where they had overturned and been abandoned.176
In the Sankt Vith sector, aviation reports also could vector in U.S. artillery against the German columns that were closest to the front.177
Altogether, the 9th Air Force claimed to have destroyed nearly sixteen hundred trucks, twenty-eight tanks, twelve other armored vehicles, forty horse-drawn carriages and sixty artillery pieces or anti-tank guns during 1,063 fighter-bomber sorties on 22 January.178 How large the actual German losses were is impossible to determine. Although a considerable part of the stock that was reported as destroyed by the American airmen, were counted two or three times by different pilots, and actual German losses were not quite as high, it is beyond doubt that the Allied aviation on this day inflicted most terrible German losses on the ground. The cost for this was in comparison relatively modest, fifteen fighter-bombers lost. Throughout the day, not even a single German aircraft had appeared in the area!
’Worse than the Falaise pocket. Biggest day in TAC history of destructions,’ Major General Weyland, commander of the XIX Tactical Air Command, triumphantly wrote in his diary.179 Lieutenant General Hodges’ diary entry reads almost the same, ’Greater successes than those chalked up in the Falaise pocket. .,’180
The U.S. Army Air Force’s official history of World War II says, ’The most successful attack was staged by the medium bombers on the Dasburg bridge during the morning of 22 January when serious damage to the bridge led to a terrific traffic congestion on all exit routes in the area of Clerve, Dasburg, and Vianden. The resultant havoc which fighter-bombers of XIX TAC wrought among the enemy’s stalled columns far surpassed the destruction in the Falaise gap of August 1944.’181 That the devastation surpassed the results at Falaise was an opinion shared by the commander of German 7. Armee, General Erich Brandenberger.182
One of the American soldiers who a few days later marched forward on these roads, Captain Richard Durst in the 11th Infantry Regiment, explains:
’The scene sickened even the most hard hearted of our number. It was terrible! The battered remnants of enemy motor vehicles, horse-drawn conveyances, artillery pieces, and miscellaneous equipment along with the mutilated bodies of scores of enemy personnel and horses virtually filled the road along which we were marching, the roadside ditches, and the adjacent snow-covered fields.’183
This was a blow that the German forces in the Ardennes would never recover from, and this of course also produced consequences at the front, especially regarding the soldiers’ morale. ’The ground opposition offered to our troops today was generally everywhere light,’ Lieutenant General Hodges noted.184
On that day, 22 January, Hitler issued new orders: all territory west of River Our was now to be evacuated in stages, and the troops would fall back to a line from the Roer to Weiden and thence to Kesternich - the area west of Krinkelt - the area west of Schönberg - the Our sector - the West Wall.185
On 23 January, Patton’s Third Army and Hodges’ First Army opened a unified general offensive due east along the Ardennes Front. Here and there some German units still offered a furious resistance. Throughout 23 January, U.S. 6th Armored Division battled with German 15. Panzergrenadier-Division at Troisvierges, five miles northwest of Clervaux. Panzer Lehr halted U.S. 5th Infantry Division at Hoscheid, while the 2. Panzer-Division forced U.S. 4th Infantry Division to fight hard to take Fouhren, five miles farther to the southeast. But overall, tendencies of dilution and breakdown of morale became more evident among the German troops in the Ardennes.
