CHAPTER 4

5. PANZERARMEE: PANZER MARCH TOWARDS THE MEUSE!

“The night between 15 and 16 December 1944 was pitch dark. There was frost. The enemy’s artillery was about as active as in the past evenings and nights. Nevertheless, his infantry remained passive, so we were able to occupy our points of departure for the attack completely unnoticed. Thus, the element of surprise seemed to have been achieved.”

General Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of German 5. Panzerarmee on 16 December 1944.¹

SILENT INFILTRATION

Night fighting has always been one of the most terrible forms of warfare, particularly before the era of nocturnal fighting devices. This of course is even more terrible when the night fighting takes place in a hilly terrain, and especially so in winter time when snow, ice or mud turn hillsides and precipices into death-traps to soldiers who grope forward while they anxiously listen and stare into the dark for something that might be an enemy ambush. All of this was at hand when the Germans began their assault in the early morning hours of 16 December 1944.

Quietly, without any preparatory artillery fire, small groups of soldiers of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division left their positions at dawn on 16 December. It was four o’clock in the morning and still pitch dark.² The soldiers shivered in the raw and chilly night. They did not know whether it was because of the temperature, which was just below the freezing point, or because of their tense nerves. During their march, they met weary pioneer troops who had cleared passages in the American minefields. As the assault groups disappeared into the darkness, they appeared to be half-dressed because each man only had a half snow oversuit. There simply were not enough white snow oversuits, remembered Hans Poth, one of the soldiers of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division that morning. ’Everyone got one piece; either a pair of trousers or a jacket.’³

These soldiers were no veterans. The 18. Volksgrenadier-Division had been formed as recently as September 1944, around the 18. Luftwaffe-Feld-Division, which consisted of men who had been regarded as dispensable by various German air units. However, most of the troops in the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division consisted of sailors that the German Navy had transferred to the Army. Nevertheless, in the assessment of General Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of the 5. Panzerarmee, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division was, as he put it, ’well suited for attack operations.’⁴

Although prohibited by Hitler, von Manteuffel had regularly despatched reconnaissance patrols across the front lines during the days preceding the offensive. Thus, the Germans had been able to get a quite good idea of the American line of defense east of the Losheimer-Graben, the two to six mile-wide valley that runs from a point roughly about twenty miles northeast of Luxembourg’s northern border and southwestwards, between two mountain ridges, offering an easy passage between Germany and Belgium. The Losheimer-Graben had played a central role in three German military penetrations of Belgium—in the wars of 1870-1871, of 1914, and of 1940. Now, this little valley occupied the minds of the military strategists a fourth time.

To the east of and parallel to this valley, the mile-wide ridge of Schneifel rises about three hundred feet above the surrounding landscape. From the area east of Bleialf—a village with a railway station and 800 inhabitants in 1939, located three miles northeast of Luxembourg’s northern border—this ridge extends ten miles to the northeast. Here, among one hundred and seventy concrete pillboxes in the West Wall, U.S. 106th Infantry Division had taken up positions with its 422nd Infantry Regiment and two battalions of the 423rd Infantry Regiment. Although the portholes of the German-built pillboxes were facing the ’wrong’ direction for the Americans, it is safe to say that the 106th Infantry Division felt pretty certain that there would be no German attack in this sector, so the troops were mainly concentrated in the villages and farms beneath the Schneifel to the west. The positions held by American soldiers in the dark and desolate spruce forest on the ridge were only sparsely manned. Consequently, the Germans had a good chance to silently infiltrate the enemy lines in the same way as the Soviet troops did at the opening of Operation ’Bagration.’

The 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, the northernmost division of the 5. Panzerarmee, had perhaps the most difficult task of all units in von Manteuffel’s Panzer Army. It was positioned along a ten-mile wide front—a larger sector than any of the armored units further south—and faced most of U.S. 106th Infantry Division and 14th Cavalry Group (a mechanized force of about a regiment’s size). With the emphasis on its right flank, the division’s first goal was to secure the Losheimer-Graben valley. Next, the important road and rail junction of Sankt Vith, six miles from the German lines, was to be seized, and the American troops in the area were to be surrounded. This indeed was a delicate task, but the divisional commander, Generalmajor Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn, was convinced that his troops would be able to handle all of these tasks.

The German assault gun Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III) was used with great success throughout the war both as an infantry support vehicle and a tank destroyer. The main armament consisted of a 75mm Sturmkanone StuK 40 L/48. It also had a 7.92mm machine gun. Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244, which supported the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, was reported to have destroyed 54 American tanks against own losses of not more than two StuG IIIs during the Ardennes Battle. (BArch, Picture 101I-276-0702-07/Wehmeyer)

Hoffmann-Schönborn was an experienced ’fox.’ He had been awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves for several successful surprise attacks against the enemy—including the capture of the Greek Metaxas Line in April 1941. Von Manteuffel held Hoffmann-Schönborn in very high regard and felt confident that his personal courage, cunning and experience would compensate for his men’s lack of experience.

The soldiers who were the first to leave their positions and slip past the American lines were of Grenadier-Regiment 294 and Grenadier-Regiment 295, the main assault force of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division. They had been selected to play a key role in Operation ’Herbstnebel’s opening attack.

To climb the slippery slope of the Schneifel’s northern projection in the darkness, and in observance of silence, cost the grenadiers great efforts. But while tired and cold American soldiers sat in their positions, staring into the darkness among the spruce trees in the spooky woods, the Germans, breathlessly silent, sneaked past a few dozen yards away. German veterans of the Ardennes Battle in the winter of 1944/1945 remember that they were able to notice the presence of U.S. soldiers in the vicinity by the sweet smell of the Virginia tobacco smoked by the ’Amis.’ These Germans could not help but feel a pang of jealousy—they themselves had to make do with the acrid Turkish tobacco, or, more commonly at this time, surrogate tobacco.

Down on the plains on the western side of the Schneifel—where the Losheimer-Graben begins—the landscape was dominated, then as now, by large, rolling cattle fields, occasionally separated by long and narrow planted copses of pine or hardwood. Here Hoffmann-Schönborn’s men were divided into three task forces for a quick but absolutely silent march on the small country roads and over the half frozen grass fields towards the villages of Roth, Weckerath, Kobscheid, and Auw, between one and two miles to the west of the Schneifel’s northern projection. They were to assume attack positions just outside of these villages—that were filled with American soldiers—still observing total silence, and wait for the signal to attack. Farther back, Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244 (equivalent in size to a company) stood ready with fourteen Sturmgeschütz StuG III assault guns. The moment when the assault companies began the attack against the American-held villages, the StuG IIIs would surge forward at full speed to provide support.

Some seven miles to the south of Grenadier-Regiments 294 and 295, the men of Grenadier-Regiment 293 crawled forward across the Schneifel’s southerly projection, cut the barbed wire and made it to their goal, Bleialf, nine miles southwest of Roth. This was the southern pincer of the division’s operation. Between 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southern and northern attack forces, to the east of the Schneifel, the German three-mile front line was held by no more than a few hundred men from the rifle/reconnaissance battalion 18. Füsilier-Bataillon. Their task was to make as much noise as possible one hour after the main forces had departed, in order to distract the Americans.

Grenadier-Regiment 295 was divided so that one part of its I. Bataillon went into position on the fields outside of Roth, a village of six hundred inhabitants, less than a mile beneath the Schneifel. The II. Bataillon continued down the rural road towards the south and assumed assault positions in the small spruce groves outside of Kobscheid, a mile from Roth. Grenadier-Regiment 294 marched on towards the west, across the fields north of Roth, until it reached a position a few hundred yards outside of that village, and then split up so that the II. Bataillon sneaked northwards, and went into position among the leafless deciduous trees outside of Weckerath, slightly to the northwest of Roth, while the remainder of the I. Bataillon veered off towards Auw, a slightly larger community of twelve hundred inhabitants, located on a hill two miles southwest of Roth. In these communities, Major General Middleton, the commander of U.S. VIII Corps, had grouped a mechanized force of about a regiment’s size, the 14th Cavalry Group—with thirty-M5 Stuart tanks—on the 106th Infantry Division’s left flank, next to the 99th Infantry Division further north.

The commander of the 14th Cavalry Group, forty-seven-year old Colonel Mark Andrew Devine, Jr., had earned fame as a very demanding commandant at the Tank Destroyer Center’s Officer Candidate School when he in May 1944 was appointed to lead the 14th Cavalry Group. Neither Devine nor his 14th Cavalry Group had any combat experience when the unit was shipped over to France in September 1944, to be shifted to the Ardennes in mid-October. Another officer in the unit described Devine as a ’hard nosed, blunt talking, spit and polish’ officer.⁵Devine was personally acquainted with the corps commander Middleton, who respected and esteemed his military capabilities.

Although the 14th Cavalry Group also contained elements of the 275th Armored Field Artillery Battalion and the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion—the latter equipped with thirty-six 3-inch (76.2mm) M5 anti-tank guns—the area it was expected to hold was too large for such a limited force. Therefore Devine had decided to concentrate his troops to a number of populated areas—where service to vehicles and other heavy equipment also was easier—instead of trying to hold a continuous line of trenches. This was appreciated not least by the men, who by this time had had more than enough of the icy and wet trenches. Most of them were sleeping in houses in villages and farms in the area when the soldiers of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division crept up to their starting positions for the attack. The Americans did not suspect anything.

Shortly after five in the morning, ’A’ Troop (about the eqivalent of a company) of the 14th Cavalry Group’s 18th Cavalry Squadron in Roth reported the sighting of a red flare somewhere over the Schneifel in the east. On the other side of Roth, an American jeep and a Dodge Weapons Carrier truck came roaring at full speed up the hill, on the road from Auw. Apparently, the Americans must have detected the troops of Grenadier-Regiment 294 that came marching across the fields on both sides of the road, or the Germans at least assumed that they did so. In any case, the Germans opened fire with their Sturmgewehr, knocking out both vehicles. Corporal Howard Hoffmeyer (592nd Field Artillery Battalion) was killed and remained lying in the roadside next to the wrecked jeep. He may have been the first fatality of Operation ’Herbstnebel.’

In fact, the Americans realized that something was afoot only when the rumble of the Maybach engines in the German StuG III assault guns reached them from the darkness to the east. Built on the chassis of the by then obsolete Panzer III tank and armed with a 75mm gun, the StuG III—Sturmgeschütz III—was a terrifying infantry support vehicle. Personally led by Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn, fourteen of these steel monsters came clanking to support the infantry attack. At a quarter past five the last U.S. soldiers woke up to a terrible artillery fire. The artillery of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee, farther to the north, had began its firestorm a few minutes too early. Soon, parts of the 5. Panzerarmee’s artillery also mingled in.

A German soldier remembers:

A German field howitzer shelling American positions before sunrise on 16 December1944. (BArch, Bild 101I-279-0919-09/Bergmann)

’In the north and in the east the horizon behind the treetops suddenly lit up. Then the shells came roaring above our heads, heading towards their targets on the American side. The rumbling and howling sound of hundreds of artillery pieces and Nebelwerfer hit us with an almost physical force. Although we knew it was not directed against us, it felt awkward. Then it exploded on the American side. A wall of smoke rose up in front of our eyes, and inside the smoke there were red, yellow, and white flashes.’

Howitzers, field guns, and Nebelwerfer showered shells and rockets over selected targets on the U.S. side. Heavy long-range guns mounted on railway wagons subjected the larger resorts such as Sankt Vith and Schönberg to fire. Villages, farms, and artillery positions down in the Losheimer-Graben, pillboxes and other positions up on the Schneifel—all disappeared into a vortex of exploding shells. Vital telephone lines were cut by the explosions, which complicated communications between the American headquarters and their units. The Nebelwerfer—or ’Screaming Meemies’ as the Americans called them—was particularly feared. This was a rocket artillery weapon whose psychological impact was just as effective as its physical effect. Fired from a five-tube launcher, the rockets let out a blood-curdling howl on their way to the target. Emil Frie, who served in Volkswerfer-Brigade 18 during the Ardennes Battle, said:

’The whole unit always fired together, meaning that three batteries of six launchers each were fired, making a salvo of ninety rockets. […] The firing and the flight of the rockets caused an ear-splitting howl and whine that had a demoralizing effect on the enemy, rather like the howl of the Stuka. […] After a frightening, unnerving howl, ninety detonations took place at once in the enemy lines. The more concentrated the impacts were, the greater damage was created. The blast and shock wave of the exploding projectiles was enormous. Fragments of the rockets were less dangerous. A mixture of liquid gases in a special kind of rocket created tremendous air pressure when this mixture was released by the detonation and united with the oxygen in the air. Thus enemy soldiers were killed by the air pressure.’⁶

Colonel Devine radioed the headquarters of the 106th Infantry Division:

’I am receiving heavy artillery fire on all—repeat—all my forward units and my Command Post! No damage reports have come in yet and I’ll advise you as soon as info is available. What’s going on? This is a hell of a lot of artillery for a Ghost Front!’

But not all shells hit where they were supposed to. Leutnant Hans Joachim Neutmann, one of the men in German Grenadier-Regiment 295, recalls, ’After we assembled for the attack, we waited for our designated artillery support. However, the artillery was employed too late. Located too far back, the artillery fire hit our own men from the regimental 6th and 7th companies. Moreover, the Americans recognized the situation and subjected the regiment to heavy fire. At this point, the battalion commander, Hauptmann Lorenz, was seriously wounded. I was able to pull him out of the killing zone behind a small wall.’⁷

A few miles farther to the south, German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division attacked. Located on the top of a hill a mile southeast of the country road between Habscheid and Sankt Vith, the small village of Heckhuscheid, with by this time 250 inhabitants, was occupied by the 3rd Battalion of U.S. 424th Infantry Regiment. Here, Private Martin L. Company received a brutal awakening as an NCO stumbled into the bivouac, yelling, ’The Germans are coming! We will all be killed!’ Martin Company and his mates stumbled out and saw rows of shadowy figures advancing across the crest of the hill. They approached the Americans, howling and screaming. A strong odour of good old German liquor—Schnaps —met the American soldiers; they could smell it at a surprisingly long distance. Before each attack, German officers used to distribute richly amounts of Schnaps—’bottled courage,’ as the men called it—among their men. This had proven to enhance the effectivity of attacking troops.*

DEPLOYMENT

In military historiography, the Ardennes—the hilly area in southeastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg—often is associated with high, steep mountains and deep, impenetrable forests, more or less like Switzerland, or (for U.S. accounts) the Rocky Mountains. Indeed, this image is true for large parts of northern Luxembourg. But that was not where the greatest battles took place during the Ardennes Offensive; these mainly were fought in southeastern Belgium, which certainly also is part of the Ardennes. This area is dominated by gently rolling fields, here and there spruce forests, but it can’t be decribed as a montainous area.

The most dramatic montainous area actually begins where the Ardennes ends in the east. Here, inside Germany, the Eifel region—with its majestic mountain ridges, dark spruce forests and deep river gorges—takes over. Here the mountains are higher, the ravines steeper and the forests far deeper than in most of the Ardennes. The Eifel’s westernmost protrusion is called the Schnee Eifel (not to be confused with the smaller ridge Schneifel) and extends from the north to the south like a mighty frontier barrier, bounded in the west and in the south by the rivers Our, Sûre (Sauer in German), and Moselle. Here the Germans had taken advantage of the terrain to further reinforce the West Wall, which of course gave the Germans great difficulties now that they attacked this section of the West Wall, which was in the opponent’s hands. Moreover, in the west, the Schnee Eifel descends steeply into the deep gorge excavated by River Our, which flows to the south from eastern Belgium, forming the stream that marks the border between Germany and Luxembourg.

On 16 december 1944, the northernmost corps of German 5. Panzerarmee, the LXVI. Armeekorps under General Walther Lucht, had positioned the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division on its left, and the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division on its right flank, closest to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s southern flank. Here the front line ran to the east of River Our, since U.S. 28th Infantry Division had penetrated into this area during the first attack on the West Wall in September 1944. The landscape in this area is gently undulating, with farmland dominating the east and deep spruce forests in the western part.

View from the German side of the Our river towards Dasburg and the Luxembourgian countryside. This painting was made in the winter 1944/1945 by the German artist Horst Helmus, who served as an Unteroffizier in the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division during the Ardennes Offensive.

The 62. Volksgrenadier-Division, which stood against mainly U.S. 424th Infantry Regiment, was provided with two tasks on this first day of the offensive: To capture the bridge over the Our at Steinebrück, four miles west of Bleialf, and to secure the highway that ran in a northwesterly direction from Habscheid in Germany, via Steinebrück and on to the strategically important junction of Sankt Vith. On 16 December 1944, Steinebrück was at a distance of about eight miles from the front, and to Sankt Vith there was another good three miles.

Unlike the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division was an old and experienced German division; basically it was 62. Infanterie-Division, which had participated in the war since the invasion of Poland in 1939. Cohesion in the division was strengthened by the fact that the majority of the men and officers came from Silesia in south-eastern Germany. But by this time only about forty percent of the men had any combat experience—many of the recruits had until recently toiled as miners in Silesia—but this was offset by the fact that the majority of the division’s officers and about two-thirds of the NCOs were seasoned veterans.⁸ The divisional commander, Generalmajor Friedrich Kittel, however, had spent much of the war in various staff positions, and on 16 December 1944 he was one of the few German generals on the Ardennes Front who had not been awarded with the Knight’s Cross. Von Manteuffel was not too happy with Kittel. ’He lacked,’ von Manteuffel wrote, ’experience, both regarding service on the front and regarding commanding a division on the battlefield.’⁹ Kittel deployed Grenadier-Regiment 183 south of the highway Habscheid –Sankt Vith, and Grenadier-Regiment 190 north of the highway. Once a decisive breakthrough had been achieved, the ’mobile battalion’ (bewegliche Abteilung) under Oberst Arthur Jüttner was to be launched. Consisting of the headquarters unit and the bicycle infantry battalion in Jüttner’s Grenadier-Regiment 164, plus three Jagdpanzer 38 (t) Hetzer tank destroyers and a battery of 105mm field howitzers, this was tasked to make a rapid advance along the road up to Steinebrück.¹⁰ Oberst Jüttner was one of the most distinguished regimental commanders on the German side during the Ardennes Battle. As a company commander, he had distinguished himself already during the first day of the attack on Poland in 1939. In almost continuous service on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1944, he had managed to save quite difficult situations on several occasions, through both his skill and strong leadership. While other German units completely collapsed during Operation ’Bagration’ in June 1944, Jüttner brought an encircled unit back to the German lines through a forty-four day march. For this he was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross.

South of the LXVI. Armeekorps, the LVIII. Panzerkorps under General Walter Krüger was deployed on an eight-mile wide frontline to the east of the point where Germany’s, Belgium’s, and Luxembourg’s current borders meet.* The landscape here was much the same as at LXVI. Armeekorps’ front sector. At Sevenig—in the center of LVIII. Panzerkorps’ front sector—began the bridgehead on the eastern side of River Our that the Americans had established in September 1944. At dawn on 16 December, 112th Infantry Regiment of U.S. 28th Infantry Division and, further north, the 424th Infantry Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division were positioned between one and four miles to the east of River Our.

Generalmajor Siegfried von Waldenburg commanded the 116. Panzer-Division during the Ardennes Offensive. Von Waldenburg passed away in 1973, at the age of 74. (BArch, Bild146-1983-123-28A)

116. Panzer-Division on the LVIII. Panzerkorps’ northern flank also was an ‘old’ division: Early in the war it had been an infantry division, 16. Infanterie-Division, and it served on the Eastern Front during most of the war. Having been badly mauled in the winter of 1943/1944, it was withdrawn to Germany, where it was converted into an armored division. Then it was deployed to France, where it fought at Normandy, again sustaining heavy casualties. In mid-December 1944, the 116. Panzer-Division, however, had recovered its strength, and according to von Manteuffel’s assessment, it was ’well suited for attack operations.’¹¹ The divisional commander, Generalmajor Siegfried von Waldenburg, had been in active service since the first day of the war. When Hitler’s armies moved to assault through the Ardennes on 10 May 1940, von Waldenburg was operations officer of VI. Armeekorps, in which, incidentally, 16. Infanterie-Division was included.** Therefore, he had organized a breakthrough in the very same area once before. On 19 September 1944, von Waldenburg was appointed to command the 116. Panzer-Division, and when the Ardennes Offensive began, he had made a name for himself in the battles against both the air landing forces at Arnhem and the Americans in the Hürtgenwald. A week before the Offensive, the barely forty-six-year-old von Waldenburg was awarded with the Knight’s Cross.

During the Battle of the Hürtgenwald in November 1944, the 116. Panzer-Division—which now had assumed the name ’Windhund-Division’ (Greyhound)—inflicted heavy losses on U.S. 28th Infantry Division, which the German gallows humor called the ’Bloody Bucket Division.’ These two divisions now would meet again.

The first task of the 116. Panzer-Division was to capture the bridges over the Our at Burg Reuland and Oberhausen, slightly to the north of the point where Germany’s, Belgium’s and Luxembourg’s current borders meet.¹² At Burg Reuland—about six miles deep into the area controlled by the Americans—one of the main roads in the area was located. According to the plan, the 116. Panzer-Division would march from this area and straight on to the Meuse. The division opened its attack with four assault companies of Panzergrenadier regiments 60 and 156 infiltrating the American lines on a three-mile wide front between Heckhuscheid and Leidenborn, three miles to the east of River Our.¹³

The LVIII. Panzerkorps’ second division, 560. Volksgrenadier-Division, deployed farther to the south, was arguably the weakest among the 5. Panzerarmee’s divisions. When the attack began on 16 December, only parts of the division’s strength had arrived at the front, so each of its three regiments rather was of battalion strength. In addition, the division lacked all its heavy weapons, including tank destroyers. Von Manteuffel laconically labeled the divisional commander, Oberst Rudolf Langhauser as ’not very experienced.’¹⁴ In the case of the men, he noted, ’Many very young without any first-line experience.’¹⁵

Similar to Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn, Langhauser had divided his unit into two battlegroups: on the right (northern) flank, Kampfgruppe Schumann (Volksgrenadier-Regiment 1130) was directed towards the river crossing at Ouren, just north of the meeting point of Germany’s, Belgium’s and Luxembourg’s current borders. To the left of this battlegroup, Kampfgruppe Schmitt (Volksgrenadier Regiment in 1128) was to advance towards Kalborn and Heinerscheid, three to four miles further south, inside Luxembourg.

South of the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division was the southernmost corps in the 5. Panzerarmee, General Heinrich von Lüttwitz’s XLVII. Panzerkorps, whose front ran for about six miles along the eastern side of the Our. The two panzer divisions of this corps were focused on two river crossings: the 2. Panzer-Division on Dasburg, four miles south of Kalborn, and Panzer Lehr on Obereisenbach, a little bit further to the south.

The Eifel region of western Germany is characterized by dark spruce forests. In the photo, a U.S. air defense unit advances on one of the narrow roads that wind through this hilly area. The gun is a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun. (NARA, SC 196217)

The 2. Panzer Division was anything but a ’green’ division. It had been in first-line service since the first day of the war. On 10 May 1940—when Hitler’s armies launched their Blitzkrieg in the West—the division had crossed the Our at Vianden. And now, four and a half years later, the division was prepared to attack across the same river for a new ’Western Campaign.’ Although it had sustained very heavy casualties during the fighting in France in the summer 1944, the 2. Panzer-Division also had regained much of its strength. Von Manteuffel’s assessment of this division on the morning of 16 December 1944 was the same as for the 116. Panzer-Division: ’well suited for attack operations.’¹⁶ The divisional commander, the merely 39-year-old Oberst Meinrad von Lauchert, had been specially selected by von Manteuffel, who described him as ’a good battle technician from the Eastern Front.’¹⁷ As with his colleague von Waldenburg, von Lauchert had been in the first line since the neginning of the war. Von Lauchert also had participated in the attack in the West on 10 May 1940, serving as a battalion commander in the 4. Panzer-Division. He fought for more than three years on the Eastern Front, where he was awarded with the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. Owing to his qualifications as a panzer unit commander, he was appointed to lead the first regiment equipped with the new Panther tanks in the summer of 1943. In the fall of 1944 he earned reputation for his successful command of an ad hoc armored unit in the defense of East Prussia.

However, one disadvantage for both von Lauchert and the 2. Panzer-Division during the beginning of the Ardennes Offensive in 1944, was that he assumed his position as unit commander only on the day before the launching of the attack. But this could be offset by the high quality of both the rank-and-file and the NCOs and officers in the division. According to the commander of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2, Oberst Joachim Gutmann, all unit commander replacements—down to the level of company commander—were battle experienced men drawn from other units. Even among the NCOs and the troops, no more than one third of the replacements were fresh recruits, who nevertheless received an additional four-week training at the unit.¹⁸

Inside Luxembourg, on the other side of the river in this area, lay the 110th Infantry Regiment of U.S. 28th Infantry Division. Indeed, this was a pretty combat-experienced unit, but as mentioned above, the division had suffered griveous losses during the fall of 1944. The 28th Infantry Division had been shipped to France on 22 July 1944, and immediately was hurled into the fierce final battle of Normandy. The division’s greatest trial came when it was employed in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest on 2 November 1944; twelve days later, its 110th Infantry Regiment had lost more than eighteen hundred men, including the regimental commander, Colonel Theodore Seeley, who had been injured. He was succeeded by 50-year-old Colonel Hurley Fuller. As we shall see later, Fuller would prove to be one of the most farsighted unit commanders in the entire VIII Corps during the first day of the German attack.

By this time, the 110th Infantry Regiment had been upgraded to a Regimental Combat Team (110th RCT), which meant that it was supplied with additional support troops—including armor—so that it reached a strength of nearly five thousand men, instead of slightly more than three thousand, which was the standard for a U.S. Army regiment. The recruits that had arrived to fill the gaps after the severe losses, however, left much to be desired in terms of infantry training.

Fifteen miles as the crow flies to the west of the positions held by Fuller’s men, was the small town of Bastogne—the strategic Belgian communications junction on the road towards River Meuse—the conquest of which Hitler especially had stressed the importance of. That task fell on von Lüttwitz’s shoulders.

Von Lüttwitz’s Panzerkorps not only had to cross River Our—on the other side of the river, a serpentine road led up to the high ridge which rose between 120 and 200 feet above the forest-clad slopes descending down to the river gorge in the east. On the crest of this ridge, parallel to the river from the north to the south, ran a paved road which the Americans called ’Skyline Drive’ (the same name as the highway which runs on the mountain ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia). This high ridge extended westwards with rolling fields and farmland, until the terrain descended fairly steeply into the next natural obstacle, three miles west of Dasburg—River Clerve, which in the middle of northern Luxembourg had carved a 75-foot-deep gorge running from the north to the south. On the western side of this river, around the town of Wiltz, twelve miles southeast of Bastogne, is a large area of such a heavily forested mountaneous landscape that has become the general image of the Ardennes. On the third day of the attack, the two southernmost divisions of von Lüttwitz’s Panzerkorps would find themselves congested on the narrow main road that winds through the mountains in this sector. But just a few miles further to the north—in the area northeast of Bastogne—the 2. Panzer-Division could surge ahead through a beautiful, undulating farmland. It was here that Hitler’s armies had rushed forward during the Lightning War in May 1940.

In the morning on 16 December 1944, German anti-aircraft searchlights illuminated the low cloud cover to help the troops through a so-called ‘artificial moonlight.’ Painting by former Unteroffizier Horst Helmus, 26. Volksgrenadier-Division.

Already at one o’clock in the morning, eighty-man-strong assault companies from the 2. Panzer-Division’s 38. Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon and II. Bataillon/ Panzergrenadier-Regiment 304 put rubber assault boats into River Our’s ice cold water at Dasburg for a ’silent infiltration.’ Obscured by mist and darkness, the soldiers quickly made it across to the other river bank, and began to climb the steep and muddy slopes. When the XLVII. Panzerkorps artillery opened up at 0530 hrs, the stormtroopers had already taken up positions around the U.S. defense positions at Marnach on the road the panzers would take on the way westward from Dasburg towards Bastogne, and at Munshausen, about a mile and a half farther to the southwest. Others grouped among the trees on the heights of Our’s eastern side opposite to Dasburg, where engineers hastened to bring forward semimanufactured bridge parts that would be laid across the river. Two men with a radio managed to sneak a few miles through the U.S. controlled area, to the hills above the town of Clervaux at River Clerve, where they set up an artillery observation position.

To the left (south) of the 2. Panzer-Division, soldiers from two regiments of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division—Grenadier-Regiment 77 and Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39—crossed the Our with rubber assault boats at three in the morning on 16 December. This was the infantry support division of von Lüttwitz’s Corps. The German infantrymen also managed to cross the river without being detected by their opponent. Still without the Americans sensing that something was amiss, they climbed the slopes to assume positions around the U.S. defense posistions at Hosingen, Holzthum, Walhausen, and Weiler—on a three-mile wide front, between four and six miles south and southwest of Dasburg. One task force went into position at the Our opposite Obereisenbach—five miles south of Dasburg—where a bridge would be built for Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division.

At the appointed time, at 0530 hrs, the assault groups of 2. Panzer-Division and 26. Volksgrenadier-Division—in most cases individual platoons, but at Hosingen a whole battalion—attacked the 110th RCT’s positions along the whole sector between rivers Our and Clerve.¹⁹ In the meantime, the main force started to cross the river. At Obereisenbach, heavy infantry weapons and armed motorcycles were initially brought across on makeshift ferries while engineers toiled to construct temporary bridges both at that location and at Dasburg.²⁰

Amidst all this, at 0535 hrs, an eerie glow lit the night sky in the east. The air defense searchlights that von Manteuffel had placed behind the frontlines now went into action to illuminate the low cloud cover in order to help troops to find their way. This spooky so-called ’artificial moonlight’ has served to give the term ’Ghost Front’ a new meaning for many of the American veterans who survived the battle.

THE STRUGGLE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH

’0530 hours: armed attack,’ wrote German Unteroffizier Horst Helmus in his diary for the first day of the attack. ’The low cloud cover above the front is lit up by searchlights, an artificial moonlight, and we become spectators to magnificent “fireworks.” The sound of firing guns and the shell explosions hardly can be distinguished from each other. Nebelwerfers howl like wild animals, the artillery thunders like a bomb carpet. Me and my comrades are absolutely wild with excitement. Is this 1940 or 1944?’²¹

As so often in the early part of a great battle, the first hours of the German attack were characterized by varying success and confusion on both sides. At 0610 in the morning on 16 December, Colonel Devine of U.S. 14th Cavalry Group in the Losheimer-Graben valley again radioed the 106th Infantry Division’s headquarters in Sankt Vith:

’Enemy troops are in many locations in the Losheim Gap and are attacking Krewinkel, Afst [half a mile northwest of Krewinkel] and Roth. My scattered forces are fighting for their lives, and it appears the main enemy attack is continuing to the west —repeat—main attack is continuing to the west!’

The American resistance was much tougher than the Germans anticipated when they launched their attack, which resulted in some very high German losses. (NARA, SC 197682)

What Devine could imagine—a German flanking movement—had not yet dawned on Major General Jones, the 106th Infantry Division’s C-in-C. While German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s two northern regiments struck the villages of Weckerath, Roth, Kobscheid, and Auw—at the same time as the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division of 6. SS-Panzerarmee assaulted the adjacent village Krewinkel—its Grenadier-Regiment 293 further to the south attacked Bleialf, held by a battalion of U.S. 423rd Infantry Regiment.

In Spa, information about the German attack reached the commander of U.S. First Army, Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges—as his two aides, Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis C. Smith noted in the diary they kept on the general’s behalf, ’First word that something was brewing came from VIII Corps sector shortly before seven o’clock this morning when an attack of infantry supported by tanks retook the town of [Roth].’²² However, Hodges assumed that this was nothing more than ‘spoiling attacks to take the pressure off the important V Corps drive towards the Roer River Dams.’²³

U.S. soldiers cleaning a 105mm howitzer in the field. The M2A1 was the U.S. Army’s standard howitzer during World War II and was used for infantry support. The gun had a firing range of about 7 miles. (NARA, SC 195503

The report sent by radio by the 423rd Infantry Regiment’s commander, Colonel Charles C. Cavender, at 0730 hrs is quite indicative of the desperate situation of the U.S. troops in the front line who were left alone during those first fateful morning hours: ’Enemy advancing on Bleialf is threatening to cut off Troop B, 18th Cav [18th Cavalry Squadron of 14th Cavalry Group] and I …’ There the transmission was interrupted, and when it was resumed again, Cavender’s tense voice was heard crying out, ’Enemy is now in Bleialf—repeat—enemy are in Bleialf now! They wiped out one of my platoons defending there and I urgently need permission to use my 2nd Battalion so I can launch a counterattack! I fully understand that 2/423 is part of the division reserve, but the Bleialf situation is serious and is a threat to the division’s defence. Have alerted Service Company and Cannon Company to move to the support of Bleialf. I’ll try and do my best with what I have, but if we want to kick those people out, I need my 2nd Battalion released to me now!’

But Major General Jones still refused to give his permission to use the reserve force; just like the army commander Hodges, he was of the opinion that this was not a major German offensive.

A column German Panzer IV tanks. With its 75mm KwK 40 L/48 gun, the Panzer IV could penetrate an American Sherman tank’s 64mm frontal armor at a distance of 2,000 yards. The Panzer IV had a 80 mm front armor at 80 ° slope. The 30mm side armor was supplemented by spaced armor in the form of armored skirts, Schürzen—six 5 mm thick steel plates that slightly overlapped and hung from a long rail.

(BArch, Bild 101I-708-0298-26/Scheerer (e))

However, the order to the American soldiers to stay put was conscientiously followed, with an admirable persistence. In the small village of Grosslangenfeld, slightly more than a mile southwest of Bleialf, on the other side of the muddy fields between the two villages, another force from Colonel Cavender’s 423rd Infantry offered a stiff resistance against Grenadier-Regiment 190, the northernmost of 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s regiments. Here the 106th Reconnaissance Troop—with one hundred and fifty soldiers and thirteen M8 armored cars, each armed with a 37mm gun—managed to repel the attackers after a short battle. Kittel, the German divisional commander, decided to commit the Bicycle Infantry Battalion, Oberst Jüttner’s ’mobile battalion,’ prematurely, in an attempt to circumvent the Americans through a rapid advance on the main road from Habscheid and northwards. But this was almost doomed in advance. This road passes just beneath the small plateau on the right side where Grosslangenfeld is located, and on the road’s left side an American company held positions in a grove.

Jüttner, who personally led the bicycle advance, was a quite demanding commander. While his soldiers painstakingly wobbled forward on their heavily laden bicycles on the slippery road, the cries of their officers—’Schnell! Schnell ’—could be heard to the American positions.²⁴ Shortly afterwards, U.S. 591st Field Artillery Battalion had directed its 105mm howitzers against the German squad. The shells struck on both sides of the bicycle column, which were scattered to the winds while the men hurled themselves into the water-filled ditches. When the sound of the explosions subsided, the screams of the wounded filled the air.

During the remainder of the day repeated assaults were made against Grosslangenfeld, but each time Kittel’s troops were repulsed with bloody losses. When Leutnant Gerhard Wurm, one of the platoon commanders in Grenadier-Regiment 164, shortly after midnight on 17 December inspected the foxholes dug by the Germans in the wooded hill south of Grosslangenfeld, he came upon dead or wounded everywhere. All around in the snow lay frozen body parts and bloody corpses, contorted into grotesque shapes—the remnants of what had been Wurm’s men. It turned out that eight combat-ready men was all that remained of his platoon.²⁵

For some reason American First Army’s report, the FUSA Inspector General report, afterwards claimed that ’most of the officers and men’ at Grosslangenfeld ’surrendered the next morning without a fight.’²⁶ The Germans who survived the battle, however, tell a different story. It was only when 62. Volksgrenadier-Division on the next day employed heavy artillery that the Americans withdrew from the hamlet.

The southernmost regiment of the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division, Grenadier-Regiment 183, fared no better as it thrust towards the hills south of the highway where Jüttner’s regiment was stalled. Having seized Heckhuscheid—four miles south of Grosslangenfeld and three miles northeast of Lützkampen—at dawn on 16 December, Grenadier-Regiment 183 ran out of luck. Located on top of a hill, the small village of Heckhuscheid was left at the mercy of an intense fire from American mortars. The 3rd Battalion of U.S. 424th Infantry Regiment—the battalion where Private Martin Company had been woken up by a panicked NCO who thought everyone was going to die—had regrouped in the wooded hills to the west, and their mortars now showered shells over the Germans in the village.

