CHAPTER 6

6. SS-PANZERARMEE: RUTHLESSLY FORWARD!

"These units—characterized by their arrogance and extremely inflated pretentiousness—had, through their total lack of discipline (which in itself was an integral part of their system) and an ill-considered recklessness, in combination with a great deal of stupidity, a directly harmful influence on the outcome of the battle. They always were an obstacle to any methodical command." Oberst Heinz Kokott, commanderofthe26.Volksgrenadier-Division.¹

SS CONTRA THE WEHRMACHT

On the northern flank of the Ardennes Offensive, things looked completely different. Here, SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Josef ’Sepp’ Dietrich’s 6. SS-Panzerarmee was intended to play the main role in Operation ’Herbstnebel.’

According to the operation plan, the I. SS-Panzerkorps under SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Priess would perform a rapid advance through the Losheimer-Graben, the two- to six-mile-wide valley where the Germans had carried out their main attacks in the invasions of Belgium in 1870, 1914, and 1940. Once Priess had reached the Meuse, the II. SS-Panzerkorps under SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Bittrich was supposed to join the offensive to give extra impetus to the final assault towards the prime goal, Antwerp.

As an additional support, two special operations were assigned to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s advance. One of these, code-named ’Operation Greif’ (Griffin), was to be carried out by SS-Panzer Brigade 150 under SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny. These troops would be wearing American uniforms. This unit consisted of basically two different forces: 150 men—among them those who spoke the best English—formed Einheit Stielau, whose task it was to infiltrate the American lines on the first day of the attack, in order to carry out sabotage, spread confusion, and reconnoitre in the enemy’s rear area. The rest of the brigade’s about 2,500 men were divided into three task forces—Kampfgruppe X, Y, and Z. These would join the advance units of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division, the 12. SS-Panzer-Division, and the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division. The plan was that these task forces would infiltrate the American lines when these divisions had reached the Malmédy area, and utilize their American disguises to capture the Meuse bridge at Huy as well as the bridges at Amay and Andenne, on both sides of Huy.

The second special operation assigned to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee, was Operation ’Stösser’ (Pestle). Commanded by paratroop veteran Oberstleutnant Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, twelve hundred German paratroopers were to be air dropped behind the American lines during the night before the offensive. The aim was to take and hold the key crossroads of Baraque Michel, seven miles north of the town of Malmédy.

But much in the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s participation in ’Herbstnebel’ was skewed from the outset. Firstly, no more than ten appropriate commando soldiers who spoke the perfect American English that ’Operation Greif’ presupposed could be found, and only one serviceable Sherman tank was available. Skorzeny had to put up with four hundred men who could speak a reasonable English, and two thousand men with no English skills at all, and with Panther tanks that had the turret coverings removed and plates mounted to at least vaguely resemble U.S. M10 tank destroyers.

The paratroop operation was terribly ill-prepared, and this soon became clear to Oberstleutnant Freiherr von der Heydte. When, on 8 December, he was oriented on the operations plan by Generaloberst Kurt Student—the first commander of the German paratroop force, at that time C.O. of the 1. Fallschirmarmee and Heeresgruppe H in Holland—he felt that a force of 1,200 troops was too small for the task. Von der Heydte had commanded paratroopers during the air landings on Crete in May 1941, and he knew what he was talking about. Student agreed, but explained that it was an unyielding ’Führer Order.’ Von der Heydte then asked for premission to use of paratroop veterans from his old regiment, Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6. Led by von der Heydte, Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6 had fought gallantly against, among other units, U.S. 101st Airborne Division ’Screaming Eagles’ at Normandy in June 1944. But Hitler turned down von der Heydte’s request—he did not want to risk losing the entire paratroop elite, which was basically grouped in Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6. Instead, he ordered each paratroop regiment to despatch ’a hundred of their best men’ to Kampfgruppe von der Heydte. Of course, the opposite was what happened—under the pretext of having selected the elite’ German regimental commander took the opportunity to get rid of men regarded as a burden to their units.

GERMANS IN AMERICAN UNIFORMS

Operation ‘Greif’—German soldiers in American uniforms and with U.S. military vehicles behind the Allied lines— actually was the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s perhaps most successful undertaking during the Ardennes Offensive. On the evening of 16 December, at least six small groups from Einheit Steilau (led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Helmut Steilau) managed to infiltrate the American lines.¹ One of these was reported to have reached the Meuse at Huy, where it went into position at an intersection to observe American troop movements. Shortly afterwards, an American armored column arrived. The German officer is said to have managed to trick the Americans into taking a big detour by claiming that the roads in the south were blocked by ‘those damned Germans.’ On the way back to their own lines on the following day, this group cut telephone lines at Marche and removed road signs or turned them the wrong way.² Another group is reported to have reached the Liège area where they localized a major U.S. ammunition storage, which it reported to headquarters. This group also caused a U.S. unit to take a detour to the front area.³ A third group also located a U.S. fuel supply dump, which was reported to headquarters.

Another group crossed the Meuse at Amay and could report that the Americans took no special precautions at the Meuse bridges. On the way back to the German lines, this group blocked the road that led to the front with mines, mine warning signs, and tree barriers.⁴

The greatest damage, however, was done to the Allies through Steilau men in captivity. At least two of the commando groups were captured by the Americans. Some of these soldiers were executed, but before that they had managed to plant the false rumor that similar commando groups were on their way to assassinate General Eisenhower. This gave rise to the widespread fear of the Germans in American uniforms that came to characterize the situation behind the Allied lines for several days.

How half a million American soldiers, in Bradley’s words, played cat and mouse with each other to try to discover if they were disguised Germans, has passed into history. Among thousands of Allied soldiers who mistakenly were arrested by suspicious American soldiers, was, on 20 December, Brigadier General Bruce Clarke, the commander of Combat Command B of the 7th Armored Division, sent to relieve 106th Infantry Division at Sankt Vith. He had to put up with being called ‘one of those Nazi murderers’ by his American captors.⁵ Even Field Marshal Montgomery was at one time held in captivity for a couple of hours.⁶

In Versailles, the supreme commander Eisenhower was compelled to go underground. The SHAEF headquarters was surrounded by barbed wire, the guards were quadrupled, and even tanks were brought forward to protect the headquarters. In the heated atmosphere, all kinds of rumors spread. On 20 December, Eisenhower received an ‘urgent warning’ about German soldiers in American uniforms that were supposed to have been seen near Èpernay, south of Reims. French police reported that the Germans in American uniforms had landed in parachute in the immediate vicinity of the SHAEF headquarters, and another report even spoke of Germans dressed as nuns (!) that had landed in parachutes near Valenciennes.

An American officer who resembled Eisenhower, Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin B. Smith, was dressed in one of the supreme commander’s uniforms and was driven in a car back and forth between Eisenhower’s home and the headquarters in Versailles to serve as a target for the Germans.⁷ One of the captured ‘Greif’ men had claimed that Skorzeny and fifty of his commandos would meet at the Café de la Paix in Paris. Therefore, the Americans positioned two tanks at this location. Eisenhower himself ordered the printing of thousands of ‘wanted’ posters with a picture of Skorzeny’s face. After 17 December no more Steilau groups were despatched on ‘Grief’ missions, but the commando forces were used by German units for reconnaissance missions for several weeks.

1 Skorzeny, Special Missions, p. 169.

2 Ibid., p. 170.

3 Skorzeny, Ardennes Off ensive (Role of Commandos and 150th Panzer Brigade). ETHINT-12, pp. 6-7.

4 Skorzeny, Special Missions, p. 169.

5 Whiting, Skorzeny: The Most Dangerous Man in Europe, p. 69.

6 Infi eld, Skorzeny: Hitler’s Commando, p. 88.

7 Toland, Battle: The Story of the Bulge, p. 222.

Von der Heydte had to start by sending back the hundred worst men to their original units, and replaced them with volunteer youths from the Paratroop School. These were rated as better, although many of them had not yet made any jump. Just as things looked quite dark, 250 paratroop veterans from Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6 turned up. When the rumor had reached them that von der Heydte was looking for men to form a new unit, these had ’deserted’ to report for duty under their old boss. This act won the approbation of sentimentally inclined German commanders, who agreed to endorse the irregular unit change. In some ways this captures the state and mentality of the Nazi Armed Forces in a nutshell.