Further north, Combat Command A, 7th Armored Division was able to enter Sankt Vith without much difficulty in the afternoon on 23 January—exactly one month and one day after this division had been forced out of this place. ’There were not many enemy putting up a show of resistance,’ Hodges noted, ’but artillery and Nebelwerfer fire was heavy and did cause casualties.’186 It was not a pleasant sight that met the Americans as they marched through the ghostly ruins of the devastated city. ’All we could see,’ recalls Lieutenant George Wilson, one of these soldiers, ’were the jagged outlines of the shattered walls that had once been buildings. It was like a nightmarish surrealistic painting. Nothing was undamaged; there was no sign of life.’187
Tuesday, 23 January also was a day with excellent flight weather. Although the American fighter-bombers could not reach the same level of operations as on the previous day, seven hundred and fifty fighter-bomber sorties meant a new massive effort. During incessant attacks against the German columns that continued to encumber the roads, the American pilots claimed to have destroyed 993 trucks, nine tanks, twenty-one other armored vehicles, eighteen horse-drawn carriages, and seventeen artillery pieces or anti-tank guns. Additionally, the railway traffic to the east of the Our was attacked, and as a result thereof, the destruction of six locomotives and one hundred and fifty rail cars was reported, and as well as the severing of rail tracks at forty-six places. The American losses were confined to six fighter-bombers.188
Concerning the results of the attacks against the roads, it may be assumed that the American claims on this day were the result of an even higher proportion of ’double counting’ than on the previous day. ’The entire Ardennes front,’ said one of the German soldiers, ’reminded me of a giant anthill with reverse circadian rhythm. As soon asdarkness fell, everyone took the advantage of this as a cover against the swarms of fighter-bombers. And then when the next day dawned, almost no life could be seen on the roads. Only now and then a soldier dashed from house to house, after first having peeked up at the sky. But as soon as it grew dark again, everything seemed to pour out of caverns to form huge, winding columns on the roads’
U.S. soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division in the outskirts of Rodt, northwest of Sankt Vith, on 23 January 1945. (NARA, 111-SC-199413)
On the afternoon of 23 January, the American war photographer Technician Fifth Grade Hugh F. McHugh from the 165th Signal Photo Company took this image of soldiers from the 7th Armoured Division as they recaptured Sankt Vith, the town the division had lost a month earlier.(NARA, 111-199031/McHugh)
This image of soldiers from the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division advancing towards Wallerode, northwest of Sankt Vith on 25 January 1945, was the last photo the American war photographer Technician Fifth Grade Hugh F. McHugh ever took. Just a few seconds later he was hit by a fatal bullet from a German sniper. Today he rests at the American War Cemetery Henri-Chapelle near Liège, along with 7,991 other American soldiers who died in World War II. (NARA, 111-SC-199228/ McHugh)
This image was taken by war photographer Private First Class Peter J. Petrony from the U.S. Signal Corps and shows how American paratroopers of the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, supported by Sherman tanks from ‘C’ Company, 740th Tank Battalion, advance along a forest road towards Herresbach, northeast of Sankt Vith on 28 January 1945.(NARA, 111-SC-199509, Signal Corps Photo ETO-HQ-45-10668/Petrony)
For the third day in a row, the Luftwaffe was almost entirely absent, despite clear weather. Not even the jets appeared. On the afternoon of 23 January the British Ultra decrypted a report from the Arado 234 base at Rheine, ’Since there was a continual fighter screen over the A/F, 5 attempts to take off were fruitless. One aircraft was destroyed and burned out while towed during an attack by Tiefflieger.’189 Next day, 24 January, four Ar 234s managed to get airborne, and these bombed ships in the port of Antwerp, but otherwise the Luftwaffe’s operations in the west were confined to occasional reconnaissance flights and twenty-two fighters who covered the Arado 234 airfield at Rheine. 190 For 25 January, II. Jagdkorps was ordered to provide the ground troops of Heeresgruppe B with air cover against Allied air attacks, with the flying units in 30 minute-standby from 0700 hrs.191 But this failed to materialize.