When even the howitzers of the 591st Field Artillery Battalion mixed in, the Germans fled. The Americans immediately assaulted Heckhuscheid and took one hundred and seven prisoners, most of them wounded by shrapnel. Von Manteuffel commented that ’the interaction between the different units [of the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division] was carried out insufficiently, and was absolutely inadequate when it came to exploiting the local successes attained.’²⁷

While this took place, the assault companies of the 116. Panzer-Division’s II. Bataillon/ Panzergrenadier-Regiment 60 clashed with a pair of American companies in the large spruce forest southwest of Heckhuscheid. There are no German reports on what happened there, but an American soldier’s recollections reveal that the Germans encountered ’B’ Company, 1st Battalion of U.S. 112th Infantry Regiment. On 16 December 1944, this battalion was based in Lützkampen—a small German community of about five hundred residents at this time, located two miles northeast of the spot where Germany’s, Belgium’s and Luxembourg’s current borders converge at River Our. Private First Class George Knaphus recounts, ’Here they came, a whole regiment of Germans, somewhere around a thousand people came right down that road. They were yelling, a lot more than you would expect in this kind of case. One of them said “Yankee sons of bitches,” and then the other one said some nasty things about [the famous baseball player] Babe Ruth.’

’B’ Company of 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion had positioned their anti-tank guns a bit further to the west. Its after action report reads, ’At 0715 hrs, heavy long range enemy machine gun fire coming from the woods to the east. Wires were cut and broken by shell fragments and falling debris, stopping all communication with the 424th Regimental Headquarters and with the First and Third Platoons. At 0800 hrs, heavy fighting along entire Regimental front but lines continued to hold. At 1000 hrs, very heavy mortar fire reported at Second Platoon area and stragglers from Cannon Company area toward the front came thru the Tank Destroyer area. The stragglers reported that the Cannon Company was almost entirely wiped out.’²⁸

The 424th Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion soon came to the aid, with fire support from the anti-tank company that fired explosive grenades right into the ranks of German soldiers. The battle was terribly bloody. One of the German companies was almost completely wiped out, and ’B’ Company of 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment lost one hundred and thirty men killed, wounded or missing. ’There were just two to three hundred bodies,’ George Knaphus said, ’lying there like they were sleeping peacefully.’

A bit farther to the south, near the village of Sevenig, about a mile southwest of Lützkampen, a platoon of ’L’ Company from the 112th Infantry Regiment’s 3rd Battalion was obliterated. The German troops responsible for this came from Kampfgruppe Schumann of 560. Volksgrenadier-Division. This division’s infiltration attack began at five o’clock in the morning, in total darkness and without any artillery support. ²⁹ The left battalion’s Assault Company (Stosskompanie) discovered that there were no barbed wire barriers in the fields on both sides of Sevenig, and thus was able to bypass Sevenig quickly to surprisingly descend upon their opponent. The soldiers advanced across the fields and through the spruce forest west of Sevenig, and at seven o’clock captured the little stone bridge over the Our river.³⁰

But by then the battle was in full swing. The air was filled with all hellish sounds of a battlefield—the deafening crashes of exploding grenades and clatter of automatic weapons, soldiers screaming with fear or to instill courage in themselves, the cries of the wounded for medics, and blood-curdling howls of pain. The night turned into day. Everywhere explosions and fires flashed and blazed, and on top of that the winter darkness was lit up through the ghostly glow from the anti-aircraft searchlights on the German side that lit up the thick, low cloud cover. The powerful U.S. artillery was not late to respond, and soon villages and towns on the German side went up in flames.

At Sevenig, American artillery observers equipped with a radio vectored the 229th Field Artillery Battalion’s 105 mm howitzers against Kampfgruppe Schumann’s main force which was advancing across the fields in the footsteps of the assault companies. This artillery fire was supplemented with mortar shelling, machine guns, and small arms from the pillboxes in the West Wall that the Americans held occupied since September. With their comrades falling to the left and to the right, the surviving men of Kampfgruppe Schumann hastily took cover. When a small American unit of the 2nd Battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment made a determined counterattack against the stone bridge, the German soldiers were completely taken by surprise; these men, who through a prolonged indoctrination had been induced to believe that the Americans were unable to accomplish much ’man to man’ in the field, were totally unprepared and surrendered quite easily. Afterwards the Americans described these Germans as ’awfully green.’ ³¹

German infantry advancing during one of Ardennes Offensives first days. Already at midday on 16 December, Hoffmann-Schönborns main force had taken the villages of Weckerath, Roth, Auw, and Kobscheid in a two mile-wide and three mile-deep area on the plains west of the Schneifel Ridge. (NARA, III-SC-333946)

The American after action report reads, ’Lt. Flores, and T Sgt. Stephens with 5 men of the 3rd squad of the 3rd Platoon captured about 30 men trying to protect the bridge. They also captured the rest of the company in a patch of woods. Their mission was to take and hold the bridges for their own use. They were armed with auto rifles & bazookas. From 9 to 12 of their company were killed, and from 18 to 20 killed by our men. We had no casualties.’³²

Kampfgruppe Schmitt (Volksgrenadier-Regiment 1128) on 560. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southern flank had a much easier task, since the Americans here were on the west side of the river. Schmitt’s men were able to secure their first goal, the stone bridge over the Our at Tintesmühle, four miles southwest of Lützkampen, already in the morning. This nevertheless was found to be destroyed. But the soldiers of Kampfgruppe Schmitt made it across the river’s icy waters and established a small bridgehead where they managed to hold out against American counter-attacks, while they waited for the trucks that would bring the bridge construction material.

Meanwhile, the Corps commander, General Krüger, and Generalmajor von Waldenburg, the 116. Panzer Division’s commander, knew nothing of what the 116. Panzer-Division’s four assault companies had accomplished. There was no radio connection, and for most of the day, nothing was heard from these troops. When the two generals at four o’clock in the afternoon on 16 December still had not heard anything about the assault troops, the decision was made that the 116. Panzer-Division would deploy the remainder of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 156, with the support of eight Panzer IV tanks, on the division’s southern flank.

The Panzerkampfwagen IV (Panzer IV) medium tank really was the German armored force’s workhorse during World War II. It stemmed from an idea by armored warfare theorist Heinz Guderian, who wanted a robust infantry support tank to fight the opponent’s fortified positions. Later on, in 1941, when the Germans were confronted with the superior Soviet T-34 tanks on the Eastern Front, the Panzer IV was modified with a larger gun and more armor to fight other tanks. In the latest version, Ausführung J, the electric generator that powered the tank’s turret traverse had been removed due to production considerations, so the turret had to be rotated manually.

After a Nebelwerfer battery sent their howling rockets in the direction where the American positions were believed to be located—in fact without knowing if their own ’disappeared’ assault companies were where the deadly explosives hit—Hauptmann Werner Brinkmann, commanding the II. Abteilung/ Panzer-Regiment 16 ordered his tanks forward, ’Panzer Marsch!’ Thundering and squeaking, the 25-ton armored vehicles rolled out of Leidenborn.

They moved north, in column on the road leading towards the Our crossing at Burg Reuland. At sunset, half past four, they rumbled through Lützkampen, which was occupied by Panzergrenadier-Regiment 156.³³ On the other side of the small community, the road passed through a dense forest. It was here that II. Bataillon/ Panzergrenadier-Regiment 60 had sustained such heavy casualties a few hours earlier. Everywhere in the forest were dead and dying men. Among the wounded who struggled back towards their own lines was Major Wilhelm Carstensen, the German battalion commander. But Hauptmann Brinkmann’s tank crews knew nothing of this as they drove forward on the narrow road towards Diedrichsborn. Neither did they know that the 3rd Platoon of ’B’ Company, U.S. 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion held positions just a bit further north.

The tank destroyer battalions of the U.S. Army were either equipped with thirty-six tracked tank destroyers or with a similar number of 3-inch (76.2 mm) M5 towed anti-tank guns. The 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion was one of the latter. Its 2nd Platoon had been pushed back and abandoned three of its guns during the previous battle, but the 3rd Platoon remained in position. Private First Class Paul C. Rosenthal sighted what he later reported as ’five enemy tanks, a hostile pillbox and two German-occupied buildings,’ and directed the 23’4” long barrel of his antitank gun against the tanks.³⁴

The Germans had reached a point no more than about a hundred yards from Lützkampen when a sharp bang was heard. The leading Panzer IV, with Leutnant Hans Einwächter as commander, was hit frontally and burst into flames. Einwächter slumped forward, dead in the turret hatch.³⁵

The U.S. M5 anti-tank cannon had a teriffic firepower. It was able to slam straight through the heavy frontal armor of a Panzer IV at a distance of over five hundred yards. Rosenthal’s gun was reloaded and fired again. A new hit, a new German tank was set on fire. Rosenthal continued firing. The American after action report reads, ’Private First Class Rosenthal put his gun into position and fired eighteen rounds of APC and HE shells causing complete destruction of the tanks, the ammunition truck, the pillbox, the two buildings, and also inflicting ninety casualties on the enemy personnel.’³⁶

The war diary of II. Abteilung/ Panzer-Regiment 16 gives the German perspective, ’From an antitank position somewhere in the vicinity of Diedrichsborn –Bock our tanks were exposed to heavy fire. Within a few minutes, six tanks are knocked out. The road is blocked. Covered by fire from the pillboxes, the other tanks pull back. Our tanks manage to neutralize three anti-tank guns, but our attack had to be cancelled.’³⁷

It is interesting to see how the confusion during the first hours of the German attack also has characterized various depictions of the events on the 116. Panzer-Division’s southern flank. According to American military historians Hugh M. Cole and Charles B. MacDonald the German tank losses in this sector during the first day were ’at least fifteen’ and ’at least thirteen tanks’ respectively.³⁸ The German divisional commander, von Waldenburg, gives a completely different description of the same events:

In general the American resistance was weak except in the woods west of Berg where the enemy fought very bravely and fiercely. The commitment of German tanks west of Lützkampen soon forced the enemy to withdraw from this position. Weak enemy harrassing fire was reported from Kesfeld, Uttfeld and Leidenborn and from the road Uttfeld -Leidenborn -Lützkampen. […]

The two assault companies sustained heavy losses. The assault company of the 60 Regt was nearly destroyed, the assault company of the 156 Regt was seriously weakened and joined the regiment the next day. The other losses during the first day were small. Two or three tanks were knocked out by the enemy during the fighting between Lützkampen and Ouren.³⁹

The difference between von Waldenburg’s data and the German battalion’s war diary above regarding German tank losses, may possibly be due to the former counting only total losses in tanks, while the war diary (written on the day when this happened) also included such tanks that the Germans afterwards could repair. In general the Americans exaggerated the German tank losses during the Battle of the Ardennes. An important explanation for this may be that the German tanks often managed to withstand frontal hits from many U.S. weapons, without being significantly damaged—hits that would have destroyed any American tank. In the heat of battle it is understandable that American gunners often assumed that they destroyed a German tank that they scored a direct hit on.

A German Panther tank passing through anti-tank obstacles in the West Wall in the winter of 1944/1945. The German medium tank Panzerkamp-fwagen V Panther was developed as a response to the Soviet T-34, which outshone all German tanks in 1941. The Panther entered service on the Eastern Front in the summer of 1943. The Panther is regarded by many as the best medium tank of World War II. (BArch, Bild 183-P0213-501)

The uncertainty in the headquarters of the 116. Panzer-Division on 16 December 1944 only cleared the next day, when contact again was reached with the two assault companies of II. Bataillon/ Panzergrenadier-Regiment 156. It turned out that these ravaged behind the American lines during an entire day, taking a total of two hundred and fifty prisoners.⁴⁰

But partly due to the resistance met by the 116. Panzer Division on the northern flank, and the fact that huge anti-tank obstacles (called ’dragon’s teeth’) were discovered there—a serious intelligence failure—the Corps commander, General Walter Krüger, ordered the division to turn south instead and cross the Our at Ouren, a small hamlet southwest of Lützkampen. Since the assault companies of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 60 on the panzer division’s northern flank also had been repulsed, American 423rd Infantry Regiment had the opportunity in the afternoon on 16 December to assemble a strike force with sufficient strength to drive the Germans out of Bleialf south of the Schneifel ridge. Thereby Grenadier-Regiment 293 on the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southern flank was halted. At 1930 hrs, the American regimental commander, Colonel Cavender, reported:

’Situation is not the best, but we’re still holding. Denied my 2nd Battalion. I have no reserves and B Troop, 18th Cavalry is bottled up in Winterscheid. My right flank, and maybe my left, are up in the air and I’ve lost contact with 424th. Again, we are holding and we will continue to improve our present positions.’

At around the same time, Colonel Devine, the commander of the 14th Cavalry, made it to SanktVith with the intention to personally ask Major General Jones for reinforcements. But Jones refused to see him, claiming that he was too busy, and demanded that the tough cavalry colonel should wait. When the next morning dawned, Jones had still not received Devine, who by that time was so furious that a present officer described him as ’a volcano about to erupt.’⁴¹

The fact that Major General Jones still was so relatively calm probably was because Lieutenant General Hodges, the First Army’s C-in-C, at half past eleven in the morning on 16 December decided to shift the equivalent of an armored regiment—Combat Command B (CCB) of the 9th Armored Division—from the V Corps in the north and to the 106th Infantry Division’s support.

Unlike the German panzer divisions, each of which consisted of a ’pure’ armored regiment equipped with all of the division’s tanks, and two ’pure’ panzer grenadier regiments and an artillery regiment, the Americans divided the various components of their regular armored divisions equally between three Combat Commands—A, B, and R (Reserve). Such a combat command generally consisted of an armored battalion, a battalion of armored infantry, an artillery battalion, and a tank destroyer platoon. The assigned strength of a combat command was fifty M4 Sherman medium tanks and seventeen light tanks, mainly M5 Stuarts, thus almost as many tanks as in many of the German armored divisions in the Ardennes. With one hundred and eighty-six Shermans and eighty-three Stuarts divided between its three Combat commands, the relatively newly formed 9th Armored Division had more than its assigned strength on 16 December 1944.⁴²

Later in the day on 16 December, Major General Jones met the commander of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division, Brigadier General William Hoge, who reported that his armored units had already departed from the Malmedy area, between twelve and twenty miles north of the 106th Infantry Division’s battle area. Shortly afterwards Middleton, the commander of the VIII Corps, called and informed Jones that the C-in-C of the 12th Army Group, Bradley, also had ordered the 7th Armored Division to be detached from the Ninth Army in the Maastricht area in the north. At 1730 on 16 December, the 7th Armored Division was assigned with the orders to prepare for a rapid movement southwards, where it was to support the 106th Infantry Division.⁴³ Jones learned that Combat Command B of the 7th Armored Division was expected to arrive at Sankt Vith at seven in the morning on 17 December. The Americans reckoned that the Germans hardly would be able match these two armored combat commands.

Had he had a better overview of the situation, Jones would have realized that there was every reason not only to worry, but also to act quickly.

Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn had, as we have seen, placed the emphasis of his 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s attack on the northern flank, just south of the seam between the 5. Panzerarmee and the 6. SS-Panzerarmee. This also was one of the most important sections during the first day of Operation ’Herbstnebel.’ That Grenadier-Regiment 293 on Hoffmann-Schönborn’s southern flank was repulsed in the afternoon on 16 December, was of secondary importance, since the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s powerful northern attack force managed to achieve an operational breakthrough in the sparsely manned sector entrusted to Colonel Devine’s U.S. 14th Cavalry Group.

Already by noon on 16 December, Hoffmann-Schönborn’s main force had seized the villages Weckerath, Roth, Auw, and Kobscheid in a three mile-wide and four mile-deep area on the plains west of the Schneifel ridge. The Americans had been completely taken by surprise. Grenadier-Regiment 295 took eighty-seven American prisoners in Roth, and in Kobscheid they captured all the vehicles of two U.S. cavalry platoons. The 18. Füsilier-Bataillon, the small force in the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s center, played a perhaps decisive role in this German breakthrough, when its noisy fake attack gave the Americans up on the ridge the impression that they were much stronger than what was the case. This had the effect that Jones did not dare to release the 422nd Infantry and most of the 423rd Infantry—the bulk of the 106th Infantry Division—for counter-attack in the flanks, which secured Hoffmann-Schönborn’s operational breakthrough. The Losheimer-Graben valley thus lay wide open to the Germans. In the sector just north of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s mighty armored forces meanwhile broke through right at the junction between Major General Jones’ Division and U.S. 99th Infantry Division, threatening to cut off the promised American armored reinforcements before these had time to join the 106th Infantry Division.

While the Germans continued to push forward across the snowy fields towards the west, the already bad weather turned even worse. Soon, a whirling blizzard whipped the young and weary soldiers, but this was greeted with joy by the Germans, since it effectively kept the feared Allied aviation away. U.S. 9th Air Force under Lieutenant General Hoyt ’Van’ Vandenberg mustered 2,300 aircraft—about a thousand medium bombers of General Samuel Anderson’s IX Bomber Division, and around thirteen hundred fighter-bombers. The latter were divided into three tactical air commands—each responsible for the air support of one U.S. ground army: IX Tactical Air Command (IX TAC) for the First Army, XIX TAC for the Third Army farther south, and XXIX TAC for the Ninth Army in the north. In addition, fifteen hundred aircraft of British 2nd Tactical Air Force under Air Marshall Arthur Coningham were tasked to support British-Canadian 21 Army Group on the Allied northern flank. But on this first day of ’Herbstnebel’—a quite appropriate name (Autumn Mist)—not even a single of General Anderson’s bombers could take off, and in IX Tactical Air Command (led by veteran General Elwood ’Pete’ Quesada), only ninety aircraft were able to take to the air.⁴⁴ A couple of pilots from the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group indeed reported the observation of ’seventy-seven German trucks and tanks’ in the section opposite to U.S. 28th Infantry Division. But this did not suffice to lead the American air commanders, who simultaneously met at Quesada’s headquarters in Verviers, to the conclusion that the Germans had launched one of the war’s largest offensives. Instead the focus of the conference was on how to provide air support for the offensive against the Roer dams when the weather cleared up.

Neither did Major General ’Dutch’ Cota’s 28th Infantry Division manage to prevent von Lüttwitz’s XLVII. Panzerkorps from achieving a decisive breakthrough on 5. Panzerarmee’s southern flank. The relation of forces simply was too uneven. As we have seen, the 112th Infantry Regiment of Cota’s division basically held positions against the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division and the 116. Panzer-Division throughout the first day. But farther to the south, one of the links in the chain of defensive positions that Colonel Hurley Fuller’s 110th Regimental Combat Team had established in northern Luxembourg finally broke.

In this sector, the battle was undecisive for most of the first day of the attack. At sunrise on 16 December, the men of the 110th Regimental Combat Team fought desperately to hold the villages of Marnach and Hosingen along ’Skyline Drive’—the main road on the ridge—as well as Munshausen, Holzthum, and Weiler, on the slopes of the ridge. The German plan expected the assault companies of the 2. Panzer-Division (in the north) and the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division (in the south) to have seized these objectives at this point, paving the way for the following panzers, but the American resistance proved to be much more stubborn than what had been anticipated. In addition, extensive rainfalls in the past few weeks had caused such strong currents in River Our that the construction of the makeshift bridges at Dasburg and Obereisenbach was considerably delayed.⁴⁵ Of course, small ferries were available to bring heavy equipment to the western side—this was possible at Obereisenbach but not at Dasburg, because of the steep river gorge at the latter place—but once across, the Germans encountered extensive roadblocks. During their retreat in September 1944, the Germans themselves had shed large amounts of trees over the three small roads leading to the west from Obereisenbach, and the trees were still there. The Americans also had neglected to repair the large holes that the Germans had blown in the roadways. As a consequence, the German troops on the river’s western side had to do without close support of heavy weapons during the first hours of the battle. The Americans of course did not have the same problem.

Colonel Hurley Fuller reacted with commendable swiftness that fateful morning. As soon as the first reports of the German attack came in to his headquarters in Clervaux, he phoned the divisional commander Cota in the town of Wiltz, about a dozen miles southwest of Hosingen, and asked him to employ the reserve troops. Cota thought it was a remarkable request, as he considered it too early to assess the situation—it was not even six in the morning and the fighting around the American positions west of the Our had just begun. But Fuller asseverated that his regiment was in real trouble, and managed to get Cota to agree to deploy the 707th Tank Battalion, attached to his 28th Infantry Division. With seventy-four tanks—including fifty Shermans—this was numerically just as strong as a German panzer regiment. At 0600 hrs, the tank battalion received its orders: ’A’ and ’B’ companies will immediately move to support the 110th Regimental Combat Team, ’C’ Company to the 109th Regimental Combat Team in the south, and ’D’ Company to 112th Infantry Regiment in the north!⁴⁶ ’A’ and ’B’ companies, which had bivouacked in Wilwerwitz in River Clerve’s gorge, six miles southwest of Hosingen, immediately set its thirty-four Sherman tanks in motion on the winding road that climbs up the ridge towards Hosingen.

The Sherman was the U.S. Army’s standard medium tank during WWII. However, in June 1944, it would prove to be inferior to the better armed and stronger armored German tanks in Normandy. In the Ardennes, the relations were slightly better with the new Sherman with a 76mm gun. However, of U.S. First Army’s 937 Sherman tanks on 12 December 1944, only 314 were equipped with the 76mm gun (NARA, SC 196127/Meyer)

The M4 Sherman was the most widely used American medium tank during World War II. It had been developed according to the so-called cruiser tank concept, which meant that such tanks would operate in independent formations to penetrate gaps in the enemy defense lines that had been accomplished by the infantry, and then sever the opponent’s lines of communication. When the M1A1 Sherman was introduced in 1942, its 51 mm thick frontal armor and its 75mm M3 gun put it on pair with the opponent’s best tanks. However, the situation was completely different in the Ardennes in late 1944, when the Sherman was outclassed by the new German tanks and tank destroyers. Even though this had been the situation for more than a year, not even the new version, Sherman M4A3, was able to compete with its opponents. The main improvement to be introduced was when the shorter 75mm M3 gun began to be replaced by the longer 76mm M1, which had a much better penetration impact. However, the introduction of this gun was delayed because of the opposition from several senior officers (including General Patton), who preferred the old gun, as it had more firepower in the explosive shells (used against ‘soft’ targets such as infantry). The fact that many of them also vigorously resisted the idea to mount the British 17-pound gun—probably the most effective anti-tank gun in Western Allied service—to the U.S. Shermans, also speaks volumes. Had the 17-pounder been the standard gun in the U.S. Sherman tanks, the Ardennes Battle definitely could have taken an entirely different course. But the American opposition to the 17-pounder was in part because of a relatively lower explosive power in the 17-pounder’s explosive shells, and partly because of the disadvantage it meant to have a 17-pounder’s 13 ft 9 in long barrel instead of the M3’s 9 ft 10 in. American national prestige may also have had an influence in this case.

Regarding armor protection, the Shermans in service in the Ardennes had a 63 mm thick front armor sloped back at 47 degrees from the vertical, which proved to be totally inadequate against the German anti-tank guns. A Sherman even could be knocked out by a single Panzerfaust—the hand held anti-tank weapon which the German infantry was richly equipped with—at a distance of between sixty and one hundred yards. Where the German infantry had access to the Panzerschreck (Raketenpanzerbuchse 54), a Sherman could be destroyed at a distance of over 200 yards. But the German assault troops on the ridge west of River Our at dawn on 16 December 1944 apparently lacked anti-tank weapons. The Shermans of the two tank companies split up into four groups, and were able to drive the German infantry out of Holzthum, Hosingen, Munshausen, and, shortly afterward, Marnach without much difficulty.

At three in the afternoon on 16 December, however, German Pionier-Bataillon 600 had completed the bridge over the gorge at Dasburg.⁴⁷ Among the first German vehicles to cross the bridge were the fourteen Panther tanks of 1. Kompanie in the 2. Panzer-Division’s armored regiment, Panzer-Regiment 3. But new difficulties waited just on the other side of the river. There, a serpentine road wound up the hill with steep hairpin bends. At each such spot, the German tank drivers had to reverse to a new position in order to take the bend, which meant that a large distance had to be maintained between the different vehicles. To top it all, the driver of one of the Panthers made a too sharp turn and crashed into a bridge span, plowing straight through, and then tipping over, crashing into the river. It took two hours to repair the damage to the bridge.

The bridge over River Our at Dasburg. To the left of the photographer, the road bends to the left up the steep, wooded hillside with sharp hairpin bends, just behind the photographer. Here the German Panther tanks had great difficulties in getting through. (The Paul Warp Collection)

In any case, ten tanks were across. When they finally had managed to climb the difficult road, the next obstacle waited them: Again, it was found that the scores of trees felled across the road by the Germans during their retreat in September remained in place. It was only after these had been cleared that the tanks could join the battle. The men of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 340 at Marnach cheered when the Panthers came clanking down the road from the east. Now the roles were reversed! The Panzerkampfwagen V Panther was totally superior to the M4 Sherman. With its long 75mm Kampfwagenkanone (KwK) 42 L/70 gun, the Panther could penetrate a Sherman’s frontal armor at a distance of over 2,700 yards. Even with the new American 76.2mm M1 gun, the Sherman had to close in to a distance of five hundred yards before it could penetrate the Panther’s 80mm frontal armor, sloped back at 55 degrees from the vertical. A Sherman with a 75mm gun needed to fire its shell from a distance of just 50 yards to have a chance to penetrate a Panther frontally—practically an impossibility. An American tank soldier remembers a clash between a Sherman and a Panther:

’A tank commander reported that he had come face-to-face with a Panther that had its gun turret turned ninety degrees from the forward position. He fired the first round from the 76mm gun and struck the Panther square in the middle of its forward glacis plate. There was a tremendous flash of sparks, like a grinding wheel hitting a piece of steel. When it was over, the tank commander realized that the round had ricocheted and not penetrated the tank. He quickly reloaded, fired the second round, and struck the glacis plate again as the German slowly turned its turret in his direction. Before the Panther could get its gun zeroed in on the M4, the tank commander got off a third round, with equal results. The Panther was finally able to fire its high-velocity 75mm, which penetrated the M4 tank like a sieve. Fortunately, the tank commander survived to tell this story.’⁴⁸

Before the American armor at Marnach had time to retreat, the German tanks had disposed of four Shermans and five of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s anti-tank guns.⁴⁹ However, during the battle of Marnach, five or six tanks from the 2. Panzer-Division were put out of action when their own shells exploded inside the barrels. An analysis afterward showed that a shipment of armor piercing shells to the 2. Panzer-Division had been sabotaged, presumably in the manufacturing by foreign slave laborers.⁵⁰

With Marnach in German hands, Oberst von Lauchert’s 2. Panzer-Division continued towards the west. But Panzer Lehr, the armored division on the XLVII. Panzerkorps’ southern flank, did not have the same fortune. The 130. Panzer Lehr-Division—usually referred to as just Panzer Lehr—originally was an élite unit. As the name ’Lehr’ (’training’) suggests, it had been formed by instructors from various armor schools in 1943. The division was commanded by one of the most famous German generals of World War II, Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein. He had served as a staff officer under the command of both Guderian in 1939-1940 and Rommel in North Africa, and had been awarded with the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.

Just as the two other panzer division commanders von Waldenburg and von Lauchert, Bayerlein had participated in the breakthrough on the Western Front on 10 May 1940, when he served as the operations officer of Generaloberst Heinz Guderian’s XIX.Panzerkorps (of which the 2. Panzer-Division was a part). Under Bayerlein’s command, Panzer Lehr performed very well during the fighting in Normandy in 1944, but was also heavily decimated. When the Ardennes Offensive began, the division had not yet had time to be fully replenished, its two panzer grenadier regiments reaching only 89 and 73 percent recpectively of their assigned strength, and the panzer regiment mustering no more than twenty-nine Panthers and thirty-four Panzer IVs, of which twenty-six and thirty respectively were in serviceable condition.⁵¹ In return, the division was provided with a heavy anti-tank battalion, schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 under Major Erich Sattler. This mustered eighteen Jagdpanzer IVs, fifteen StuG IIIs, and even five Jagdpanthers—the teriffic tracked tank destroyer that combined the Panther’s thick armor with the 88mm PaK 43 (Panzerabwehrkanone 43) anti-tank gun. The PaK 43 was the most powerful mass-produced German anti-tank gun of the entire war. At 30 degrees angle of impact it could penetrate 139 mm of armor at a distance of more than 2,000 yards. The Jagdpanzer IV was built on the chassis of a Panzer IV and had this tank’s armament and armor protection, which in the case of the tank destroyer version was combined with a small height of only 6 ft 1 in, allowing it to often sneak up unobserved on the opponent.

Although the recruits who arrived at Panzer Lehr to fill the gaps after the losses in France left much to be desired in terms of training, they received supplemental training by experienced front-line soldiers once at the unit, and Panzer Lehr also still had a cadre of highly capable officers and NCOs. Ahead of the Ardennes Offensive, its armored regiment (Panzer-Regiment 130) and schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 were integrated into three battlegroups—Kampfgruppe von Fallois (the reinforced armored reconnaissance battalion), Kampfgruppe 901, and Kampfgruppe 902 (the reinforced Panzergrenadier regiments 901 and 902), quite similar to the U.S. combat commands.

Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, the commander of the Panzer Lehr Division during the Ardennes Offensive. Bayerlein had previously served as a staff officer under both Guderian in 19391940 and Rommel in North Africa, and carried the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. Bayerlein died in 1970 in suites of the jaundice he caught during the war in North Africa.

(BArch, Picture 146-1978-033-02/Dinstühler)

German automotive columns work their way up on the heights east of the river crossing at Obereisenbach on 16 December 1944. Horst Helmus, then an Unteroffizier in the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, has drawn what he himself experienced.

Unsurprisingly, von Manteuffel had particularly high expectations for Bayerlein’s division.⁵² These would nevertheless not be immediately fulfilled, which during the first days of the offensive primarily was due to the stubborn resistance offered by a few hundred U.S. troops—mostly from the 110th RCT ‘s 3rd Battalion under Major Harold F. Milton—against two regiments of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division.

The correlation of forces between Milton’s battalion and the attacking German units in this section were not as uneven as it may look on paper. Milton’s men enjoyed the support of armor and artillery, as well as of a company from the 103rd Engineer Battalion. And while at least some of the troops of the 28th Infantry Division—of which the U.S. battalion was a part—were quite combat experienced, the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division had just months earlier been formed on the remnants of the 26. Infanterie-Division, which had been virtually wiped out by the Red Army in late summer 1944. The large gaps caused by the losses had largely been covered by older, discarded men from the Luftwaffe and the German Navy—men who had spent many years at airfields or behind desks, and who had no combat experience. Additionally, the division had not yet been fully equipped, and only amounted to 10,600 men.⁵³ These were supported by no more than fourteen tank destroyers of the type Jagdpanzer 38 (t) Hetzer.

However, the divisional commander, forty-four-year old Oberst Heinz Kokott, was highly experienced. He had been in first-line service on the Eastern Front for two years, and after being wounded, he served as a troop trainer until in the fall of 1944 he was called to lead the new 26. Volksgrenadier-Division.

The division’s assault companies crossed the Our early on 16 December, undetected by the opponent. Grenadier-Regiment 77 on the northern flank was to advance as far as the bridge over the next river, Clerve at Drauffelt, while Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39, on the southern flank, was supposed to take the Clerve bridges at Wilwerwiltz. It was an ambitious goal—the distance from the Our to Wilwerwiltz was eight miles, in extremely rugged terrain.

Having scaled the slippery, wooded slope up to the ridge where the ’Skyline Drive’ ran, a force from Grenadier-Regiment 77 managed to descend upon and destroy a platoon of the American battalion’s ’K’ Company on the rolling fields south of Hosingen. On the southern flank, II. Bataillon of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39 meanwhile captured Wahlhausen, two and a half miles southeast of Hosingen. Next it attacked Wahlhausener Dickt, a mile farther to the north-west, in conjunction with the regiment’s I. Bataillon, which came out of the forest in the north. Grenadier-Regiment 77 continued to advance, and just outside of Bockholz—four miles west of Hosingen—it attacked ’C’ Battery of the 109th Field Artillery Battalion, which in the ensuing battle lost sixteen men, including the battery commander.⁵⁴

But the element of surprise soon was over. When II. Bataillon/ Grenadier-Regiment 77 entered the larger village of Hosingen, the Germans became embroiled in fierce street fighting with ’D’ Company of Major Milton’s battalion and ’B’ Company, 103rd Engineer Battalion. At the small village of Weiler—five miles southeast of Hosingen and two miles southwest of the river crossing at Obereisenbach—the battalion of Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39 that constituted the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southernmost force, clashed violently with ’I’ Company of Milton’s battalion, supported by 81mm mortars and a tank destroyer platoon. At first, the Germans marched into Weiler without any incident, but when they reached the center of the village, they suddenly were exposed to a raging fire from American soldiers who had taken up positions in windows, on rooftops, and behind house corners. ’We are shot at from all sides,’ wrote Horst Helmus, who took part in the Battle of Weiler as a young Unteroffizier in Panzerjäger-Abteilung 26. ’We dash from the vehicles and take cover. I am so afraid that I can’t see or hear anything. Enemy bullets hit the ground, spraying mud, both in front of me and behind me. The cries of the wounded drown everything else. […] Get out of the Weiler! We rush from house to house while an undefined shooting continues. Who is shooting at whom? It is totally insane, but leapfrogging over fences and hedges, with fighter-bombers in the sky above us, we reach the last house on the outskirts of the village, and there we remain lying. I procure some hand grenades. Are we dealing with partisans or regular troops? A hit in the roof behind us makes debris fly all around us. Then we dash across a 100-yard wide open field and hurl ourselves into a ditch. We managed to get away!’⁵⁵

The Germans soon launched a counter-attack, and savage fighting raged from house to house. Despite bloody losses on both sides, the Americans allowed the Germans twice over the course of the morning on 16 December to send their medics into no-man’s-land in the center of the village to take care of their wounded.⁵⁶ Of 238 casualties suffered by the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division on this first day of the attack, 126 were from Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39.⁵⁷

The reinforcements that Fuller had requested soon arrived. The Germans barely had attacked the American battery at Bockholz, when five Sherman tanks from the 1st Platoon of ’B’ Company, 707th Tank Battalion appeared farther down on the road.⁵⁸ Exposed to the fire from the American tank guns and machine guns, and with no available anti-tank weapons, the Germans made a hasty withdrawal up the road. Shortly afterward, more American tanks arrived, and at noon on 16 December, the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s plan of attack was completely in tatters.

The engineer troops of Panzer Lehr’s Pionier-Bataillon managed to complete the bridge over the Our at Obereisenbach only at four o’clock in the afternoon on 16 December. But that did not bring any immediate relief to the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division. The steep and narrow serpentine roads leading from Obereisenbach to the west turned out to be in a deplorable state. The sleet that fell throughout the day—in the afternoon the temperature rose to just above the freezing point—softened the roadways, which soon were totally rutted by all German heavy vehicles. Oberst Kokott describes the situation, ’Densely packed together, the tracked vehicles of the Panzer Lehr Division’s reconnaissance battalion laboriously struggled ahead on the muddy, steep forest roads. Stalled vehicles and horse drawn ammo carts created a terrible congestion. Enemy artillery and mortar fire hit the woods and the road, causing additional losses and gridlock.’⁵⁹

Only towards the evening on 16 December, when Panzer Lehr’s reconnaissance battalion could be deployed to support the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, were the Germans able to recapture Weiler. Horst Helmus describes this in his diary, ’Armed with hand grenades and small arms, we go from house to house and search them from the basement to the attic. “Come out!” we call. 28 prisoners are put behind bars. Mayer brings his “shot” [cannon]. We fire explosive shells through suspected windows. A few houses are on fire, and infantry ammunition explodes.’⁶⁰

However, in Hosingen, and—three miles farther to the south—Consthum, the Americans continued to hold out, thereby blocking Panzer Lehr’s advance. Indeed, Major Milton’s men would tie down the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division and Panzer Lehr—which eventually would be forced to bring in reinforcements from both 2. Panzer-Division and the 7. Armee’s 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division—for two whole days of bitter fighting. This gave the slowly reacting American high command time to bring forward reinforcements at the last moment to prevent the important road junction Bastogne from falling into German hands.

The story of the battle in the Eifel region on 16 December 1944, is the history of American steadfastness against an absolutely overwhelming German numerical superiority. What the Germans had expected, that the Americans would thrown up their arms and flee, had not occurred at very many places. The American soldiers, who more than anything else had been trained to follow orders, in most cases stayed put according to recent orders. The problem was higher up in the military hierarchy. Inexperienced officers often did not know what to do when the situation around them changed from a static position to something that one of the American generals afterwards would describe as ’fluid.’ Higher up in the hierarchy, the headquarters of divisions, corps, First Army, and the 12th Army Group had a hard time getting a handle on what actually was happening; there the response in most cases came with remarkable slowness. In the absence of clear directives from the top, the U.S. Army, where the troops were not as trained to take initiative as their German opponents were, reacted with a paralysis that initially could serve as a breakwater against the German onslaught, but which turned out to be purely disastrous when the German spearheads penetrated deep into the rear of the American positions. On the evening of 16 December, the 5. Panzerarmee’s operational breakthrough was a fact, both at Dasburg, opposite to Bastogne, and in the Losheimer-Graben opposite to Sankt Vith on the Panzer Army’s northern flank.

After the battle. Destroyed U.S. military equipment. At the front of the picture, an M3 half-track vehicle. To the right, a Stuart tank.