But von der Heydte’s problems were not solved with this. Even his veterans proved to be insufficiently trained for the impending task. Since the air landings in Crete in 1941, the German paratroopers had been used mainly as a ’fire brigade’ in pure infantry fighting. In Kampfgruppe von der Heydte, there were not even three hundred men who had made a combat parachute jump, and many of the veterans had not jumped since the invasion of Crete three and a half years earlier. Very few were prepared for a combat jump at night over a forested area.

The 6. SS-Panzerarmee was by far the best equipped among the three German armies that participated in Operation Herbstnebel.’ Among many things, it had a battalion of the huge 70-ton Königstiger tanks, which, with its 88mm KwK43 L/71 Kampfwagenkanone had an almost unmatched firepower. A Königstiger could knock out a Sherman frontally at a distance of up to two miles, whilst its own frontal armor was almost invulnerable to the fire of a Sherman at basically any distance. (BArch, Bild 146-1975-102-14A/Hamann)

On top of this, von der Heydte met no cooperative attitude from the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s boorish commander Sepp Dietrich. Four days prior to the start of the Offensive, Oberstleutnant von der Heydte reported to SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich. Two men more different from each other than von der Heydte and Sepp Dietrich could not have been found. If there were contradictions between the SS and the Wehrmacht, this was even more pronounced in the relationship between SS commanders who often had a proletarian background (as in Sepp Dietrich’s case) and Wehrmacht commanders of Noble Family. Baron von der Heydte, descendant of an ancient Bavarian Noble Family with family ties to most of the Noblesse in Europe, ’looked down on Dietrich, the son of a butcher, as an uneducated street brawler.’²

On one occasion, Baron von der Heydte described Sepp Dietrich as ’a cur dog.’³ The blue-blooded lieutenant colonel’s negative impressions were reinforced when he noted that Dietrich, at least according to von der Heydte, was drunk and reeked of alcohol when the two men met to confer. Von der Heydte’s patience was further strained by Sepp Dietrich’s chief of staff, SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Kraemer, who during the entire conference wandered about, repeating, ’It’s crazy! What a lunatic operation!’⁴

Sepp Detrich probably already had made up his mind about the baron. During World War One, Dietrich served as a simple artillery soldier in the Royal Bavarian Army, where Friedrich von der Heydte’s father was a senior officer. For some reason Sepp Dietrich was ashamed to have belonged to the artillery, and afterwards invented the story that he had been a cavalryman.⁵ In fact, his first period of service in the Royal Bavarian Army took an abrupt end when, after just one month, he fell off a horse and was badly injured. It should have hurt if he knew that Friedrich von der Heydte carried his second name August after his grandfather who served as the commanding officer of the cavalry regiment böhmische Dragoner Regiment ’Graf Paar’ No. 2. That the paratroop officer von der Heydte also was related to the man behind the 20 July Plot against Hitler, Baron Claus von Stauffenberg, however, hardly was unknown to the SS general. Sepp Dietrich’s attitude towards von der Heydte perhaps can’t be better illustrated than by the answer he is said to have given the baron when he asked about the U.S. forces in the landing area:

’I am not a prophet! You will learn earlier than I what forces the Americans will employ against you. Besides, behind their lines there are only Jewish hoodlums and bank managers!’⁶

When von der Heydte suggested that his paratroopers would bring along carrier pigeons in the event that their radio equipment was lost during the air drop, Sepp Dietrich laughed scornfully and said: ’What do you think I am? Running a zoo?’⁷

The original idea was that the paratroopers would be the first to attack, but they rather became the last: At ten in the evening on 15 December, when the transport planes were supposed to take off, only four hundred of von der Heydte’s twelve hundred men were present at the airfields at Paderborn and Lippspringe. The others were stranded at their barracks at far distance, because no trucks had arrived to carry them to the airfields. As it would turn out, these trucks had not been not assigned with any fuel! Operation ’Stösser’ was postponed by one day.

Unlike most Wehrmacht units, the SS units were abundantly equipped with both personnel and materiel. When the assault began, SS-Oberführer Wilhelm Mohnke’s 1. SS-Panzer-Division ’Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ (LAH) mustered over forty Panthers and thirty-seven Panzer IVs in SS-Panzer-Regiment 1.⁸ Meanwhile, the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ under SS-Brigadeführer Hugo Kraas could field forty-one Panthers and thirty-seven Panzer IVs—all of which were ready for operations—in SS-Panzer-Regiment 12.⁹ Additionally, these two panzer divisions, who were supposed to be some kind of elite, were assigned with one ’heavy’ special battalion each. In the case of the ’Leibstandarte,’ this was schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 under SS-Sturmbannführer Heinz von Westernhagen, with forty-five Königstigers.¹⁰

The ten-foot-two-high and twelve-foot-four-wide Königstiger (Tiger II) was a terrifying armored beast with no equivalence on the Allied side in the Ardennes Battle. Its 20 foot long 88 mm KwK 43 L/71 anti-tank gun was absolutely unsurpassed, able to destroy a Sherman at a distance of 3,800 yards. With a 5.9-in frontal armor sloped at 40°, the Königstiger was more or less invulnerable to frontal hits. Also, the side armor was 3.5 in thick. It has been asserted that the Königstiger with its weight of 70 metric tons was too heavy and cumbersome to move offroad and across bridges, but as a matter of fact the ground pressure of a Königstiger was lower than that of both the Panther and the Panzer IV.

The ’Hitler Jugend’ Division’s equivalence of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 was schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 560, a Wehrmacht unit equipped with twenty-eight Jagdpanzer IVs and fourteen Jagdpanthers—the latter also armed with the dreaded 88mm gun.¹¹ Moreover, the two divisions had one anti-tank battalion each— the ’Leibstandarte’ had SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 1 with twenty-one Panzer IV/70 (Jagdpanzer IV/70) tank destroyers and five StuG IIIs, and the ’Hitler Jugend’ had SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 12 with twenty-two Panzer IV/70s. In addition to these, each SS panzer division was equipped with eight Flakpanzer IVs—a Panzer IV chassis converted into an anti-aircraft vehicle.^*

Mustering over 21,000 troops on 16 December 1944, the 1. SS-Panzer-Division was the numerically strongest division in the Ardennes Battle—on both sides!¹² The 12. SS-Panzer-Division came not far behind, with 20,000 men.¹³ That ’Leibstandarte’ was the strongest of the two divisions is explained through the fact that it was meant to be ’Herbstnebel’s’ absolute spearhead—or rather, its mighty advance force, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper under the barely 29-year-old SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim ’Jochen’ Peiper. All of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s 124 tanks were concentrated into SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper.¹⁴

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Operation ’Herbstnebel’ was that the SS men entrusted with the task of carrying out the main thrust were not exactly the ones most suitable for this task. The majority of the men in these two SS divisions were inadequately trained recruits. When the Ardennes Offensive began, about 60 percent of these had less than six to eight weeks of training.¹⁵ After the war, Sepp Dietrich admitted that the troops of the 5. Panzerarmee had been better trained than those of his 6. SS-Panzerarmee.¹⁶This reinforced the negative effects of the particular ‘SS culture’ that to a more or less large extent permeated many Waffen-SS units, where such things as Nazi masculinity ideals and a willingness to sacrifice were nourished. The recruits often were taught to regard the fighting on the battlefield as an end in itself. The empty phrases picked up by the SS men during their training, naturally disipated after a while in combat. But since the majority of the troops in the two panzer divisions of the I. SS-Panzerkorps in December 1944 lacked any combat experience, they were quite heavily influenced by these unrealistic attitudes during the first days of the Ardennes Offensive—to a far greater extent than earlier and in other combat zones. This is perhaps the most important reason why the I. SS-Panzerkorps performed significantly less well at the beginning of ’Herbstnebel’ than often before.