Despite deteriorating weather, 312 American fighter-bomber sorties were made on 24 January, and 581 on the 25th. These were reported to have knocked out a total of twenty-one tanks and 982 other vehicles without having seen anything of the Luftwaffe in the air.192 On 25 January Heeresgruppe B reported, Air Situation: Morning—100 twin-engine bombers at Euskirchen/Malmedy/Sankt Vith. Approximately 400 fighter-bombers, concentration in the Sankt Vith area. Afternoon—75 twin-engine bombers with fighter escort at Aachen/Sankt Vith. Approximately 300 fighter-bombers at Eifel and Lower Rhine.’193
GERMAN COLLAPSE
These Allied airstrikes contributed, along with the disastrous news from the Eastern Front, to the total collapse of the already embattled German morale. On 24 January Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front broke through in southwestern East Prussia and reached the coast at Elbing. Thus, most of East Prussia around the major city of Königsberg was surrounded. This could not be concealed by the German authorities, and that same day the German Military Forces’ news bulletin reported, ’In the western part of East Prussia the enemy pushed north and northwest to the area south of Elbing and Mohrungen.’194 Next day it was announced that Soviet troops had captured the German city of Oppeln, southeast of Breslau in Silesia.195On 27 January the Wehrmacht news bulletin admitted ’several deep penetrations’ in the industrial region of Upper Silesia, and reported that fighting now took place in the city of Schneidemühl in Pomerania.196 This news more than hinted at a disaster for the German defense on the Eastern Front, but the German soldiers in the Ardennes understood that the reality was even worse than what these reports actually announced, since the Armed Forces news bulletin simultaneously despatched this report from the Ardennes, ’Enemy attacks in the area northeast of Sankt Vith, at Luxembourg’s northern border and in the Clervaux area broke down in our concentrated fire.’197
In fact, the German morale in the Ardennes, and thus the entire defensive battle, collapsed entirely during these days. Whole units disbanded as exhausted, starving, dirty and now also increasingly disheartened troops began marching east, towards the German border, or gave up as soon as U.S. troops approached, or simply deserted at the first opportunity. The forests in the areas abandoned by the Wehrmacht, became filled with deserters—many of them Poles, Czechs, or others of non-German nationalities—who begged civilians for food and asked for help to hide.198
On 24 January—the day the German Armed Forces’ news bulletin stated that the Allied attack broke down in concentrated German fire—U.S. 26th Infantry Division mopped up the last German resistance in Wiltz. Further north, other American troops reached River Clerve, and northeast of Sankt Vith U.S. 1st Infantry Division took Möderscheid, previously held with such tenacity by III. Bataillon/ Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 5 of the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Next day, when U.S. 101st Infantry Regiment and 6th Cavalry Group liberated Clervaux, the last pitiful remnants of the Panzer Lehr Division hobbled across River Our at Gemünd. All that remained of that panzer division was five thousand men with five serviceable tanks, seven anti-tank guns and nine artillery pieces.199 The retreat was performed in such a haste and under such chaotic conditions that fifty serviceable tanks had to be abandoned because no fuel could come through on roads blocked by bombed vehicles.200 On 26 January, U.S. 90th Infantry Division stood on a three-milewide front between Heinerscheid and Lieler, northeast of Clervaux, right at the small wooded area that borders River Our.
On 28 January, the Americans initiated their last offensive in the Ardennes, aimed at breaking through the German West Wall at Losheimergraben. The main thrust was performed by Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps, which attacked along a six-mile-wide front north of Sankt Vith. For this operation, the 1st Infantry Division was transferred to the northern flank of the airborne corps, while Ridgway placed the 82nd Airborne Division on the southern flank. Thus this previously so battered airborne division returned to the front. Just as the 7th Armored Division had received the honor of retaking Sankt Vith, Ridgway now gave the troops of the 82nd Airborne the honor of dealing the final blow against the German forces who had conducted the Ardennes Offensive.
’Plowing through the deep snow,’ wrote Charles B. MacDonald, ’the two divisions of the XVIII Airborne Corps encountered only sporadic opposition, often taking the form of occasional patrols or scattered rifle fire.’201 During the first day of the attack alone, the Americans took nearly one thousand German prisoners.202 American reports spoke of a total breakdown of the morale among the paratroopers of German 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division, which previously had offered an almost fanatical resistance. According to Lieutenant General Hodges’ diary on 28 January, these ’once the pride of Marshal Göring’ displayed an ’all-time low for the Wehrmacht morale.’203
U.S. First Army’s Intelligence Department even reported on a veritable rebellion among 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division’s soldiers, ’Forced to go into combat despite frozen feet and despite lack of hot food for three days, [they] are now finally rebelling. News of the Russian advances has reached all soldiers on the Western Front, mainly in the form of rumors but to this is added a final crowning blow to their already lowered morale and there seems little doubt.’204
What had began as a successful offensive by highly motivated Germans against Americans who were saturated by their assuredness in victory, deteriorated after one week into a bloody war of attrition between Americans who put their trust in their material superiority and fanatically fighting Germans, and eventually it all turned into a pure mopping up operation. In just the first three days of U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps’ final offensive, more than three thousand German prisoners were taken.205 On the last day of the month, the XVIII Airborne Corps crossed the border into Germany. By that time, V Corps and VIII Corps also took part in the offensive.