(David E Brown.)

THE PANZER MARCH BEGINS

Halfway between the two breakthrough areas in the north and in the south, the 16. Panzer-Division was regrouped during the night of 16 December, and at dawn on 17 December it surged towards the southwest from Lützkampen. The goal now was the bridge over the Our at the small hamlet of Ouren, from where the division was supposed to continue to Weiswampach on the other side of the river, and thence on towards the town of Houffalize, a dozen miles farther to the west.

Colonel Gustin M. Nelson, commanding the 112th Infantry Regiment of the 28 th Infantry Division, had foreseen this movement, and therefore had positioned his tank destroyer and artillery companies at Ouren. These also received reinforcements from Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division in the shape of a platoon of tank destroyers from ’C’ Company of the 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Air support also was promised, in spite of the continued bad weather. But the Americans still were outnumbered by the German assault force, which consisted of Kampfgruppe Bayer—Panzer-Regiment 16 under Oberst Johannes Bayer, a battalion of Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 156, a reinforced battalion from Panzergrenadier-Regiment 60, and a company of sappers—plus the 560. Volksgrenadier division’s Grenadier-Regiment 1130.⁶¹During the course of the morning of 17 December, the Germans succeeded in sweeping away all American forces immediately to the west of Lützkampen.⁶²

Surrounded by high, forested mountains, Ouren is located deep down in the gorge of River Our, just where the river bends sharply to the west, inside of this arc, with the river on all sides except the south-east—where a small road to Lützkampen climbs uphill. When the first eight Panther tanks of Kampfgruppe Bayer at noon on 17 December crept up to the crest at the top of this hill, they were met by an intense fire.⁶³ Colonel Nelson had positioned his tank destroyers in well masked battle positions among the trees on the hills on the other side of the river, and from there they were able to shell the German tanks as these appeared behind the trees. There are two American versions of this battle. According to one, ’C’ Company, 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion destroyed no less than fourteen German tanks, whereafter the Americans had to withdraw, having lost two Hellcat tank destroyers, an M20 armored car, and five jeeps.⁶⁴ According to the second version, four Hellcats knocked out four of the German tanks before these returned fire and destroyed three Hellcats.⁶⁵

Then American fighter-bombers appeared and forced the German armor to seek cover in the forest. The American pilots reported the destruction of four tanks with another two damaged.⁶⁶ Hence, if the American reports are to be believed, the 116. Panzer-Division should have lost between eight and eighteen tanks in the Ouren section alone. The actual German losses were confined to three Panthers.⁶⁷

SLOW REACTION IN THE ALLIED COMMAND

While the Germans struck U.S. First Army in full force, the American military command reacted with an astonishing slowness. To some extent, this was because the information failed to arrive in time, and once it reached the responsible commanders, these had a tendency to downplay the incident.

For the Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Paris, 16 December 1944 began quite gently. He was in a good mood because he knew this was the day when the U.S. Congress would officially approve his promotion to a five-star general.

The 54-year old general began the morning by reading a letter from the commander of the British-Canadian 21 Army Group, Field Marshal Montgomery, who asked for permission to celebrate Christmas with his son in England. In the letter, Montgomery also reminded Eisenhower of the bet he had made a year before for five pounds that the war would be over by Christmas 1944, and Montgomery claimed to have won the bet.¹ Then Eisenhower attended the wedding of his orderly in the Versailles palace chapel. Afterwards, he hosted the wedding dinner in his own villa in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris—known as the ‘Rundstedt-Villa,’ since the German commander-in-chief on the Western Front, Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, had lived there before. There Eisenhower received a message that the commander of U.S. 12th Army Group, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, had arrived, and he went to Hôtel Trianon in Versailles.² There the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under Eisenhower’s command was located.

Neither did Bradley feel any need to worry when he on the morning of 16 December found that the weather was too uncertain to allow a flight from his own headquarters in Luxembourg to Versailles for the planned conference with the commander-in-chief. Therefore, he chose to take his Cadillac to Paris.

At Hôtel Trianon, Eisenhower, Bradley and the staff officers of the SHAEF were discussing the need to reinforce the forces taking part in the offensive against the Roer dams, when a G-2 (intelligence officer) at around four in the afternoon appeared and handed Major General Kenneth W. Strong, chief intelligence officer at the SHAEF, a note. Strong read it and asked for the floor to announce that the Germans at dawn had attacked at five places along the front held by U.S. VIII Corps. This made the men at the conference somewhat perplexed.

Both the reporting and the realization of what was going on took place at an astonishing slow and uncoordinated manner on the American side. At seven in the morning the first information on the German breakthrough reached the headquarters of U.S. First Army in Spa. But the commander of the First Army, Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges, dismissed this as nothing but a German relief attack, and he took no specific action.³ Consequently, at the briefing in the 12th Army Group headquarters in Luxembourg at 0915 hrs—just before Bradley left for Paris—First Army only reported ‘all quiet on the VIII Corps front.’⁴ At eleven in the morning, however, the reports to Spa on German breakthroughs on different sections had piled up to the point that Hodges finally concluded that the Germans were ‘staking all on this drive’ and that they were ‘putting their maximum strength against the 106th Div.’ ⁵ But in the situation report submitted to the SHAEF at noon on 16 December, the capture of three villages by U.S. forces on the Roer front were mentioned, and apart from that nothing but ‘all quiet along the rest of the front.’⁶

U.S. V Corps, which was subjected to massive attacks by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee, reported nothing about this until at 1244 hrs on 16 December, and it took until 1450 hrs before it was recorded in the First Army headquarters in Spa.⁷ Then it took more than another full hour before the information finally reached the SHAEF.

Like Hodges, Bradley initially thought that this only was a German relief attack. ‘The other fellow knows that he must lighten the pressure Patton has built up against him,’ he said. ‘If by coming through the Ardennes he can force us to pull Patton’s troops out of the Saar and throw them against this counter-offensive, he’ll get what he’s after. And that’s just a little more time.’⁸

But Eisenhower was not as certain. He felt that this was something bigger than a relief attack and urged Bradley to send two armored divisions—the 7th from the Ninth Army in the north, and the 10th from the Third Army in the south—to bolster the First Army. Bradley still was hesitant about this when he telephoned Patton, the commander of the Third Army. He confided to Patton that he ‘hated it,’ but that he had to order him to deploy the armored division.

Without really worrying that much about the German attack, Eisenhower and Bradley withdrew to the villa in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where they opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate Eisenhower’s promotion. As late as 2300 hrs on 16 December, the following report was written by the Intelligence Department of the 12th Army Group:

‘The sudden attack and the apparent superiority of the six enemy divisions identified in the last twelve hours should not be misinterpreted. The quality of the involved divisions, the scattered efforts to implement small-scale attacks, and the apparent lack of a large-scale objective restricts the specific threat from the enemy. Apparently, the enemy launched a major relief attack to force us to withdraw our divisions from the vital Colgne [sic] and Saar river basins to meet the threat in the Eifel region.’⁹

The report despatched by U.S. VIII Corps twenty minutes earlier obviously had not been quite understood: ‘The enemy has crossed the Our River in the 28th Infantry Division’s section. Most of our units have been cut off… the situation is changing rapidly.’

In fact, it would not be until on the second day of the attack that the American military command understood that this actually was a German major offensive. By then the First Army’s defence lines were crumbling like a house of cards.

1 Toland, Battle: Th e Story of the Bulge, p. 148.

2 Ibid., p. 148.

3 Sylvan and Smith, Normandy to victory: the war diary of General Courtney H. Hodges & the First U.S. Army, p. 213.

4 Toland, p. 148.

5 Sylvan and Smith, p. 214.

6 Toland, p. 148.

7 Ibid., p. 148.

8 Ibid., p. 32.

9 National Archives and Records Administration: Twelft h Army Group, G-2, Periodic Report. RG 407, US Army, WWII; WW II Musings, Volume 3 Issue 2, April 1995.

It took a fierce battle before Kampfgruppe Bayer succeeded in driving the Americans from their defensive positions, and could capture the bridge at Ouren undamaged. But again, the inadequacy of German intelligence reports was shown. ’Now it proved,’ wrote von Waldenburg, ’that the bridge was too small and too weak for tanks and heavy artillery and a reinforcement of the bridge by the Division engineers would have required 12-15 hours.’⁶⁸ Nor could the armor cross the river at Tintesmühle, three miles further south. As we have seen, during the first hours of the attack, the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southern task force, Kampfgruppe Schmitt, had established that the stone bridge at this place was destroyed. Also here it would prove that the Germans had been fighting in vain. The trucks carrying bridge construction material were unable get through because of large amounts of felled trees across the narrow little road that wound down the hills east of the river. It was only in the afternoon of 17 December that German engineer troops were able to complete a new bridge at Tintesmühle.⁶⁹

Hence, the 116. Panzer-Division was instructed to swing to the south and cross the river at Dasburg, where the 2. Panzer-Division moved across the Our. It has been argued that this cost the 116. Panzer-Division a delay of fifteen hours, but the fact is that the commander of the LVIII. Panzerkorps, General Walter Krüger, had sent the 116. Panzer-Division’s Kampfgruppe Stephan to Dasburg while the main part of the division struck towards Ouren.⁷⁰ Kampfgruppe Stephan consisted of the division’s armored reconnaissance battalion, one artillery battalion, an antiaircraft battery, a Nebelwerfer battery, and a company with six StuG IIIs.⁷¹ Its commander, Major Eberhard Stephan, had been in first-line service since 1939.

While the battle for Ouren was raging, Kampfgruppe Stephan moved across the Our at Dasburg together with the 2. Panzer-Division. This caused some traffic jams on the narrow winding road on the other side, but after a good three miles, Stephan’s motorized column took the first top turn right. The vehicles rolled downhill on a narrow little dirt road between rolling fields. Having jolted along this path for a mile, the Germans took the hard-surfaced ’Skyline Drive’ which runs north parallel to the Our.

Weather on 17 December 1944 was not as bad as on the previous day. Indeed, the sky still was covered by thick, low-hanging clouds that hampered air operations, but with two or three Centigrades below the freezing point in the morning, the mist had at least eased, and the sleet turned into a light snowfall. The reconnaissance battalion’s Puma armored cars took the lead.

The eight-wheeled armored car Puma (SdKfz—Sonderkraftfahrzeug—234) was produced in several different versions. Kampfgruppe Stephan had ten of the model SdKfz 234/1, armed with a 20mm machine gun in an open turret, and two 234/2, equipped with an armored turret with a 50mm gun. The Czech-made Tatra V 12 diesel engine allowed the Puma to reach a speed of 52 mph on road, and it also had an excellent performance in rough terrain. The frontal armor, 30 mm thick sloped back at 20° from the vertical, gave no effective protection against anything more than small arms fire, but as an armored reconnaissance vehicle, the Puma fulfilled all expectations.

The Germans now drove along the ridge, with snow-covered fields, circumscribed by cattle fencing, on both sides. They had barely passed the first tiny hamlet, Fischbach, just over two miles north of Marnach, and were driving down the hill, when they discovered a column of small olive green tanks on the brow of the hill, about half a mile away, coming straight against them on the road. These were the M5 Stuart tanks of U.S. 707th Tank Battalion’s ’D’ Company. This company had previously been ordered north to support the 112th Infantry Regiment, but when reports came in that German armor had crossed the Our at Dasburg and was heading towards Clervaux, the company was instructed to turn around and despatch its seventeen Stuarts to cut off this advance at Marnach.

An image of Ouren, taken before the war. The picture is taken from the wooded heights overlooking the Our river in the west, where Colonel Gustin M. Nelson, C.O. of the 112th Infantry Regiment of U.S. 28th Infantry Division, had positioned his tank destroyers and artillery at dawn on 17 December 1944. The road that runs down the slope on the other side of the village, on the right hand side in the photograph, was the road the Germans had to take when they attacked. The river band is visible from top to bottom in the center of the photograph.

Stuart tanks heading for the front. The U.S. light tank M5 Stuart was hopelessly inferior to the German tanks and tank destroyers in the Ardennes, and ped units were inflicted terrible losses. D’ Company of the 707th Tank Battalion was completely obliterated on 17-18 December 1944. (US Army)

It was a decision just as desperate as ill-considered. The tank crews were in practice sent towards their own destruction. Their light infantry support tanks, each provided with a 29 mm frontal armor and equipped with a small 37mm cannon, possibly were evenly matched with the German Puma, but stood off badly against Major Stephan’s Sturmgeschütz Ills.

The 7 ft 6 in high and only 14 ft 2.4 in long Stuarts looked like little blocks where they came rattling on their narrow (11 5/8-in) tracks. The Germans were first to react. Their StuG IIIs descended down on the lower lying fields to the right of the road and opened fire on the Americans. Before these could react, several Stuarts already were burning. Within the space of ten minutes, fifteen U.S. tanks were turned into blazing wrecks.⁷² Moreover, two hundred American soldiers were captured by the Germans, who did not lose a single Sturmgeschütz in this engagement.⁷³ Only two Stuarts managed to escape, and these sought refuge in Clervaux, three miles farther to the southwest.

The picturesque small Luxembourgian town of Clervaux is nestled between high, forested mountains in the Clerve river’s gorge, just where the river makes a tight, U-shaped bend. The resort is dominated by the hefty medieval fortress, located on a hillside above the city streets, inside the river bend, in the center of the town. Several sturdy bridges over the Clerve, and a station on the north-south railway line made the town a major transportation hub. Here the Americans had decided to stop the German advance. Colonel Fuller was ordered shortly to hold the town at any cost.

Fifty-year-old Colonel Hurley Edward Fuller was, according to historian Charles B. MacDonald, known to be a curmudgeon.⁷⁴ As a veteran of the First World War, he went ashore at Normandy on the second day of the invasion, in the position of a regimental commander. But ten days later, Fuller was stripped of his command because his regiment had failed to achieve its assigned objective.⁷⁵ Then it took until the end of November 1944 before he received a new command, in the lead of the 110th Infantry Regiment in ’Dutch’ Cota’s combat-experienced division.⁷⁶ At his disposal for the defense of Clervaux, Fuller had a considerable albeit motley force: The Stuart tanks that in the morning on 17 December took refuge down to Clervaux, where they joined other remnants of the 707th Tank Battalion, plus what remained of the 110th Regimental Combat Team, backed by the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Moreover, the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve (CCR) had sent the nineteen Shermans of ’B’ Company, 2nd Tank Battalion to the town. To emphasize the importance of the order he gave Fuller, ’Dutch’ Cota added, ’No one comes back!’⁷⁷—which more or less was what actually happened.

At nine thirty in the morning on 17 December, the 2. Panzer-Division struck Clervaux. Half a dozen Sturmgeschütz Ills from 1. Kompanie/ Panzerjäger-Abteilung 38 and about thirty armored vehicles with panzer grenadiers carefully motored down the glassy road that goes in a steep downhill south of the small town. Visibility was obscured by a dense snowfall, which favored the alert crews of five Shermans from the 707th Tank Battalion that lay in ambuscade where the road enters the first of three hairpin bends. Two StuG IIIs were hit and set ablaze.⁷⁸ Although the Germans equalized by knocking out three Shermans, any further German advance this way was made impossible by the destroyed armored vehicles that blocked the narrow road.⁷⁹

The Germans now decided to take a detour to the north to attack Clervaux via the bridge over the river at the rail station, north of the river bend. But there, still on the Clerve’s eastern side, they came upon the Sherman tanks of ‘B’ Company, 2nd Tank Battalion, supported by anti-tank guns of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Two platoons of Panzer IV tanks from II. Abteilung/ Panzer-Regiment 3 decided the outcome of the battle. Although surpassed by the more heavily armed Panther, the German medium tank Panzerkampfwagen IV (Panzer IV) was superior to the American Sherman by a wide margin. With an 80 mm thick frontal armor, sloped back at 80 degrees from the vertical, the later models of the Panzer IV could withstand hits from a Sherman’s 75mm cannon at normal battle distance. Meanwhile, the Panzer IV’s 75mm KwK 40 L/48 gun could penetrate a Sherman’s frontal armor from a distance of 2,000 yards.

One of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2’s battalions raced past the burning U.S. tank hulks on the road towards the north, high above Clervaux, which lay hidden by the spruce furs on the hills to the west. At dusk, the men of one of the battalion’s companies made it down the steep, wooded slopes just east of the rail station in the northern end of the town. While some waded across the Clerve’s icy water and undetected fell upon the rail station, other grenadiers raced towards the bridge across the river. The attack came as a total surprise, and both objectives soon were in German hands.⁸⁰The Panzer IVs immediately were radioed, and soon came clanking down the hill and across the bridge. They continued along the Grand Rue street towards the center of the town, and as they rumbled in among the houses, with guns blazing, all organized American resistance collapsed. In the words of U.S. veteran Charles B. MacDonald, this was the kind of ’disintegration not uncommon among hastily formed provisional units where the individual soldier has no unit loyalty.’⁸¹ The bridge at the southern end of the town soon also was in German hands.

From his headquarters at Hôtel Le Claravallis, just next to the rail station and that same bridge, Colonel Fuller contacted Major General Cota and asked for permission to withdraw in order to save his remaining forces, but the request was denied. When Fuller at six thirty was informed that another large number of German tanks—these were the Panthers of I. Abteilung/ Panzer-Regiment 3—were heading down towards Clervaux, he again rang the 28th Infantry Division’s headquarters to ask for permission to retreat, but Cota’s chief of staff, Colonel Jesse L. Gibney, only repeated what Cota had said earlier.⁸²

As an old Texan, Fuller saw a clear parallel to the legendary Battle of Alamo during the War of Texan Independence 1835-1836, when an American force of two hundred men under Lieutenant Colonel William Travis held out against two thousand Mexicans for thirteen days. ’I told Colonel Gibney,’ Fuller wrote afterward, ’that since he was transmitting to me the general’s orders, I had no alternative but to obey them and to “fight in place.” I reminded him that I was in the same predicament that Colonel Travis found himself at the Alamo and that “we will never surrender nor retreat.”’⁸³ But the situation changed rapidly before Fuller even was able to finish the phone call:

While we were still talking, one of the German tanks fired three rounds of cannon shells into the S-1 office in the room beneath me. This fire came from a range of about fifteen yards, the tank being in the street in front of the CP. The Chief of Staff heard those explosions and asked what they were. I told him. I asked him to send Co G to Eselborn by truck immediately. I told him that I would have it met there and guided by a staff officer to the place I intended to employ it. The chief of staff started to say something more, but I told him that I had no more time for talk and rang off. I asked the operator for HQ, 2nd Bn. While he was trying to get this connection, a blast of machine gun fire came from below through the window of the room I was in, knocking plaster off the ceiling over my head. I heard more tank firing outside, and then I was unable to get anything more out of the phone.⁸⁴

A destroyed Stuart. The tank battle at and around Clervaux was a disaster to the participating U.S. armored units. Of 51 tanks in the ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘D’ companies, 707th Tank Battalion, no more than six tanks, all of them damaged, remained afterwards.

(National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

Hôtel Le Claravallis is located in the narrow river gorge with the front facing the street Grand Rue, which runs along the western bank of the river. Fuller and a handful of soldiers made their escape through a window on the back side of the Hôtel. Here they immediately came upon the steep wooded cliffs that rise almost vertically 150 feet above the Hôtel. Steps were carved into the cliff, and they toiled their way upwards along these. When Fuller reached the top he was totally exhausted. By this time, he could hear that the battle was dying down in the town.

When the German Panther crews drove into the center of the town, which burned in several places, they found that the majority of the American garrison had surrendered. Along with the U.S. soldiers, large amounts of heavy equipment was captured or destroyed. However, up in the fortress, a group of around a hundred American soldiers under the command of Captain John Aiken, signals officer of the 110th Regimental Combat Team, and Captain Clark Mackey, commanding the regiment’s Headquarters Company, would offer a frantic resistance for almost another day. From this position they were able to open fire against all traffic that passed through Clervaux, which meant that the Germans could get through only with armored vehicles.⁸⁵

The most commonly used German armored personnel carrier, the Schutzenpanzerwagen 251 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug SdKfz 251) half-track—also known as Hanomag—had an up to 14.5 mm thick armor which gave protection against fire from small arms (unlike its American counterpart, the M3 half-track, which, because of its susceptibility to fire even from small-caliber weapon used to be called the ’Purple Heart Box’—alluding to the U.S. medal which was awarded to soldiers who were wounded or killed in action). The Hanomag had space for ten fully equipped soldiers, and was present in large numbers in the German divisions in the Ardennes Battle. But since it was open at the top, soldiers could not pass through Clervaux even in Hanomag vehicles, other than at the risk of getting fired upon from the fortress.

How many men the Americans lost in the Battle of Clervaux has never been clarified. According to a report issued by Colonel Fuller, the 110th Regimental Combat Team sustained a total of 2,750 casualties during the first days of the Ardennes Offensive, but it is not known how many of those were lost in Clervaux. ’B’ Company, 103rd Engineer Combat Battalion was inflicted 100 percent losses, and the 109th Field Artillery Battalion lost about one hundred men.⁸⁶ In addition to that, the 110th Regimental Combat Team lost more or less all of its vehicles and the six howitzers of its Cannon Company.⁸⁷ The 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion lost thirty of its thirty-six anti-tank guns on 17 December, most of these in Clervaux.⁸⁸ Of an original strength of fifty-two tanks—thirty-four Shermans and eighteen Stuarts—in the morning of 17 December, ’A,’ ’B’ and ’D’ companies, 707th Tank Battalion were left with only six damaged tanks, plus five tracked tank destroyers, twenty-four hours later.⁸⁹ These were rapidly pulled back to Wiltz in the south.⁹⁰ ’B’ Company, 2nd Tank Battalion of the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve fared no better, losing fourteen Shermans and most of its tank crews.⁹¹ All in all, the first tank battle of the Ardennes Offensive cost the Americans nearly sixty tanks, while German 2. Panzer-Division lost four tanks.⁹²

Together with a small group of soldiers, Colonel Fuller worked his way through the woods and fields to try to get back to the American lines. What could have ended up as a feat in the history books ended ingloriously two days later when the tired and hungry men in a dense forest stumbled into a night camp set up by a group of soldiers from the 2. Panzer-Division. Fuller felt a heavy blow against the back of his head, and when he came around he found that he was in captivity.

The Germans listed another tactical success when they in the morning on 18 December finally were able to crush the resistance in Hosingen, southeast of Clervaux. Here, three hundred and twenty American soldiers were captured.⁹³ At last, Generalleutnant Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division could begin its real advance.

By now, the American combat morale appeared to have suffered a major blow. Large masses of defeated and demoralized American troops poured westwards in disarray, away from the German panzer columns. ’Many soldiers,’ wrote Michael E. Weaver in the 28th Infantry Division’s Chronicle, ’just wanted away from the fighting. Some pushed their way toward Bastogne, thinking that was a means of escaping the onslaught.’⁹⁴ Private Donald Burgett, of the 101st Airborne Division, described his encounter with the retreating soldiers, ’They shambled along in shock and fear, blocking the road completely, eyes staring straight ahead, mumbling to themselves. I have never before—or since—seen such resolute terror in men.’⁹⁵ A U.S. Army report reads, ’Hundreds of stragglers jammed the roads moving south and west. […] At times the confusion and terror of these bewildered refugees bordered on panic. One artillery organization abandoned their guns right in the city streets; although later an officer made them return to get them.’⁹⁶

Oberst Kokott, commanding the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, said, ’After the fall of Hosingen, the enemy’s resistance apparently had become completely paralyzed. Their fighting spirit seemed to be broken, and the only resistance—to the extent that you even can speak of such a thing—seemed to be highly incoherent.’⁹⁷

Soldiers from the U.S. 28th Infantry Division giving way before the German advance in the Ardennes in December 1944. (Signal Corps Photo #ETO-HQ-44-30380/Tec 5 Wesley B. Carolan)

The disorderly American retreat in turn caused panic among civilians, who hurriedly packed their belongings on carts, wagons, and bicycles and took to the roads on the same kind of somber trek that has always been the fate of civilians in war. The sleet, the soggy dirt roads, the surrounding waterlogged fields, the rumble of artillery, and the leaden sky above gave the scenes a tragic framing. When the frozen and drenched refugees passed by farms or stottered through small villages on their way to the west, they were frightened even more to venture out on the roads. Over the course of 18 December, the crowds began to fill the streets through Bastogne, where they told the residents that the Germans were ’burning all the villages in their path.’⁹⁸

Soldiers from a German Volksgrenadier-Division on the Western Front advance across a muddy field. Their equipment is typical for the variety of equipment of the German troops at this late stage of the war. The soldier closest to the photographer carries a Sturmgewehr 44 (StuG 44) assault rifle, a revolutionary firearm at the time. The soldier to the left has a Karabiner 98 Kurz 7.92mm repeating rifle. This Mauser-designed gun was the German infantry’s standard rifle during World War II. The gun had good accuracy up to 500 yards, so when equipped with telescopic sights it also could be used by snipers. The soldier to the right carries a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon. (BArch, Picture 183-J28344/Lohrer)

TOWARDS SANKT VITH!

While this took place, the situation looked just as grim to the Americans on the 5. Panzerarmee’s northern flank. After Grenadier-Regiment 294 of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s northern attack force had captured the small German village Auw—four miles northeast of the important Our crossing at Schönberg, on the other side of the current Belgian border—at noon on 16 December, the Germans were halted in this sector. They paused during the night, and in the morning on 17 December, with the help of the StuG IIIs in Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244, managed to break through. Thereby, this force was advancing in the rear of U.S. 106th Infantry Division ‘s 422nd Infantry Regiment. From Auw, the Germans worked their way westwards along narrow paths winding between rolling fields until they arrived at Andler at the Our, barely three miles farther to the west. This thrust took the Americans completely by surprise. In Andler, they had nothing more than a Troop (company) from the 32nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (approximately the equivalent of an armored reconnaissance battalion) without any heavier equipment than a handful of M8 armored cars. After a brief skirmish, the Germans were masters of the tiny village.

The 18. Volksgrenadier-Division now approached Schönberg from two directions. From Andler in the north came Grenadier-Regiment 294, and from Bleialf in the south came Grenadier-Regiment 293, personally led by the divisional commander, Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn. Both of these forces were supported by assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244.

Steep slopes, covered by thick forest, rose on the right side of the narrow road from Bleialf to Schönberg, creating ideal conditions for an ambush. But the demoralized American soldiers passed at full speed, heading towards the looming Our crossing at Schönberg. Corporal Minturn T. Wright from the 106th Infantry Division recounts, ’The guys thought they had let the Army down and endangered every other outfit in the line by being driven back. All of us had read the stories from Anzio and we heard at Camp Atterbury in Indiana how bad the beaches were on D Day. We knew that no American soldiers had retreated since the Kasserine Pass, and we had a feeling we’d failed in our first test.’⁹⁹

A column of American POWs are herded off on a road in the Ardennes on 18 December 1944. German 18. Volksgrenadier-Di-vision captured Schönberg with its bridge over the Our through a lightning attack on 17 December 1944, and thus had cut off most of U.S. 106th Infantry Division, including its support units, on the river’s eastern side. The operation was led by Generalmajor Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn, who earned fame as an expert of maneuver warfare. (NARA, 111-SC-198240)

U.S. 589th Field Artillery Battalion was about to establish new positions with its towed guns south of Schönberg when an officer suddenly came running, shouting, ’March Order! Get out of here, the Germans are coming!’ By that time, the first assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244 already were entering the northern outskirts of Schönberg, just behind the church. It was the gray morning of 17 December, and the clock on the church tower showed a quarter to nine as the first StuG IIIs rumbled in among retreating American vehicles at the crossroads between the little church and the bridge, in completely chaotic scenes. One of the gunners of the 589th Field Artillery Battalion, Sergeant Randolph C. Pierson, had just stepped from his truck in Schönberg when the German fighting vehicles appeared. Pierson desperately rushed for an American truck that was running towards the stone bridge at full speed. The truck slowed down, allowing Pierson to hang on to the tailgate, where four strong arms grabbed him. He heard a sharp voice ordering the driver to ’hit it.’ The truck skidded down along the icy road to the bridge over the Our. The last thing the men on the truck saw before they rounded the curve was the black outline of a Sturmgeschütz III on the road behind them.¹⁰⁰

Meanwhile the artillery battalion’s next group of vehicles came speeding into Schönberg. When they reached the crest of the downhill leading into the town and straight on to the stone bridge, the driver of the first truck saw a Sturmgeschütz III standing in the middle of the intersection in front of the bridge. Apparently, the German crew failed to observe the Americans, because in the next moment the assault gun departed in a cloud of blue exhaust fumes and disappeared around a corner. An officer called on the American column, ’Let’s go!’ But when they came down the hill, they saw another Sturmgeschütz III in position next to one of the houses in the village. Some of the American vehicles managed to escape at full speed across the bridge, but on the other side of the river they faced another Sturmgeschütz III with its barrel pointing straight at them. Corporal J. Don Holtzmuller and some of his comrades dashed from the truck before it was blown to bits by a shell from the tank destroyer. The game was over for these Americans, who stood up in the ditch with their hands above their heads. Holtzmuller remembers that the Germans searched the Americans’ pockets and took their provisions, watches, cigarettes, and other stuff that they found useful. Then they pointed up the hill and told the prisoners to ’start marching in the direction of Germany.’

With Schönberg and its stout stone bridge over the Our undamaged in German hands, the 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments—two-thirds of Major General Jones’ 106th Infantry Division—were trapped east of the Our, in the area between Bleialf and Roth. Along with support units—five artillery battalions and elements of the 14th Cavalry—probably more than ten thousand American soldiers, a large number of artillery pieces and as many as one hundred and fifty tanks and tank destroyers were caught in the sack.

The German units that held these forces encircled, were significantly inferior, both numerically and in terms of heavy equipment: General Hoffmann-Schönborn had assigned no more than three to four thousand men against the encircled Americans. But the enveloped Americans were completely unaware of this. Instead of assembling for a counter-attack at least in order to test the strength of the surrounding German forces, they remained inactive, waiting for the promised rescue from the 7th Armored Division and Combat Command B of the 9th Armored Division. They also expected the Air Force to show up and clear up the situation soon—after all, the skies had cleared at least to some extent. They still could not imagine that they would be utterly defeated.

In general, the bad weather persisted, although it was slightly better than on the previous day. On this 17 December, the fighter-bombers of the 9th Air Force made strong attempts to support the hard-pressed ground forces, carrying out a total of 647 sorties over the course of the day. But the Germans had a new surprise in store for these pilots. The Allies had no idea what a large force the Luftwaffe Commander Göring had assembled for the support of the offensive. All in all, the German fighter aviation on the Western Front made about 650 combat sorties on this day, with ’Jabo-Jagd’—to fight Allied fighter-bombers—as the main task.¹⁰¹ The fliers of the 9th Air Force had not seen that many German aircraft in the air for a long time, and were completely off guard.

Time and again, American fighter-bombers found themselves bounced by German fighters and had to jettison their bombs in order to defend themselves. For example, the twin-engine Lockheed Lightning fighter-bombers of U.S. 474th Fighter Group performed two missions on this day: During the first one, they were attacked by seventeen Messerschmitt Bf 109s from the Luftwaffe fighter group I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 11, which forced them to jettison their bombs, with an unaccomplished mission as a result.¹⁰² On the next mission, the same unit took off to attack a bridge in the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s area, but was intercepted by Focke Wulf 190s from two entire Luftwaffe fighter groups—I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 26, and IV. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 54—and lost four of their eight Lightnings.

But these missions also were quite costly to the German air units themselves. When the fighter pilots of I. Gruppe/ Jagdgeschwader 11 returned from the first encounter with the 474th Fighter Group on that day, nine Bf 109s were missing, while only four Lightnings were reported downed. During its next air combat, the 474th Fighter Group managed, despite its numerical disadvantage, to shoot down three Focke Wulf 190s.¹⁰³ In total, the aerial activity on the Western Front on 17 December 1944 cost a loss of eighty-one German and thirty-six Allied fighter planes.¹⁰⁴ However, the Luftwaffe pilots generally managed to accomplish their task—to cover their ground troops against Allied air attacks.

Not least through this, the German ground troops were able to prevent the American armored reinforcements from arriving in time to bail out the enveloped U.S. forces. At the 106th Infantry Division’s headquarters in the Sankt Josef monastery in Sankt Vith, Major General Jones urged the 7th Armored Division to put in ’an immediate attack east from Sankt Vith to take and hold Schönberg in order to provide an escape corridor for the two surrounded combat teams.’¹⁰⁵ But due to various reasons, such a relief operation was never undertaken. The American armored division’s after action report noted:

’The east route was cut by the enemy [the 6. SS-Panzerarmee] south of Malmedy between Division Headquarters and Division Artillery, necessitating the latter and all following elements to turn back and place themselves on the west route in rear of the troops already moving thereon. This was successfully accomplished, but resulted in a considerable delay in the arrival of the artillery to its firing positions. Traffic on the west route continued to roll fairly well until noon on the 17th, then it was slowed by congestion resulting from the ever thickening stream of friendly troops flowing west and northwest from the threatened Poteau - Vielsalm - Beho - St. Vith area. Towards nightfall the traffic congestion increased, and the 7th Division column stretching from Poteau through Vielsalm, Trois Ponts, and Stavelot to the north was brought to a complete standstill.’¹⁰⁶

Combat Command B of the 9th Armored Division—the other unit sent south to support the 106th Infantry Division—also ran into the 6. SS Panzerarmee in the north, but was fortunate enough to escape a skirmish with its most powerful element, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, with relatively modest losses. Still, this unit would not either be able to arrive in time to save the 106th Infantry Division. When these American armored forces eventually reached Sankt Vith, the situation in this sector had changed drastically, owing to the initiative of a German general.

General Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn commanded German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division during Ardennes Offensive. Hoffmann-Schönborn was one of the ablest generals on both sides during the Ardennes Battle. He had been awarded with the Knight’s Cross after his battalion had breached the Metaxas Lin in Greece in April of 1941. On the Eastern Front in 1941, he distinguished himself in several battles, for which he received the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross, but he also was wounded in December 1941. Hoffmann-Schönborn returned to front service only when he in September 1944 was assigned to command the new 18. Volksgrenadier-Division. In February 1945 he was appointed deputy commander of the 5. Panzerarmee, and in this position he was seriously wounded on the Eastern Front three weeks before the war ended. Hoffmann-Schönborn passed away in 1970. (BArch, Bild 183-B7259)

Generalmajor Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn was wellknown as a master of mobile warfare. As a battalion commander in August 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, he managed to capture an important bridge over River Dnepr at Gornostaypol through a lightning attack before the Russians were able to destroy it, thereby securing the continued march towards Kiev. Now he tried to ’snatch’ Sankt Vith through a similar ’coup.’ On the previous day, Hoffmann-Schönborn reckoned that he would not be able to reach Sankt Vith—the road junction that would play a significant role in the continued advance towards the Meuse—until on 18 December, but now it looked as though this could be attained through a bold lightning attack. For this purpose he ordered the leading elements of Grenadier-Regiment 293 and Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244 that had reached Schönberg—three assault guns and about two platoons of grenadiers—to immediately continue across the river and on to Sankt Vith. Hoffmann-Schönborn himself took the lead.¹⁰⁷ The infantrymen mounted captured American CCKW trucks, and the vehicle column hurriedly set off.*

It all went so fast that for an hour or so, there barely were any German troops in Schönberg. The confusion was complete when a column of three U.S. M8 armored cars and six jeeps from the 14th Cavalry came racing at full speed behind Hoffmann-Schönborn’s small force. These managed to get across the bridge in Schönberg, and now they attempted to reach the American lines on the other side of the river. The American cavalrymen had no chance to avoid the Germans on the narrow forest road, and a Sturmgeschütz III knocked out three armored cars and five jeeps in quick succession.

By that time, there were almost no American forces available to counter the German advance towards Sankt Vith. At Heuem, a mile and a half west of Schönberg, Hoffmann-Schönborn’s three Sturmgeschütz IIIs ran into three of U.S. 168th Engineer Combat Battalion’s tanks. In a brief firefight, two of these were set ablaze while the third managed to escape.¹⁰⁸ Presumably, it was this tank’s crew that radioed a warning to the Americans in Sankt Vith about Hoffmann-Schönborn’s thrust—a message that was passed on to the 9th Air Force.