Although the officers in the SS divisions were not inexperienced in battle, they also were negatively impacted by the dilettantism that characterized the Waffen SS. This was true throughout the entire Waffen-SS.^* The ideological approach of military tasks created an audacity that ever since the invasion of Poland in 1939 had caused Wehrmacht commanders to shake their heads in disbelief. One of these was Oberst Heinz Kokott, who led the 26. Volksgrenadier-Division during the Ardennes Offensive, and who during the Battle of Bastogne got better acquainted with the way in which these two SS divisions acted on the battlefield. In a report, Kokott wrote the following on the two SS Divisions, ’These units—characterized by their arrogance and extremely inflated pretentiousness—had, through their total lack of discipline (which in itself was an integral part of their system) and an ill-considered recklessness, in combination with a great deal of stupidity, a directly harmful influence on the outcome of the battle. They always were an obstacle to any methodical command.’¹⁷

This SS-Schutze from the 1. SS-Panzer-Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,’ photographed during the advance westward in December 1944, has come to symbolize the German soldiers in the Ardennes Offensive. Contrary to what is often assumed, the average age of the German soldiers in Operation ‘Herbstnebel’ was not particularly low. In fact, the average American soldier was slightly younger. SS soldiers were less well trained than the men of the 5. Panzerarmee, a fact which was acknowledged even by the 6. SS-Panzerarmees commander, SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer ‘Sepp’ Dietrich; about 60 percent did not even have six to eight weeks of training, which was assessed as a minimum. (NARA, m-SC-197561)

Indeed, the Königstiger needed skilled drivers and required constant maintenance to keep it operational, but the large number of SS Konigstigers left standing because of non-combat related damages during the advance in the Ardennes, still is quite conspicuous. According to Edmund Zeger of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, only two of the tanks of his company were able to reach the battle area; the other twelve suffered ’non-combat related damages.’¹⁸Several among these had to be left behind where they had been stranded when the Americans captured the area. Out of thirty-two available Konigstigers on 30 December, only thirteen were serviceable.¹⁹

BLOODBATH AT DAWN

’The earth seemed to break open. A hurricane of iron and fire went down on the enemy positions with a deafening noise. We old soldiers had seen many a heavy barrage, but never before anything like this.’²⁰ Even though it was the opponent who received all this fire, Major Günther Holz, the commander of the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Panzerjäger-Abteilung 12, afterwards described how he was paralyzed by the SS Army’s preparatory artillery fire that began at 0530 hrs on 16 December. The 6. SS-Panzerarmee had a considerably larger artillery than the other two German assault armies, and it hit the Americans with a tremendous impact. On the American side, Staff Sergeant John Hillard of 394th Infantry Regiment describes the psychological effect of this massive artillery fire, ’Several of our men went mad and left their shelters in order to get killed or mutilated.’²¹

The ‘rolling fire’ was chiefly directed first against the main defense lines; then against command posts, road junctions, villages near the front line and other fortified points, and finally against more remote villages and fortified points and roads along which American reinforcements could arrive. But even if the artillery continued to pound on the American lines until seven in the morning, the material damage inflicted on the U.S. forces actually was fairly limited.²² ’Wire communications went out almost everywhere, but so widely spaced were the positions that many of the shells fell on undefended sectors, and elsewhere the men were well dug in.’²³ This was just one of many setbacks suffered by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee on the first day of the attack.

The LXVII. Armeekorps under Generalleutnant Otto Hitzfeld had been assigned with the task to cover the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s northern flank; its 272. and 326. Volksgrenadier divisions were supposed to strike towards Monschau and Eupen in the area south of Aachen. But as we have seen, the Americans struck first by launching an offensive to seize the Roer dams on 10 to 13 December (see Chapter 3). This attack was directed against the LXVII. Armeekorps’ both flanks—with U.S. 78th Infantry Division moving towards Kesternich in the north, and the 2nd Infantry Division, ’Indian Head,’ against Wahlerscheid on the southern flank. This forced the main part of the LXVII. Armeekorps onto the defense, thereby reducing its attack strength.

With 78th Infantry Division’s capture of Kesternich on 15 December, the threat loomed of an American incursion into the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s rear area, so Generalleutnant Hitzfeld had to counter-attack. On the evening of 15 December, his 272. Volksgrenadier-Division struck, and after a full night of bloody battles, Kesternich had been retaken. But even if U.S. 78th Infantry Division sustained more than fifteen hundred casualties between 13 and 16 December, it remained strong enough to compel the Germans to refrain from using the 272. Volksgrenadier-Division as had been intended according to the plan for ’Herbstnebel.’

An American soldier in the trenches in front of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee. It is just before the German attack and the first snow has just fallen in the Ardennes. (NARA, SC 196342)

On the LXVII. Armeekorps’ southern flank, U.S. 2nd Infantry Division managed to dislodge German 326. Volksgrenadier-Division from the important crossroads at Wahlerscheid at dawn on 16 December. The American dual thrust against the Roer dams had the effect of considerably weakening the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division’s assault force—two of the division’s six battalions had to be detailed in support of the 272. Volksgrenadier-Division, and two others were deployed to defend Wahlerscheid. Added to these troubles, by 16 December, the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division still had not received the promised Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653—equipped with the huge 70-ton Jagdtigers with 128mm guns. Bombed railway tracks had prevented the timely transfer of this battalion to the front area. Hence, the already weakened LXVII. Armeekorps had to launch its attack without the support of either tanks or tank destroyers.

The four battalions of the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division that attacked at six in the morning on 16 December, were met by a new secret American weapon: artillery shells fitted with a proximity fuze that caused them to explode a couple of feet above the ground, with a far greater deadly effect. Although this new device—called the POZIT—had been at hand for some time, the Allied commanders had prohibited its use in situations where there was a risk that it might fall into German hands. But when the C.O. of the 405th Field Artillery Group, Colonel Oscar Axelson, saw how U.S. positions were getting overrun by the 326. Volksgrenadier-Division, he ignored these directives and ordered his 196th Battalion to deploy the top secret POZITs. The proximity fuze shells had a devastating effect. The German infantry attack formations were literally torn to pieces. The most advanced infantry units sustained up to twenty percent losses.²⁴ The Americans soon could report that the Germans were in ‘a headlong retreat.’²⁵The advance of the LXVII. Armeekorps was halted in its starting positions. The German offensive certainly forced the Americans to cancel their own attack against the Roer dams, but this was due more to developments farther south than to the LXVII. Armeekorps.

Just south of Wahlerscheid, a ten-mile long mountain ridge, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet, marks the present German-Belgian border. A dense, dark spruce forest covered the hillside to the west. Here the Germans had taken advantage of the terrain to reinforce the West Wall, but it was also in this opaque area that the I. SS-Panzerkorps would launch its attack.

This northern part of the Ardennes is called the High Ardennes, but this name can be misleading. Just a few miles west of the current nationale border, the mountain ridge and the spruce forests are succeeded by a high plateau without any dramatic elevation changes. Located at an altitude of between 1,500 and 1,800 feet, this area is dominated by moors and bogs. Since the altitude makes it difficult to grow anything here, the area still is quite sparsely populated, with mainly small villages surrounded by large fields. The Ardennes Offensive’s armored main force was supposed to advance through this area in the direction of Liège, River Meuse, and Antwerp. With a predominantly German-speaking population, this part of Belgium was annexed by Hitler in May 1940, and the German soldiers felt that they were retaking the westernmost part of Germany during the first seventeen miles of the advance.

Initially, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee was opposed by not even a complete American Infantry Division, the 99th. Only a few weeks previously, this unit had taken up positions along eighteen miles of the present German-Belgian border between Monschau in the north and the hills just north of the Losheimer-Graben Valley in the south. The idea was that the 99th—like the neighboring division in the south, the 106th—would gain combat experience in this ’quiet front sector.’ The 99th Infantry Division has been described as a ‘fresh’ unit, but its troops actually were in a much better shape than many of its opponents. Formed at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, in November 1942, the 99th was sent to Europe in October 1944, by which time the troops had a quite solid military training. Robert Walter, who served as a Technical Sergeant in the Division’s 393rd Infantry Regiment, explains, ’The 99th was a relatively green unit as far as combat goes, but we were well trained. Most of us had been with the division from its early days at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, through advanced instruction at Camp Maxey, Texas. By the time we shipped out of Boston Harbor in September 1944, most of the division’s citizen soldiers had nearly two full years of training.’

However, the divisional commander, 51-year-old Major General Walter E. Lauer, had no combat experience, and although his Division amounted to no less than 16,000 men, it had no armor of its own. Moreover, only two of its regiments, the 393rd and 394th, stood in the frontline against German 6. SS-Panzerarmee on 16 December 1944. Since the division held the southern flank of U.S. V Corps, its 395th Infantry Regiment was assigned to cooperate with 2nd Infantry Division in the assault at Wahlerscheid. Nevertheless, the 99th Infantry Division was assigned with a quite experienced anti-tank battalion—the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had been in first-line service since it landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on 13 June 1944.²⁶ This unit was equipped with thirty 3-in M5 towed anti-tank guns. Overall, however, the two regiments of the 99th Infantry Division that at dawn on 16 December 1944 took the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s full onslaught, were totally outnumbered by their opponent.