But Hodges, Ridgway and Patton would be deprived of the opportunity to deal a final devastating blow against their main opponent, von Manteuffel’s 5. Panzerarmee, this time not due to the Germans. While the defeated and scattered remnants of this panzer army limped back into Germany, pursued by determined and well-equipped American forces, political considerations within the Allied supreme headquarters took over again.
On 1 February, General Eisenhower issued orders to halt U.S. First Army’s offensive and shift substantial parts of its troops to the north, to the Ninth Army, which still was subordinate to Montgomery’s 21 Army Group. This decision was made even though the First Army’s advance scarcely met any resistance. 206 * According to Eisenhower, the reason for this order was British objections that the First Army’s continued advance on the Rhine threatened to ’spread out forces’ rather than, as the master plan prescribed, invest in an attack by the British army group in the north, with the Ruhr area as the main object. As usual, Eisenhower was under strong pressure from Montgomery, to whom he also had promised to ’make a decision on Bradley’s offensive by the first day of February.’207 Having taken the brunt of the German offensive, Hodges’ First U.S. Army, which finally seemed to be close to dealing the final blow against the enemy, had to see its role reduced to basically that of a mere flank cover of Montgomery’s offensive.
How Hodges reacted to this is quite clear by the comment on the order as noted by the secretaries in his diary, ’A blow to the General and to his key staff officers.’208 Hodges turned to Bradley, the 12th Army Group Commander, to get his support for pursuing the offensive and destroy the weak opponent. Hodges argued, with good reason, that a continued attack had every opportunity to ’be turned into a real smash.’209 But it was to no avail; Hodges only managed to obtain permission to continue the advance for four more days. On 2 February, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment could advance three miles through the West Wall, taking one pillbox after another.210Next day, Losheim, Krewinkel, Roth, and Bleialf, all taken by the Germans on the Ardennes Offensive’s first day, were captured. Only at the latter place did the Americans meet any resistance whatsoever. But notwithstanding this, Hodges had to order his victorious troops to halt.
By that time the German troops were not only demoralized and beaten, but a wide gap had also been torn in the German front lines between the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division at Rocherath-Krinkelt and its adjacent unit to the north, the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division. ’There is no sense in not saying that this is an extreme disappointment to Hodges and to the staff,’ was noted in the First Army’sdiary.211
By shifting the emphasis of their offensive north of the Ardennes, the Allies launched their main attack exactly at the sector where the German defense was still most effective: Montgomery’s advance was seriously delayed as the Germans flooded the Urft Valley and the Roer, with the effect being reinforced by rivers Rhine and Maas (Meuse) overflowing their banks due to the heavy thaw that suddenly set in. Thereby the Allies lost three whole weeks. The offensive could not be properly resumed until the water had subsided. Only on 28 February were the Allies able to advance to the Rhine south of Düsseldorf. No one could be more surprised at the respite thereby granted to the Germans than the German soldiers who narrowly escaped out of the Ardennes across River Our.
As we have seen, the Ardennes Offensive had made the Allied supreme command so nervous that on repeated occasions it had cancelled successful local attacks in the Ardennes. It can be assumed that this psychological factor played a not unimportant role in Eisenhower’s and Montgomery’s decision to allow Montgomery and not the American generals to take charge of the main assault once ’the Bulge’ had been eliminated. This in turn had a significant impact on the shaping of postwar Europe, because it gave the Soviet Red Army the opportunity to conquer large areas in the east while the British and Americans were held back west of the rivers Roer, Maas and Rhine.
Surrendering German soldiers in the Ardennes in January 1945. During the last days in January 1945, several thousand German soldiers simply gave up. More and more of them realized that the war was lost and that there was no longer any use to risk their lives. (NARA, 208-YE-105)
* Major General Gerow, the previous commander of V Corps, was appointed to command the newly formed U.S. Fifteenth Army, tasked to replenish U.S. Army units that had been heavily decimated during the Ardennes Battle.
* Hasbrouck was promoted to Major General on 5 January 1945.
* On that day the XVIII Airborne Corps submitted the following report from the German West Wall: ‘Pillboxes were almost unoccupied, there was no artillery fire, and small arms fire was the only kind of oppostition.’ (Sylvan and Smith, p. 284.)