As so often came to be the case in the latter part of the Ardennes Battle, it would be the U.S. artillery and aviation that saved the situation at Sankt Vith, at least on this 17 December 1944. While the StuG IIIs fought back the small American force at Heuem, Major Richard Leary came buzzing in the air in his Thunderbolt fighter-bomber. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was one of the largest and heaviest single-engine aircraft of World War II. At a distance, the chubby P47 looked like a giant bumblebee. Even though the heavy aircraft had a turning radius that would cause the proponents of turning combats to faint, it surpassed most German fighters in terms of speed.* By striking down from above on German formations instead of allowing themselves to get drawn into a turning combat, the U.S. Thunderbolt pilots had gained the opponent’s healthy respect. But it was in the role as a fighter-bomber that the Thunderbolt reaped its greatest successes. With a 500lb. bomb under each wing, and eight .50 in (12.7mm) machine guns, the aircraft could inflict considerable damage on the enemy on the ground, and its rugged construction made it able to sustain a lot of fire. ’For the low-level job we had to do, where you couldn’t keep out of the light flak and small arms fire, there wasn’t a better plane than the P-47,’ said one of the Thunderbolt fighter-bomber pilots, Don Clark. ’It would keep going with damage with which other types would have fallen out of the sky.’¹⁰⁹

Major Leary knew only too well what the ground troops had to endure. A few months earlier he had been wounded by German gunfire when he visited the 3rd Armored Division. Back in action after a two-month hospital stay, Leary was determined to pay back. When he called ground control over the radio to ask for a target, he received a detailed response: ’Our troops are holding Saint Vith, but there is a very strong enemy column about a mile and a half away. If you can knock out the leading tank and slow them, we may be able to hold the town tonight.’¹¹⁰

With adrenalin pulsing in his veins, Leary shoved the control stick forward and went down beneath the thick clouds. There he saw the great forests east of Sankt Vith, and after a little searching, he discovered a clearing, and there, on the road to Sankt Vith which became visble, was a column of vehicles heading for the west. This must be the German column! Without hesitation, Leary dived down with rattling machine guns and dropped his bombs. These exploded in huge fireballs while the gray-clad soldiers on the road below scattered in all directions. Now it was Leary’s time to strike back! No less than eight times, he floated down on the road with blazing machine guns. When he finally departed, he could see a whole series of black smoke columns rising from the shattered German column.

For this effort, Major Leary received America’s third highest military award for valor in action, the Silver Star. It certainly was well deserved. His persistent low-level attacks took a heavy toll on Hoffmann-Schönborn’s little advance force. The British Ultra code breakers intercepted a desperate German request for immediate fighter cover against enemy fighter-bombers that attacked the force that was advancing towards Sankt Vith.¹¹¹ But when nothing of the kind appeared, Hoffmann-Schönborn ordered what remained of his force to leave the road and instead push forward across the terrain—which was easier said than done. The left (south) side of the road could not be taken, since it descended quite steeply down to the gorge of the Eiter brook. So the vehicles and soldiers had to climb the wooded slopes to the right. There they labored forward with utmost exertion through the dense spruce and deciduous forests, in hilly terrain where large snow drifts remained, despite the thaw and rain. It was only in the evening that the exhausted men reached the western end of the forest. They made their way down a steep slope to the mill at Wallerode, and then up the hill to the west. Only a mile away, Sankt Vith lay nestled like in a huge pot, surrounded by large heights, but when the Germans began to receive a fairly heavy artillery fusillade from the west, Hoffmann-Schönborn decided to postpone the attack until reinforcements arrived. From Wallerode he sent a radio message that hardly served to please the 5. Panzerarmee’s commander, General von Manteuffel, ’Heavy resistance east of Sankt Vith!’

However, through his bold thrust, Hoffmann-Schönborn made such an impression on Major General Jones that he decided to hold back the reinforcements that arrived during the following night, instead of immediately despatching them to break the encirclement of his 106th Infantry Division. At eight thirty in the evening on 17 December, the 7th Armored Division received a report stating that there were ‘as many as sixty enemy tanks in our sector.’¹¹² The American perception that Sankt Vith was heavily threatened was further reinforced during the following night, when a task force from the 6. SS-Panzerarmee made a thrust from the north.

As we have seen, U.S. 7th Armored Division’s regrouping to Sankt Vith along the ’eastern route’ from Malmedy in the northwest was halted by the advancing 6. SS-Panzerarmee. Over the course of 17 December, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s I. SS-Panzerkorps covered twelve miles during its advance to the west. En route to the 106th Infantry Division’s area of operations in the afternoon on 17 December, a small force from U.S. 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command B was eliminated in Ligneuville, ten miles northwest of Sankt Vith. While the bulk of the SS Army continued westwards, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen veered to the southwest on the evening of 17 December. Commanded by SS-Standartenführer Max Hansen, this task force consisted of 4,500 men with 750 vehicles, including about twenty Panzer IV/70 tank destroyers. After them followed 1,500 men and 150 vehicles from another SS task force.

Hence, a considerable threat from the north suddenly loomed against Sankt Vith. This soon became painfully clear to Colonel Mark Devine, the thick-skinned cavalry colonel who now was ordered to set up defensive positions at Recht, five miles north-northwest of Sankt Vith, with what remained of his 14th Cavalry Group. But Hansen’s force made it there before the Americans, and in the evening on 17 December, Devine’s Headquarters Company clashed with a scouting group of the SS force. In the ensuing fight, all of the American vehicles were knocked out. Devine and another officer escaped to the adjacent village of Poteau on foot. When he later reported the incident, Major General Jones refused to believe that there were any German troops that far to the west, and promptly dismissed Devine from his command.

Just as the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve was approaching Sankt Vith, it received instructions from the divisional commander, Brigadier General Robert Hasbrouck, to hold Recht ’for as long as possible.’ By that time, the American unit had a very unclear image of the situation, as displayed by its after action report for the night of 17 December: ’At midnight of the 17th December, Combat Command R was almost completely ignorant of the enemy situation. Having received increasing numbers of reports of enemy in the vicinity of Recht and information indicating that the 14th Cavalry Group had been withdrawn from their north, northeast and east, Combat Command R increased local security with all available personnel and equipment. After continued reports of enemy activity, including an ambush 1-1 1/2 miles east of Recht, one tank company of the 17th Tank Battalion moved into town to outpost to the west, north and east, supported by existing outposts.’¹¹³

In full darkness, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen’s advance force pushed vigorously into Recht, striking from the high terrain in the north and the east. The savage battle lasted only forty-five-minutes. At 0245 in the morning on 18 December, the American force was ordered to pull back.¹¹⁴Lieutenant Colonel Fred M. Warren, the acting commander of Combat Command Reserve, 7th Armored Division, had realized that he was close to losing an entire company of medium tanks.¹¹⁵ Abandoning four Shermans, the Americans withdrew.¹¹⁶

Having waited a while for the arrival of additional elements from his task force, SS-Standartenführer Hansen decided to press on down the road towards Poteau—two miles southwest of Recht—before sunrise on 18 December. In the meantime, the remnants of U.S. 14th Cavalry Group had assembled at that place under the command of Major James L. Mayes. He received instructions to counter-attack in conjunction with the 17th Tank Battalion of Combat Command R, 7th Armored Division, to retake Recht. At seven in the morning on 18 December, the two opposing units clashed on the main road north of Poteau. What is often described as a German ambush, in fact was a pitched battle between two mechanized forces.

The Germans, who caught sight of the American vehicles when these came out from behind the trees at the road bend some five hundred yards north of Poteau, were first to react. Moreover, their Panzer IV/70s were clearly superior to the American equipment. The Panzer IV/70 was a Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyer that instead of the Jagdpanzer IV’s usual 75mm L/48 gun (as on the Panzer IV) had the longer and more powerful 75mm L/70 gun, like the Panther tank. With their 15.75-in wide tracks, the Panzer IV/70s could leave the road embankment quickly, and moved out into the terrain to maneuver around the U.S. vehicles. For the wheel-driven American M8 armored cars of the 14th Cavalry Group, this was not quite as easy.

William Barton, gunner on one of these armored cars, recalls how the first shell fired by the Germans hit and killed both the radio operator Charly Yost and the driver, and wounded Ray Bacon in the turret. While Barton went into position on the outskirts of Poteau, he witnessed how the Germans quickly broke up the American task force. He remembers how a battery of 8-in M1 howitzers from the 740th Field Artillery Battalion that had got stuck in the marshy fields southwest of Poteau was riddled by German fire, with seven gunners getting killed and the remainder abandoning the seven guns. At least ten of 14th Cavalry Group’s armored cars were destroyed or captured by the Germans, and on the field to his left, Barton saw ’perhaps ten Sherman tanks lined up as if for parade inspection (CCR 7th AD).’¹¹⁷ Following a bitter struggle, the Americans retreated from Poteau. All that managed to escape was a tank, a tank destroyer, three armored cars, and a couple of jeeps.¹¹⁸

German soldiers among captured American equipment near Sankt Vith in December 1944. The Germans were astonished at the large amounts of heavy equipment, often in full working order, that the U.S. Army abandoned during the retreat in the Ardennes in December 1944. The photo also clearly illustrates the weather conditions in the Ardennes during the first days of the German offensive. (NARA, III-SC-198246)

But in the meantime, the promised U.S. reinforcements arrived at Sankt Vith. On 18 December, a considerable force had been gathered to the town’s defense: The tattered remnants of the units that had retreated from the east—elements of the 106th Infantry Division’s 424th Infantry Regiment, the 28th Infantry Division’s 112th Infantry Regiment, and the 14th Cavalry Group—were joined by the entire 7th Armored Division and Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division. Altogether, these units mustered over 300 Sherman tanks, plus substantial artillery. In addition, some quite skilled American generals arrived at Saint Vith.

Brigadier General William Hoge, the commander of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division, was known to be an experienced and brave officer. He had been awarded for valour in combat already during World War One. During the landing at Omaha Beach on D Day, he led a special task force of engineer troops. The armored battalion in Hoge’s combat command, the 14th Tank Battalion, also was the first unit to become equipped with the new M4A3 Sherman armed with the 76mm M1 gun. However, the 9th Armored Division was a relatively ’green’ unit. After the war, William Hoge made the following comment about the men of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division by that time, ’They had more discipline, but we were still short of experienced officers particularly in the higher groups. We had so few that were competent in the battalion grades or anything like that. That was the big problem. The men were all right and willing.’¹¹⁹

The 7th Armored Division had seen action on the Western Front for four months, and had gained much valuable experience at Normandy, at Metz, Holland, and the Roer sector. When the division was sent into the front line in August 1944, it had been characterised as ’a welltrained division with high morale.’¹²⁰ However, it suffered a row of setbacks in Lorraine (at River Seille) and in the Netherlands in September and October. Major General Lindsay McDonald Silvester, who had commanded the 7th Armored Division since it was formed in March 1942, was replaced by Brigadier General Robert W. Hasbrouck, the previous commander of Combat Command B, on 31 October 1944.¹²¹ Hasbrouck was highly versed in military theoretics. He held the title of Professor of Military Science and had previously served inter alia as deputy chief of staff of the 12th Army Group.

Paratroopers from the 3. FaHschirmjäger-Division and soldiers from SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen near Poteau on 18 December 1944. Confidence in victory is clearly written in the faces of these German soldiers. By this time it seemed as though the entire U.S. Army in the Ardennes was on the verge of collapsing. (NARA, III-SC-341648)

Hasbrouck’s successor as commander of the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command B, 44-year-old Brigadier General Bruce Clarke, had previously led Combat Command A of the legendary 4th Armored Division during Patton’s ’sweep’ through France. Major General Jones’ last action as operational commander in Sankt Vith was to take the fateful decision to postpone the intended attack to relieve the troops that had become surrounded to the east of the Our. Then he turned to Brigadier General Clarke and handed over the command of Sankt Vith’s defense to him. This created a quite confusing command structure in the defense of this town: Clarke was lower in rank than Jones, had fewer service years than Hoge, and he of course was subordinate to his own divisional commander, Brigadier General Hasbrouck. It was the latter who on 18 December ordered Colonel Rosebaum’s Combat Command A, 7th Armored Division to attack immediately in order to recapture Poteau.

From Jones’ and Hasbrouck’s viewpoint, the shifting to the defensive at Sankt Vith rather than attempting to relieve the 106th Infantry Division perhaps was the most rational thing to do. If Jones had underestimated the German threat on the first day, he by now clearly understood the magnitude of the disaster that threatened the Americans at Sankt Vith. At that time he could of course not know that this threat was not as acute as he believed. Indeed, according to the original German plan, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen was supposed to continue from Poteau along the road to Vielsalm on River Salm, around five miles southwest of Poteau. Had this been accomplished on 18 December, the fate of the Americans at Sankt Vith would have been sealed. But just when such a victory was within reach, Hansen’s unit ran out of petrol. Supplies of fuel were hardly to be expected within the nearest hours—which to some extent was due to the SS troops themselves. In order to move on faster, SS-Standartenführer Hansen had split up his column so that the I. SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung with its twenty-one Panzer IV/70s took the road through Andler, just northeast of Schönberg. Thus, the SS clambered into the 5. Panzerarmee’s operation area—and even claimed the roads that the LXVI. Armeekorps needed for its advance towards Sankt Vith.

The huge German vehicle columns that began to move on the roads east of the Our over the course of 17 December soon created huge congestions that in a classical way slowed down until large parts moved forward at a snail’s pace. Hoffmann-Schönborn’s possibilities to receive reinforcements were additionally hampered by American fighter bombers that bombed Schönberg, where several houses were hit and rubble partially blocked the village street.¹²² The traffic chaos in the 5. Panzerarmee’s rear area was compounded by the often extremely arrogant SS men who forced their way onto the already overcrowded roads. To his despair, Oberstleutnant Moll of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division could establish that ’all attempts to move ahead were hampered by the insubordination of SS officers who refused to obey any orders from army officers.’ According to Moll, the SS ‘applied their own traffic organs who halted the Army’s vehicles, and in some cases even forced them to drive into the ditch, so that their own columns could pass.’¹²³

General Walther Lucht, the commander of the LXVI. Armeekorps, and his chief of staff had to make it to the area in order to interfere personally. ’In order to liquidate the road jam occasioned by vehicles of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee,’ Lucht wrote, ’a barrier was established near Schönberg, where vehicles were allowed to pass only when the road ahead was free. In spite of that, SS formations again and again tried to circumvent the regulations, and, on several occasions either the Commanding General or the C-of-St had to take energetic measures including arrests.’¹²⁴ This also explains why Generalfeldmarschall Model personally participated in the traffic control in this area—a fact that has puzzled several historians.

While waiting to get through the Wehrmacht area, some SS men vented their frustration on a group of eleven soldiers of the African-American 333rd Field Artillery Battalion who had been cut off behind the German lines near Wereth, just north of Andler. The SS men were seen leading away the Americans, and afterward all eleven were found in a ditch, bearing signs of torture and shot to death.* As far as the traffic jam on the German side is concerned, the situation was pretty much the same all along the front. From the north to the south, the demands on the narrow dirt roads were just too great. On 18 December, the temperature also rose to 39 degrees, and heavy rainshowers turned these dirt roads into pure streaks of mud. At bottlenecks such as hairpin bends and bridges, huge traffic jams were created, and when a larger vehicle broke down or was forced to halt for any other reason, a road could get totally blocked, causing an abrupt halt extending several miles backwards. The Germans could only say a prayer of gratitude that the Luftwaffe and the bad weather kept most Allied fighter-bombers at a safe distance!** The fact that large parts of the 106th Infantry Division’s artillery had been destroyed of course also was of great importance to the long vehicle columns that snaked toward Schönberg. Another reason for the traffic jams on the German side was the decision on 17 December to bring one of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s reserve divisions, the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen,’ forward to the front, where it would be subjected to the I. SS-Panzerkorps.¹²⁵

The 9. SS-Panzer-Division took its name from the medieval German Imperial dynasty of Hohenstaufen, where, among others, Friedrich Barbarossa (whose name was lent to the plan for Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union) was included. The division was formed late in the war by unskilled laborers of the Reich Labor Service, and in the spring of 1944 it was deployed to the Eastern Front to face the Red Army’s offensive in southern Poland. There it sustained terrible losses. The division had barely recovered from these when it was redeployed to Normandy in the summer of 1944. Having participated also in the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944, merely 7,000 of the division’s original 16,000 troops remained. The resulting gaps were filled with inadequately trained recruits who had received perhaps just too much SS indoctrination of heroism and sacrifice in order to become truly professional soldiers. This would put its mark on the ’Hohenstaufen’ Division’s operations in the Ardennes Battle. As was the case with other SS divisions, it was quite richly equipped, and on 16 December 1944 it mustered nearly one hundred tanks, twenty-eight StuG III assault guns, and twenty-one Jagdpanzer IVs.¹²⁶ Since July 1944, the division had been commanded by Sylvester Stadler—who at the age of only thirty-three on 14 June 1944 was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, thus becoming one of the war’s youngest generals. In December 1944 he wore the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves for his accomplishments in the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front.

However, this division immediately found itself in serious trouble on the bad and clogged up roads leading to the front. A report to Generalleutnant Krebs, chief of staff in Heeresgruppe B, is quite telling of the situation, ’Road Arhuette - Dollendorf blocked by stragglers of the 9. SS-Panzer-Division. Strict traffic control and the immediate clearing of the vehicles off the road is necessary.’¹²⁷

In Poteau, the advance force of SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen received orders at two o’clock in the afternoon on 18 December to pull back to the main force in Recht, two miles up in the northeast. Colonel Rosebaum’s Combat Command A, 7th Armored Division reached Poteau just as Hansen’s men were about to evacuate. At five in the afternoon on 18 December, Poteau was back in American hands.¹²⁸

Frustrated that the march towards Sankt Vith seemed to have stalled, both Model and von Manteuffel visited the headquarters of the LXVI. Armeekorps to discuss the situation with the Corps commander General Lucht. The 5. Panzerarmee now faced two difficulties. Since the best roads in the area converged in Sankt Vith, the strong American force at this place blocked the 5. Panzerarmee’s continued advance. Additionally, the region’s only east-west railroad line—absolutely indispensable if the Germans would have a chance to support their army once it was across the Meuse—ran through the town, so Sankt Vith had to be taken at all costs. The second difficulty was constituted by the American 106th Infantry Division, which the Germans had enveloped east of River Our. In view of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s relatively limited strength, these circumstances amounted to a significant problem for the Germans. Model and von Manteuffel saw the risk of losing everything—not just the possibility of seizing Sankt Vith and the annihilation of the encircled enemy units, but the entire 18. Volksgrenadier-Division could also be lost if the Americans pulled themselves together and counter-attacked, both from Sankt Vith and from within the ’cauldron’ east of the Our.

It was quite clear that the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division needed to be supported by other units, so Model decided to employ the Führer Begleit Brigade from the 5. Panzerarmee’s reserve in order to flush out the resistance at Sankt Vith and advance to Vielsalm on River Salm, slightly more than ten miles farther to the west.¹²⁹

But when the Führer Begleit Brigade’s more than ninety tanks and assault guns, accompanied by hundreds of other motor vehicles, entered the roads to the front on 18 December, it made the traffic situation immensely worse. The Führer Begleit Brigade’s commander, Oberst Otto Remer, wrote, ’As for myself, I drove ahead on the designated road and did not reach the forward command post of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division in Wallerroder Mühle until about morning. The ordered road of advance was completely jammed and in bad condition. Traveling off the road was impossible, even for tracked vehicles. I therefore reckoned with a considerable delay of the march movement and reported this fact to the Corps.’¹³⁰

At nine in the evening, the advance force of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division was in position on the forested hill southeast of Sankt Vith, with other elements, and the troops of Führer Begleit Brigade that had arrived thus far, at Hünningen, a mile northwest of the town.¹³¹ At the meeting between Model, von Manteuffel, and Lucht at the headquarters of the LXVI. Armeekorps, it was decided to launch all available forces in an attempt to seize Sankt Vith on 19 December.

German soldiers at Poteau. (NARA, III-SC-341641)

(NARA, III-SC-341616)

POTEAU, MONDAY 18 DECEMBER 1944

On 18 December 1944, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen, supported by paratroopers from the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division, wiped out a U.S. mechanized force north of Poteau. A couple of German war correspondents arriving at the scene of these events shortly afterward, took some shots that have gone down in documentary film history.

The battle is over and SS men and German paratroopers appear to be searching the area for hiding American soldiers. In front, an American M3 is burning fiercely. (NARA, III-SC-198252)

(NARA, III-SC-198253)

Dressed in winter greatcoats, these German soldiers move along the waterlogged grass field beneath the road north of Poteau, where the combat took place. This image clearly shows the foggy and damp weather, with a temperature just a few degrees above the freezing point, that dominated during the first days of the Ardennes Offensive. This weather prevented the Allied aviation from interfering at any larger scale. (NARA, III-SC-19572)

Triumph and fatigue is painted in the face of this SS soldier, who has endured 48 hours of uninterrupted advance. (NARA, III-SC-197569)

An SS-Schütze (private), to the left, and two paratroopers from the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division enjoy their war booty in the shape of American cigarettes. That the SS soldier is a machine gunner is obvious from the cartridge belts he is carrying. He also is wearing a captured U.S. rain poncho. His personal weapon is a Pistole 640(b), the German designation of the American 9 mm Browning Hi-Power pistol that was made on license by the Belgian arms producer FN. In the background, an American M8 armored car from the 14th Cavalry Group. (NARA, III-SC-198249)

In the background, an American 3-in M5 anti-tank gun. Behind this, the wreck of an M3 half-track with a .50-in machine gun above right front seat. Far to the right, a jeep that obviously has been hastily abandoned. This photo was taken by a German war reporter, a so-called PK photographer, and was meant to illustrate the successful offensive in the Ardennes. That the photo is arranged is evident by the soldier who quite unconcerned walks along the ditch to the left. (NARA, SC-III-198250)

Another arranged ’combat photo.’ However, the burning American vehicle in the background is from the actual combat, which nevertheless was over when this photo was taken. (NARA, III-SC-341618)

The row of destroyed or captured U.S. military vehicles extended for more than a hundred yards along the road north of Poteau. (NARA, III-SC-341639)

SS soldiers and paratroopers comb through the area, searching for hiding U.S. soldiers. (NARA, III-SC-341616)

With victory in sight? The German troops at Poteau knew little of what awaited them further on in their offensive. (NARA, III-SC-341647)

(NARA, III-SC-341615)

This image shows the steep roadside at the road north of Poteau, which gave the Americans difficulties during the combat, while the German Panzer IV/70s rapidly could descend down on the surrounding grass fields. (NARA, SC-III-341614)

Three of the 14th Cavalry Group’s knocked out or abandoned M8 armored cars. In the distance can be seen what appears to be one or two knocked out tanks from Combat Command Reserve, 7th Armored Division. (NARA, III-SC-341642)

THE TANK BATTLE AT BASTOGNE

On 5. Panzerarmee’s southern flank, the German advance proceeded at a considerably higher pace, even though the traffic jams in the rear area were nearly as severe here as farther north. On the third day of the offensive, Major General Cota’s U.S. 28th Infantry Division was more or less neutralized. This division’s 110th Regimental Combat Team, in the center, had been largely wiped out, along with most of the 707th Tank Battalion, in Clervaux. On the left flank, German 116. Panzer-Division drove the 28th Infantry Division’s 112th Infantry northwards, in the direction of Sankt Vith. On the right flank, the 109th Infantry retreated to the south and southwest. As Cota and his headquarters withdrew to the west, he literally was a general without troops!

Into the gap that had been torn in the American lines, General von Lüttwitz’ XLVII. Panzerkorps now poured, with von Lauchert’s 2. Panzer-Division to the right and Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division to the left. Kampfgruppe von Fallois—Major Gerd von Fallois’ reinforced armored reconnaissance battalion of Panzer Lehr—crossed River Clerve at Drauffelt at nine in the morning on 18 December.¹³² The armored Kampfgruppe 902 followed duly. The goal was set on River Meuse and the road junction of Bastogne.

Belgium, December 1944. These American soldiers have dug their fox holes behind a hedge to avoid detection by the advancing German troops. (NARA, SC 199254)

The commander of U.S. 9th Armored Division, Major General John W. Leonard, was a former student of the so-called ’class the stars fell on’ at West Point, along with, among others, the prospective Supreme Commander Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, who now commanded U.S. 12th Army Group. But when Leonard’s ’green’ 9th Armored Division arrived at First Army and VIII Corps in October 1944, it was dispersed to different sections of the Ardennes where its men were to acquire combat experience. Only one of the division’s three Combat commands—CCA, opposed to the southernmost German assault forces—stood under Leonard’s direct command when Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt struck on 16 December 1944. Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division was subordinate to the V Corps at the Roer dams, but—as we have seen—it was immediately diverted southwards, to Sankt Vith, where it was subordinated to the 7th Armored Division.

At the exit road at Feitsch, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Harper positioned Sherman tanks from the 2nd Tank Battalion among the pine trees in the forest clearing that lines the main road’s west side. (NARA, SC 196963)

Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division, under Colonel Joseph H. Gilbreth, actually was the only American unit available to meet the full brunt of XLVII. Panzerkorps’ attack towards Bastogne on the morning of 18 December. This of course was a totally inadequate force. Moreover, ’B’ Company of CCR’s 2nd Tank Battalion had been heavily decimated in Clervaux on 17 December. As if the dispersed state of the division was not enough, Colonel Gilbreth received an order from Corps commander Middleton in the evening on 17 December to divide his weakened Combat Command into three different task forces instead of concentrating the available forces.¹³³ But since there were no natural barriers on the road to Bastogne after Clervaux—the landscape between these two towns is dominated by gently rolling fields and fields without any rivers or mountains—Middleton deemed it necessary to cover a sector as wide as possible.

The most advanced among Gilbreth’s combat groups, Task Force Rose, was sent all the way up to Antonihushof, five miles west of Clervaux. Here, in the middle of vast open fields, the highway from Clervaux joins the wide main road N 12 (National Route 12) which leads from Sankt Vith in the north. The Americans assumed that the Germans would come through here on their way to Bastogne, a quite correct assumption. Task Force Rose, led by Captain Lyle K. Rose, consisted of nineteen Sherman tanks from ‘A’ Company, 2nd Tank Battalion, and the infantry of ’C’ Company, 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion, plus a platoon from the 9th Armored Engineers.¹³⁴

A column Panther tanks on the advance. The German armored spearheads seemed to be impossible to halt as they surged forward on the muddy roads of the Ardennes during the first days of the offensive in December 1944. (BArch, Bild 183-H28153)

Three miles farther down the road, at the exit road at Feitsch, N 12 continued southwards while the N 20 led farther westwards towards Bastogne. At this place, Task Force Harper—the 2nd Tank Battalion’s ’C’ Company and what remained of the tank battalion’s ’B’ Company (which had lost fourteen of its nineteen Shermans in Clervaux), plus ’B’ Company, 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion went into position.¹³⁵ The commander Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Harper, who also led the 2nd Tank Battalion, positioned the tanks among the fir trees in the edge of the forest that lines the road’s west side. Five hundred yards away, the infantry was ordered to dig foxholes. A cold rain was pouring down as the G.I.s put their shovels in the wet mud. When the holes were completed, it didn’t take long until muddy water stood ankle-high in them.

Another two to three miles farther to the west, Task Force Booth lay in position on the moist hills near the village of Moinet. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Booth, the commander of the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion, this group consisted of Headquarters Company, 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion, two platoons from the 52nd AIB’s ‘A’ Company, a platoon of tank destroyers from the 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and a platoon of Stuart tanks from ‘D’ Company, 2nd Tank Battalion. The orders issued to Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division read routinely, ’Hold on at all costs.’¹³⁶ One of the soldiers in the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion recalls that he overheard Lieutenant Colonel Booth getting informed via radio that ‘you are a sacrifice unit and you will hold your position at all costs.’¹³⁷

What many of these men apprehended as the worst thing, was that no one—neither the officers, nor the NCOs or the ordinary soldiers—had any idea of what awaited them. One of the officers, Major Eugene A. Watts, complained about ’the almost complete lack of dissemination of enemy information,’ and afterwards said, ’The seriousness of the situation occasioned by the enemy breakthrough was never completely realized by us because we did not know until a few hours before contact with the enemy that our positions were being threatened.’¹³⁸

According to certain sources, a small group of heavy Königstiger tanks from schwere Panzer-Abteilung 506 arrived to take the lead in the 2. Panzer-Division’s advance, but this has proved difficult to verify. Both German and U.S. sources suggest that what Captain Rose’s men at half past ten in the morning on 18 December saw emerge on the highway from Clervaux, was nothing but a couple of armored reconnaissance vehicles from Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 2. While anti-tank guns boomed, the American infantry jumped into their foxholes. The German thrust was fought back quite easily, and through the drizzle the Americans could see the enemy vehicles disappear behind a small copse.

After one hour, German reinforcements in the shape of Panzer IV tanks arrived. Covered by a smoke screen, these joined the reconnaissance force, but since the Germans still lacked the required infantry support, no attempt was yet made to attack the American positions. As we have seen, the German march through Clervaux was hampered by an American force that held out in the fortress on the hill in the center of the town. At noon on 18 December, a Panther tank sped up the hill leading to the castle and crashed right through the wooden gates. A lone 707th Tank Battalion Sherman which stood in position in the courtyard tried to knock out the attacker, but failed. In the next moment, the Panther’s gun had put the American tank out of commission. A hit in the turret’s race ring decided the fate of the crew. Inside the castle, the brave garrison realized that the game was over. A white flag was hung out through one of the windows.

A German PaK 40 anti-tank gun in action during the Ardennes Offensive. (Horst Helmus)

At three in the afternoon on 18 December, Oberst von Lauchert, the 2. Panzer-Division’s commander, had brought forward a force sufficient to launch an attack against Antonihushof. The Germans charged from three directions, with Panzer IVs and Panther tanks as well as assault guns and infantry. Seven Shermans were knocked out immediately, and this caused the U.S. infantry to panic and disperse in all directions.¹³⁹

Via radio, Captain Rose requested permission to withdraw, but Middleton personally repeated the order to hold at all costs. The rain-laden air at the intersection was filled with thick black smoke where red, flickering tongues of flame loomed from burning Sherman tanks and other military vehicles. German shells ceaselessly hit into this inferno. An American howitzer battery abandoned its positions. Captain Rose realized that the game was over. With his five last remaining tanks and a couple of SPGs, he retreated down the slope north of the intersection. The after action report of the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion reads, ’Many of our vehicles were destroyed and our casualty rate was high. Aproximately 50% of the personnel at this position managed to withdraw by foot and in vehicles and attached themselves to the task force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Harper.’¹⁴⁰

Oberst Meinrad von Lauchert commanded German 2. Panzer-Division during the Ardennes Offensive. Von Lauchert, considered as one of Germany’s best panzer unit commanders, was appointed to this position as late as the day before the offensive. His panzer division came to take the lead during Operation ‘Herbstnebel.’ After the war, he served as a German specialist adviser during the production of the famous film ‘Battle of the Bulge’ from 1965. The film’s German protagonist, colonel Martin Hessler (Robert Shaw) is clearly inspired by the German panzer colonel. Meinrad von Lauchert passed away in 1987.

(BArch, Bild146-1973-005-16/ Dr. Paul Wolff)

While the German armor and the bulk of the infantry were occupied fighting this battle, the 2. Panzer-Division’s armored reconnaissance battalion had continued southwards on N 12, and clashed with Task Force Harper at Feitsch at a quarter to four in the afternoon. Shortly afterward—by which time darkness had set in—the advance force of Panzer-Regiment 3 also could be redeployed against Task Force Harper. Twenty-four German tanks went into position on top of a hill in the fields a few hundred yards to the east of the road.¹⁴¹ At midnight, Oberst von Lauchert gave the signal to attack.

After the war, the Americans concluded that the Germans had used Panther tanks equipped with night sighting devices in this battle.¹⁴² However, according to the commander of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2, Oberst Joachim Gutmann, the reason for the German success was much simpler than that: Since the Americans had lined up their tanks along the edge of a forest on the western side of the road, the Germans simply could aim at the treetops, which stood out clearly against the slightly brighter night sky.¹⁴³ Oberst Gutmann describes the battle:

’The German tanks retained their full mobility and each time they fired their guns they rapidly withdrew down the slope. A full hit on an American tank set this ablaze, whereby we got a clear view of all the enemy tanks in the glare of the flames, while the Americans themselves became so dazzled by the glare that they could not see a thing.’¹⁴⁴ Only three Shermans managed to put up any resistance before the German Panthers and Panzer IVs had shot the entire American armored force to smithereens. ’Within ten minutes,’ Oberst Gutmann wrote, ’24 enemy tanks had been set ablaze and another ten could be captured undamaged. Our own total losses were confined to two tanks’¹⁴⁵

The German armor surged forward, towards the American infantry, setting their vehicles on fire with tracer ammunition from their machine guns, and then started to mow down the U.S. soldiers in the glare of the fire. Among the Americans who got killed here were the commander of the 2nd Tank Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Harper, and the commander of ’B’ Company, 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion, Captain Lewie F. Hayse.¹⁴⁶

After the battle. The terrain is littered with the wrecks of knocked out Sherman tanks and other U.S. combat vehicles. (US Army)

While all of this took place, the third combat group of Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division—Task Force Booth at Moinet—had no idea of what was taking place. Indeed, the men could hear the thunder of guns in the east, and in spite of the rainy night the flickering light of the fires on the battlefield could be seen, but this was nothing special to men at war. At six thirty in the evening, Lieutenant Colonel Booth’s reconnaissance patrols reported the sighting of German armor south of the positions held by the combat group.¹⁴⁷ At that stage, Booth had lost radio contact with Colonel Gilbreth, and none of the runners who tried to reach his headquarters in Longvilly had returned.¹⁴⁸ The 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion’s after action report reads, ’Recon. patrols sent out in all directions revealed that we were completely surrounded by enemy armor from the northeast and south by what was estimated as about at least a German Panzer Division. The C.O. decided that the only chance we had was to attempt to escape to the NW and make our way toward Bastogne thru Bourcy.’¹⁴⁹

The vehicles were hastily loaded and then the entire combat group set off on the muddy little dirt road that leads up towards Bourcy, a couple of miles northwest of Moinet. There the Americans clashed with a small German force—probably a reconnaissance patrol from von Lauchert’s division. Following a twenty-minutes firefight, the Germans disappeared and Booth’s men could carry on. They took what they believed to be the road towards Hardigny in northwest (presumably with the intention of continuing to the main road that leads to Bastogne from the north), but apparently they chose the wrong exit in the darkness. Instead, they embarked on the road that led to Tavigny, six miles farther northwest. Thus Task Force Booth was out of the game—in more than one way, as we shall see later.

It may seem as if von Lauchert followed Booth as the 2. Panzer-Division just hours later—when the battle at Feitsch/Allerborn was over—took to the right from the N 20 to follow the same country lane as Booth’s column had used to reach Bourcy. But von Lauchert had set his sights westward—his task was to bypass Bastogne in order to reach the Meuse river in the shortest time possible. Neither Booth nor von Lauchert had a clue about the American build-up that meanwhile took place in Longvilly, barely a thousand yards downhill south of the by now well-worn country lane.

It has been asserted—by among others the well-versed but also occasionally strongly criticized U.S. military historian S.L.A. Marshall—that the U.S. Army lacked a proper infantry reserve on the Western Front in 1944. ¹⁵⁰ However, this is not quite true. Only days before the German attack on 16 December 1944, two brand new American divisions—the 11th Armored and the 75th Infantry Division—were about to be shipped across the English Channel to France. Another two newly formed divisions—the 66th Infantry and the 17th Airborne—were being readied to follow suit in the following weeks.*

This Sherman apparently has received a hit that resulted in an ammunition fire, with the result that the over 30-ton-heavy vehicle has been overthrown. 

(National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

Sherman tanks in combat. (NARA, SC 196413)

But there was a lack of reserves in the sense that these new divisions still were at a great distance from the front lines. The only options left to get new forces to plug in the gaps created by the German attack, was to either bring in units that had recently been taken out of action in order to recuperate after sustaining heavy casualties, or to thin out the lines on other front sectors—which would have the effect that planned offensives had to be aborted. The crisis was of such magnitude that Eisenhower quite soon saw himself compelled to do both.

In the area north of the German breakthrough, the 7th Armored Division and Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division were, as we have seen, regrouped south on 16 December to assist the 106th Infantry Division. During the following two days, first the 30th Infantry Division, and then also the 3rd Armored Division were ordered south towards the northern flank of the breakthrough. Thus the Americans were forced to cancel the offensive against the Roer dams which had cost so much blood, now in vain.