The 393rd Infantry Regiment was lined up along five miles on the wooded mountain ridge south of Wahlerscheid. The regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jean D. Scott, also had been compelled to deploy his 2nd Battalion to the 2nd Infantry Division’s attack against Wahlerscheid farther north. At dawn on 16 December, he therefore only had two battalions at his disposal to counter German 277. Volksgrenadier-Division, tasked to open a gap for the 12. SS-Panzer Division ’Hitler Jugend’ on the northern flank of the I. SS- Panzerkorps. The 277. Volksgrenadier-Division had been formed on the remnants of 277. Infanterie-Division in the fall of 1944, but was definitely more combat-experienced than the American regiment that constituted its main opponent. The German unit commander, Oberst Wilhelm Viebig, characterized his division as ’well versed in the tasks of defence’ with ‘several companies trained for offensive operations.’²⁷ Although the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division also faced a battalion of U.S. 394th Infantry Regiments on its northern flank, its over 7,000 men made it more than twice as numerous as its opponent.

The 394th Infantry Regiment, on U.S. 99th Infantry Division’s southern flank, was pitted against not only the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division’s southernmost formation, but also the whole 12. Volksgrenadier-Division. Mustering 9,500 men, this was numerically stronger than its northern neighbor, which to some extent offset its other weaknesses; the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division had been pulled back from the terribly bloody battles at Aachen as late as on 3 December, and its commander, Generalleutnant Gerhard Engel, described the unit as ’completely exhausted. In the infantry all regiments were worn out, having had no personnel replacements during the battles; the companies had a battle strength of some 15 to 20 men.’²⁸ The hastily trained recruits that arrived to fill the gaps in the badly mauled division barely had the time to prepare themselves before the division thus was ordered to the Ardennes Front. However, the task of defeating a single and inexperienced American regiment would seem to be something that even such a rundown German division would be able to accomplish. Once this was accomplished, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s spearhead, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division ’Leibstandarte,’ would begin its march forward along the route that the German plan called Rollbahn D (Runway D) to cross the Meuse at Huy.

South of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, another armored task force of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen, stood ready to advance through the Losheimer-Graben Valley along Rollbahn E, Krewinkel - Manderfeld towards Born, north of Sankt Vith, and thence westwards, in order to cover Peiper’s southern flank. First of all, the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division was supposed to open the way for SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen.

SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich’s opening attack differed in important respects from von Manteuffel’s initial operations. Unlike the Wehrmacht generals farther south, Dietrich did not open the offensive through an infiltration of the American lines, but started with the infantry assaulting the American lines following the initial artillery barrage. Nor did the 6. SS-Panzerarmee employ anti-aircraft searchlights all along the frontline to illuminate the skies over the battlefield, as the Wehrmacht armies did.²⁹

We have seen how Generalmajor Hoffmann-Schönborn’s 18. Volksgrenadier-Division (part of the 5. Panzerarmee) took advantage of the darkness to sneak past the opponent’s positions in the southern part of the Losheimer-Graben. In the northern part of the valley, where the SS sent the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division into battle, things looked completely different. Actually, this was the section of the Ardennes front where the Americans were at their weakest. Here, on U.S. 106th Infantry Division’s northernmost flank, the Americans had, as we have seen in Chapter 4, nothing but Colonel Devine’s 14th Cavalry Group, which based its defense more on motorized patrols than fixed positions. Moreover, at night Devine held his troops in the area’s villages. The German paratroop division ought to have been able to conduct a rapid and easy advance to clear Krewinkel and Manderfeld along the route that SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen would take.

But the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division was not in the best condition. Only a few weeks earlier it had been withdrawn from the fighting in the Hürtgen Forest, where the division had been bled white: Its Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9 alone had been inflicted with a hair-rising fourteen hundred casualties, and these losses were replaced with absolutely inadequately trained recruits.

Furthermore, the German artillery fire had alerted the Americans—often even without causing them much harm, since the Germans, due to their efforts to conceal the preparations for the offensive, had refrained from reconnoitering the area properly. As the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division’s spearhead—the 5., 6., and 7. Kompanie, the Sturm-Zug, and the Nachtrichten-Zug of II. Bataillon/Fallschirmjäger Regiment 5—assaulted Krewinkel in cooperation with Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 8, the Germans became aware that the U.S. positions had not at all been wiped out by the artillery. On the contrary, the few American soldiers in the small hamlet offered a dogged resistance that took the Germans several hours to put down. Then the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division was halted again by other U.S. troops at Manderfeld, a little larger village slightly more than a mile farther west.

While Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 5 stayed behind to complete the seizure of this place, the I. Bataillon of Oberst Helmut von Hoffmann’s Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9 swung north to circumvent the American positions. Two miles north of Manderfeld lies Lanzerath, another small hamlet. At this place, a detachment from U.S. 14th Cavalry Group had been stationed, but as soon as the German artillery opened fire at dawn, these soldiers packed their equipment and rolled out of the village, to the north. The only U.S. troops left remaining in Lanzerath were eighteen men of the Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon of the 3rd Battalion, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Infantry Division, so it should have been quite easy for the paratroopers to take this small village.^*

The American platoon commander, First Lieutenant Lyle Bouck, called regimental headquarters and said, ’The tank destroyers are pulling out, what should we do?’ The answer was clear, ’Hold at all costs!’ Bouck thought that he probably would not live to see his twenty-first birthday— which happened to be on 17 December 1944— but set about to deploy his troops in the gunner positions covered by logs on top of the hill just northwest of the village. From there, they had an overview of the main road and the open terrain below to the south and southeast. It was precisely from this direction that the German paratroopers came marching. Bouck again contacted headquarters and again he was ordered to ’remain in position.’

Bouck told his men to hold their fire, when he suddenly saw a young woman approaching the German soldiers on the road sloping down to the left of the American positions. He saw her point towards the hill. For more than sixty years, Bouck thought that she had betrayed the American position, but when he met her in 2006, she could inform him that the Germans only had asked her where the Americans were, and then she told them that they had left in vehicles uphill on the road towards Buchholz in the north. She had no idea that Bouck’s men were in the trenches to the left of the road. In fact, the Germans were alerted only when a nervous U.S. soldier fired his gun.The inexperienced paratroopers assaulted on foot straight up the hill. First Lieutenant Bouck recalls:

’They came screaming and yelling in a direct frontal attack up the snow-covered hill. They were firing at us but they had no targets. The paratroopers had to climb over a typical farm fence that bisected the hill. For us it was like target practice. […] I could see blood all over the snow. I heard screaming, hollering. It was a bizarre scene, hard for me to realize it was really happening.’

That the Germans did not immediately withdraw to instead circumvent the U.S. positions through the dense forest that surrounded First Lieutenant Bouck’s men on both sides, but instead continued to charge straight into the American fire, is completely incomprehensible. They made three attempts to neutralize the U.S. positions through frontal assaults. After the last attempt, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the paratroopers had enough of the idiotic orders. A small group made the only logical choice—they crept into the woods at the side of the U.S. positions, which then could be taken quite easily.

The Americans, who by that time were short on ammunition, immediately surrendered. The Germans could hardly believe their eyes when they lined up their prisoners—no more than fifteen American soldiers, most of whom were wounded—and failed to find more than one man killed in the American position. (The two other Americans had been sent to get ammunition, and had been captured.) As the Americans raised their hands to the air, it appeared as though some of the German paratroopers were about to shoot them, but a German officer rushed forward and yelled at them to lower their weapons.³⁰

First Lieutenant Bouck’s Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon was awarded with a Presidential Unit Citation—the special award for gallantry that was instituted shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and awarded to entire military units. Each of the men in the platoon was decorated one way or another. In German captivity, First Lieutenant Bouck was awarded with the Silver Star, and twenty-two years later he received the Distinguished Service Cross. Today a small memorial adorns the little hill where a handful of American soldiers held the German advance down for almost an entire day.

Quite commonly, it is asserted that the Germans lost five hundred men at the slope in Lanzerath—a figure that is quite unreasonable considering both how small that hill really is, and given that there actually was only a handful of U.S. defenders. Dutch researcher and expert on the Ardennes Battle, Hans Wijers, has found the actual German losses to be forty men killed and wounded—quite a substantial number for such a small area, not more than the size of about two football fields.