In the area south of the German breakthrough, U.S Third Army was ordered in the evening on 16 December to redeploy its 10th Armored Division, ’Tiger Division,’ to the Bastogne sector, where it would be subordinated to the VIII Corps already on the following day.¹⁵¹Lieutenant General George S. Patton, the Third Army’s hot-tempered commander, only reluctantly agreed to relinquish this division. By that time his full attention was directed at the offensive that was supposed to break into Germany in the Saar Region. Extensive preparations had been made, and according to the plan the attack would open with three days of massive air strikes starting on 21 December.¹⁵² ’It will be the biggest blitz in the Third Army’s history,’ Patton enthusiastically told his staff officers.¹⁵³

The 10th Armored Division was a cornerstone in the planned attack, so the removal of this division—and shortly afterward of several other divisions—effectively meant the death knell to Patton’s offensive plan. When the Superior Commander ’Ike’ Eisenhower informed Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, C-in-C of the 12th Army Group, that Patton would have to give up one of his armored divisions, Bradley commented that this would infuriate Patton. Eisenhower, who occasinally could get quite irritated at Patton’s wilful manners, snapped, ’Tell him that Ike is running this damn war!’ ¹⁵⁴ As Bradley had foreseen, Patton protested vehemently. ’Hell, it’s probably nothing more than a spoiling attack to throw us off balance down here and make us stop this offensive,’ he lamented. Bradley was not entirely sure that Patton was mistaken, but an order was an order. ¹⁵⁵ ’I hate like hell to do it, George,’ he confided, ’but I’ve got to have that division.’¹⁵⁶

At 1320 hrs on 17 December, the 10th Armored Division ’Tiger’ departed for the transfer northwards. Meanwhile, the extent of the German breakthrough began to dawn on the U.S. commanders. When Clervaux in the evening on 17 December appeared to be about to fall, which would mean that the Germans were across the last river on the way to Bastogne, Eisenhower decided to bring in also the XVIII Airborne Corps. The two divisions of this corps rested in Mourmelon and Sissonne in the vicinity of Reims, France, following the bloody battles in the Netherlands in connection with the airborne operation against Arnhem in September, but at 1930 hrs on 17 December, they were ordered to urgently regroup to Bastogne in order to defend this important junction. There they were to be incorporated into Middleton’s VIII Corps. This order, which was sent in clear text over the radio, was picked up by the Germans.

Von Lüttwitz, the commander of German XLVII. Panzerkorps, received a translated version on the evening of 17 December, and reacted with satisfaction. ’If the Americans,’ he said, ’are having to use two formations which have suffered so heavily in battle, that proves that they will not be undertaking any airborne operations in our rear. They can’t have any reserves left if they have to put their best strategic reserve divisions into the battle.’¹⁵⁷ He looked forward to the clash between his XLVII. Panzerkorps and the American XVIII Airborne Corps.

In the course of the next few hours, the situation would prove to be even worse than the Allied Supreme Commander had feared. During the transfer, one of the divisions of the airborne corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, was issued with new orders—instead of deploying to Bastogne, the division was to continue through Bastogne and up towards Houffalize in the north. At that place, MPs were waiting to direct the way to the unit’s new area of deployment, Werbomont—some twelve miles west of Stavelot, which was reached by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s spearhead on the evening of 17 December. The crisis on the Allied side is illustrated by the 82nd Airborne Division, which when it finally arrived at its new destination immediately was hurled against both the 6. SS-Panzerarmee west of Stavelot and the 5. Panzerarmee’s northernmost force in the Sankt Vith area.

Thus, only one of the airborne divisions, the 101st ’Screaming Eagles,’ could be deployed to the defense of Bastogne. Since the commander of this division, Major General Maxwell Taylor, at the moment was in the USA, the division’s artillery commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, came to lead the ’Screaming Eagles’ in the first phase of the Battle of Bastogne.

Due to the mounting crisis, neither U.S. VIII Corps, nor the 101st Airborne Division, could be supported by the whole 10th Armored Division; since the 4th Infantry Division on Patton’s northern flank was heavily beset by German 7. Armee, the 10th Armored Division’s Combat Command A and Combat Command Reserve were vectored to this sector, in order to save the connections between the Third and First armies from getting severed. Hence, only this armored division’s Combat Command B, which was led by the 3rd Tank Battalion’s commander, Colonel William L. Roberts, could be deployed to Bastogne.

When Roberts arrived at the VIII Corps headquarters in the Heintz Barracks in Bastogne at four in the afternoon on 18 December, he was instructed by Middleton to split its armored regiment into three smaller battlegroups. This had been feared by Roberts, but he had no choice but to follow orders.¹⁵⁸ Between seven in the evening on the 18th and midnight, Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division was divided into Team Cherry, Team O’Hara, and Team Desobry, which were sent to the east, the southeast, and the north respectively.

Another visitor at the VIII Corps headquarters in Bastogne that evening was the tough commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, Major General Matthew B. Ridgway. He found ’the gloom inside that headquarters thicker than the fog outside.’ In his memoirs, Ridgway wrote, ’This atmosphere of uncertainty was in no way the fault of General Middleton, a magnificent soldier with a wonderful combat record in two wars. But the most disquieting thing in any war is to be in a completely unknown situation. General Middleton knew that some of his units had been overrun. […] Nearly all his communications with his forward elements were out, and he had no knowledge of where his forces were, nor where the Germans were, nor where they might strike next.’¹⁵⁹

The situation was, if possible, even worse in the headquarters of U.S. First Army. During a visit on this 18 December 1944, Brigadier General Thomas J. Betts, Eisenhower’s deputy intelligence officer, found the First Army’s headquarters ’in shambles.’ He wrote, ’They just didn’t know what was going on. As far as fighting a war was concerned, the First Army was thinking in terms of a battalion here and something else there but they seemed to have no plan at all for meeting the attacks. And I couldn’t see any orders going forth.’¹⁶⁰

All day on 18 December, anxious American commanders wondered when the Germans would reach Bastogne. The men of the 101st Airborne Division kept arriving throughout the day, but most of their artillery still was underway, and the last troops would not arrive until late in the following night. The Americans did not even know if the 10th Armored Division’s Combat Command B or the 82nd Airborne Division would arrive before the Germans. But whereas a few groups of stalwart American soldiers had stalled the Germans on the day before, it was the poor accessibility in the mountains in northwestern Luxembourg that on 18 December saved these American units from being blocked by Generalleutnant Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division in cooperation with the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, whose task was to advance straight on Bastogne.

On 20 December, four days after the German armored attack began, the terrain both north and east of Bastogne was strewn with the wrecks of American Sherman tanks. (US Army)

As we have seen earlier, Panzer Lehr Division’s advance force—Kampfgruppe von Fallois (the reinforced armored reconnaissance battalion) under Major Gerd von Fallois—crossed River Clerve at Drauffelt at nine in the morning on 18 December. At that time, nothing more than scattered American units stood between them and Bastogne, less than twenty miles farther to the west.

One and a half hours later, U.S. 82nd Airborne Division’s vehicle columns left Sissonne and began the 115-mile trip to Bastogne.¹⁶¹ The journey would continue through Houffalize towards Werbomont. As we shall see, during its ride towards Werbomont on 18 December, this division would come a hairsbreadth from getting cut off by various German panzer units, and this on two occasions. But while the Americans were able to run at full speed on a paved highway that ran nearly dead straight across an almost entirely flat agricultural landscape all the way to Bastogne, Panzer Lehr had to take narrow, winding roads through the kind of mountainous forest area that constitutes the epitome of the ’the impenetrable’ Ardennes.

Major von Fallois’ primary task was to cover the main force against flank attacks. Therefore he and his unit made it down to Erpeldange, just north of the town of Wiltz, five miles southwest of Drauffelt. There the Germans tore into a U.S. force consisting of, inter alia, three Shermans from the 707th Tank Battalion and some of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s anti-tank guns. This was what had managed to get out of Clervaux on the previous day, before total annihilation struck the Americans in this town. The Germans immediately opened fire. The 707th Tank Battalion’s after action report reads, ’Battalion assault platoon and 3 tanks, “B” Company were defending Wiltz from attack from NW, and fought off continual heavy enemy attacks throughout the day and inflicted heavy damage to enemy personnel and vehicles.’¹⁶² However, according to German sources, Kampfgruppe von Fallois managed to oust the Americans from both Erpeldange and, a bit farther down the road, the Wiltz suburb of Weidingen.¹⁶³

Meanwhile, Panzer Lehr’s main force was underway, but it was not alone. Since the American resistance in Hosingen had been broken on the morning of 18 December, both the Panzer Lehr Division and the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division broke loose. These two divisions set in motion simultaneously towards a single crossing of the Clerve river, the narrow bridge at Drauffelt, three miles south of Clervaux. In all, about twenty thousand soldiers began to move towards this bottleneck. Added to this was not only hundreds of combat vehicles of all kinds, but also the five thousand horse-drawn conveyances of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division. This whole mass was directed down on the narrow road that winds down the slope towards Drauffelt—a small village of a hundred inhabitants around a railway station. It was the same route as Kampfgruppe von Fallois had taken, but with this huge mass of troops, horses and vehicles, it was a completely different matter.

Officers and traffic control units worked with sweat pouring to bring order to the traffic across the bridge. But the situation was not brighter on the other side of the river. New traffic jams formed on the long and steep uphill leading out from Drauffelt. Once out of the community, the dramatically undulating landscape confined the Germans to the narrow Wëlzerstroos (Wiltz Road), which cuts through the mountains from Drauffelt towards the town of Wiltz, six miles to the southwest.

Just hours before, withdrawing American soldiers had passed here, leaving ample signs of a panicky retreat. Weapons, helmets, and other equipment littered the road and the surroundings. Trucks and combat vehicles abandoned by the Americans could be pushed aside quite easily or, further on along the road, tipped over the steep bank on one side of the road. The difficulties grew worse about a mile from Drauffelt, where one side of the road was lined with almost vertical cliff walls while the other side descended steeply into the deep river gorge. Here the entire column came to a halt when a German tank or a tractor stopped because of a malfunction. In pouring rain, shivering and cursing infantrymen and motorcyclists tried to push forward between trucks and tanks, contributing even more to clog up the road.

Oberst Kokott, in command of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, became absolutely terrified by the chaotic scenes. ’For several hours’ he wrote, ’the narrow road was blocked by individual tanks or towing vehicles that have been standing. No vehicles could get past. From the rear area a motorized column came roaring into the mass of vehicles, pushed the infantry’s horse-drawn ammunition or weapons conveyances to the side, trying to squeeze through, and finally encountered a vehicle which, despite strict prohibition, drove from the west to the east. Finally the entire column became standing along several kilometers.’¹⁶⁴

It was only after the main part of the column had remained practically stationary on this road for several hours, that the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39 managed to disengage and march down to Erpeldange, where it took over from Kampfgruppe von Fallois. While the latter now could take the main road N 12, which from Erpeldange paves its way through the mountains towards the north-west, the German main force took to the right about a mile north of Erpeldange.

Just a thousand yards further ahead, the main force came upon a small American force at Eschweiler, four miles drive from Drauffelt. The Americans had no chance to withstand the immense power of the German force, and after a brief firefight the long German column could resume its advance.¹⁶⁵ The terrain was a much more difficult opponent for the Germans. After Eschweiler, their march continued steeply uphill, on a backroad that wound through among desolate mountains and dark forests in an area so rugged that it was virtually uninhabited. As darkness fell at twenty to five in the afternoon, it became even more difficult to get around along the mountain roads. In the cloudy and hazy weather, the night turned absolutely pitch black, and because of the danger of air attacks the headlights could not be used.

Unteroffizier Horst Helmus of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division drew a group of German soldiers inspecting knocked out Sherman tanks to the east of Bastogne in December 1944.

At six in the evening on 18 December, Kampfgruppe von Fallois reached the houses of Niederwampach, six miles east of Bastogne.¹⁶⁶ Here it paused briefly to wait for the rest of the division. When the leading vehicles of the main force, Oberstleutnant Joachim Ritter von Poschinger’s Kampfgruppe 902, arrived at nine in the evening, the advance resumed. The plan was to take Bastogne through a nocturnal surprise attack.

The Germans were relieved to have left the difficult hilly terrain behind, but in the area they now entered, there were virtually no proper roads. They had to advance along nothing but small tracks that ran between the fields in this fertile farmland. The terrain continued to be their worst opponent. The Germans entered the hamlet of Benonchamps, which proved to be abandoned by the Americans.¹⁶⁷ In the neighboring village Mageret a force from U.S. 158th Combat Engineer Battalion was swept away without much difficulty. The village itself was found to be almost completely deserted; many of its inhabitants had joined the stream of refugees towards Bastogne. It was midnight when Panzer Lehr established itself in Neffe—some twenty stonehouses that lined the main road just before the eastern entrance to Bastogne. No more than a mile of the best highway remained to Bastogne, but the German offensive against this strategically important town would not reach further.

The divisional commander, Generalleutnant Bayerlein, ordered a halt. He saw what he believed to be a looming threat that his advance force would be encircled by U.S. forces that moved into position north and south of the road to Bastogne.¹⁶⁸ But there was no such American plan, nor did the Americans have the resources to do so. Instead, Middleton simply sent his reinforcements forward as they arrived from the south. The 158th Engineer Combat Battalion was ordered to Neffe (whence they were driven out by Panzer Lehr) and Bizory, the adjacent village a mile farther north. The small force that arrived at the latter place, hardly had the strength to envelop Panzer Lehr, but the Germans were unable to see that in the dark.

Just south of the road that Panzer Lehr had taken from Mageret to Neffe, a long column U.S. combat vehicles, including a large number of Sherman tanks, moved out of Bastogne to take up positions in the small village of Wardin, three miles south of Mageret. This was Team O’Hara, one of the three battlegroups of Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division ’Tiger.’ Consisting of the 21st Tank Battalion’s ’C’ Company, a tank platoon from the 3rd Tank Battalion’s ’D’ Company, and two companies from the 54th Armored Infantry Battalion, plus engineer troops and an armored reconnaissance squadron, Lieutenant Colonel James O’Hara’s combat team could have posed a serious threat to Panzer Lehr’s advance force. Von Fallois despatched a force against Wardin to test the American strength, but when it arrived the Germans found the place abandoned. For some reason, O’Hara had withdrawn his troops to Marvie, another mile to the southwest. Thus, his battlegroup no longer constituted an immediate threat to Panzer Lehr. Nevertheless, it was held under close observation. Bayerlein himself observed the troops of Team O’Hara with binoculars at dawn on 19 December.¹⁶⁹

Due to the U.S. withdrawal from Wardin, the Germans were able to concentrate against the larger American force observed in Longvilly two miles northeast of Mageret, midway between Panzer Lehr and the 2. Panzer-Division. Just before Panzer Lehr had taken Mageret and Neffe, Team Cherry—another of the battlegroups in Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division—had passed through these two villages in accordance with Middleton’s orders to take up positions in Longvilly, northeast of Bastogne. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Henry T. Cherry, this combat group consisted of most of the 3rd Tank Battalion (except ’B’ Company and two platoons of ’D’ Company), ’C’ Company of the 20th Armored Infantry Battalion, and a platoon each from the 609th Tank destroyer Battalion, the 90th Cavalry Squadron, and the 55th Armored Engineer Battalion.¹⁷⁰

Team Cherry’s leading unit, the 3rd Tank Battalion’s ’A’ Company, with fifteen Sherman tanks under First Lieutenant Edwards. Hyduke, reached the farmland area in the little valley just to the west of Longvilly at twenty past seven in the evening on 18 December.¹⁷¹ The men of the 3rd Tank Battalion were used to success, and watched the chaotic scenes that met them with horror. Not least the demoralized soldiers of the 28th Infantry Division’s 110th Regimental Combat Team and 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve, that had escaped German 2. Panzer-Division’s attacks at Antoniushof and Allerborn, and now poured into Longvilly, stunned the men of the ’Tiger Division.’

An American Army Report noted that ’the town, which nestled in a depression, between several adjacent hills, was jammed with the vehicles of elements of CCR, 9th Armored Division.’¹⁷² In the midst of all of this was Colonel Joseph H. Gilbreth, the by now rather disoriented commander of Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division. But Lieutenant Colonel Cherry quickly organized the forces around Longvilly. His own unit consisted of the troops that had formed the spearhead of Patton’s breakthrough into Germany on 19 November 1944. They took for granted that they would halt the Germans at this village.

On the morning of 19 December, a quite sizable American force was concentrated at Longvilly. In addition to Team Cherry were the elements of Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division which had arrived the day before, and other troops in the shape of retreating soldiers from 110th Regimental Combat Team and four anti-tank guns from the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived. Moreover, two artillery battalions—the 58th and 73rd Armored Field Artillery battalions—had taken up positions and started to shell the Germans in the east.¹⁷³ However the Americans still could not expect any major air support; the low pressure clung stubbornly across the region, with low, dark clouds, rain and fog. On 19 December, the temperature rose further and throughout the day remained between 37 and 42 degrees. By now, the snowdrifts in the terrain had shrunk considerably: this definitely was not a winter war—at least not yet.

The Germans also had built up a strong attack force against Cherry. Over the course of the night other elements of Panzer Lehr and Grenadier-Regiment 77 from the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division had arrived to the forward positions that had been taken in the previous evening.¹⁷⁴The task of destroying the American force in Longvilly was assigned to Grenadier-Regiment 77. The regimental commander, Oberstleutnant Martin Schriefer, immediately organized a plan of attack: ’A Grenadier battalion sneaks forward to positions about 500 yards southeast of Longvilly. Two companies take up positions in the front with a third company a bit further back to the right. The 2nd Battalion positions one company plus anti-tank arms in the forest area 1,000 yards west of the village, with its front facing the east, to cut off the main road. The other two grenadier companies sneak forward to positions 800 yards southwest of the village.’¹⁷⁵ In addition to these, Bayerlein assigned twelve Panther tanks from Kampfgruppe 902 to the infantry force that was deployed on the wooded hill southwest of the village. ¹⁷⁶

Nevertheless, the communications apparently did not function with the 2. Panzer-Division, which was totally caught by surprise when its marching columns on the forenoon of 19 December were subject to fire from what was assessed as an ’up to 100 vehicle strong’ American armored unit about a thousand yards northeast of Longvilly.¹⁷⁷ These Germans had thought that they had annihilated all U.S. forces in the area, and did not expect the enemy to be able to bring forward new units so rapidly. But by attacking the 2. Panzer-Division, Team Cherry also got involved in a firefight with this unit. Von Lauchert immediately ordered a group of tanks from Panzer-Regiment 3 to the area northeast of Longvilly, where the tank crews made contact with Oberstleutnant Schriefer who included them in the German attack plan against Team Cherry.¹⁷⁸ At 1300 hrs, the German attack commenced with a devastating artillery fusillade. This is what it looked like from the German horizon:

To the sound of rattling machine guns and muffled explosions from artillery shells, the groups and platoons of the Grenadier companies bolted out of their positions and advanced while well spread out towards the village and the road. Firing from all guns, Panzer Lehr’s tanks surged forward from the southwest. A complete confusion erupted on the enemy side, where only single machine guns opened fire from house windows and behind garden hedges, while a large number of soldiers rushed back and forth in the fire storm. A couple of American tanks turned their turrets and opened fire on the attacking troops, but many other tanks already stood in flames. Other tanks tried to make it out of the village to the west, only to collide with vehicles that tried to enter the village. Others tried to escape north, but these were exposed to fire from the German tanks on the main road Bourcy -Longvilly¹⁷⁹

When the German attack began, Lieutenant Colonel Cherry was in CCB’s headquarters in Bastogne, and command of the troops in Longvilly had been assigned to Captain William F. Ryerson. The Americans were driven down into the village. This is located like in a pot between high hills, and through the German pincer attack it transformed into a veritable ’kill sack,’ in the words of American historian John C. McManus.¹⁸⁰ The German narration describes the final battle:

Our infantry advanced from the west and southwest, crossed the main road and entered Longvilly where all opposition was swept away by the tanks from Panzer Lehr. At half past two the battle was over. Our opponents had sustained heavy casualties. A large number of officers and more than 100 men were taken into captivity. More than 50 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed and lay torn and burning on the road and the streets in the village. A large number of other motor vehicles were captured in usable condition or were shot to pieces all around. Only a few tanks and a few scattered groups of soldiers managed to escape to the north or northwest.¹⁸¹

’Compared with the success,’ wrote the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s commander, Oberst Heinz Kokott, ’our own losses were negligible. As far as I can recall, they amounted to two killed or wounded officers and about fifty soldiers in the entire Regiment 77.¹⁸² Additionally, eight German tanks were knocked out.¹⁸³

Colonel Joseph H. Gilbreth, in command of the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve, barely managed to escape to Bastogne, where he arrived in a state of total exhaustion.¹⁸⁴ Meanwhile, twelve Panther tanks attacked Colonel Cherry’s headquarters in the grandiose castle Château de Neffe south of Neffe. Team Cherry’s Headquarters Company and the armor of Reconnaissance Platoon, 3rd Tank Battalion were without any chance. Colonel Cherry sent a desperate radio message to headquarters of Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division in Bastogne before he and what remained of his force withdrew westwards, ’We’re not driven out; we’re burned out!’¹⁸⁵ Here the Germans counted another six destroyed American tanks, several destroyed or captured trucks, and more than fifty prisoners.¹⁸⁶ The Germans took over a battlefield completely littered with burning American military vehicles. According to certain U.S. sources, the Americans lost ’over 200 vehicles,’ including twenty-five tanks, fourteen armored cars, and fifteen M7 105mm SPGs.¹⁸⁷ But the actual U.S. losses at the tank battle at Longvilly-Neffe on 19 December 1944 have never been clarified. Von Manteuffel, the 5. Panzerarmee’s C-in-C, recorded fifty destroyed American armored vehicles, with another twenty-three Shermans, fourteen armored cars, fifteen SPGs, twenty-five lorries, and thirty jeeps captured undamaged by the Germans.¹⁸⁸ These figures are in line with those recorded by the 2. Panzer-Division and Panzer Lehr.¹⁸⁹

Thus, the U.S. armored force at Bastogne had been largely annihilated. To the heavy losses at Longvilly on 19 December should be added the thirty-one Shermans lost by Task Force Rose and Task Force Harper on 18 December. Together with the fourteen Shermans lost by U.S. 2nd Tank Battalion at Clervaux on17 December, this single battalion’s Sherman losses consequently amounted to forty-five in just two days.¹⁹⁰ Moreover, a large number of tank destroyers were lost. In ’C’ Company, 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion—part of Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division—the 3rd Platoon lost three Hellcats, while the 2nd Platoon was forced to abandon all of its vehicles.¹⁹¹

A few hours later, Major General Middleton and the VIII Corps headquarters left the Heintz Barracks in Bastogne—which were taken over by Brigadier General McAuliffe and the headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division—and withdrew to Neufchâteau in the southwest.

The diary that Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis C. Smith kept for Lieutenant General Hodges, C.O. of U.S. First Army, reads for 19 December 1944, ’Situation in VIII Corps extremely fluid. […] There are reports that Bastogne has fallen and has not fallen; the same applies to Hoffleize [Houffalize].’¹⁹² The Allies still had no grasp on which German units they were being attacked by, or how powerful these were. When Ultra in Bletchley Park on 20 December decrypted a German radio message saying that ’Armee Manteuffel’ was making good advance, the comment was added that this could be ’an indication that Manteuffel may again be with his former command. 5 Pz Army and the Gruppe named after him [apparently Gruppe von Manteuffel, the code name the Germans—obviously with quite good effect—had assigned to the 15. Armee during the preparations for the Ardennes Offensive; see page 45] may have ceased to exist.’¹⁹³

Hodges also seemed to be worn down. This at least was the impression Field Marshal Montgomery got when he visited him at his headquarters on the following day.¹⁹⁴ Even the Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower expressed great anxiety. On 20 December he sent an officer’s delegation under Major General Ray Barker, deputy chief of staff in the SHAEF, to the USA with an urgent request for further reinforcements in troops and materiel. This was the message that Eisenhower forwarded to the War Department in Washington: ’Unless we are supported more strongly, we might lose the war!’¹⁹⁵

MONTGOMERY MAKES HIS ENTRANCE

After the near annihilation of U.S. 106th Infantry Division and the collapse of the 28th Infantry Division’s positions east of Bastogne, the situation looked grim to the Americans. When the Supreme Commander Eisenhower summoned the American generals for the conference in Verdun on 19 December (see page 274), he was glad that he could not see any signs of panic among those gathered.¹ But the briefing of the situation delivered at the conference by Major General Strong, intelligence officer at the SHAEF, was, as the Third Army commander, Lieutenant General Patton put it, ’far from happy.’² Quite symptomatically, the First Army’s commander, Hodges, did not attend the conference in Verdun because of his headquarters’ almost headlong evacuation for fear of being overrun by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper. This had made a two-mile deep inroad on the Ardennes Front’s northern flank in just two days.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of the British-Canadian 21 Army Group, studied the map. He noticed that the German breakthrough was about to cut General Bradley’s U.S. 12th Army Group in half: While the VIII Corps on the American First Army’s southern flank appeared to be pushed to the southwest, other parts of the First Army were pushed due north, towards the positions held by U.S. Ninth Army. It was clear to Montgomery that if the Americans would not be able to prevent the Germans from crossing River Meuse, his own army group would soon find itself exposed to a serious threat. In that case, Montgomery’s forces and the American forces that had been pushed northward needed to cooperate closely, which presupposed a unified command. But to be on time to defuse such a situation, he opined, the most rational thing to do was to establish such a unified command immediately. To Montgomery, it was natural that he take this unified command.

He summoned Major General John Whiteley, operations officer at the SHAEF headquarters, and suggested that he himself would assume command of the northern U.S. forces, which he felt Bradley would find it hard to lead.

Whiteley agreed with the logic of Montgomery’s proposals, and along with Major General Strong, the SHAEF intelligence officer, he visited the SHAEF’s American chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, to discuss the matter that same evening. At first, Smith reacted against the the proposal, calling it a product of ’a damned British staff officer.’³ Whiteley not only had the cultural divisions between the Old World and the New World against him, but also the reluctance that many felt toward the eccentric and often arrogant Montgomery.

But Strong soon understood the organizational logic and called Eisenhower to forward the proposal. Eisenhower replied that he would answer the next morning. Shortly afterwards, the British Prime Minister Churchill phoned Eisenhower to discuss the matter.

When Eisenhower woke up the next morning, he took out a map of the combat zone and with a thick crayon he drew a straight line from Givet on the Franco-Belgian border, due east, across Luxembourg’s northernmost tip, to the German town of Prum. All U.S. forces north of that line—of the First and Ninth armies—were to be placed under Montgomery’s command until the crisis in the Ardennes was settled. Sankt Vith, Malmedy, Marche, and Dinant ended up north of the line. Eventually the area between Dinant and Rochefort also was transferred to Montgomery’s ’zone.’ This meant that Bradley would be deprived of the control of about half of his forces.

Eisenhower was aware that this was a sensitive issue. He had Bedell Smith convey the matter to Bradley. As expected, his first reaction was a complete shock. Bradley at first regarded it as a sign of panic in the SHAEF, but, like Bedell Smith, he ultimately allowed himself to be persuaded that after all it was a sensible decision.

At the same time, the two Tactical Air commands in the 9th Air Force responsible for the direct air support of U.S. First and Ninth armies—IX TAC and XXIX TAC under major generals Quesada and Nugent—were placed under the command of British 2nd Tactical Air Force. However, three of the six Fighter groups of the IX TAC simultaneously were shifted to the XIX TAC, which supported Patton’s Third Army—which also took over the First Army’s VIII Corps. British 2nd TAF was commanded by Air Chief Marshal Arthur Coningham, who in the position of supreme commander of the Allied air force that supported British 8th Army in North Africa had developed advanced and highly effective methods of direct air support—methods that the USAAF reluctantly but successfully had adopted.

The ratings in the postwar depictions of Montgomery in the Ardennes range from the eulogies of certain biographies to a purely scornful dismissal of his accomplishments. The depiction of Montgomery is confined to anecdotes about his person in quite a few accounts of the Ardennes Battle. Thus, it is not uncommon to read that Bradley after the war called the concession to Montgomery’s wish to command U.S. forces ’one of my biggest mistakes of the war.’ Similarly, it is often said that the news that Hodges’ U.S. First Army and Simpson’s U.S. Ninth Army would be subordinated to the British field marshal created an ’undercurrent of dissatisfaction’ at the Palace Hôtel in Chaudfontaine, where the First Army staff settled down after the evacuation. At noon on 20 December, Montgomery arrived at this headquarters, accompanied by his chief of staff, Major General ’Freddie’ de Guingand. An accompanying British staff officer felt that it was as if the field marshal strode into Hodges’ headquarters ’like Jesus who came to clear the temple.’ This story has been propagated in several books and articles. Furthermore, it is narrated that Montgomery then insulted the Americans (probably unintentionally) by turning down an invitation to join them at lunch, and instead sat down, as he used to when he was not in his own headquarters, and had a sandwich and drank coffee from a thermos.

Montgomery himself found the American front sector to be in quite a bad shape. He felt that Hodges seemed worn and tired, and in a report on the state of the First Army’s headquarters he wrote that there definitely was a lack of control over the situation, and that ’no one’ had ’any clear idea of the situation.’

He also felt that the northern part of the indentation of the Ardennes Front was extremely disorganized. He was critical of the fact that U.S. Ninth Army had two corps and three divisions, whereas U.S. First Army had three corps and fifteen divisions. After the war, Montgomery said that at that stage, none of the commanders of the various U.S. armies had met Bradley or any of the higher officers from Bradley’s staff, and that they therefore had no instructions regarding the battle plan.⁴

Field Marshal Mongomery (left), Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, and (right) Lieutenant General William Simpson, the commander of U.S. Ninth Army. (NARA, SC 197799/Miller)

Certainly Montgomery had a rather special personality, and his way of life was like a red rag to conservative American generals. An objective military analysis, however, shows that his strategic decisions helped to save the day for the Allies.

Hence, during his visit at Chaudfontaine on 20 December 1944, Montgomery instructed Hodges to shift Major General ’Lightning Joe’ Collins’ U.S. VII Corps from the Roer area to the Meuse sector in front of German 5. Panzerarmee. In Montgomery’s eyes, Collins—who had commanded the American forces during the battle against the Japanese at Guadalcanal in 1942-1943 with great success—was the best general available on the American side. He stressed that he would not consider any other American commander than Collins. Montgomery also decided to assemble his British XXX Corps, also under a very capable commander, to the west of Collins’ corps on the Meuse Front.

Previously it had been decided that U.S. 75th and 84th Infantry divisions would be subordinated to the VII Corps, and Hodges liked the idea that Collins would be despatched against the German offensive. But Hodges wanted the VII Corps to be used for a counter-attack against the Germans at Sankt Vith. This section, where a horseshoe-shaped pocket was being formed with strong German forces on three sides, became a bone of contention between Montgomery and Hodges. Montgomery demanded the immediate evacuation of this hazardous wedge, and Hodges and some of his subordinate U.S. commanders did their best to procrastinate this. In their opinion, it was absolutely inappropriate for a British field marshal to order Americans to give up territory that had been defended with American blood.

But Montgomery refused to budge. He believed—and was proved to be completely correct—that the Germans were just too strong at Sankt Vith. He stood by that Collins’ corps should be transferred to the Marche area south of River Meuse, in order to strike at the Germans when their supply lines had become stretched out. This was a strategy he had learned in North Africa, where he defeated the German Africa Corps.

Next, Montgomery turned to Lieutenant General Simpson, commander of U.S. Ninth Army, which also had its headquarters located to Chaudfontaine, and asked him to transfer his powerful 2nd Armored Division ’Hell on Wheels’ to Collins’ VII Corps at the Meuse.

Although many American generals expressed strong negative viewpoints on Montgomery, he made a very good impression on Americans under his command in the Ardennes. One of them was Brigadier General Bruce Clarke, a highly experienced armor commander who led Combat Command A, 4th Armored Division during Patton’s ’sweep’ through France, and then, during the Ardennes Battle, Combat Command B of U.S. 7th Armored Division. In Clarke’s opinion, Montgomery was ’magnificent,’ and he described him as ’the complete master of the situation. He was calm and relaxed and refused to be shaken by the enormity of the problem with which he was confronted. Contrary to the practice of some U.S. commanders, Montgomery believed men would fight better and accomplish more if they were given an opportunity to rest and refit. He would keep a unit in combat for three days and then pull it out for a day. The men in these units were far more effective than those who were kept constantly in the line. It was a practice, however, that galled many of Montgomery’s associates.’⁵

According to Clarke, the troops of the 7th Armored Division, which on 20 December 1944 was placed under Montgomery’s command, felt great confidence in the British field marshal: ’They sensed that he exercised integrity, courage and common sense in the crucial days of this bitter battle.’⁶

1 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 350.

2 Fox, Pattons Vanguard: The United States Army Fourth Armored Division, p. 300.

3 Dupuy, Bongard and Anderson, Hitlers Last Gamble, p. 143.

4 Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, K.G, p. 308.

5 The Bulge Bugle, Volume XIII, No. 1, February 1994. www.veteransofthebattleofthebulge.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/1994-Feb.pdf. 17 April 2014.

6 Ibid.

This Sherman has in vain tried to take cover between two houses. (National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

THE BATTLE OF SANKT VITH

Demoralization spread from top to bottom in U.S. First Army. Over the course of 19 December, the frightened and partly leaderless American soldiers that retreated into Bastogne triggered a mass exodus of civilians from the town. People had begun to leave the town on the day before, but now such large numbers of refugees filled the roads that the military transports became severely disrupted. Scenes reminiscent of the gloomy days of May 1940, when half the Belgian population fled to avoid the German Blitzkrieg, occurred on the roads out of the little town. These refugees in turn frightened even more people farther to the west, and it is estimated that no less than 200,000 civilian Belgians and Luxembourgers fled the fighting.¹⁹⁶

Meanwhile, the surrounded U.S. 106th Infantry Division on the northern flank approached its final destiny. The divisional commander, Major General Jones, who had decided to concentrate the considerable reinforcements he had received to the defense of Sankt Vith, where his headquarters was located, had nothing to offer his surrounded men than the following orders:

’Attack Schönberg; do maximum damage to enemy there; then attack toward Sankt Vith. This mission is ’of gravest importance to the nation. Good luck!’¹⁹⁷

Jones himself had new reason to worry when German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division crossed the Our at Steinebrück, four miles southeast of Sankt Vith.

By this time the commanders of the two surrounded U.S. regiments, Colonel Descheneaux of the 422nd and Colonel Cavender of the 423rd, had given up all hope. When he received the orders from Jones, ’Colonel Descheneaux bowed his head and almost sobbed: “My poor men—they’ll be cut to pieces”’¹⁹⁸ Cavender found the passage of gravest importance to the nation’ to be insulting. None of them were aware of the fact that their own forces were three times larger than the German units that barely held them surrounded. Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn had left the task of annihilating the ’American cauldron’ to his chief of operations, Oberstleutnant Dietrich Moll—who had grenadier regiments 293 and 295, plus a small battalion of former Russian POWs that had volunteered to fight on the German side, at his disposal. Moll characterized the American passivity as ’totally incomprehensive.’ He continued, ’The enemy really showed no activity at all. He neither disturbed us by attacking our advancing regiments, or carried out any larger troop movements. We didn’t either see much battle activity in the rear area.’¹⁹⁹

The impression persisted that the inexperienced Americans seemed to have become almost totally paralyzed when they discovered that there was no support available. The Air Force seemed to have let them down—not only was there almost no tactical air support, Cavender’s and Descheneaux’s requests for air-dropped supplies seemed to fall on deaf ears. Indeed, the Americans had a large number of twin-engine Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft, but ’air force bureaucracy had grounded the C-47s. A second mission was requested. This time the C-47s landed at a field in Belgium, but no fighter protection was available and no map coordinates for the scheduled drop were provided. Once again, the mission was scrubbed.’²⁰⁰

Weather on 18 December still was too bad to allow efficient operations by the Tactical Air Force, and the Luftwaffe remained very active, forcing most fighter-bombers to jettison their bombs just as on the previous day. All in all, the German fighter force carried out 849 sorties while U.S. 9th Air Force despatched 500 fighter-bombers and 165 medium bombers. In a repetition of the previous day’s bitter air fighting, the Germans lost fifty-nine fighters and recorded twenty-six enemy aircraft shot down.²⁰¹ On 19 December, the weather deteriorated further: an overcast covered the whole area, and a heavy sleet made it almost impossible to carry out any flights at all.

Devoid of any air support, their ammunition running low, and with empty bellies, the Americans conducted the counter-attack as demanded by Major General Jones against Schönberg on 19 December. Oberstleutnant Moll’s troops were waiting for them with assault guns that mowed down the U.S. ranks. Then the Germans attacked. This caused the resistance of the surrounded men to collapse. Staff Sergeant Richard McKee from ‘A’ Company, 1st Battalion, 422nd Infantry Regiment, recalls:

We ran back. I only had enough time to jump on the last jeep in the convoy. It was panic, pure and simple, no withdrawal. We were running for our lives. As we entered Schönberg the lead jeep hit a land mine and blew up. The CO [Lieutenant Colonel William Craig, commander of the 1st Battalion] was killed. All the vehicles stopped. It was around 9 a.m. and one of the officers holding a white flag told us to destroy our guns, other equipment and surrender. We couldn’t believe it. We were not under fire and we could not see any Germans. Everyone was told to get rid of family pictures, money, billfolds and knives. Keep only your dog-tags, blankets, canteen. Around 10.30 a.m. the Germans came up and took over. They were like a bunch of kids with new toys, trying to start the trucks and going through them. Our captors told us to get rid of our helmets and put our hands on top of our heads. They took our watches and anything else they wanted. They told us that if anyone attempted to escape they would shoot everyone. The war was over for me.²⁰²

Among the American soldiers who had been scattered after the failed assault on Schönberg, the Germans took three thousand prisoners on the morning of 19 December. The Germans continued to mop up the Americans in the wooded area, which was subject to a furious artillery fire. ’My God,’ Descheneaux exclaimed, ’we’re being slaughtered … I’m going to save the lives of as many men as I can, and I don’t care if I’m court-martialled.’²⁰³ At 1430 hrs, he surrendered with the men of his 422nd Infantry Regiment. Sergeant Leo Leisse of the Regiment’s 2nd Battalion remembers:

’We had begun to retreat, some of the men in frightful disorder, towards the wooden area when the next order came to “Stand fast.” A bit later we got another order from the Colonel to destroy our weapons. We threw them into the creek and broke our rifles over the rocks.’

At 1600 hrs, Colonel Cavender, unaware of the fact that his neighboring regiment had surrendered, decided to surrender with his 423rd Infantry Regiment.

One of the German soldiers, Leutnant Behmen of Artillerie-Regiment 1818, wrote down his impressions of 19 December 1944 in his diary:

’Endless columns of prisoners pass; at first, about a hundred, later another thousand. Our car gets stuck on the road. I get out and walk. Generalfeldmarshall Model himself directs traffic. (He’s a little, undistinguished looking man with a monococle.) Now the thing is going. The roads are littered with destroyed American vehicles, cars and tanks. Another column of prisoners passes. I count over a thousand men. In Andler there is a column of 1,500 men with about 50 officers, and a lieutenant colonel who had asked to surrender.’²⁰⁴

As so often is the case when it comes to American losses in the Ardennes Battle, U.S. sources fail to give any conclusive information regarding losses in the battle of annihilation east of the Our. According to a report issued by the Information Section, Analysis Branch, Hq Army Ground Forces in Washington, the 106th Infantry Division lost a total of 8,663 men, including more than 7,000 recorded as missing in action.²⁰⁵ But this appears to be a too low figure, not least in view of the fact that the Division had mustered more than 18,000 men on the morning of 16 December, and after the surrender east of the Our the 106th Infantry Division was regarded as more or less ceased to exist—all that remained were the tattered remnants of the 424th Infantry Regiment and the poor remainder of some support units that had managed to cross the river and run westwards. To the 106th Infantry Division’s losses should be added those inflicted on other U.S. units that had been caught in the ‘cauldron’: Elements of the 589th and 590th Field Artillery battalions, the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 634th Antiaircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion, the 18th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, the 81st Engineer Battalion, and the 331st Medical Battalion.²⁰⁶

In what is usually regarded as the main U.S. work of reference on the Battle of the Bulge, American military historian Hugh M. Cole wrote that ’the number of officers and men taken prisoner on the capitulation of the two regiments and their attached troops cannot be accurately ascertained. At least seven thousand were lost here and the figure probably is closer to eight or nine thousand.’²⁰⁷ Once again it might be that the figures issued by the Germans—who after all were those who registered the POWs—are the most reliable ones. According to the Germans, 10,000 Americans surrendered east of the Our.²⁰⁸

By now, the U.S. tactic of stubbornly trying to hold permanent lines seemed to provide the Germans with a chance of enveloping another large American force, the one at Sankt Vith. But at the same time, the U.S. positions from Sankt Vith and southwards constituted an important ’breakwater’ because they cut several main roads that connected Germany with the 5. Panzerarmee’s area of operations around Bastogne. Thus the Germans were confined to a single paved road—the one that ran from Dasburg, through Clervaux and into Belgium—to supply the 5. Panzerarmee’s two panzerkorps.

A column of captured American soldiers in Ardennes on 18 December 1944. The exact number of American soldiers that were captured when the 106th Infantry Division surrendered, is not known, but the Germans counted 10,000 prisoners. American sources indicate slightly lower numbers. (BArch, Bild 183-J28589/Büschel)

Lieutenant General Hodges, C-in-C of U.S. First Army, openly defied Field Marshal Montgomery—his superior since 20 December (see sidebar)—by refusing to comply with the British field marshal’s calls to withdraw the troops from the exposed wedge at Sankt Vith. This now became increasingly threatened by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s advance in the north. Since 18 December, the I. SS-Panzerkorps stood in the area Ligneuville - Stavelot, between ten and twelve miles northwest of Sankt Vith. In Rech, just five miles north-northwest of Sankt Vith, stood SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen—albeit temporarily halted by fuel shortages.

Twenty-two miles southwest of Sankt Vith, Houffalize was captured on 19 December by the 5. Panzerarmee’s 116. Panzer Division, which continued to advance towards the northwest—against Hotton, twenty-five miles straight to the west of Sankt Vith. Close after this armored division followed the infantry of the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division, whose Kampfgruppe Schumann (Volksgrenadier Regiment 1130) on 19 December was less than ten miles southwest of Sankt Vith. Thus, the American lines on both sides of Sankt Vith formed a twelve-mile deep horseshoe-shaped wedge with enemy forces both in the north and in the south, and perhaps soon also in the west.

As we have seen, on 17 December, the commander of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee, Sepp Dietrich, had ordered the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen’ to the front section north of Sankt Vith, with the task of taking over SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen’s planned march to Vielsalm on River Salm, west of Sankt Vith. It was the Americans’ good fortune that this division also had major problems in reaching the front on the narrow and jammed roads in the east.

In order to hold the whole Sankt Vith wedge, Brigadier General Bruce Clarke, the commander of the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command B—assigned with the task to defend this sector—had to divide the powerful force that had arrived to defend the town. He handed over the direct command of his own Combat Command B to Lieutenant Colonel William H. G. Fuller, the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion’s well-versed commander who had been awarded the Silver Star for his accomplishments during the fighting in the Netherlands in October 1944. Thus the command of the direct defense of the town of Sankt Vith also was handed over to Fuller. Since German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division on 19 December crossed the Our at Steinebrück, four miles farther southeast, and from that place advanced towards Sankt Vith, it became necessary to deploy a strong force to the south of the town—the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command B, with the remnants of the 106th Infantry Division’s 424th Infantry Regiment and the 28th Infantry Division’s 112th Infantry Regiment on its right flank. These units held a six-mile wide front between Sankt Vith and the road junction at Oudler in the south.

In the northwest, Clarke positioned the remnants of the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command A at the previously disputed village of Poteau, and the depleted tank battalion that remained of Combat Command Reserve went into position at Vielsalm, a good three miles farther to the southwest. In the rear area, a new battle group, Task Force Jones, was formed under the commander of the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Robert B. Jones. This consisted of hastily pulled together units—mainly from the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command A and Combat Command Reserve, with the 17th Tank Battalion and the 440th AAA AW Battalion as the most powerful units, but also single platoons from e.g. the 112th Infantry Regiment.

The core of Task Force Jones was a small force under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert O. Stone, C.O. of the 440th AAA AW Battalion (Anti-Aircraft Artillery-Automatic Weapons). On 17 December, the AAA battalion’s Headquarters Battery and a tank platoon from ’D’ Company, 40th Tank Battalion received instructions to take up positions at Gouvy—a small town with a couple of thousand inhabitants and a station on the railroad between Sankt Vith and Bastogne, surrounded by wide open fields, about ten miles southwest of Sankt Vith.²⁰⁹Lieutenant Colonel Stone found two hundred and fifty men from various support and staff units in Gouvy, in addition to about seven hundred and fifty caged German POWs.²¹⁰

Already on the next day the first German troops reached Gouvy from the south. First to arrive were three German tanks which shot up three or four of the American vehicles.²¹¹ But Stone would not budge. ’By God, the others may run, but I’m staying here and will hold at all costs!’ he said, and organized the support and staff units to the defense of the town. They managed to hold out until other elements of Task Force Jones arrived on 20 December. By that time, the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Kampfgruppe Schumann also had reached the area, following a long march from the east. But after the bloodletting that this unit sustained during the first day of the offensive, Schumann could muster no more than five hundred and fifty men.²¹² Task Force Jones was able to repel the attack without any great difficulty.

The Germans fared no better when their still relatively limited forces were launched against Sankt Vith on 19 December. This little town with its 2,800 mostly German-speaking inhabitants is located about six miles inside Belgium from the German border, but in 1940 it had been incorporated into the German Reich. A U.S. soldier from the 7th Armored Division wrote in a letter to his wife, ’This was old Germany or new Belgium. These people were German. On the walls there were pictures of husbands, brothers, and sons, all in the uniform of the German army. It was fear more than hospitality that caused them to bring out bread, jam, and jellies, and to sit up all night making coffee for us.’²¹³ The Americans had noticed the town’s proGerman character already when they marched into Sankt Vith in September 1944, and none of the town’s residents were on the streets to welcome them, unlike the joyous scenes that were seen in other Belgian cities farther west. According to U.S. accounts, there even were instances during the final battle in December 1944 when residents of Sankt Vith opened fire on U.S. troops on the streets below from residential buildings in the town.²¹⁴

20 December 1944. Soldiers of a U.S. tank destroyer battalion who lost their vehicles during the retreat have hastily dug fox holes to meet the German attack. 

(NARA, Signal Corps Photo ETO-44-30382/Carolan)

Generalmajor Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn, the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s C.O. who had been assigned to command all the German forces in the Sankt Vith section, received instructions that Sankt Vith must be taken on 19 December, ’at any cost.’ He was told that this was absolutely crucial if the offensive was to continue at all—not just in this section, but also for the rest of the 5. Panzerarmee farther south, where access to the paved roads that ran through Sankt Vith and southwards was badly needed. But that was easier said than done. Although the encircled U.S. troops east of the Our surrendered on this day, a large part of Hoffmann-Schönborn’s division still remained east of the Our in order to handle the mass surrender. Additionally, the troops that attacked Sankt Vith on 19 December barely had any artillery support.²¹⁵ Nor could Hoffmann-Schönborn hope much from the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen,’ since only its armored reconnaissance battalion, SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, had reached the front by this time. Still, this battalion was launched towards Poteau on the morning of 19 December, in an attempt to cut off Sankt Vith from the west. But it was a futile attempt. The more powerful force of Combat Command A, 7th Armored Division not only repulsed the attack, but also improved its own positions by ousting SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 from the forest to the east of Poteau.²¹⁶

German soldiers attack in the vicinity of Sankt Vith in December 1944. (NARA, III-SC-341644)

In the evening on 19 December, a dejected Hoffmann-Schönborn reported, ’The 18. Volksgrenadier-Division’s attack on Sankt Vith encounters superior enemy forces. Heavy own losses.’²¹⁷ The Führer Begleit Brigade, which had started to arrive at the front section northeast of Sankt Vith on the previous day, still had not been able to assemble a sufficient force. Its commander, Oberst Otto Remer, reported that the attack was repulsed by American artillery fire.²¹⁸

Realizing that the possibility to cut off and annihilate the Americans in Sankt Vith was about to slip out of his hands, Model decided on 19 December to deploy even the second armored division in the 6. SS Panzerarmee’s reserve, the 2. SS-Panzer-Division ’Das Reich.’ This division probably was the best among the Waffen-SS divisions that Hitler employed for the Ardennes Offensive. Although the ’Das Reich’ Division was renowned for the massacre in the French village of Oradour in June 1944, it also had an impressive military track record. Having produced quite mediocre results at the beginning of the war, the division learned many valuable lessons during the fighting on the Eastern Front, and when it was shifted to Normandy in June 1944, it could be regarded as an élite unit. By 16 December 1944, the material losses inflicted on the division in Normandy had been replaced, so that it had ninety-two tanks, twenty-eight StuG IIIs, and twenty Jagdpanzer IVs on hand.²¹⁹ Although many of its recruits were inadequately trained, this was, according to SS-Obersturmbannführer Günther Wiscliceny, one of the division’s battalion commanders during the the Ardennes Battle, offset by ’the totally self-sacrificing attitude of all the officers and NCOs.’²²⁰

After the war, the divisional commander, SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Lammerding—famous for his many anti-partisan operations—was convicted in absentia by a French court to death for the massacre at Oradour, but he never was extradited from West Germany.

To avoid getting stuck in the same traffic jam as the 9. SS-Panzer-Division, the ’Das Reich’ Division was ordered on 20 December to turn south and assemble south of the U.S. wedge at Sankt Vith. The aim was to seal off the American forces in interaction with the ’Hohenstaufen’ Division in the north. The movement of this entire armored division along fifty miles of roads in winter conditions, however, resulted in considerable delays. In fact, the ’Das Reich’ Division needed two full days to complete this march. It could not establish battle positions at Reuland, opposite the U.S. strongpoint at Oudler, six miles south of Sankt Vith, until 22 December.

Meanwhile both sides reinforced their positions at Sankt Vith. On 19 December, U.S. 82nd Airborne Division began to arrive to establish a rear line at River Salm, about nine miles west of Sankt Vith. On 20 December, Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, commanding the American XVIII Airborne Corps, was appointed supreme commander of the U.S. forces in the sector between rivers Amblève and Ourthe—in other words against both the I. SS-Panzerkorps and the 5. Panzerarmee’s northern flank.* Forty-nine-year-old Ridgway has been described as a stalwart soldier. He acted with absolute toughness and did not hesitate to criticize soldiers for cowardice or to dismiss commanders who he considered useless. This true fighter was an if possible even stronger opponent than Hodges to Montgomery’s plan to evacuate the Sankt Vith wedge.

On the German side, Hoffmann-Schönborn requested air operations against the American artillery positions west and northwest of Sankt Vith ahead of the planned attack on 20 December.²²¹ Deteriorating weather allowed no such German air support to be carried out, but because of the rapid collapse of the American troops east of the Our, the bulk of the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, as well as considerable amounts of artillery, were able to march up in front of Sankt Vith during the course of 20 December. In order not to waste resources on another attack against an overwhelmingly superior enemy, Hoffmann-Schönborn decided to hold back his troops on 20 December. Meanwhile, he ordered the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division to detail its Grenadier-Regiment 183 to support the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, while the division’s other two regiments were to attack the American flank immediately south of the town.

The 62. Volksgrenadier-Division attacked on the night of 21 December. Grenadier-Regiment 183 met an unexpectedly great success: without encountering any major resistance it succeeded in capturing advantageous positions at Breitfeld a few miles southeast of Sankt Vith. On the division’s southern flank, two miles farther to the south, Grenadier-Regiment 164 overpowered an advance force of Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division, which lost three tank destroyers. Here the Germans used three captured Soviet tractors to tow their artillery. After the war, the German regimental commander, Oberst Arthur Jüttner, learned that the noise from the engines of these had led the Americans to believe that they were subject to an armored attack.²²² But Grenadier-Regiment 164 soon was halted, to the east of the Grüfflingen (Grufflange), and the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s center regiment was repulsed by U.S. 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command B already in their jump-off positions. These attacks nevertheless prevented the Americans from reinforcing the defense of the town of Sankt Vith before Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn launched his attack.

U.S. SOLDIERS FROM THE ARDENNES IN GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMP

Among the soldiers of the 106th Infantry Division that fell into German captivity was the aspiring author Kurt Vonnegut. He served as a private in the 423rd Infantry Regiment, and was a prisoner of war in Dresden when the city was subjected to the devastating bomb raid on 13-14 February 1945. What Vonnegut experienced here would become the starting point for his partly autobiographical book Slaughterhouse Five.

The German treatment of prisoners of war during World War II varied considerably and was primarily based on Nazi ideas of ’race’ and ’nation.’ Of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers in German captivity, about 3.3 million perished, i.e. 57 percent. Western Allied POWs were affected, particularly towards the end of the war, by the difficult supply situation in Germany, but with some notable exceptions they were treated more or less in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Among the 93,941 registered American prisoners of war in Germany during World War II, the mortality rate until the war ended was about one percent.¹

But among one category of prisoners of war that were captured during the first days of the Ardennes Offensive, and interned at POW Camp Stalag IX-B, mortality was as high as 20 percent. On 18 January 1945, the German Camp Command at Stalag IX-B demanded that all Jewish prisoners of war presented themselves. These were placed in a separate barracks surrounded with barbed wire—a kind of ’ghetto’ in the POW Camp—and received smaller rations and less fuel for the stove than the other POWs.²

In February 1945, these Jewish POWs, plus a number of other American POWs that the Germans believed had Jewish names, and some branded as ’troublemakers’—in total 350 men—were transported to the Concentration Camp Berga. Located about thirty-five miles south of Leipzig, this slave labor camp had been established to house concentration camp prisoners that would be put to work to construct tunnels where a part of the German production of synthetic fuels would be located. The majority of the slave workers in Berga consisted of Jews and political prisoners from the Concentration Camp Buchenwald.

The American POWs who ended up in Berga, were subjected to the same inhumane treatment as the rest of the Concentration Camp inmates. They were forced to a daily twelve hours of hard labor under extremely dangerous conditions, exposed to the guards’ brutal treatment, and on a starvation diet. Of the 350 American POWs deported to Berga, 73 died, more than one in five, in just two months.³

1 National Archives and Records Administration: Statistical and Accounting Branch Offi ce of the Adjutant General. Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II. Final Report, 7 December 1941 - 31 December 1946. Department of the Army, p. 5.

2 Whitlock, Given Up for Dead: American GI’s in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga, p. 121.

3 Cohen, Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble, p. 272.

The final assault against Sankt Vith began at three in the afternoon on 21 December with an artillery and Nebelwerfer fire that was described by an American narrative as ’one of the heaviest and longest-sustained barrages the veteran American combat command had ever encountered.’²²³ Hans Poth, who participated in the assault of Sankt Vith as a soldier in the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division, remembers how the volleys of the feared Nebelwerfer rocket batteries came howling straight over the heads of the German soldiers, who trembled with fear even though the rockets were not intended for them.

A column of German soldiers with Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons are advancing towards Sankt Vith. These Panzerfausts took a terrible toll among U.S. 7th Armored Division’s tanks during the final battle of Sankt Vith. (BArch, Bild 146-1985-129-16)

The bombardment continued for a full hour. Then the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division attacked. The Germans had the tactical advantage of attacking in the twilight, with the U.S. defense positions lit up by the flames from the raging fires that had been caused by the shelling of the town. Moreover, the Germans also came downhill from the heights just east of Sankt Vith.

’The Americans formed a defense belt with their tanks along the outskirts of the village,’ recalls Hans Poth. ’The tanks were positioned behind an earthen wall, exposing only the turrets that raked the wall. We circumvented the wall on the right side, which allowed us to attack them from the side and rear. Individual soldiers with Panzerfausts were able to destroy as many as five tanks. Additional tanks that were destroyed stood in the road. Looking into the tanks from above down through the cupola revealed a horrific sight.’²²⁴

On one occasion, five Shermans from U.S. 31st Tank Battalion came clanking up the hill that leads out of the town in order to encounter the German infantry. They were confronted by six StuG IIIs from Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 244. The Germans fired flares that illuminated the American tanks, and in rapid succession they set all Shermans burning. Next the StuG IIIs fell upon the American infantry positions.

Since the German artillery fire had severed all telephone lines to the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion’s headquarters—where the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Fuller, had been assigned with the command of the town’s defense—Major Donald S. Boyer, Fuller’s operations officer, tried to organize the defense from his advanced position. At 1735 hrs, Boyer received a phone call from Lieutenant John Higgins of ’B’ Company, who yelled into the phone, ’My god, my men are being slaughtered! Where the hell are the tank destroyers?’²²⁵ Boyer desperately phoned another of the Battalion’s officers and asked him to ’tell Colonel Fuller if we don’t get some TD support damn fast those Jerry tanks will get through!’²²⁶ But all Boyer could do was to helplessly witness the catastrophe. Fuller had left his headquarters, telling the commander of the 81st Engineers, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Riggs to take over, and departed to Brigadier General Clarke’s headquarters, where he told Clarke ‘he couldn’t take it any more.’²²⁷ While the medics in Clarke’s headquarters evacuated Fuller as a sick case, the U.S. forces at Sankt Vith collapsed.*

In his forward position, Major Boyer received a phone call from the commander of the 2nd Platoon, ‘B’ Company, Second Lieutenant Morphis A. Jamiel. ’Don,’ Jamiel said as calmly as he could, ‘I need help fast! That tank section from Company A that’s supposed to be covering the Schönberg road, they’re either knocked out or pulled out. Two Panthers are going up and down my foxholes!’²²⁸ When Jamiel called again a while later, he sounded different—this time he was so upset that Boyer barely could hear what he said, ’God damn it, they’ve got two more tanks here on the crest! They’re blasting my men out of their holes one by one. The same thing is happening on the other side of the road. Damn it, Don, can’t you do something to stop them? Please!’ Boyer heard three explosions in the phone, and then Jamiel’s cry: ’One of the tanks is on the other side of my house! We’re getting the hell out of here!’²²⁹

Two Panzer IV tanks advance through the slush. (BArch, Bild 101I-708-0299-01/Scheerer)

Of the men who had been under Lieutenant Colonel Fuller’s command in Sankt Vith, only a few hundred managed to escape, half of whom were wounded. The rest were killed or became German prisoners. Among the latter was Lieutenant Colonel Riggs. The rapidity with which Sankt Vith was captured is illustrated by the fact that Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt—who of course was kept continuously informed of the developments at the front—at 1930 hrs on 21 December demanded that St. Vith ’urgently’ had to be seized, and merely two hours later the battle was over. When the German troops advanced into the town, they were welcomed by some inhabitants, and previously hidden swastika flags hung from many windows.²³⁰

But while the Wehrmacht forces were in the process of completing the conquest of Sankt Vith, both of the SS divisions that had been brought in failed in their mission to block the retreat of the defeated U.S. forces. A crucial mistake on the German side was that the SS split up their forces.

The additional elements of the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen’—II. Abteilung of SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, and II. Abteilung of SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 9—that arrived at the front in the north on 21 December, were almost immediately hurled into a new effort to seize Poteau. Combat Command A of U.S. 7th Armored Division, which had established positions at this place, was instructed by divisional commander Hasbrouck to hold Poteau ’at any cost.’ Hasbrouck also had instructed the commander of Combat Command A to deploy his troops along the road from Poteau to Recht.²³¹ Since the road outside of Poteau still was littered with the American combat vehicles that SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen had destroyed a few days earlier, the SS division’s Panzer IV tanks and tank destroyers slowly crawled across the marshy fields on both sides of the road. There they were subjected to a devastating fire from the flank and had to pull back after sustaining heavy losses.²³²

Another attempt to cut off the American forces was made by the ’Hohenstaufen’ Division’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19, which also reached the front area on 21 December. But instead of supporting the attack against Poteau, this regiment was ordered to continue another three miles westwards, to the sector south of Stavelot, where it was to attack southwards against Grand-Halleux on River Salm. The aim was to cross the Salm and attack Vielsalm—a few miles farther south and six miles west of Sankt Vith—from the western side of the river. This SS Regiment began its assault on the evening of 21 December, but by that time the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division had arrived at the Salm. Its 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was unable to prevent the ’Hohenstaufen’ panzer grenadiers from capturing the eastern part of Grand-Halleux, but by blowing up the bridge over the river and getting entrenched on the opposite side, the airborne troops averted an immediate German advance into the rear of the quite substantial U.S. forces that still remained north and south of Sankt Vith.

The other SS division to be deployed in the Battle of the Sankt Vith Wedge, the 2. SS-Panzer-Division ’Das Reich,’ failed to arrive in time. As we have seen, this division had been ordered south to encircle the Americans. Over the course of 21 December it began to assemble in the area south of the Sankt Vith Wedge. Initially the Americans noticed nothing. But to assemble the whole SS division at Burg Reuland, six miles south of Sankt Vith, took quite some time, and once this was completed, the whole situation had changed: By now, the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division had reached not only Gouvy but also Cherain, another three miles to the west. Hence, the 2. SS-Panzer-Division was ordered to the former place, from where it was to seal off the U.S. forces at Sankt Vith. But thus the Germans lost their element of surprise. During the long march to Gouvy, a sapper from the 2. SS-Panzer-Division was captured by the Americans. The news that the 2. SS-Panzer-Division had arrived at the sector south of the Sankt Vith Wedge compelled Ridgway, the C.O. of U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, to order the withdrawal of the most endangered units—the 112th and 424th Infantry regiments on the Wedge’s southeastern flank. Task Force Jones was tasked to secure the withdrawal of these units from Beho (three miles northeast of the Gouvy) to Bovigny, four miles to the west; the order was to hold this position ’like grim death.’²³³

However, Ridgway—called ’the Lion’ by his men—regarded the order to withdraw as nothing but an exception. ’Wars are won not by giving up terrain, but by conquering and holding terrain,’ he said. Indeed, he saw the need to shorten the defense lines, but he also demanded that the Americans hold what he somewhat peculiarly called ’a fortified goose egg’ from an area just to the west of Sankt Vith to River Salm; Ridgway felt that this could be a good point of departure for a flank attack against the 6. SS-Panzerarmee in the north. For this reason, he left the two armored units Combat Command B, 7th Armored Division and Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division north and just south of Sankt Vith.

A direct hit has blown off this Sherman tank’s turret. According to the U.S. Army’s official historian Hugh M. Cole, the exact American losses during the Battle of Sankt Vith can not be accurately determined, partly because many documents have been destroyed. According to available statistics, the 7th Armored Division alone lost 88 tanks at Sankt Vith. Figures on U.S. personnel losses vary between 3,400 and 5,000 men. (National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

Ridgway’s subordinate generals were not as enthusiastic. Brigadier General Clarke said that Ridgway’s idea of a ‘fortified goose egg’ sounded like a plan for ’Custer’s last stand’ (alluding to the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 when George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry was wiped out by a superior Indian force).²³⁴ Hasbrouck, Rosebaum, and Hoge were of more or less the same opinion.²³⁵ Their concerns about a scenario similar to ’Custer’s last stand’ could have materialized had it not been for the shortcomings of the two SS divisions—particularly the 9. SS-Panzer-Division. But even the Führer Begleit Brigade had a slow start in its attack when this unit finally was able to get started once sufficient forces—including twenty-five Panzer IV tanks—of that brigade had reached the front.²³⁶

Despite its name, the Führer Begleit Brigade (FBB) was a pure Wehrmacht unit. It was formed from the army’s equivalence of Hitler’s SS bodyguard, Wachtruppe Berlin. The commander of the Berlin Force, Major Otto Remer, had played a crucial role in the crushing of the 20 July Plot against Hitler. When the Führer Begleit Brigade was formed in November 1944 for the purpose of being used in the Ardennes Offensive, 32-year-old Remer—promoted from Major directly to Oberst—was awarded by being assigned to command the unit. With troops drawn from Division ’Grossdeutschland’ on the Eastern Front, the FBB was a crack unit from the onset. It consisted of an armored brigade with fifty Panzer IV tanks and forty Sturmgeschütz III assault guns, a panzer grenadier regiment, an anti-aircraft regiment with twenty-four 88mm guns, and an artillery battalion with eighteen howitzers. The troop strength amounted to six thousand men.²³⁷ As far as the number of tanks and assault guns was concerned, this brigade was about as powerful as the Wehrmacht panzer divisions that participated in ’Herbstnebel,’ but the number of supporting troops was weaker. Among his subordinate officers, Remer had Major Hubert Mickley, a veteran carrying the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves who had been in combat since the first day of the war. In the Führer Begleit Brigade, he was made the commander of the panzer grenadier regiment’s II. Bataillon.

The Führer Begleit Brigade’s first task was to block the American retreat from Sankt Vith through a flanking movement from the area north of the town. At midnight on 22 December, Remer positioned the bulk of his panzer regiment—the I. Abteilung with two companies with twenty-five Panzer IVs, and the II. Abteilung with StuG IIIs—at Nieder-Emmels, with Sankt Vith on the other side of the hills in the southeast, only a mile and a half away. Meanwhile the panzer grenadier regiment’s III. Bataillon went into position on the left flank.

German panzer grenadiers and Panzer IV tanks advance through the fresh snow. (BArch, Bild 101I-277-0844-13/Jacob)

Remer took personal command of the Panzer Regiment and started by despatching a strong reconnaissance force along the little dirt road that runs southwest from Emmels towards Rodt (Sard-lez-Sankt Vith), slightly more than two miles west of Sankt Vith. Meanwhile it had started to snow. The Germans worked their way up the long uphill and soon were able to establish that the marshy fields on both sides of the road absolutely were not navigable. A couple of Panzer IVs got stuck there and had to be pulled out. As the Germans were moving through the forest on the hill midway between Ober-Emmels and Rodt, they were subjected to enemy fire and observed several American armored cars.

When the reconnaissance troop returned with its report, Remer decided to instead go straight westwards, across the wooded hill west of Ober-Emmels, and from there turn south towards Rodt. To ’soften up’ the American positions, the twelve 105mm and six 150mm howitzers of the brigade’s Artillerie-Bataillon began to shell Rodt. But the advance was not as simple as Remer had imagined. His tanks constantly got stuck in the marshy terrain below the slope. Finally one tank at a time had to be conveyed by soldiers on foot in order to find the most passable terrain in the dark. But by the sound of engines running as the drivers tried to get the tanks out of the mud, the German position was revealed to the Americans. However, covered by the darkness and an increasing snowstorm, the soldiers of the panzer grenadier regiment’s III. Bataillon managed to make their way to combat positions atop the hill of Tommberg, just north of Rodt. But the attack was further delayed when the main tank at dawn drove on a mine at the outskirts of the forest north of Tommberg, which then had to be cleared of mines.²³⁸

But still, in spite of all these German difficulties, it was only a matter of time before the Americans would be enveloped south and west of Sankt Vith, unless they pulled back rapidly. Early in the morning on 22 December, U.S. 7th Armored Division’s commander, Brigadier General Hasbrouck, wrote Ridgway a strongly critical PM, ’The withdrawal of CCB, 7th Armored Division, last night from Sankt Vith was expensive. So far we are missing at least one half of Clarke’s force. Of course many of them will show up, but they will be minus weapons, ammunition, blankets and rations as well as at a low physical level. I don’t think we can prevent a complete break-through if another all-out attack comes against CCB tonight due largely to the fact that our original three infantry battalions have at present melted to the equivalent of only two very tired battalions.’²³⁹

Hasbrouck barely had written these lines when he was reached by discouraging news from the section south of Sankt Vith, where Hoge’s Combat Command B of the 9th Armored Division was positioned. While the Führer Begleit Brigade attacked north of Sankt Vith, German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division had renewed its attack south of the town during the wee hours of 22 December. After a heavy artillery fusillade—whereby Hoge’s headquarters was severely hit and several officers were killed or wounded—the German troops took advantage of the darkness and the thick snowfall to sneak up to and overpower the foremost American positions.²⁴⁰ U.S. 27th Armored Infantry Battalion retreated to Neubrück, slightly more than two miles south of Sankt Vith. Thus left without infantry support, the American 14th Tank Battalion found itself surrounded when the 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Grenadier-Regiment 190 joined the attack.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Clarke’s Combat Command B, 7th Armored Division, which had been scattered north, west and south of Sankt Vith following the defeat at that town, was getting outflanked by Remer’s Führer Begleit Brigade, coming from the northeast.²⁴¹Hasbrouck, who still had not sent his PM to Ridgway, hurriedly added, ’A strong attack has just developed against Clarke again. He is being outflanked and is retiring west another 2,000 yards refusing both flanks. I am throwing in my last chips to halt him. Hoge has just reported an attack. In my opinion if we don’t get out of here and up north of the 82d before night, we will not have a 7th Armored Division left.’²⁴²

As soon Ridgway received this message he rushed to Hasbrouck’s headquarters in Vielsalm. The airborne general snarled when he met the armor commander. He held up Hasbrouck’s message and asked with a critical tone of voice if he had even read what it said before signing it. Hasbrouck replied, equally sharply:

’Yes, sir, I most assuredly did!’²⁴³

By that time the American possibility of holding out east of the Salm river eroded rapidly. The Führer Begleit Brigade had broken through north of Sankt Vith. The 7th Armored Division’s after action report for 22 December 1944 reads:

’The two platoons of Company C, 38th Armored Infantry Battalion, which had been with Task Force Jones were attached to Combat Command A at 0830. They were sent at once to patrol towards the north and east the heavy woods southeast of Poteau, for at this very time it was known that approximately one company of German infantry was encircling our troops southeast of the town. At 0945 a platoon of B Company, 40th Tank Battalion, was sent to the vicinity of Rodt to repel an enemy company south of that town. By 1100 that platoon plus one from Company A, 40th Tank Battalion, were engaging 16 enemy tanks. At about the same time enemy infantry infiltrated through our positions in the heavy woods southeast of Poteau into the vehicle park of the 48th Armored Infantry Battalion where they managed to destroy several of our vehicles. The remainder were withdrawn to Petit-Thier. Hostile tanks gained control of Rodt, but two platoons of the 40th Tank Battalion still held on.’²⁴⁴

Oberst Remer describes the battle of Rodt from his perspective: ’The III. Battalion broke into the locality and fought from house to house. The village was stubbornly defended by enemy tanks. Individual combat groups were halted by enemy tanks and even temporarily taken into captivity, including the battalion commander. It was not until we attacked from the edge of the woods on a broad front that we were able to take the village and restore the situation. The III. Battalion had considerable losses, especially inasmuch as enemy tanks concentrated fire at close range on the many wounded men who were in several cellars. At about noon Sard-lez-Sankt Vith [Rodt] was fully cleared and in our firm possession.’²⁴⁵

In this situation Colonel Rosebaum ordered two of the tank companies in Combat Command A, 7th Armored Division to counter-attack. They clashed with the tanks of the Führer Begleit Brigade, and after a bitter tank battle in a swirling blizzard, the Americans were forced to withdraw, leaving behind several burning Shermans.²⁴⁶ The Germans recorded twenty destoyed or captured American tanks during the battle at Rodt on 22 December 1944.²⁴⁷

The American resistance south of Sankt Vith also collapsed. Indeed, the 14th Tank Battalion of the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command B managed to break out of their encirclement and retreated westwards over the course of 22 December, but German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s breakthrough on this front sector was a fact. Its Grenadier-Regiment 190 surged forward and seized Neubrück, slightly to the south of Sankt Vith, where it captured a large number of trucks and prisoners that were reported to be ’really shook up.’²⁴⁸

Thereby the lines held by Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division collapsed, allowing the regiment on 62. Volksgrenadier-Division’s northern flank, Grenadier-Regiment 183, to break through the positions of the battered Combat Command B, 7th Armored Division just south of Sankt Vith. Task Force Jones just had been ordered to deploy the 17th Tank Battalion to this Combat Command’s support, but when this armored battalion arrived at the village of Crombach, two miles southwest of Sankt Vith, it was ambushed by Grenadier-Regiment 183. Unnoticed, the German soldiers sneaked into positions where they laid an ambush and fired on the American tanks with anti-tank weapons. Having lost eight tanks, the Americans retreated.²⁴⁹ It was the American good fortune that Sankt Vith’s roads were blocked by rubble which prevented German 18. Volksgrenadier-Division from immediately attacking to the southwest from the town to isolate the American armored unit that according to Ridgway’s orders still hung on in the south.

Even farther to the south, the withdrawal of American 112th and 424th Infantry regiments enabled the southernmost regiment in German 62. Volksgrenadier-Division, Oberst Jüttner’s Grenadier-Regiment 164, to advance six full miles across apparently endless, now completely snow-covered plains over the course of 22 December. The scattered U.S. troops encountered by the Germans during this march proved to be utterly demoralized, and surrendered quickly, with large numbers of artillery pieces, tanks, and other vehicles falling into German hands.²⁵⁰ Grenadier-Regiment 164’s own losses were quite limited.²⁵¹ It was only in Beho, six miles southwest of Sankt Vith, that Jüttner’s men paused late in the evening on 22 December. As the Germans saw it, they thus had crossed the border to Belgium—the new border drawn up by Hitler in May 1940 when he incorporated this area into Germany.

The German successes contributed to reinforce the contradictions in the Allied High Command, which owing to a German radio message that Ultra at Bletchley Park decrypted were quite aware of the German intentions. Sent on the evening of 22 December, this message read: ’Heeresgruppe B intentions for 23 December: Continuation attack 5. Panzer-Armee and 7. Armee to the west and northwest over the Ourthe sector, and with 6. Panzer-Armee to carry out concentrated attack to destroy Allied forces in the Sankt Vith area.’²⁵² Montgomery now saw himself compelled to intervene with greater strength than before against the American generals that opposed his order to withdraw. After the war, he wrote:

I, personally, did not visit the Seventh Armored Division; the situation in which the division was placed was reported to me by one of my liaison officers who had been there and had talked to Gen. Hasbrouck. As soon as I heard about the division, and about Ridgway’s order, I went at once to the headquarters of the First Army, discussed the matter with Hodges, and ordered the division to be withdrawn. I instructed Hodges to inform Ridgway that I had canceled his order and to tell him that I was not prepared to lose a very good American division because of the sentimental value of a few square miles of ground; men’s lives being of more value to me than ground which is of no value. Ridgway never forgave me for canceling his order, I was informed. His philosophy was that American troops never withdraw …²⁵³

At first, Task Force Jones was ordered to retreat behind River Salm and take up positions along a line between Bovigny and Vielsalm, four miles farther north. Quite symptomatic of the confused situation on the U.S. side in the battle east of the Salm, the 112th Infantry Regiment—whose withdrawal Task Force Jones had been assigned to cover—was ordered to turn around and cover the retreat of Task Force Jones!