American soldiers on guard in a foxhole with an M1919 Browning .30 caliber medium machine gun. This 7.62mm machine gun is one of the most commonly used machine guns of the Twentieth Century, and was used both as an infantry machine gun, as vehicle-mounted, as aircraft armament (both fixed and flexible), and as an AA gun. The weapon was in use from 1919, through World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. It had a rate of fire of 400-600 rounds per minute, a firing range of 1,500 yards and was fed with a 250-round belt. First Lieutenant Lyle Bouck’s American platoon in Lanzerath was armed with two such machine guns, plus a .50 caliber heavy-machine gun mounted on a jeep, besides the soldiers’ own Browning Automatic Rifles and M1 Garand rifles. (US Army)

Meanwhile, one of the regiments of the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division’s northern neighbor, the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division, ended up in a similar situation. Grenadier-Regiment 48 advanced through Losheim (just 2,500 yards across the fields east of Lanzerath) along the highway Pr ümer Strasse to the northwest. The C.O. of this regiment, Oberst William Osterhold, says he had no idea of the whereabouts of the U.S. positions as he led his regiment to attack: ’We had not been informed and had been forbidden to carry out reconnaissance. We had to stay in Kronenberg until night fell, and then we were directed west in the direction of Losheimergraben. That was all! I never took part in an attack that was worse prepared.’³¹

Slightly north of Losheim, Osterhold’s men found that the road viaduct that crossed the railroad still had not been repaired after it had been blown up by retreating Germans during the previous fall. Hence, the advance could only resume with soldiers on foot until the 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s Pionier-Bataillon had constructed a new bridge towards the evening.³²

Without the support of heavy weapons, German Grenadier-Regiment 48 was halted at the village of Losheimergraben (not to be confused with the valley with the same name), which was held by the 1st Battalion of U.S. 394th Infantry Regiment. The scenes here were reminiscent of those at Lanzerath. Here too, the Germans advanced up a hill, where the Americans held position with machine guns and mortars. One of the American soldiers, Sergeant Eddie Dolenc, moved his heavy machine gun to a new position right up to the Germans. Before he was subsequently listed as missing—fate unknown—he was seen firing continuously, with a pile of killed Germans in front of his fox hole.³³ SS-Gruppenführer Priess characterized the American resistance at Losheimergraben as ’skilfull and dogged.’³⁴ However, it also cost the defenders dearly. On this first day of the German offensive alone, U.S. 394th Infantry Regiment recorded the loss of nine hundred fifty-nine men killed, missing or wounded. Losheimergraben’s defenders also were to be honored with a memorial after the war.

Bypassing Losheimergraben from the north, another German unit, 12. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Füsilier-Regiment 27, at four in the afternoon managed to oust 394th Infantry Regiment from the railway station Buchholz, in the middle of the forest, a mile southwest of Losheimergraben. (This regiment would have been able to relieve the paratroopers at Lanzerath by simply taking the road down the hill to the other side of the woods where Bouck’s men held their positions, a mile and a half away. That this never took place illustrates the lack of communication between the various German units.)

In the meantime, the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division clashed with U.S. 99th Infantry Division’s 393rd Infantry Regiment in terribly bloody battles in the hilly forest area in the north. Oberst Wilhelm Viebig, the German divisional commander, had been assigned with the task to pave the road for the 12. SS-Panzer-Division. This had to be done by clearing two small forest roads that from Hollerath and Udenbroth on the German side wound across the forested mountain ridge south of Walherscheid and down to the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt, capture them, and then continue up towards the Elsenborn ridge in the west.³⁵ That meant that the soldiers had to make it through dense forests in a rolling terrain where the Americans lay in ambush. ’The enemy,’ reported the commander of the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Grenadier-Regiment 989, Oberst Georg Fieger, ’was offering tenacious resistance. His islands of defense were so well camouflaged as to be extremely difficult to detect even at very close range; the terrain features were particularly unfavourable for the attacking forces.’³⁶ Oberst Viebig reported his division’s first day in Operation ’Herbstnebel’:

’In the course of the day, the 989. Regiment succeeded, after heavy and costly combat in the woods, in pushing forward up to the Jans Stream, where enemy resistance increased considerably. The 990. and 991. Regiments, on the other hand, were not able to gain much ground during their attack towards the west, due to the difficult wooded terrain with its particularly dense underbrush and numerous young trees. They failed in their intention to penetrate the wooded region quickly and by surprise, and to thus clear the roads for the armored units. For the moment, nothing was heard from the rifle company. Due to the fact that no other forces were following, it had been compelled, because of strong enemy resistance, to take up an all-around defense position in the area of the road intersection, 2 km southwest of Udenbreth. The reinforcements promised by the Corps in the form of assault guns and engineer equipment, either failed to appear or came too late. Already during the initial phase of the attack, the regiments suffered heavy casualties, especially as regards officers and NCOs.’³⁷

The commanders of Grenadier regiments 990 and 991, Oberstleutnants Josef Bremm and Otto Jaquet, both were wounded during the fighting on 16 December. The third Regiment of the Division, Grenadier-Regiment 989, lost both of its battalion commanders. The next morning, the commander of this regiment, Oberst Fieger, collapsed at his Headquarters in Hollerath and became unconscious. Afterwards he wrote, ‘I was transferred to a hospital, and did no longer take part in any action of this war.’³⁸ The losses were no less severe on the U.S. side, where the two battalions of the 393rd Infantry Regiment lost about seven hundred men in this day’s terrible forest fighting. Today, just where the forest begins, on the German side of the border, is a memorial dedicated to those who died on both sides during this battle.

On 17 December, the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division was reorganized into two battle groups—one under Oberst Fieger’s successor, Major Johe, the other led by the commander of Grenadier-Regiment 991, Oberstleutnant Josef Bremm, who although he had been wounded by shrapnel remained in first-line service.

Firing their guns from the hip and shouting ’hooray’—according to the German photo caption—these German soldiers from a Volks-grenadier Division are assaulting a U.S. position in a wooded area on the first day of the Ardennes Offensive, 16 December 1944. (BArch, Bild 183-J28586/Kriegsberichter Lange)

PEIPER MAKES HIS ENTRANCE

The headquarters of some of the U.S. units hit by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s attack did not react with the same confusion as was the case with the VIII Corps and its subordinate units that were attacked by the 5. Panzerarmee. However, when Major General Clarence R. Huebner, deputy C.O. of U.S. V Corps, and the commander of the 99th Infantry Division, Major General Lauer, met at the latter’s headquarters in Bütgenbach at eight thirty in the morning on 16 December, both were of the opinion that the German attack was nothing serious, that it was probably only an attempt to distract the Americans from their attack against the Roer dams.³⁹ Shortly afterward, Major General Walter Robertson, the commander of U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, visited the 99th Division’s headquarters in Bütgenbach where he found Major General Lauer sitting and playing a piano. Lauer maintained that his 99th Infantry Division ’had matters in hand.’⁴⁰ At midnight on the night of 16 December, Lauer reported to the commander of the V Corps, Major General Leonard T. Gerow, that his division’s entire front was more or less established on its original line and ’the situation was in hand and all quiet.’⁴¹

But the Corps commander Gerow and Major General Robertson were more experienced. Of the fragmentary reports that arrived at V Corps’ headquarters until noon on 16 December, Gerow drew the conclusion that this was a large-scale offensive, and that the 2nd Infantry Division in the north would soon end up in a vulnerable position. Because of that, he requested permission from U.S. First Army’s commander, Hodges, to cancel the attack at Wahlerscheid and shift the 2nd Infantry Division to the Elsenborn ridge, the plateau to the west of the ‘twin villages’ Rocherath-Krinkelt. This request, which also was repeated by Robertson, was rejected by Hodges. But Gerow’s and Robertson’s view on the situation was so clear that the latter, supported by Gerow (and Huebner), decided to defy the Army commander. Robertson’s orders to his units to discontinue the assault contributed in a decisive way to saving the situation for the Americans, as we shall see later.