Meanwhile, the first elements of Gerrman 2. SS-Panzer-Division—a company of Panzer IVs and StuG IIIs from SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 4 ’Der Führer’ under SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger, and the reconnaissance battalion under SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst August Krag—started to move from the area northeast of Houffalize, nine miles southwest of Vielsalm. These forces advanced due north in a raging blizzard, and the most advanced armor column attacked the retreating forces of Task Force Jones just as these made their way over on the west side of the Salm. A report from the 7th Armored Division describes the battles that took place just west of River Salm on the afternoon of 22 December:

The withdrawal of Task Force Jones started at 1430 […] and proceeded north towards Salmchâteau [a river crossing less than a mile south of Vielsalm] along the exit route. A few hundred yards south of that town an enemy ambush destroyed one light tank of the 14th Cavalry Group with bazookas, and in Salmchâteau two light tanks of D Company, 40th Tank Battalion, were destroyed by 88mm (?) fire. […] The column withdrew to 11/2 miles south of Salmchâteau at 1700, and the 112th Infantry Regiment attempted to clean out the town with an attack at 1930. Meanwhile a reconnaissance for an alternate route in the vicinity of Sainte Marie was completed. Simultaneously the rear of the column was attacked by tanks from the south and east which destroyed four M36 tank destroyers, a medium tank, two towed guns and two other vehicles. Six of the tanks were destroyed. The majority of the personnel escaped on foot. As the enemy was pressing strongly, the alternate route was taken. In the creeks west of Sainte Marie an enemy ambush destroyed two armored cars and three 1/4-tons. At (865692) two Mark IV tanks attacked the column, destroying two more armored cars and three 1/4-tons. Part of the column attempted to move towards Provedreux and met an enemy column of unknown strength, losing one armored car. The balance of the vehicles negotiated the creeks (two 1/4-tons and one armored car mired and abandoned) and moved on road north from Sainte Marie until they reached the road Salmchâteau -Baraque de Fraiture where contact was made with the outpost line of the 82nd Airborne Division.²⁵⁴

The armored division’s report on the evening of 22 December 1944 indicates that the situation had deteriorated further:

Morale was not good and the combat efficiency was down to about 80%. The enemy did not rest. […] During the late afternoon and night of the 22 December 1944 the enemy was pressing strongly on all positions. It was also definitely confirmed that the enemy was in strength along the Salm River from Trois-Ponts to Grand-Halleux and along the high ground from south of the highway running west from Salmchâteau. This meant that the 106th Infantry Division, Combat Command B of the 9th Armored Division, the 112th Regimental Combat Team [previously 112th Infantry Regiment], what remained of the 14th Cavalry Group, some corps troops including some corps artillery which had been attached to the 7th Armored Division, and the entire 7th Armored Division with attachments less Trains, were left east of the Salm River, low on supplies, and completely fatigued by five or more days and nights of continuous fighting, with only one sure exit route, a secondary road running west from Vielsalm, and one probable route, the road Salmchâteau - Joubival -Lierneux.²⁵⁵

Only through the intervention of U.S. artillery in the evening on 22 December could the 2. SS-Panzer-Division be brought to a halt, slightly to the south of the important road from the river crossing at Salmchâteau to the crossroads of Baraque de Fraiture, eight miles farther to the west.

’It is difficult to determine with surety how much of the 7th Armored Division, CCB, 9th Armored, 424th Infantry, 112th Infantry, and the numerous attached units had been lost during the fight for Sankt Vith and in the subsequent withdrawal,’ wrote U.S. military historian Hugh M. Cole. ’Many records were destroyed during the final retreat, units were put back in the line on the 23rd with no accounting of their existing strength, and the formations of the 106th Division and 14th Cavalry Group had taken very severe losses before the defense of Sankt Vith began.’²⁵⁶ The available loss statistics may be regarded as underestimated. According to these, the Battle of Sankt Vith cost the 7th Armored Division a loss of eighty-eight tanks—fifty Shermans and twenty-nine Stuarts—plus twenty-five armored cars.²⁵⁷ Figures on U.S. personnel losses vary between 3,400 and 5,000 men.²⁵⁸ Two powerful U.S. divisions—with a total of about thirty thousand men and more than three hundred tanks and tank destroyers—that had been assembled against Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn’s 18. Volksgrenadier-Division less than a week earlier, were largely neutralized as fighting units. British military historian Peter Elstob, who himself served as an armored soldier in Belgium at the time, wrote:

’A conservative estimate for the period from 16 December to 23 December in the Sankt Vith area including the Schnee Eifel debacle would be about fourteen thousand casualties and over one hundred tanks, forty armored cars, hundreds of other vehicles, many guns of all sizes and large quantities of other equipment lost.’²⁵⁹ By now, the Germans counted a total of 20,000 POWs since the beginning of the offensive.²⁶⁰ The German losses since the opening of the offensive were sixteen hundred casulaties in the 18. Volksgrenadier-Division and the Führer Begleit Brigade, and about half a dozen tanks in the latter unit. The 62. Volksgrenadier-Division lost twelve hundred men between 16 and 23 December, a large share of these losses occurring during the first day of the attack in attempts to assault well-fortified American positions.

Major General Alan W. Jones, C.O. of the 106th Infantry Division, now had sustained two major defeats in less than a week. In the evening on 22 December, Major General Ridgway visited him at 106th Infantry Division’s Headquarters. Ridgway noted that Jones’ ’attitude seemed strange,’ that ‘he appeared to be casual, almost indifferent.’ ²⁶¹ Ridgway wrote. ’After talking to him a few minutes, I sent everyone from the room except the general officers and Colonel Quill, my Deputy Chief of Staff. On a scrap paper Colonel Quill at my direction wrote down in longhand my orders relieving this officer of his command.’²⁶²

A couple of hours later, Major General Jones suffered a heart attack and was taken for emergency treatment at the hospital in Liège. Ridgway appointed Hasbrouck to assume command of all U.S. forces east of the Salm, and informed him that he would ’approve whatever you decide.’²⁶³ In so doing, the rapid evacuation of all territory east of the Salm started.

It was a badly mauled American 7th Armored Division that poured back across the two only river crossings in American hands, south of Salmchâteau and at Vielsalm. Hugh M. Cole wrote, ’Unit integrity had been lost, the armored components were far below strength, and many of the armored infantry were weary, ill-equipped stragglers who had been put back in the line after their escape from Sankt Vith.’²⁶⁴

Lou Berrena, a sergeant in the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment of U.S. 82nd Airborne Division—which just arrived and taken up positions at River Salm—remembers the meeting with the retreating soldiers from 7th Armored Division: ’These guys hardly had any equipment. The weapons were gone. And they say it’s a mess. And all the tanks are coming back.’ The withdrawing troops were happy to meet the reinforcements of which Berrena was part, until he told them that there was just one battalion. ’A battalion?’ one of them exclaimed. ’Hell, there are divisions out there of Germans! I’m not kidding you. You’ll never stop them!’

This 7th Armored Division soldier actually had a quite realistic idea of the German force: At dawn on 23 December, U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps—the 82nd Airborne Division and the ragtag remnants of the American units that had escaped from the Sankt Vith Wedge—was pitted against two panzer divisions, a panzer brigade, and two infantry divisions: the 2. SS-Panzer-Division on the southern flank, the 18. and 62. Volksgrenadier divisions in the center, and the 9. SS-Panzer-Division and the Führer Begleit Brigade on the northern flank. Furthermore, the most advanced force of the powerful 1. SS-Panzer-Division, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper—stood at La Gleize, ten miles west-northwest of Vielsalm.

Indeed, U.S. 3rd Armored Division’s Combat Command A and Combat Command Reserve were brought into position at Hotton some twenty miles west of Vielsalm, to the right (west) of U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, but these forces were held back by another German panzer division, Generalmajor von Waldenburg’s 116. Panzer-Division. Already on the evening of 20 December, its spearheads reached a point just northeast of Hotton, following a lightning advance of eighteen miles in thirty-six hours. The 82nd Airborne had just barely avoided getting its march northwards, to the Salm, cut off by von Waldenburg’s panzers. But the crisis was far from over. A glance at the map on 23 December revealed that the XVIII Airborne Corps was in a new vulnerable position in a six to twelve-mile deep, horseshoe-shaped wedge from the west to the east, surrounded on both sides by German panzer forces.

THE WINDHUND DIVISION’S BLITZ ATTACK

Although German 116. Panzer Division on the second day of the Ardennes Offensive had been divided into two groups as Major Eberhard Stephan’s advanced task force, Kampfgruppe Stephan, crossed River Our at Dasburg far ahead of the main force—which had to turn around at Ouren in the north (see page 94)—Generalmajor von Waldenburg did not hesitate to allow the advanced battalion to continued the advance westward on its own.

Having wiped out the tanks of U.S. 707th Tank Battalion’s ’D’ Company at Marnach on 17 December, Stephan’s troops encountered tougher resistance in Heinerscheid, four miles north of Marnach. Here, the 1st Battalion of U.S. 28th Infantry Division’s 110th Infantry Regiment, supported by five Sherman tanks, made a brave attempt to halt the German advance. After a fierce battle in which three Shermans were knocked out, the Americans were compelled to withdraw to Hupperdingen (today called Hupperdange), two miles to the west. There the fight continued until this village also was in German hands. But by that time darkness had set in, so Major Stephan allowed his troops to rest for the night.

When Kampfgruppe Stephan resumed the advance on the morning of 18 December, the Germans advanced against Troisvierges (five miles northwest of Heinerscheid), which was taken after a short battle, and then continued on the road that led via Asselborn to Hoffelt, four miles southwest of Troisvierges, and on to the junction at Buret, another three miles farther to the west. By penetrating into the area midway between Sankt Vith in the north and Bastogne in the south, Kampfgruppe Stephan—in conjunction with the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division—pushed U.S. 28th Infantry Division’s 112th Infantry Regiment northwards. This secured the northern flank of German XLVII. Panzerkorps and its continued advance towards Bastogne and the Meuse. On December 18, U.S. 28th Infantry Division’s headquarters reported, ’In the 112th Infantry sector the enemy attacked continually throughout the day and late in the day all communications to the Regiment were lost and the situation became obscure.’²⁶⁵

The U.S. retreat from Sankt Vith on 22 December was accompanied by a heavy snowfall. (US Army)

On the evening of 18 December, Major Stephan’s troops bivouacked in Tavigny, only about three miles southeast of Houffalize and twelve miles from Heinerscheid. A few hours earlier, they had captured a large ammunitions dump that had been abandoned by the retreating Americans.²⁶⁶ For these achievements Major Stephan was awarded with the Knight’s Cross. Even though his small force by that time was left with only two serviceable StuG IIIs (out of originally six), it would deal the Americans another hard blow before sunrise.²⁶⁷

As we have seen (page 117), Task Force Booth—the force from Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division that had escaped the disaster east of Bastogne on 18 December—withdrew northwards from the area of Longvilly on the night between 18 and 19 December. During the retreat, some of the battered remnants of the other two task forces in this division’s Combat Command Reserve joined up. Having narrowly escaped being completely crushed by German 2. Panzer-Division, these units were, in the words of one of the participating soldiers, ’really shook up.’²⁶⁸ They were in such a hurry that they failed to notice that Tavigny was in enemy hands as they roared into this village, heading west at midnight on 18/19 December.

The Germans were taken by surprise when the first American vehicle column emerged around the road bend and continued down the hill above the little castle château de Tavigny. But the small town is located in a valley, and while Americans shifted down to work their way up the hill leading out of Tavigny towards the west, the Germans assembled to strike against them. The first armor-piercing shells soon were fired, and before the Americans had reached the crest of the hill west of the village, all fourteen tanks had been turned into blazing torches. These were identified as Shermans, but this possibly could have been a German misidentification of the fourteen Stuart tanks that U.S. 2nd Tank Battalion lost.²⁶⁹ Shortly afterwards, a second column of seven Shermans came rumbling from the south. According to the war diary of German II. Abteilung/ Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 146, all seven were destroyed by Panzerfausts.²⁷⁰

Then the German infantry attacked. The commander of 6. Batterie in the II. Abteilung/Artillerie-Regiment 146, Oberleutnant Egon Steinmeier, took charge of a group of soldiers who stormed the shocked Americans, who quickly surrendered. In triumph, Steinmeier’s men brought ninety-eight American prisoners, six captured half-tracks, and three anti-tank guns to Tavigny.²⁷¹ Among the prisoners of war was Lieutenant Colonel Robert Booth, C.O. of the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion.

The roads along which the German armored forces advanced in the first days of the offensive in December 1944 were filled with destroyed or abandoned U.S. combat vehicles. The image shows a row of Sherman tanks. (NARA, SC 197374)

Task Force Booth was completely wiped out. Losses amounted to 600 men.²⁷² ’Almost without losses the reconnaissance battalion dissipated and destroyed a number of enemy groups, knocked out some enemy tanks, captured a lot of personnel and all types of vehicles,’ the German divisional commander Generalmajor von Waldenburg noted with satisfaction.²⁷³ For some reason, many American depictions of the Ardennes Battle—including such that are considered to be major reference works on the subject—remain silent about the U.S. armor losses in Tavigny, but locals remembered how the road through the village and the fields beyond Tavigny were littered with American tank wrecks.²⁷⁴

Thus, not only Task Force Booth, but also U.S. 9th Armored Division’s entire Combat Command Reserve was almost completely obliterated. All three battalion commanders had been lost. The 2nd Tank Battalion had lost fifty-nine tanks.²⁷⁵ The 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion recorded a loss of 697 men, among which only three were killed while most were missing or captured.²⁷⁶ In the space of twenty-four hours, this battalion had lost both of its battalion commanders and all of its company commanders, ’B’ Company even lost its company commander as well as his successor. The material losses amounted to seventy-three half-track vehicles, thirty-five trucks, and three M8 SPGs.²⁷⁷

Major Stephan had decided to remain in Tavigny and await the rest of the division, instead of going straight on Houffalize, which had proved to be in the hands of a strong U.S. unit (82nd Airborne Division, which over the course of 18 December raced through Houffalize, in its rapid march from Reims in the south to River Salm in the north). Meanwhile, some of Tavigny’s residents—including people from Château de Tavigny—took on the task of burying the fallen Americans. One incident showed that Wehrmacht soldiers of the 116. Panzer-Division had a completely different view of the opponent than that of many SS troops. When some of the German soldiers saw a civilian Belgian pulling the corpse of a U.S. soldier in a rope that was attached around the neck of the dead American, they harshly reproached the Belgian for not respecting the dead.²⁷⁸

Early the next morning, 19 December, the first elements of the 116. Panzer-Division’s main force arrived in the area, Kampfgruppe Bayer, consisting of its entire Panzer Regiment, supported by Panzergrenadier-Regiment 60 and artillery. Bayer’s troops immediately attacked the American force that Kampfgruppe Stephan had detected on the heights east of Wicourt, south of Houffalize, completely obliterating the American force. Kampfgruppe Bayer reported several U.S. tanks knocked out and took more than four hundred prisoners.²⁷⁹

But since Oberst Johannes Bayer, the commander of Kampfgruppe Bayer, believed that an entire American division had moved into position in Houffalize, while he himself had no more than one regiment of supporting infantry, the divisional commander von Waldenburg decided not to assault Houffalize, situated among wooded heights. However, here the Germans missed out—U.S. 82nd Airborne Division hurriedly raced through Houffalize on 18 December and the following night. On the morning of the 19th, its main force was on the way to assume positions at River Salm, twelve miles farther to the north. ’The tail of the column beat the enemy out of Houffalize by approximately five minutes early in the morning of 19 December,’ reported Major John Medusky of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. ’Some MPs were cut off from their vehicles in Houffalize and had to escape on foot. The rest of the column continued north on N15 to Werbomont, where the regiment closed at 0300 on 19 December still without having contacted the enemy.’²⁸⁰ But unaware of this, von Waldenburg ordered Kampfgruppe Stephan and Kampfgruppe Bayer on the morning of December 19 to advance southwards in an attempt to circumvent Houffalize while waiting for the division’s second regiment, Panzergrenadier-Regiment 156.

At Bertogne, six miles southwest of Houffalize, Kampfgruppe Stephan clashed with a composite force from at least three American units—the 203rd Antiaircraft Battalion, the 129th Ordnance Maintenance Battalion, and a vanguard force from the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion—that passed Houffalize heading south to reinforce the garrison at Bastogne.²⁸¹ The Germans reportedly set two American tanks and twenty trucks ablaze, and captured twenty vehicles.²⁸² Here too it has proven difficult to use U.S. records to establish the exact U.S. losses. The captured American vehicles, however, came in handy as the Germans continued their rampage.

When Major Stephan shortly afterwards reported that the bridge over the Ourthe (Ourthe Occidentale) north of Bertogne was found to be demolished, he was ordered by von Waldenburg to continue southwestwards on the highway, which five miles further on joined the N 4—the highway that leads northwest from Bastogne to Marche.* His aim was to reach the Meuse via this road; a recently arrived report from the German air reconnaissance indicated that this could be possible to achieve without major difficulties.

German panzer grenadiers charging through the Ardennes in a leichter Schützenpanzer Sd.Kfz. 251 armored troop carrier, armed with a 7.92mm MG 42 machine gun. On the side of the armor is a log to be used when the vehicle got stuck and needed firm ground. It also served to reinforce the protection against shrapnel etc. (BArch, Bild 183-J28519/Gottert)

In August 1944, Oberleutnant Erich Sommer conducted the first reconnaissance flight with a jet plane in history. Flying a twin-engine Arado 234, he had since carried out regular strategic high-altitude reconnaissance flights without the Allies being able to do anything about it—for a long time even without the opponent being aware of these German air operations. On this 19 December 1944, Sommer took off at ten to eleven in the morning with the task of mapping the situation in the Meuse-sector in front of the 5. Panzerarmee. When he landed at 1222 hrs, he reported, ’Road bridges area Namur undamaged, road bridges Dinant and Givet in use. Railway bridge 10 km north of Dinant repair work in progress. Railway bridge 3 km south of Dinant destroyed.’²⁸³ He also had observed signs of massive American retreat movements: ’From Marche to Emptinne very heavy lorry column traffic in direction Namur. From Bastogne to Marche very heavy lorry traffic in direction Marche.’²⁸⁴

Just before Major Stephan’s motorized force reached the N 4, in the forest glade on the N 4’s northern side, the Germans came upon yet another American unit. U.S. 101st Airborne Division’s field hospital had settled here, seven miles northwest of Bastogne, in the belief that they were far away from the fighting. A tank destroyer positioned exactly in the road fork was immediately eliminated, and several other American vehicles were set ablaze. Field surgeon Captain Williss McKee remembers how just before midnight he heard violent gunfire. He rushed out of his tent and saw a German motorized force consisting of U.S. half-track vehicles, jeeps, and a captured Sherman tank approaching from the road in the northeast. A surgery tent was riddled with machine gun fire. Captain Charles Van Gorder, a field surgeon of Dutch origin who could speak pretty good German, shouted that they were medical personnel and unarmed. The Germans held their fire and told Van Gorder that the Americans had forty-five minutes to load the wounded and themselves onto trucks for further transport.

When the German commander—presumably Major Stephan—heard the screams of wounded men from inside one of the burning vehicles, he ordered a German soldier and the American Technician Fourth Grade Emil Natalie to save them. Emil Natalie remembers the strong impression this German officer made on him: ’The [German] officer in command was a typical Prussian. He was wearing well-polished black boots and his uniform looked as if he had just come back from a Berlin pass. In his right eye was a monocle. I remember all the details. He was such a contrast with the ordinary fighting men.’²⁸⁵

During the advance through the Ardennes, three German officers have left their vehicle to consult the map at the roadside. They are dressed in the Wehrmacht’s rubber coated motorcycle coat that gave good protection against the rain and sleet that dominated during the Ardennes Offensive’s first days. Behind them are soldiers in a column of armored troop carriers, closest a Sonderkraftfahrzeug Sd.Kfz. 251/1 Ausführung D. Equipped with a 100-hp Maybach HL 42 engine, this 7.4-ton half-track vehicle could reach a speed of over 30 m.p.h. on surfaced road. The vehicle was protected by a 12mm frontal armor and a 8mm side armor.

(BArch, Bild 183-J28477/Kriegsberichter Göttert)

The whole 326th Airborne Medical Company fell into German hands. Along with the patients, eighteen officers and 125 soldiers were taken into captivity. This was a heavy blow against the Americans in Bastogne, who soon would be completely encircled.

While the POWs were rounded up, a patrol from Kampfgruppe Stephan continued the N 4 northwards and discovered an undamaged Bailey bridge over the Ourthe (Ourthe Occidentale) at Ortheuville, two miles northwest of Salle. In view of the weakening resistance met by the 116. Panzer Division and ’the high morale of the their own troops,’ von Waldenburg decided to change the ’Windhund’ Division’s march route, and instead go full speed over the bridge and continue straight ahead towards the Meuse.²⁸⁶ This could have become a ’hussard coup’ in the style of the ’Desert Fox’ Rommel! The ’Windhund’ Division could very well have reached the Meuse already on 20 December if von Waldenburg’s plan would have materialized. By that time, there actually was nothing but very weak U.S. troops in the region. The British units that Montgomery had ordered to secure the Meuse bridges would not be in place until 21 December.²⁸⁷

But scarcely had von Waldenburg issued his new orders than a counter-order arrived from Corps commander Krüger. As soon as General von Manteuffel was informed of von Waldenburg’s bold initiative, he had contacted Krüger and in harsh terms clarified that the 116. Panzer Division was not allowed to deviate from the established march route; the division was to immediately turn back to Houffalize to continue its advance towards the Meuse from that place.²⁸⁸ Through von Waldenburg’s turn south, he had entered the march route that was intended for the 2. Panzer-Division’s advance.

It may be objected that von Manteuffel could have taken advantage of the situation created by the 116. Panzer-Division as it took the forefront of all other German units to allow this unit to take over the 2. Panzer-Division’s march route, and instead pit the latter against Bastogne. This might have succeeded—had it not been for one complicating factor: For it was not just U.S. 82nd Airborne Division that arrived in the Salm area to block the German forces in the Sankt Vith region; through an intercepted U.S. radio message, von Manteuffel had learned that U.S. 3rd Armored Division was on its way from the north to plug the gap in this area. This was one of the so-called ’heavy armored divisions’ with an assigned strength of 14,000 men and 390 tanks instead of 10,500 men and 263 tanks, which was the standard.²⁸⁹ Hence, von Manteuffel needed the 116. Panzer-Division farther north.

Since the 116. Panzer Division had been divided into two task forces on 17 December, von Manteuffel’s directives caused no delay to the division’s march forward; von Waldenburg’s own report shows that the 116. Panzer-Division’s Panzergrenadier-Regiment 156, and the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Grenadier-Regiment 1129 by now had reached Houffalize, which was taken without any resistance worth mentioning.²⁹⁰ The German panzer division’s own losses were quite limited also on 19 December—they were mainly confined to a couple of armored cars that got stuck in the marshy terrain at Tavigny.²⁹¹

On the other side of River Ourthe (Ourthe Orientale), the 116. Panzer-Division surged forward with Panthers, Panzer IVs, and assault guns with mounted panzer grenadiers, passing through a large area completely abandoned by the U.S. Army. On the evening of 20 December, the western column reached the small town of La Roche, wedged between towering mountains in the Ourthe’s gorge just where the river winds northwest. Three miles farther to the northeast, the eastern column meanwhile approached Samrée, where one of U.S. 7th Armored Division’s large fuel dumps was located. The quartermaster in the American armored division, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew A. Miller, expected that he would be able to hold back the Germans with a small force from the 7th Armored Division and promised reinforcements in the shape of Task Force Tucker from the 3rd Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve. But this was a serious misjudgment. Miller’s heavy equipment—one tank and four half-tracked vehicles armed with .50 caliber quadrupel machine guns were in quick succession knocked out by a single Panzer IV.

Two U.S. soldiers, Staff Sergeant Urban Minicozzi and Private First Class Andy Masiero, in position on a rooftop at Beffe, near Marcourt, awaiting the approaching Germans. (NARA, 111-SC-198884)

When the vanguard of Task Force Tucker arrived, it met the same fate and lost all six Shermans and both of its armored cars.²⁹² Shortly afterwards, the 7th Armored Division’s Headquarters Company under First Lieutenant Denniston Averill made an attempt to drive off the Germans from Samrée with three Shermans, all of which were lost in the uneven fight. The 7th Armored Division’s maintenance unit noted, ’1st Lt Averill, Company commander Trains Headquarters Company was dispatched with three medium tanks, one of which was known to have been knocked out, to relieve the Quartermaster. Lt Averill and the two other tanks are still missing on 31 Dec 44. The Quartermaster had to finally pull out, the AAA Bn lost three guns from enemyfire.’²⁹³

During the following night, the Germans repulsed another armored attack against Samrée, this time from the east by ’D’ Troop, 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron.²⁹⁴ The persistent American attempts to retake Samrée is highly understandable, because here the Germans captured 25,000 U.S. gallons of gasoline, plus 15,000 rations. The 116. Panzer Division reportedly destroyed twelve American tanks at Samrée on 20 December.²⁹⁵ The 116. Panzer-Division’s own tank losses on 20 December was limited to two tanks and an assault gun. But during the following night further combat vehicles were knocked out by artillery fire.²⁹⁶

While Kampfgruppe Bayer continued towards the northwest, the second division of German LVIII. Panzerkorps, the 560. Volksgrenadier-Division, took up positions at Samrée. On the evening of 20 December, I. Abteilung of Oberst Bayer’s Panzer-Regiment 16 stood in front of Hotton, eighteen miles south of River Meuse. Through that day’s rapid advance, an American armored unit of the 3rd Armored Division, Task Force Hogan—a company of Sherman tanks and about four hundred men under Lieutenant Colonel Samuel M. Hogan—had been enveloped at Marcouray, between La Roche and Hotton.

Another unit from the 3rd Armored Division, Task Force Orr, made a new attempt to retake Samrée and relieve Task Force Hogan through an attack from the northeast on 21 December. But this force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William R. Orr, mustered no more than a single tank company plus a reinforced armored reconnaissance company.²⁹⁷ 560. Volksgrenadier-Division’s infantry repulsed the American attack with Panzerfausts. Gefreiter Kurt Sielemann of Grenadier-Regiment 1129 was reported to have destroyed six Shermans with Panzerfausts.²⁹⁸Without doubt, it seemed as though the116. Panzer-Division would be able to neutralize the threat from the powerful 3rd Armored Division. By 22 December, it had destroyed an average of ten American tanks for each tank loss of its own since the offensive had begun six days earlier.

PAST BASTOGNE, TOWARDS THE MEUSE!

To the south, General von Lüttwitz’ XLVII. Panzerkorps meanwhile found itself divided between two tasks: To continue the march to the Meuse and at the same time to take Bastogne, the important junction on the way west. While the Panzer Lehr Division and 26. Volksgrenadier-Division were ordered to stay behind to deal with Bastogne, the 2. Panzer-Division, on the Corps’ northern flank, was instructed to bypass the town to the north and race on towards the Meuse. This fragmentation of forces was considered justified because von Lüttwitz had annihilated the American forces east of Bastogne on 18-19 December. Model and von Manteuffel assumed that the XLVII. Panzerkorps would be able to handle both tasks without any major difficulties.

As we have seen earlier (page 117), in the early hours on 18 December, Oberst von Lauchert’s 2. Panzer-Division—having defeated the American Task forces Rose and Harper along the main road from Clervaux to the west—swung off from the main road N 20 at Chifontaine, about a thousand yards north of Longvilly, and took the narrow back road that ran almost straight towards Bourcy, two miles to the northwest. At half past six in the morning on the 19th, the German panzers clanked into Bourcy, a village with a station on the railroad between Bastogne and Sankt Vith.²⁹⁹ The armored reconnaissance battalion of von Lauchert’s division continued to the next village, Noville, another two miles farther west. But when the armored reconnaissance vehicles and tanks emerged from the little grove eight hundred yards east of Noville, they faced a U.S. battlegroup. After a brief skirmish in which two Shermans were shot up, the Germans pulled back again.

This was one of two surprises that met the 2. Panzer Division this morning. As we saw earlier, on the previous day the Americans had despatched new units from the south to fill the gaps that had been torn open by the XLVII. Panzerkorps. The clashes with American 101st Airborne Division and Team Cherry of U.S. 10th Armored Division’s Combat Command B east of Bastogne, have already been described. In Noville, four miles north-northeast of Bastogne—on the main road between Bastogne and Houffalize—Team Desobry, another task force of U.S. 10th Armored Division’s Combat Command B, had taken up positions. With no more than four hundred men and fifteen Sherman tanks at his disposal, Major William R. Desobry was assigned with the impossible task of halting German 2. Panzer-Division.³⁰⁰

A column of U.S. troops pass an abandoned supply dump. (NARA, US Signal Corps)

Throughout the night of 17 December, a steady flow of more or less terrified soldiers from various shattered U.S. units arrived at Noville, attempting to escape the approaching panzer forces. ’There are more Germans coming than you have ever seen before. There’s no use staying here. They’ll run over you in no time!’ these soldiers said.³⁰¹ But Major Desobry was just as certain as his colleague Colonel Cherry had been that he would be able to halt the Germans, so he took command of the withdrawing men and organized them for Noville’s defense. One of Desobry’s company commanders, Captain Gordon Geiger, afterwards reported that several among them had protested, claiming that they had been ordered to withdraw, to which Cherry replied, ’I’m the one giving orders now! Hold your ground and fight!’³⁰²

A U.S. M18 Hellcat tank destroyer is made ready to open fire on approaching German tanks. With its 76mm M1 anti-tank gun in a turret, the Hellcat was a most dangerous opponent to the German tanks, especially since its high speed enabled it to quickly maneuver in the side of the German tanks, where these were not as heavily armored. A weakness of the Hellcat was its own weak armor, not more than a 25mm frontal armor.

(NARA, SC 196436)

On the German side, Oberst von Lauchert needed to cross the wretched little mud roads north of Bastogne in the shortest possible time in order to reach the paved road that runs southwards from Houffalize, so he went in to try to take Noville through a surprise attack. He despatched fourteen tanks on an arduous detour over what was nothing but farm tracks on the wide, open fields to the north, to reach the main road that runs into Noville from the north and attack the Americans from that direction. This turned out to be easier said than done; several days of thaw and rain had turned the fields and these small paths into pure marshlands where several tanks got stuck.³⁰³ In the morning on 19 December, the landscape was covered by a thick, damp fog as the 2. Panzer-Division, with the tanks of Panzer-Regiment 3 in the lead, rumbled forward along the muddy road from Bourcy to Noville (today called Rue Général Desobry). Just as the Germans were about to attack, the fog dispersed, so that the armored force was completely vulnerable to American firepower out there in the open fields.

Team Desobry’s tanks and anti-tank guns, which had taken up positions behind buildings, walls, or haystacks, immediately opened a furious fire against the Germans. The fight had just begun when a platoon from the 609th Tank Destroyer Battalion came roaring into Noville to reinforce Desobry’s force. This unit was equipped with the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, armed with the new 76mm M1 antitank gun. In particular the Hellcat could utilize its superior speed—it was able to reach a full 60 m.p.h., making it more than twice as fast as for example the Jagdpanzer IV or the Panther—to get a shot from the side or behind the German tanks, where these were significantly more vulnerable. In order to reach this high speed the Hellcat nevertheless had been ’stripped’ so that it only had a 25mm frontal armor and an open turret. Therefore the Hellcat crews also developed a tactic they called ’shoot and scoot.’

Several German tanks were hit by armor-piercing shells. Following a brief skirmish, the Germans found it best to withdraw. Since they were on top of the hills east of Noville, they could get out of the enemy line of fire fairly quickly, but not until, according to the U.S. report, nine German tanks had been hit, four of which caught fire.³⁰⁴

Von Lauchert realized that it would not be possible to break the American resistance at Noville without infantry support, but the bulk of his infantry still was far away in the rear area. Since the resistance pockets in Clervaux were not cleared until late in the afternoon on 18 December, generally only armored vehicles had been able to make it through the town until then.³⁰⁵ While von Lauchert waited for the infantry, his artillery began to shell Noville.

When it now dawned on Major Desobry what a terrible force his limited unit was up against, he contacted his commander, Colonel Roberts, in Bastogne and requested permission to withdraw, which nevertheless immediately was turned down. Instead, further reinforcements were sent to Noville—a platoon from the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 1st Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Panther tanks in combat in December 1944. (BArch, Bild146-1975-015-03/Valtingojer)

German anti-tank soldiers at a 75 mm PaK 40 L/48 anti-tank gun. This gun could knock out a Sherman frontally at a distance of 2,000 yards. (Månsson)

It took until dawn the next day, on 20 December, until von Lauchert had assembled a force sufficient to take on Desobry. After a fierce battle in sleet and thick fog, the Americans were forced back, and finally the deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Brigadier General McAuliffe, gave the permission to withdraw. The battle for Noville cost the Americans a loss of four hundred men, eleven Shermans, and at least five tank destroyers.³⁰⁶ Among the casualties were to be found Major Desobry, who was injured, and the C.O. of the airborne battalion in Noville, Lieutenant Colonel James L. LaPrade, who was killed.

The fact that Desobry’s task force had managed to stall the dreaded 2. Panzer-Division for a whole day was in itself a remarkable achievement, and of course this is the explanation for the myths that have come to surround the Battle of Noville in history writing. But even if the Americans here mis-identified German assault guns as tanks, the figures for German tank losses are exaggerated—various American sources claim the figures to be twenty or even thirty. In regard to the 2. Panzer Division’s actual strength after the Battle of Noville, von Lauchert’s division hardly could have lost more than around ten tanks and five assault guns at Noville.

With American opposition at Noville broken, nothing seemed to stand in the way of 2. Panzer-Division’s march to River Meuse, and General von Lüttwitz expected the imminent fall of Bastogne. The overwhelming German victory east of Bastogne, and the weak resistance encountered in the area following this, caused Panzer Lehr’s C.O., Bayerlein, to conclude that the road to Bastogne lay basically open.³⁰⁷ Moreover, the weather continued to be on the German side. 20 December was the worst day so far in terms of flying weather. The temperature fluctuated between 44 and 28 degrees. A thick mist hung in the air, sleet poured down, and heavy squalls made it difficult even to get around on foot on the icy runways on Allied airfields in the area. That twelve aircraft managed to take into the air—the lowest number for the 9th Air Force during the whole campaign in the West—testifies to a marvel of skill in the pilots in question. Major General Troy Middleton, commanding U.S. VIII Corps, swore woe and cursed the weather, which meant that he could not even get a Piper Cub liaison plane airborne. ’The fog sat right on the ground,’ he recalled. ’We had to use lights on vehicles during the day.’³⁰⁸

On the morning of 20 December, German Corps commander General von Lüttwitz submitted a situation report: ’The 2. Panzer Division has seized Noville. The enemy withdraws head over heels from the 2. Panzer-Division through Foy and southwards. The 2. Panzer-Division pursues the fleeing enemy. Foy is expected to fall at any time, if this has not already occurred. After the conquest of Foy, the 2. Panzer-Division, will swing to the west according to orders, and enter open terrain. The Panzer Lehr Division still is in front of Neffe, but has taken Wardin and is moving fast towards Marvie. There the enemy appears to be weak and unprepared. Marvie may already have been taken.’³⁰⁹

Middleton assigned Brigadier General McAuliffe, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division, to assume command of all U.S. forces in Bastogne, and on 20 December Middleton and his own staff personnel departed from Bastogne to Neufchâteau, nineteen miles farther down southwest. The instructions Middleton issued McAuliffe shortly before his departure, were to say the least wordy: ’The [101st Airborne] Division will stabilize their front lines on the front P798945 [Recht] to Sankt Vith, south along a general line east of [highway] N 15 […] to connect with the 4th Infantry Division at Breitweiler.’³¹⁰ McAuliffe had no intention of adhering to this order, which meant that his division, supported only by remnants of the forces that had escaped the German onslaught east of Bastogne, was expected to hold a fifty-mile wide front—against virtually the entire 5. Panzerarmee and 7. Armee. Instead, he concentrated his forces in a series of defensive positions around Bastogne. The second part of Middleton’s orders, he nevertheless took literary: ’There will be no withdrawal!’ Indeed, this was the same directive that Middleton almost routinely had issued to virtually all of his subordinate units at more or less any given point from River Our and westwards during the previous five days, but with McAuliffe and the 101st Airborne Division, the Americans had a unit and a commanding officer who—for the first time—really would fulfill this order.