FLYING BOMBS SUPPORTING THE ARDENNES OFFENSIVE

The German robot weapons V 1 and V 2 played a significant role during the Ardennes Offensive. This became apparent to the Allies during the first day of the attack, on 16 December, when a V 2 hit a cinema in Antwerp, killing 296 Allied soldiers and 271 civilians. Antwerp, the main unloading port for Allied supply shipments to the Ardennes, had been fired at with these missiles since Hitler had ordered this on 12 October 1944. The following month, Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt ordered this missile offensive to be extended to include Liège—the city in eastern Belgium where Allied depots and headquarters for the Ardennes Front were concentrated.¹

V 1s, equipped with a warhead of 847 kg (1,867lb), were fired by the Luftwaffe Flak-Regiment 155 (W) under Oberst Max Wachtel. As the greater part of its launchers were localized to the area east of Cologne and Bonn, the V 1s passed over the section of the Ardennes where the 6. SS-Panzerarmee attacked. For the soldiers on both sides in this area, the fighting was accompanied by a steady stream of these flying bombs that passed heading west at an altitude of about

2,500 feet. The Allies came to know this area as the ‘Buzz Bomb Alley.’

The diary of Sergeant Alfred Di Giacomo, telephone operator in the headquarters of the XIX Tactical Air Command in Liège, gives an image of the extent of the bombardment. On 17 December Di Giacomo noted that 120 V 1s were launched against Liège. Two days later he wrote, ‘They are coming over every 12 to 15 minutes. There is an occasional explosion from V-2s as well. It is all very nerve racking and dangerous. As some infantrymen who were on rest leave said to me, “It is like a continuous artillery barrage."’

Liège had a brief respite when the German Armed Forces High Command on 19 December ordered the shelling of the city to cease when it was expected that it soon would be captured.² But already in the evening on the next day, the V 1 bombardment of Liège was resumed. All in all, the missile offensive against Liège claimed 1,649 human lives and another 2,558 people were injured. Much of the town was destroyed.

The V 1 offensive against Antwerp was less effective, since this city had a very strong air defense. This defense force, designated Antwerp-X under Brigadier General Clare Hibbs Armstrong, eventually came to include more than 500 guns of 40mm, 90mm and 94mm (3.7in) caliber, and a troops force of around 22,000 men. Already from the onset, Antwerp-X managed to shoot down 60 percent of the V 1s approaching Antwerp—a share that later in 1945 increased to 98 percent. However, the V 1s that managed to reach Antwerp inflicted a great deal of destruction.

Most of the V 2s fired during the Ardennes Battle were also directed against Antwerp. Commanded by SS-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler, most of the V 2 launchers were located in the Netherlands. There were no defense measures against this ballistic rocket. It was the Allies’ good fortune that an increasing fuel shortage prevented the Germans from firing more V 2s. In December 1944, an average of four of these rockets hit Antwerp every day. At the end of the year, the whole city center of Antwerp was devastated. A total of 8,000 of the city’s houses had been destroyed or damaged, 1,736 people had been killed and 4,500 wounded by V weapons.

In January 1945 the frequency of V 2 strikes in Antwerp increased to an average of five a day. In addition to the V 1s and V 2s, Antwerp also was bombarded by a total of 220 so-called Rheinbote, a smaller ballistic rocket with a 40 kilo (88lb.) warhead.

According to a U.S. military analysis made after the war, the German flying bombs had a strong negative impact on the unloading of supplies in the port of Antwerp. Altogether, 1,812 military personnel and close to 10,000 civilians were killed or wounded by V 1s and V 2s in Antwerp in World War II.

1 Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv RL 12/76: Kriegstagebuch Flakregiment 155(W).

2 OKW/WFSt/Op (L) Nr. 0014875/44 g.Kdos. 19.12. 1944; Jung, Die Ardennen-Offensive 1944/45, p. 157.

This V 1 was shot down near Antwerp during the winter of 1944/1945. (NARA, 600-850 via Peter Björk.)

In the German camp, the SS commanders meanwhile felt frustrated. In most places, the infantry that was supposed to open the way for the powerful armored forces during the first hours, had failed in their task.

The operation plan for ’Herbstnebel’ had divided the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s intended march to the west into five routes. The northernmost, Rollbahn A/B, began in Hollerath, following one of the two small forest roads that the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division was tasked to clear. It then continued via the villages of Rocherath and Elsenborn to Sourbrodt, just a few miles south of the crossroads Baraque Michel that von der Heydte’s paratroopers were supposed to occupy. In Sourbrodt, the planned march route was divided into Rollbahn A which bent right towards Baraque Michel, while Rollbahn B continued to the west towards Flemalle on River Meuse, south of Liège. During roughly the first six miles, Rollbahn A was basically nothing but small muddy backroads that wound across the hilly forest area or between fields and meadows. It was a gamble to send such heavy forces onto these bad roads— and in heavy rain. The following elements of 12. SS-Panzer-Division would take this route to cover the Division’s main armored force: SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25, SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 12, an artillery battalion, and an engineer company. The main force—the division’s armored regiment, the armored reconnaissance battalion, the heavy tank destroyers of schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 560, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 26, an artillery battalion, and an engineer company—would advance along Rollbahn C. This began just south of Rollbahn A in Udenbreth and ran westwards through Murringen, Bütgenbach, and Malmédy towards the Meuse bridge at Engi just west of Liège. The first few miles of Rollbahn C consisted of the other small forest road that the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division fought to secure. In the evening on 16 December, both Rollbahn A and Rollbahn C remained blocked by the Americans.

Rollbahn D began in Losheim, about four miles south of Udenbreth, on the other side of the forest, and ran in a northwesterly direction—through Losheimergraben two miles further ahead, and on to Murringen, another two miles further on. That all forces on Rollbahn C and Rollbahn D would converge in the small community of Murringen perhaps was not very prudent. From Murringen, Rollbahn D continued to the southwest, for five to six miles along nothing but small rural backroads that ran between fields and meadows, to Möderscheid. From that place, the same kind of mud roads continued for another twelve miles, until the town of Stavelot on River Amblève was reached. On the other side of the river, Rollbahn D continued along the paved highway N 23 (now designated N 66), which forty miles further ahead reached Huy on River Meuse. Rollbahn D was assigned to the bulk of SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke’s 1. SS-Panzer-Division. The lead was to be taken by the powerful SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, to be followed by SS-Kampfgruppe Sander—SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Sandig’s task force with two battalions of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2, an artillery battalion, and most of the SS division’s air defense and engineer troops. Rollbahn D also remained blocked by the Americans in the evening on 16 December.

The 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s only real success on 16 December was that Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 5 on the 3. Fallschirmjäger Division’s southern flank—aided by the successes attained by 5. Panzerarmee’s 18. Volksgrenadier-Division—managed to seize Krewinkel and the adjacent village of Afst (where part of the predominantly Germanspeaking population openly showed their sympathy for the Germans when the Americans withdrew in the afternoon of 16 December).⁴² Thus, Rollbahn E became open for SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen, which was tasked to cover Peiper’s southern flank. This route ran through Krewinkel and Manderfeld in the northern part of the Losheimer-Graben Valley, four miles south of the village of Losheimergraben, and on to Amel, two-three miles southwest of Möderscheid, and from there to Born, three miles further on to the southwest, and three miles north of Sankt Vith. It then continued to Recht (five miles northwest of Sankt Vith), and via Poteau to Vielsalm and Lierneux on the western side of River Salm. From there, Hansen’s troops were supposed to continue to Werbomont, thirteen miles west of Stavelot, where they would join Peiper’s force on Highway N 23.

SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper was led by the barely 29-year-old SS-Obersturmbannführer Joachim ‘Jochen’ Peiper, to the right in the picture along with his soldiers. Peiper took part in the invasions of Poland in 1939, of France in 1940, and of the Soviet Union in 1941. Occasionally he served as the SS commander Himmler’s adjutant. When Peiper in November 1943 was appointed to command SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandar-te Adolf Hitler,’ he had already been awarded with the Knight’s Cross. In January 1944 he was awarded with the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross. Following SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper’s failure in the Ardennes, he left front service, but at the request of the divisional commander Mohnke, he received the Swords to the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. After the war, Peiper was sentenced to death for war crimes, but the verdict was changed to a prison sentence. After more than 11 years in prison, he was pardoned in December 1956. In July 1976, Peiper was assassinated in an unclarified fire bomb attack against his residence in France. (Månsson)

SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen, under the command of SS-Standartenfuhrer Max Hansen, consisted of the I. SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung with twenty-one Panzer IV/70s, SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 1, and motorized artillery, in all 4,500 men with 750 vehicles. This task force was followed by the motorized infantry of Schnelle SS-Gruppe Knittel, fifteen hundred men with 150 vehicles under the command of SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Knittel. But even though the paratroopers had cleared the way for Hansen’s troops, these were delayed by old German minefields that the SS commanders had neglected to take notice of.

Probably no one on the German side felt more frustrated than the hot-tempered SS-Obersturmbannführer Jochen Peiper. He had hoped to begin his advance as early as the morning of 16 December, but when he visited the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division’s commander, Generalmajor Engel, at the latter’s command post at two in the afternoon, Peiper learned that the infantry still had not been able to open the way for the armor. Two hours later, Peiper just had enough and gave his unit march orders.

By that time, what seemed to be the entire I. SS-Panzerkorps was clogged in huge traffic jams on the roads behind the front. Without any regard to what the commanders of the other task forces had to say, Peiper ordered his one hundred and twenty-four tanks, including the Konigstigers of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, to ruthlessly ‘sweep aside any obstacle in their way.’⁴³ Truck drivers and terrified coachmen on horse-drawn artillery pieces drove off the road in order to avoid getting crushed by the huge tanks that were driven as though they were on the attack.⁴⁴

It had grown dark when Peiper’s long vehicle column at five in the afternoon rumbled into Losheim just behind the front. Outside the village, it turned out that the German engineer troops still had not constructed a bridge in place of the demolished road viaduct over the railway. A truck carrying the vital bridge material had collapsed en route. As the SS men stood there, the gunfire from the battle between 12. Volksgrenadier-Division and the U.S. defenders at Losheimergraben, a mile farther up the forest road, could be heard. Peiper’s tanks gently made it down the slope to the railway, clawed their way across the tracks, and then began to climb the grassy slope on the other side. They had barely done so, when a counter-order arrived from SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Priess, the commander of the Panzer Corps: turn back and advance to Lanzerath (two thousand yards to the southwest), and from there, in cooperation with Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9, attack the Americans in Losheimergraben from the southwest!⁴⁵ Through this maneuver, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper blocked and delayed SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen—which just had finished the clearing of the old German minefield. However, this could be regarded as justified since Peiper’s force after all was to take the lead.

Peiper’s vehicles barely had left Losheim when they too ran into a minefield that had been laid by retreating German troops in September 1944. This had been overlooked by the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s planners. SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Sternebeck, commanding the advance force (6. and 9. Kompanie of SS-Panzer-Regiment 1) remembers:

’Immediately outside of Losheim’s western exit, the first Panzer V [Panther] ran into a minefield and was lost for the rest of the operation. In the meantime, the sun had set. Uncertainty increased, we still saw nothing of the enemy. There was another explosion and the second Panzer V drove into the minefield, approximately 500 yards west of Losheim. Again the mines had to be removed. This took a lot of time. Our two Panthers, which were thought of as battering rams, were lost for the rest of the deployment without having made any contact with the enemy.’⁴⁶

The Panzer-Regiment’s 9. Kompanie—the pioneer company under SS-Obersturmführer Erich Rumpf—had not finished the clearing of mines until later that dark evening, and in the meantime Peiper’s impatience grew. But the tanks had just started moving again when Peiper sustained his next setback, as Sternebeck recalls, ’Immediately southwest of Merlscheid [half-way between Losheim and Lanzerath] at an open road obstacle, my panzer jumped and came to a stand-still after a detonation. Now it was also lost. I climbed into Unterstumführer Asmussen’s panzer. The advance was again delayed. The panzer had to be pulled from the road obstacle and mines had to be removed.’ Shortly afterward, Peiper’s command Panther, No. 001, sustained engine failure and had to be abandoned. He himself continued the advance in an armored personnel carrier.

The few houses in Hüllscheid shivered and shook as the heavy tanks rumbled through the village street. During the continued march, two armored personnel carriers were lost. Peiper was in a bad mood as towards midnight, he drove into Lanzerath. He exploded with rage when he discovered that the paratroopers lay fast asleep instead of fighting!

These were the men of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9 who had fought for the bitterly defended hill for several hours. When the resistance finally was broken, towards evening, the paratroopers were exhausted and hungry— they had not been fed in all day. They pillaged the little village of Lanzerath for food, and their commander failed to make them continue their march. The paratroop regiment’s 3. Bataillon went into position on the crest of the forest hill where the road leads to Buchholz, and the sound of gun fire that seemed to come from inside the woods sufficed to convince them that the area was heavily occupied by U.S. troops.⁴⁷ In reality, what they heard was the fighting at Losheimergraben, on the other side of the forest, a mile farther to the northeast; Buchholz, a mile north of the paratroopers, had by that time already been taken by 12. Volksgrenadier-Division’s Füsilier-Grenadier-Regiment 27, but owing to inadequate communications between the various units, the paratroopers knew nothing of this.

A furious Peiper stormed into Café Palm, where the commander of the paratroop regiment, Oberst von Hoffmann, had established his command post. Disregarding the fact that he was addressing a superior—displaying the contempt typically felt by the SS for Wehrmacht officers— he gave the colonel a complete dressing down. Afterwards, Peiper described this:

’I asked him for all the information that he had on the enemy situation. His answer was that the woods were heavily fortified, and that scattered fires from prepared “pill boxes” plus mines in the road were holding up his advance. He told me that it was impossible to attack under these circumstances. I asked him if he had personally reconnoitered the American positions in the woods, and he replied that he received the information from one of his battalion commanders. I asked the battalion commander, and he said that he had got the information from a Hauptmann in his battalion. I called the Hauptmann and he answered that he had not personally seen the American forces but it had been “reported to him.” At this point I became very angry and ordered the Fallschirmjäger Regiment to give me one battalion and I would lead the breakthrough.’⁴⁸

Von Hoffmann apparently was stunned by the behavior of this SS officer. In any case, he agreed to attach his regiment’s II. Bataillon—under Major Siegfried Taubert—to SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper.

While Peiper and von Hoffmann quarelled in Lanzerath, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s two special operations were launched. Several among Skorzeny’s Steinau commando groups managed to infiltrate the U.S. lines already during the first day, and a couple of these reached the Meuse in the vicinity of Huy already that same evening. In the meantime, one hundred and thirty-six Junkers 52 transport planes of aviation wing TG 3 (Transportgeschwader 3) were heading in over the frontlines, carrying Kampfgruppe von der Heydte.

But added to Oberstleutnant von der Heydte’s concerns regarding the lack of combat experience of his men, was added a corresponding problem with the crews of the transport planes. Most of these were completely new out of the flight schools, and the majority had not even been trained to fly the trimotor Ju 52. Almost all lacked any training in formation flight, and their navigational skills were absolutely inadequate. Owing to the secrecy ahead of Operation ’Herbstnebel,’ the commanders of the air units in question had been told that the mission was nothing but an airdrop training, and consequently took no measures to prepare their air crews for a combat mission; they learned of the true nature of the mission only on 13 December.

In order to facilitate the navigation, searchlights and flares from anti-aircraft guns showed the way through the darkness. At the jump area, a Junkers 88 night-fighter crew, specially trained in instrument flying, would drop flare bombs fifteen minutes ahead of the arrival of the first transport plane, and then each aircraft would mark the drop zone with flares.

This may have looked well on paper, but in reality things were much more complicated. The transport planes were shot at by both their own and the enemy’s AAA, and although this did not bring down many of the aircraft, it caused several pilots to get lost as they maneuvered to avoid the exploding shells. Heavy winds that made transport planes drift off course, created even greater problems. To half of the nervous and anxious aircrews, this was their first combat flight ever. Most transport planes signalled clear to jump in the wrong position; the ten planes that had drifted mostly off course, were as far away as Bonn, sixty miles from the jump zone. Only thirty-five transport planes managed to bring the paratroopers more or less to the intended drop zone, but merely ten of these were in the exact position. All in all, eight hundred and seventy paratroopers and thirty dummies in parachutes—the latter dropped in order to create confusion on the Allied side—were spread across a large area in eastern Belgium.

Oberstleutnant von der Heydte was one of the few who were lucky to land precisely in the assigned drop zone. When he located the strategically important road intersection of Baraque Michel in the wooded area north of Malmédy, he had been joined by no more than twenty paratroopers.⁴⁹ A couple of hours later, the group had grown to one hundred and fifty men. During the course of 17 December, their number increased to around three hundred, but they lacked both radio equipment and heavy weapons.