In the outskirts of Noville, a knocked out Sherman. (National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

Forty-six-year old Anthony McAuliffe may have been short in stature—he measured only 5 ft 9 in—but without doubt he belonged to the toughest U.S. commanders during the Ardennes Battle. He had no combat experience prior to D-Day in June 1944, but because of his proven qualities he had helped develop both the Bazooka and the American Jeep. Having graduated at West Point in November 1918, he served long in the artillery. That was why he was placed as the Artillery Commander in the 101st Airborne Division. McAuliffe was skeptical about parachute jumping, which he said was tough ’for an old crock like me’—a statement which earned him the nick-name ’Old Crock’ His name is forever associated with the Ardennes Battle in the winter of 1944/1945. Two years after the war, the central square of Bastogne was renamed from Place du Carre to Place McAuliffe, and there was erected a bust of McAuliffe, who in 1949 was awarded the title of honorary citizen of the town of Bastogne.

Forty-six-year old Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of Bastogne, was called ‘Old Crock’ by his men. His personal attitude contributed greatly to the American resistance in the encircled Bastogne. McAuliffe passed away in 1975, at the age of 77. In Belgium, he has gained the status of a hero for his heroic defense of Bastogne. (NARA)

The German force that on 20 December 1944 made a first attempt to take the town—Panzer Lehr and the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division—appeared to be strong enough for the task. But neither of these divisions was complete at the time of the attack, as both had detailed one regiment each to cover the southern flank twelve miles farther to the southeast. The fact is that the Americans were numerically superior: The 101st Airborne Division, and what was left of the armor of Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division and Combat Command Reserve, 9th Armored Division, plus whisked together remnants of various units that had been mauled in the tank battle east of Bastogne, were at least 50 percent stronger than the Germans at Bastogne. The American superiority was particularly strong in artillery.

The 26. Volksgrenadier-Division employed Grenadier regiments 77 and 78, reinforced with eight tank destroyers, against Bizory, about two miles northeast of Bastogne. This thrust was initially supported by the 2. Panzer Division, which following the capture of Noville continued south on the road to Bastogne and ousted Team Desobry and the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment from the small village of Foy, just two miles northwest of Bizory. Here the 2. Panzer-Division was halted, however not by the Americans, but by its own supreme command. Oberst von Lauchert had proposed that his 2. Panzer-Division would continue along the main road from Noville and Foy to attack Bastogne from the north, but was rebuffed by his Corps commander, General von Lüttwitz: ’Leave Bastogne and continue against the Meuse according to orders!’

Even Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, Oberbefehlshaber West, had made it clear that the 2. Panzer-Division under no circumstances was allowed to deviate from its march route to the Meuse: From his headquarters, von Rundstedt contacted Model and von Manstein to inform them that the main emphasis of the offensive from now on was on the 5. Panzerarmee and its advance towards the Meuse. It was essential, von Rundstedt said, that this Army rapidly established itself on the west bank of the river, thereby ’preventing the enemy from bringing reinforcements across the river.’³¹¹

When von Lauchert’s armor left Foy, the 3rd Battalion of U.S. 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment followed suit to recapture the village. Backed by tanks from Combat Command B, 10th Armored Division, the 506th and 501st Parachute Infantry regiments were able to halt the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, but not before the Germans had occupied Bizory.

Farther south, Panzer Lehr’s attack collapsed in the concentrated fire from six U.S. artillery battalions.³¹² Although the Germans only lost three tanks, their infantry battalions were heavily depleted.³¹³ The meadows between the villages of Neffe and Mont east of Bastogne were partitioned by barbed wire fences in intervals of thirty to fifty feet, which the Germans apparently had failed to notice. The advancing soldiers of Kampfgruppe 902 had to stop to climb over each of these fences, and there they were mowed down in droves. Afterwards these sheep fences were marked by evenly spaced rows of corpses dressed in field gray uniforms.³¹⁴

To German 2. Panzer-Division, 20 December looked entirely different. Having made it through the ruins of Noville on the way back from Foy, von Lauchert’s armored columns paved their way across a narrow and wretched backroad to the main road that ran southwestwards from Houffalize. They no longer had any contact with the enemy, but their main opponent now was the marshy land on the terrain off the main roads. Von Lauchert’s proposal to strike directly against Bastogne from the north had to some extent been dictated by the fact that there were no proper westbound roads in the area immediately north of Bastogne. On the previous day, the wheel-driven vehicles in his column had with only great efforts made their way across the narrow and muddy backroads to reach Noville. But when they reached the highway from Houffalize at noon on the 20th, things began to run smoothly. The tanks followed the same route the armor of the 116. Panzer-Division had taken on the day before, and reached Ortheuville, where they took possession of the unscathed Bailey Bridge and established a bridgehead across River Ourthe (Ourthe Occidentale).

A German soldier makes his way under a cattle fence on a field in the Ardennes. In the background, a knocked out American armored car. (NARA, III-SC-341638)

Under the command of Leutnant Ernst Gottstein a reconnaissance force of two armored reconnaissance vehicles set off from Ortheuville on Highway N 4 to reconnoitre up to the highway intersection of Barrière de Champlon, three miles further on. Gottstein took the shortest route across the hills northwest of Ortheuville until his two vehicles came up on the tarmac where the beech forest begins, a mile or so south of the crossroads. No U.S. soldiers could be seen at the crossroads. Gottstein ordered a halt, and boldly stepped into the little café at the crossroads with his pistol drawn, while his men were in position outside. Shortly afterwards Gottstein came out again, with two American POWs. He switched on the radio in his armored car and reported to his commander at the bridge, ’Road junction cleared of enemy forces!’³¹⁵

Von Lauchert’s main force went into position at Tenneville, two miles farther back, but on the northern side of the Ourthe. Ahead of them lay a single straight stretch of the paved highway from Bastogne to Namur on the Meuse, forty miles away. However, they had to take a one-day break to wait for supplies of fuel and ammunition. The supply transport had fallen far behind due to traffic congestions and bottlenecks formed at the narrow road bridges.³¹⁶

In the area south of Sankt Vith, two paved highways led to this road from Germany, but both still were blocked by the U.S. forces in the Sankt Vith section (this was the day before the fall of Sankt Vith). Because of this, the bringing up of supplies to the 5. Panzerarmee’s two panzer corps was confined to only one paved road from Germany—the one that from Dasburg snaked through Luxembourg and on to the west.

Indeed this was an asphalt road, but it was totally inadequate to supply most of the 5. Panzerarmee. At Dasburg the cliffs descend almost vertically into River Our. A narrow serpentine road led down to the bridge that had been laid across the river gorge, and on the other side, the narrow road bent to the right and then climbed up the hill. Steep, forested mountainsides and hairpin bends made it impossible to pull over to allow other vehicles to pass. The slippery winter road conditions and the limited visibility due to the fog that often lay thick on the ground, further worsened accessibility. This road was used by the bulk of the 5. Panzerarmee’s supply traffic in both directions.

The Germans were not only confined to the river crossing at Dasburg—they also could use the bridge at Obereisenbach a bit farther downstream (south). But the narrow dirt road that wound uphill from this river crossing to Hosingen and the main road ’Skyline Drive’ three miles farther west, was described by German 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s C.O., Oberst Kokott, as ’completely worn out.’³¹⁷ In some places the roadside descended steeply. It goes without saying that on the slippery winter road any trip along this route was quite hazardous to weary German drivers. Neither did the route from Obereisenbach through Hosingen offer any real alternative but to join the road from Dasburg at Marnach, three miles west of Dasburg. Especially in the first days of the Ardennes Offensive, Marnach became a hell for German military traffic controllers—at this bottleneck, where vehicles could pass in both directions, huge traffic jams formed, exposing the traffic controllers to immense challenges.

Not just wheel-driven vehicles sank into the miserable dirt roads that had turned into pure marshes through the thaw. This Sherman tank has been abandoned by its crew since it got stuck in the mud and ran down both tracks. (NARA, SC-197209)

In a small community southeast of Saint-Hubert, west of Bastogne, American soldiers take cover from German gunfire. (NARA, lll-SC-193835/Gedicks)

More often than not, a huge traffic jam extended all the way to Clervaux and its bridges over the next river, the Clerve, another three miles to the west. After Clervaux the main road passed an undulating farmland with soft hills, and here the tracks of dozens of U.S. and German tanks had ruined the asphalt, so that truck drivers often were forced to edge along in order not to destroy the axles, and this further contributed to the congestion at Marnach.

Had the Germans been able to go on through Bastogne, which would have led them straight onto the wide highway N 4 towards Marche and then Namur on the Meuse, the supply situation would have been completely different. But after traveresing twelve miles on the rutting road from Clervaux towards Bastogne, the transport vehicles now instead had to turn right from the main road and take the much poorer backroad northwards via Arloncourt, Bourcy, and Noville northeast of Bastogne. This was the dirt road that von Lauchert’s division had such difficulty in getting about two days earlier—now with the difference that it had been so utterly ruined up by the passing tanks that in the thaw that dominated the early days of the Ardennes Offensive, the road could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding fields. Here trucks and horse-drawn carriages often sank down to their axles, and even individual soldiers found it difficult to move forward because for every step they sank down to the ankles in the soft mud.³¹⁸

On the windswept fields along a stretch of six miles this road became bordered with vehicles broken down or stuck, between which cursing officers and field gendarms trudged around yelling, while fatigued soldiers struggled to push stalled vehicle aside, all while rain and sleet poured down. Moreover, the road that ran southwards from Houffalize to the area where the advanced units of the 2. Panzer Division stood, had already become quite run down by the heavy tracked vehicles.

Defeated generals rarely are to be considered the most reliable historical source, but immediately after the war many American writers were only too happy to use the German generals’ subjectively marked accounts to get an idea of ’the other side’ during the Ardennes Battle in the winter of 1944/1945. Unfortunately, many of the explanations offered by these defeated generals have been forwarded quite uncritically. For that reason, historiography often tends to portray the German supply difficulties during the first week of the Ardennes Offensive as something extraordinary.

In actual fact, the rapid motorized advances during World War II quite frequently were beset by temporary halts because the spearheads had run out of fuel.

General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz commanded German XLVII. Panzerkorps during the Ardennes Offensive. Von Lüttwitz, awarded with the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, had led the 2. Panzer-Division during the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944. He passed away in 1969. (BArch, Bild 146-1972-031-44 / Photo: Unknown.)

This actually was almost unavoidable, especially where road conditions made it difficult for wheel-driven vehicles to get around. This was commonplace on the Eastern Front, where German armored units sustained weeklong attack breaks for similar reasons in the summer of 1942, but still it did not bring the overall offensive to a halt. The most fundamental difference between the Blitzkrieg of the previous years and the Ardennes Offensive in this regard was that earlier the Germans enjoyed air superiority—unlike what was the case on the Western Front in 1944. For this reason, the Germans in the Ardennes in December 1944 welcomed the heavy rainfall, despite its negative impact on road conditions.

The American defense of Bastogne was far more stubborn than the Germans had anticipated, and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. A German report even described the American resistance at Bastogne as ‘fanatical.’ (Via Warren Watson)

It has been said that von Manteuffel had expected his troops to reach the Meuse in two or three days, but this has been denied by von Manteuffel himself: ’I had never expected to reach the Meuse river in two or three days, but rather, I felt that if all went well, we should be able to reach it in from six to eight days,’ he said when he was interviewed by the U.S. military shortly after the war (although he later corrected this to ’four to six days.’ ³¹⁹

General von Lüttwitz also was quite optimistic on 20 December when he reported, ’Enemy Situation: Opponent feels defeated, is retreating and confines himself to try to defend his withdrawal’³²⁰

Perhaps the main evidence that the German commanders at the time did not regard the 2. Panzer-Division’s involuntary stop as any serious setback in the plans is to be found with the Supreme Commander on the Western Front, Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt. Although it stood clear that the 2. Panzer Division would be left without fuel throughout 21 December, von Rundstedt did not hesitate to shift the main emphasis of the offensive from the 6. SS-Panzerarmee to the 5. Panzerarmee on the evening of 20 December.

That this temporary fuel shortage at the front lines was due to difficult road conditions and stretched supply lines, and not—as is often claimed—a supposedly inadequate assignment of fuel prior to the offensive, is illustrated by the fact that Panzer Lehr, the second armored division of General von Lüttwitz’s XLVII. Panzerkorps, was not affected by these difficulties on 20-21 December. Since this division on 20 December still stood in the area east of Bastogne, its supply lines were not as stretched as those of the 2. Panzer-Division.

On the evening of 20 December, Panzer Lehr and 26. Volksgrenadier-Division received orders from General von Lüttwitz to set their respective reconnaissance battalions in motion to bypass Bastogne in the south. These joined the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39, which two days previously had taken up positions north of Wiltz in order to cover the Army’s southern flank. Over the course of 21 December these units, in conjunction with the 7. Armee’s 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division, swept through the area south and southwest of Bastogne, where Assenois, just outside Bastogne’s southern industrial area, was taken by Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39. A little further west, the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division’s 26. Aufklärungs-Abteilung under Major Rolf Kunkel met a hard-necked American resistance in Sibret. On 19 December, Major General ’Dutch’ Cota had shifted his U.S. 28th Infantry Division headquarters to this place, a small town of some 1,000 inhabitants and a station on the railway line between Libramont in the southwest and Sankt Vith, fifty miles further to the northeast. In connection with this, most of the battered remnants of the 28th Infantry Division’s 110th Regimental Combat Team—mainly the 1st and 2nd battalions—were brought together into Task Force Caraway, which under Lieutenant Colonel Forrest Caraway’s command was assigned to defend Sibret. Caraway and Cota also had the support of the artillery from the 109th and 687th Field Artillery battalions.³²¹ In addition, what was left of the 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion was positioned north and south of the town. The defense of Sibret was facilitated by the fact that it is located on a hill dominating the surrounding fields.

German panzer grenadiers and Panther tanks of the type Ausführung G on the march. (BArch, Bild 183-H28356)

The first German attempt to attack Sibret, made by a small group of 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division paratroopers during the night of 20 December, failed. But the next morning, Major Kunkel’s force struck from four different directions. After several hours of street fighting, the American resistance finally collapsed, and the Germans took a large number of prisoners. They also captured twenty artillery pieces, and large numbers of tanks, armored cars, and other motor vehicles—some of which had been left in a hurry with the engines still running.³²² The two American commanders, Cota and Caraway, managed to get away and took refuge in Vaux-les-Rosieres, farther south on the main road from Bastogne to Neufchâteau.

Kampfgruppe von Fallois—Major Gerd von Fallois’ reinforced armored reconnaissance battalion of Panzer Lehr—surged forward on the southern flank, next to the 5. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Over the course of 21 December, von Fallois’ troops took Chenogne, two miles northwest of Sibret, captured an entire column of sixty American trucks and twenty-two jeeps, seized Libramont, fifteen miles southwest of Bastogne, and surrounded U.S. 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion near Tillet, a bit further west of Bastogne.³²³

When the commander of the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division, Kokott, followed the tracks of Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 39, he found the march route in the area south of Bastogne to be littered with burned out and shot up U.S. tanks.³²⁴

In the evening of 21 December, the German positions in the area south and southwest of Bastogne were reinforced as Panzer Lehr’s Kampfgruppe 902 was ordered to follow von Fallois and advance towards Saint-Hubert, twelve miles west of Bastogne. Only Kampfgruppe 901 (also known as Kampfgruppe Hauser) was left in the area southeast of Bastogne.

Thus, Bastogne—with 18,000 U.S. troops and 3,500 civilians—was totally surrounded. Owing to an expedient intervention by the acting mayor Leon Jacquin, a large amount of flour had been brought into the town, so that there were 7.5 tons of food to the 22,000 Americans and Belgians.³²⁵To this could be added fairly rich amounts of meat from cattle in a large number of farms in the vicinity. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the airborne general entrusted with the task to lead the defense of Bastogne, felt no particular cause for concern; after all, paratroopers were trained to fight in a situation where they were surrounded. The stratagem next attempted by General von

’There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town.’ Such read the message that von Lüttwitz via two German officers and two soldiers under parliamentary flag forwarded to McAuliffe on the afternoon of 22 December 1944. It is hardly surprising that McAuliffe was not put off balance by his opponent’s ultimatum.

The German message was conveyed to McAuliffe by the U.S. division’s deputy chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Ned Moore. McAuliffe had just been awakened from an afternoon nap in the basement of one of the Heintz Barracks, where he had set up his headquarters. In his dazed state he first perceived it as though the Germans wanted to surrender. When Moore pointed out that it in fact was an offer to the Americans to surrender, the still drowsy McAuliffe exclaimed, ’Oh shit!’ Then he ordered Moore to reject the German offer to surrender.

The major who led the German parliamentary group however required a written response from the U.S. commander, and this made McAuliffe perplexed.

’I don’t know what the hell to say to them,’ he told his staff officers.

’How about the first remark of yours?’ suggested his planning officer, Colonel Harry W. Kinnard, provoking loud laughters.

Eventually McAuliffe grabbed a pen and wrote a single word on a sheet of paper: ’NUTS.’

Hellmuth Henke, an English-German Leutnant who served as an interpreter in the German parliamentary group, explained in embarrassment to the German major that he did not really understand the answer. At the major’s request, he asked the American escort, Colonel Joseph Harper, for a clarification. Harper asked Private First Class Ernie Premetz, who served as interpreter, to explain, and he turned to Leutnant Henke and said, ’It means: “Du kannst zum Teufel gehen”—you can go to hell!’ That McAuliffe actually responded with ’Nuts’ is confirmed by General von Lüttwitz in his report on XLVII. Panzerkorps during the Ardennes Battle.³²⁶

When the American resistance at Sankt Vith was wiped out, the previously congested roads loosened up. ’Finally we were able to push on towards St Vith,’ SS-Sturmmann Helmut Semmler of 9. SS-Panzer-Division’s SS-Flak-Abteilung 9 noted in his diary. ‘Meanwhile countless vehicles taken from the enemy were in the hands of our own units, mainly Studebaker truck with the slantedoff “nose.” On the left and right of the road stood several Sherman tanks that had been abandoned. Individual dead soldiers were lying by the side of the street.’³²⁷

With brush and pencil, Horst Helmus, one of the German soldiers who took part in the Ardennes Offensive, depicted how German soldiers in a captured U.S. M8 half-track, towing a PaK 40 anti-tank gun, are pursuing the retreating American forces.

On 21 and 22 December, the German supply columns drove at full speed on the highways from the east and the north. ’After Sankt Vith was taken, traffic flows continuously,’ wrote Leutnant Behmen in Artillerie-Regiment 1818 in his diary on 22 December, but he also added, ’If enemy planes had appeared it would have been a terrible disaster.’³²⁸ But the poor weather still kept the Allied aviation grounded, and the offensive was resumed. General von Lüttwitz wrote, ’For 22 December the corps expected the two panzer divisions to advance far to the northwest. Our reconnaissance units had not encountered serious resistance anywhere. It seemed as though the enemy so far had not brought forth any new forces.’³²⁹

As soon as the first fuel trucks arrived at the bridgehead at Tenneville, von Lauchert immediately had the half-tracks of Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 2, a couple of Panther tanks and some StuG IIIs refuelled. Designed Kampfgruppe von böhm (after the commander of the armored reconnaissance battalion, Hauptmann von böhm) these set off on Highway N 4 against Marche and Namur early in the morning of 22 December.

Two and a half miles from Tenneville, the road enters a hilly wooded area. Here the American 51st Engineer Combat Battalion had made great efforts to block accessibility during the previous afternoon. They had blown a huge hole in the road, and in the woods they had felled large amounts of the naked, frozen trees over the road. In addition, a small rearguard force was in position in the forest fringe. It took a couple hours of fighting in the morning before the Americans withdrew. Hauptmann von böhm’s force resumed its advance. But when they shortly afterwards reported the deep trees latches along the forest road, von böhm was ordered to bypass this stretch of the N 4 on the small dirt road that wound up the hills westwards towards Nassogne, five miles away, and from there, continue north towards Marche.³³⁰ The German advance was supported by at least one captured jeep with American-speaking German commandos, dressed in U.S. combat fatigue, who infiltrated behind the American lines in order to sow confusion— so-called ‘Greif’ soldiers.* Meanwhile, fuel trucks kept arriving at Tenneville in a steady stream. This enabled von Lauchert to assemble his next task force, consisting of II. Abteilung/ Panzer-Regiment 3, Panzergrenadier-Regiment 304, Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 74, and two-thirds of the 273. Heeres-Flak-Abteilung. Commanded by Major Ernst von Cochenhausen—the deputy C.O. of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 304—its tanks, Puma armored cars, tractors, air defense vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and many other types of vehicles, with about two thousand mounted panzer grenadiers, set off in a long column.

The rugged terrain on both sides of the road in the forest made it impossible to bypass the tree obstacles, so these had to be cleared away, which took four hours to complete.³³¹ But then the Germans entered completely open plains at Nassogne. It was a considerable force of nearly nine hundred vehicles, and when the leading tanks reached the N 4 west of Bande, four miles southeast of the city of Marche, the last vehicles had not even entered the forest six miles farther back.

Here the Germans discovered so many fresh vehicle tracks in the snow that it was assumed that the Americans had assembled a large force in Marche. This was reported to von Lauchert, who forwarded the information to the Corps commander von Lüttwitz, who instructed the 2. Panzer-Division to veer to the northwest and instead cross the Meuse at Dinant.³³² The German conclusion proved to be entirely correct. Powerful elements of both U.S. 3rd Armored Division and 84th Infantry Division had just marched up to defend Marche. The 3rd Armored Division, led by the stalwart Major General Maurice Rose, was, as we saw earlier, a so-called heavy armored division— that is, it was considerably stronger than a regular armored division—and well over a hundred of its tanks were in the Marche region. The 84th Infantry Division was, as it would soon turn out, one of the toughest U.S. infantry divisions in the Ardennes. The division was called ’the Rail Splitters’— which caused the Germans to call its soldiers ‘the Axe Men.’³³³

Von Cochenhausen left a battalion of panzer grenadiers, a half air defense battalion, and a small Luftwaffe Flak unit south of Marche.³³⁴ Then the main force continued the advance in accordance with von Lüttwitz’s new instructions. At the place where the N 4 bends right towards Marche, the German main force took the minor road that runs westwards south of the city. Here the landscape changes into an increasingly hilly, forested terrain. This was a perfect place for ambushes, which the Americans also took advantage of.

The 335th Infantry Regiment of U.S. 84th Infantry Division had positioned its 3rd Battalion on some of these hills. Just before the Germans approached, the ’Rail Splitters’ received a welcome reinforcement from the 3rd Armored Division. Its Combat Command A had ordered Task Force Doan—elements of the 32nd Armored Regiment, the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, and the 67th Field Artillery Battalion—to take up positions at the N 4 between Marche and Bastogne. This task force barely had left the city when it clashed with Kampfgruppe von Cochenhausen at Hargimont, two and a half miles southwest of Marche.³³⁵

It was about five in the afternoon of 22 December, when von Cochenhausen’s column slowly rumbled forward on the winding road south of Marche, in the direction of Hargimont. To the right of the road there were steep cliff walls, covered by deciduous forest. It was dark and in the snowy mist visibility was not more than a few yards. Suddenly flares were lit in the sky overhead, and from the heights above the road heavy weapons opened fire. Five of the German armored vehicles were hit and burned with a fierce glow. The Germans immediately fell back on the defensive.

But the battle soon was decided by the surprising emergence of Kampfgruppe von böhm south of Hargimont. This force had taken the backroad through Nassogne, and now came roaring past the old Château de Jemeppe down in the hollow behind the American positions. Before the Americans got a grasp of what was happening, von böhm’s troops had made their way up the slope and attacked them in the back. The Americans hastily abandoned their positions and retreated towards Marche. Certain of victory, von Lauchert sent von Lüttwitz the following report:

’Our parachutists and Greif commandos have sown panic in the Allies’ rear areas. Enemy morale seems strongly shaken. Since our fight at Noville we have encountered only weak resistance that was easily overcome—except south of Marche today. Enemy planes have been little active. The Luftwaffe has not yet intervened in the battle. Revictualling and refuelling is insufficient and irregular, strongly restraining the tactical mobility of the division. We will continue our advance along the axis Buissonville, Chapois, Conneux with our main force. We will put in a roadblock at Leignon [NW of Chapois] awaiting our promised flank guard. We will occupy the zone Celles - Conjoux and prepare to cross the Meuse at Anseremme [a railway bridge 1½ miles from Dinant].’³³⁶

Meanwhile the Luftwaffe was instructed that under no circumstances must it attack the Meuse bridges to the west of the line Verviers - Bastogne, so that these would be unscathed when they were seized by German troops.³³⁷

While the Ardennes was covered with snow over the course of 22 December, U.S. First Army was on the retreat almost along the whole line. (NARA, SC-197350)

ANTITANK GUN VERSUS SHERMAN

Unteroffizier Horst Helmus, anti-tank gunner in Panzerjäger-Abteilung 26, described an encounter with a Sherman tank at Sibret in his diary on 21 December 1944:

We hold a position with the main road Bastogne - Neufchâteau half a mile in front of us. Next to us there is a 7.5cm light howitzer on a 3.7cm gun carriage. The infantry occupies readiness postures. 10.5cm howitzers open up a preparatory fire. The infantry will attack at 1100 hrs. […] We encounter infantry fire from automatic weapons, and I had to throw myself flat on the ground …]

Suddenly a cry, as from a thousand throats: TANK! The infantry tries to locate it. From all sides the yell is heard: Paanzer!—drawn out and with each syllable emphasized. In a forest beyond the road we see the outlines of a Sherman (at least we imagine that it is a tank of that model). Slowly it moves forward. Then the engine suddenly roars. The Yankee gives full throttle and at high speed it comes bumping out of the forest. In spite of the engine sound, we hear Leutnant Gutbier give fire permission. Unteroffizier Mayer gives a barely audible fire command with direction, ammunition type, distance, and the number of shells, but I am unable to see or hear anything but the tank. Distance knob set to armor-piercing shell, distance 800 meters. Easy now, a little deflection, and then I press the button. Bang! The first shot! Hoorraaaay! A hit in the road wheels! I can hear it but I see nothing because I am blinded by the smoke. […] The second shot hits one of the tracks. Now the tank halts. The tank commander had bailed out already between the first and second hits. The third shot: Hit in the upper part of the chassis side. Ammunition Fire! A huge puff of flame and smoke shoots up. End of the show…

My face is blackened by gunpowder. I look really ‘dangerous’! My ears ring and I can barely hear anything. But I understand the congratulations from Hauptmann Reinecke and Leutnant Gutbier.

Source: Horst Helmus, diary.

Horst Helmus illustrated this event with his pencil.

CONCLUSIONS AND RESULTS

The first seven days of the Ardennes Offensive caused the U.S. Army some of the heaviest setbacks in its entire history, most of all perhaps in terms of military prestige, but even in practical terms these setback were of a significant scale, decidedly larger than what is discernible in many depictions of the Ardennes Battle. The latter is particularly true regarding U.S. loss statistics, which at a close study prove to be both imperfect and contradictory. In fact, it simply is impossible to obtain reliable American loss statistics, since much of this was destroyed during the war or shortly thereafter—which from the perspective of historiography, of course is quite remarkable.*

The German offensive clearly was both skillfully undertaken and masterfully prepared. The fact that the Germans at such a late stage of the war again were able to carry out a Blitzkrieg operation—albeit in a modified form—stunned the world. That they also managed to attack their opponents with such a great surprise merits the Ardennes Offensive the attention of higher strategic studies for a long time to come.

A prerequisite for these German successes was the bad weather that kept the Allied aviation grounded, and in this field both the military planners and the meteorologists had made completely accurate assessments. Extensive air strikes against the narrow and at times quite congested transport routes to the front would undoubtedly have rendered these successes impossible.

In one respect the Germans, however, made a grave miscalculation—regarding the endurance of the U.S. soldiers, which they grossly underestimated. The use of any other word than brave to describe the G.I.s who were in the forefront in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944 would be utterly unfair. Offering a fierce resistance against the numerically superior attackers in the first hours—in some cases the first few days—these small groups of young Americans created an important prerequisite for the Allied recovery later in the battle. For example, Bastogne was saved basically by a single battalion of U.S. soldiers from the 28th Infantry Division—Major Harold F. Milton’s 3rd Battalion from Colonel Hurley Fuller’s 110th Regimental Combat Team—which tied down German Panzer Lehr and 26. Volksgrenadier-Division in Luxembourg long enough to allow the 101st Airborne Division to reach the town before the Germans. *

However much of the strategic possibilities created by these brave front soldiers, were wasted by an often appalling lack of strategic—and often also operational— competence in the headquarters. This is clearly illustrated by the actually completely unnecessary collapse of the 106th Infantry Division east of River Our, and the American defeats in the different tank battles at Bastogne on 18-19 December. That this dealt a serious blow to American morale, is something that the U.S. soldiers hardly can be accused of.

Still, although several U.S. headquarters seem to have panicked and been characterized by helplessness during the first days of the Ardennes Offensive, the Allied supreme command reacted relatively swiftly and took measures which dampened the effect of the German offensive. Bradley’s decision to regroup the 7th Armored Division prevented the Germans from taking the intersection of Sankt Vith during the second day of the attack. Even more significant was Eisenhower’s orders to move the XVIII Airborne Corps to the Ardennes, through which Bastogne remained in U.S. hands, while at River Salm a reserve was formed that was able to absorb the retreating forces from Sankt Vith. At the latter front sector, Field Marshal Montgomery played a crucial role in preventing the American front from collapsing entirely. Without these efforts by Bradley, Eisenhower, and Montgomery, German 5. Panzerarmee would probably have been able to break through to the Meuse on the offensive’s fifth or sixth day.

Another interesting aspect of German 5. Panzerarmee’s successes during the first week of the Ardennes Offensive is that these often primarily were the result of a numerical superiority on the German side. This was in some contrast to the German soldiers’ self-image, according to which his own qualitative superiority in the field was the deciding factor against a numerically superior opponent. This German perception was to some extent based on the actual context of the defensive battles on the Western Front in the fall of 1944.

Without any doubt, the American soldiers exposed to the German attack in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944 performed significantly better than what generally had been the case with the U.S. Army during the previous months on the Western Front. Possibly this can be explained through the realization of the G.I.s that no air support was to be expected, and that they now were in a completely different situation than previously. In any case, the tenacious American resistance during the Offensive’s first two days—and in the Sankt Vith section even longer than that—was quite different from what many on the German side had expected. But, as the Germans established, with the exception of the troops in Bastogne and the 82nd Airborne Division on River Salm, this will to resist had generally been broken in front of the 5. Panzerarmee by 20 December, and the road to the Meuse lay open.

The fact that U.S. 101st Airborne Division with support units managed to hold the intersection of Bastogne indeed was a major impediment in the German plans, but as long as the Allied aviation stayed away the Germans could use other routes for their supplies, particularly since the Sankt Vith Wedge had been eliminated.

In the evening of 22 December, German 2. Panzer-Division prepared itself for the last leg towards the Meuse at Dinant, with Panzer Lehr on the division’s left (southern) flank. Indeed, at Marche, Combat Command A of 3rd Armored Division and 84th Infantry Division had assembled, but these two U.S. divisions were themselves subject to a serious threat from the northeast, where German 116. Panzer-Division, 2. SS-Panzer-Division, and 560. Volksgrenadier-Division came marching. Seven miles east of these forces stood yet another German armored division, the 9. SS-Panzer-Division. All of these units were focused on one aim: to cover the 2. Panzer-Division’s march towards the Meuse at Dinant. This was the largest concentration of forces the Germans ever made in such a limited area during the Ardennes Battle—when the offensive began, these divisions mustered more than four hundred serviceable tanks, about half of which were Panthers. The question the German commanders could ask themselves was if there were any Allied troops that could resist this force.

The soldiers of this German armored troop carrier appear to be quite confident. In the evening on 22 December 1944, the 2. Panzer-Division was preparing itself for the last leg towards the Meuse. Until then, the Germans had swept aside all resistance in their way, and it seemed as though there were not many new American units that might hinder them. The German Army in the Ardennes was well supplied in terms of winter gear—a result of the lessons learned on the Eastern Front—and the vehicle and soldiers’ steel helmets apparently have just been coated with white paint. (BArch, Picture 101I-691-0241-33A/Kripgans)

Sherman in the gun sight. Illustration by Horst Helmus.

* However, the German Army was in no way unique in this regard. Fussell quotes a U.S. Army report which established that ‘the problem of alcoholic beverages […] needs serious consideration. The American soldier will find a substitute which may be poisonous, if a supply is not available.’ (Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in World War II, p. 103.) According to Fussell, the explanation is quite simple. Apart from the need to still his fear, ‘the soldier, especially the conscript, suffers so deeply from contempt and damage to his selfhood, from absurdity and boredom and chickenshit, that some anodyne is necessary. […] In the Second World War the recourse was to drunkenness.’ (Fussell, p. 98.) According to U.S. Army Medical Corps, American troops were’so eager to drink that numbers of them consumed captured buzz-bomb fluid (i.e. methyl alcohol) and died.’ (Fussell, p. 102.)

* At this time, since May 1940, the Eupen-Malmedy area was incorporated into Germany, whereby Germany’s border with Belgium was situated about six miles farther west.

** The operations officer—Ia, as the Germans called it—led the operational department of a military unit, and was in charge of preparing general operational orders given by the unit commander. The equivalent in the U.S. Army was called S3 at battalion and brigade level, and G3 at division and corps level.

* The five-ton General Motors CCKW truck was one of the U.S. Army’s most common vehicles during World War II. This was a 6x6, which means a six-wheel vehicle and all-wheel driven. The designation CCKW means: the first letter C indicates the design year 1941, the second letter C stands for ‘cab’ (closed cab), K means all-wheel driven, and W that the vehicle is equipped with tandem rear axles.

* The P -47D Thunderbolt was at its best at an altitude of around 21,000 feet, where it was was 50 to 60 m.p.h. faster than the Messerschmitt Bf 109 G -6, and at least 50 m.p.h. faster than the Focke Wulf Fw 190 A-8. At lower altitudes, such as 6,500 feet, the P-47D was roughly equal with the Fw 190 A-8 in top speed, but still about 25 m.p.h. faster than the Bf 109 G-6. The speed figures of course are optimal and varied, not least depending on how much fuel and ammunition the aircraft carried.

* These Wereth Eleven—Curtis Adams, Mager Bradley, George Davis, Thomas J. Forte, Robert Green, Jim Leatherwood, Nathaniel Moss, George W. Moten, William Edward Pritchett, James Aubry Stewart, and Due W. Turner—were honored with a memorial by the local inhabitants, but received no official monument as quickly after the war as the victims in Baugnez/ Malmedy and Ligneuville, and it was not until in 2001 that the U.S. Army garrison in Chièvres ‘adopted’ the tombs of the murdered at the church yard Henri-Chapelle in Liège.

** In the evening on 17 December, the British Ultra code breakers overheard an order from II. Jagdkorps that during 18 December all available fighters were to be despatched in order to cover their own marching columns against enemy fighter-bombers. The order specified that the fighter units were to operate in formations of 100-200 aircraft. (National Archives, Kew: Ultra files HW 5/633. CX/MSS/T 401/92. West.)

* In the book Hitler’s Last Gamble—which can be considered a major reference work on the Ardennes Battle—the military researchers Dupuy, Bongard, and Anderson list a number of U.S. divisions that are said to have been in reserve, but in one way or another all of these were involved in other combat operations. (Dupuy, Bongard, and Anderson, p. 34.) Hence, for instance, the 7th Armored Division formed an important part of the force that U.S. Ninth Army intended to launch against the Roer dams. The 94th Infantry Division was neither new, nor in reserve: between 8 September 1944 and the end of the year it was engaged in fierce battles to capture the French Atlantic ports of Lorient and Saint-Nazaire, which were held by lingering German forces.

* In regard to Fuller’s contribution to the town’s defense, however, the U.S. Congress decided on 11 January 1945 to award him with a second Silver Star ‘for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving with the 38th Armored Infantry Battalion, 7th Armored Division, in action in Belgium, from 17 to 21 December 1944.’

* The Belgian river Ourthe really consists of two rivers: on one hand, the Ourthe Occidentale (Western Ourthe), which from the Libramont runs to the northeast, about nine miles northwest of Bastogne. At a point west of Houffalize it flows into the Ourthe Orientale (Eastern Ourthe), which from the heights just north of the northernmost tip of Luxembourg’s border with Belgium flows to the southwest and west. The two joined river branches then continue from the area west of Houffalize in a northwesterly direction, passing through the resorts of La Roche and Hotton, and a bit further north it bends to the north to eventually flow int the Meuse.

* See Chapter 6.

* This may seem to be a far-reaching assertion, but for researchers who have specialized in the subject, it is a quite uncontroversial statement. In order to obtain reasonable estimates of U.S. losses, the author and several other researchers have put together bits and pieces based on extensive and in-depth studies of the enormous amounts of primary sources. But even the loss of data due to be presented by such a work should be considered as incomplete. The true extent of U.S. losses during the Ardennes Battle probably will never be fully clarified; thereto the primary material is too heavy-handed to weed out.

** Shortly afterward, both Fuller and Miltons’ battalion met a fairly inglorious end in the Ardennes Battle—which we in the latter case shall see in the next chaper.