Von der Heydte decided to change tactics. Since he only had such a small force at his disposal, it was imperative for him to avoid direct combat. Hence, the paratroopers hid in the spruce forest next to the road junction, in order to occupy it as soon as other German troops approached. From these positions, the Germans were able to observe and count the number of U.S. vehicles that passed on their way to the front. Patrols sent out also were able to attain valuable intelligence information. But since the radio equipment had broken during the parachute drop, this valuable information did not reach the 6. SS-Panzerarmee.

Paratroopers from Major Siegfried Tauberts II. Bataillon/ Fallschirmja-ger-Regiment 9 on one of the big Königstiger tanks of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper on 17 December 1944. (NARA, III-SC-341659)

In fact, the SS Army’s headquarters knew nothing about the paratroop force. Shortly before midnight on the night of 17-18 December, the British Ultra codebreakers decrypted a German radio message concerning von der Hedte’s force: ’Situation with parachute troops dropped in area 20 km south south-east of Eupen not clear. No communications.’⁵⁰

Kampfgruppe von der Heydte’s participation in the offensive ended in a miserable failure, not least because of the lack of experience of the crews that flew the three-engine Junkers 52 transport aircraft from Transportgeschwader 3 that carried the paratroopers. The picture shows one of these Ju 52s after it had been shot down and crash-landed in American controlled territory. (NARA, 56271 via Peter Bjork)

In effect, Kampfgruppe von der Heydte would accomplish nothing to the benefit of the German offensive. The paratroopers only managed to carry out a few ambushes against single U.S. military vehicles, which temporarily resulted in the capture of about thirty POWs.

The paratroopers were not even relieved by the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend,’ as had been the intention. This was partly due to the fact that the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division still had not been able to crush the resistance of U.S. 99th Infantry Division’s 393rd Infantry Regiment, despite the fact that the German assault was reinforced by a panzer grenadier regiment from the 12. SS-Panzer-Division.⁵¹ In this sector, the Americans were able to beef up their positions because of Major General Robertson’s self-indulgent decision to cancel his 2nd Infantry Division’s attack against the Roer dams. Thus, already early on 17 December, Robertson could shift his 9th and 38th Infantry regiments southwards to take up positions at the so-called ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt, and at Wirtzfeld, a mile further to the west. The 741st Tank Battalion, the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and two of the 2nd Infantry Division’s artillery battalions also joined in at these places, and once these had been established in their new positions, the 393rd Infantry Regiment was pulled back to this new line. Meanwhile, the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division was attached to the 99th Infantry Division and ordered to take up positions at Bütgenbach, farther to the southwest.

Not far to the south, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper meanwhile resumed its advance from Lanzerath during the small hours on 17 December. The II. Bataillon of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9 had been subordinated to Peiper, who immediately—at four in the morning— ordered the paratroopers to reconnoiter the forest hill up to Buchholz. It did not take long before these returned to report nothing more than ’weak American positions’ that were ’quickly overcome.’ When Peiper learned that no such strong U.S. positions as Oberst von Hoffmann had spoken of existed, he totally lost his confidence in the paratroop colonel. Irritated by the unnecessary loss of time, Peiper immediately gave his Kampfgruppe a new march order: Full speed ahead!

With the paratroopers mounted on the big Konigstigers, the Germans paved their way along the forest road. ’Snow-covered terrain lay ahead of the Kampfgruppe in the early morning hours of 17 December,’ said SS-Unterscharfuhrer Karl Wortmann. ’A path through the woods leading from Lanzerath to the railroad station, located outside of the village, showed the fresh tracks made by the armored vehicles of the vanguard. The main body followed a few minutes later. American soldiers were seen on both sides of the path. They fired machine guns and other light weapons at the moving column. A few bursts from the four-barreled Flak forced them to flee farther into the woods. Mortar shells were a little more uncomfortable as they hit the ground close to the Panzers. The powder snow, thrown up by their explosions, obscured visibility for seconds at a time.’⁵²

According to orders, the column did not stop to deal with the American troops that appeared on the flanks, but continued at full spead ahead—aiming at River Meuse. Near the railway station of Buchholz, the Germans met fire from anti-tank guns that rapidly were destroyed by fire from the Panther tanks. At four thirty in the morning, Peiper’s column surged into Honsfeld, three miles from Lanzerath. They found the village filled with parked military vehicles— tanks, armored cars, trucks with towed anti-tank guns, jeeps. These belonged to the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, and ’A’ Troop of the 32nd Cavalry Squadron. Nearly all the U.S. soldiers were asleep in the houses. Private First Class Bill Hawkins of the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion remembers how he was woken up by a young Belgian boy as he was sleeping on the third floor in one of the houses. ’Jump up, jump up, the Germans are all around us,’ shouted the boy. At first, Hawkins thought the boy was cracking a joke, but then another man of his platoon, Sergeant Briney, came up the steps and said, ’No fooling boys, they got us, they are everywhere!’⁵³

Through this rapid coup, Peiper’s men took three hundred U.S. prisoners and captured seventeen antitank guns and around fifty military vehicles. But several Americans managed to escape, and these soon returned in a minor counter-attack. One of the SS soldiers afterwards said, ’There was Amis everywhere. We disarmed them at once and broke up their weapons. Then we drove them out into the street and started to count our loot in chocolate and cigarettes. Just when we were about to mount up to move out, all hell broke loose; firing from windows at the far end of town, cannon fire, tracers zipped back and forth, men screaming in pain.’⁵⁴

U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Germans from various house windows in the village. Several Germans fell before the snipers had been eliminated. Two Wirbelwind AA panzers of 10. (Flak) Kompanie/SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 were knocked out by U.S. anti-tank guns, which immediately afterwards were destroyed by fire from a third Wirbelwind. The commander of the German Flak Kompanie, SS-Obersturmführer Karl-Heinz Vögler, was injured in this exchange of fire.⁵⁵ U.S. 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s Sergeant Devers Bryant, manning an anti-tank gun in Honsfeld, recalls that ’the Germans had taken cover in a barn about fifty yards away and were shooting at the house. I put a shell into the barn; hay, wood, men flew everywhere.’⁵⁶

Just as the Germans thought that the last resistance had been subdued, two Panther tanks—Nos. 232 and 235 under SS-Unterscharführer Willi Kritzler and SS-Unterscharführer Walter Puplik respectively— were knocked out by an anti-tank gun. A Königstiger also received four hits from two anti-tank guns, but remained unscathed and blew both guns to smithereens.

By that time, further German soldiers had arrived at Honsfeld. While Peiper and the spearhead of his Kampfgruppe continued northwards along the little backroad towards the next locality, Büllingen, some of the remaining Germans took a dreadful revenge on their American prisoners, as Elmer Haynes records:

We went downstairs and out the door. Some of the men were already standing alongside of the tanks with their hands over their heads. One tank fired just as I got to the steps and knocked down about five men. A friend of mine had both legs shot out from under him. As he was calling for help, the tank swerved to the left and ran over him. It went right by me and kept going. […] At first, the killing seemed to be random incidents. Two of us were walking side by side past the moving tanks when a single shot hit the man next to me in the chest. I grabbed him, but he was dead by the time I got him lowered to the ground. The rest of the tanks just drove on by. […] I was lucky, I dropped in a drainage ditch alongside of the road. I could feel the bullets going over me but I didn’t get hit. The firing stopped and I got to my feet. Most of the men around me were dead. I started walking to get back to the group, no one shot at me again. […] As they were pushing and prodding us back in line, our guys could see buddies laying in the street and ditches, shot down with their hands over their head.⁵⁷

There is irrefutable proof that the Germans killed nineteen unarmed Americans in Honsfeld.⁵⁸ In addition to that, they executed two Belgian civilians who were accused of ’collaboration with the enemy’—this was the part of Belgium that Hitler had annexed in 1940.

Büllingen, a small rural town with about two thousand residents by this time, is embedded between wide cattle fields on rolling hills in the German-speaking region of northwestern Belgium. This was the place where Major General Lauer had located the command post of his 99th Infantry Division; here was a fuel depot and a small airfield used by U.S. artillery observer planes. U.S. 254th Engineer Combat Battalion also was stationed here. Although the Americans were caught by surprise as SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper’s advance force attacked, a Panzer IV was kocked out by a Bazooka just outside of the town. SS-Obersturmbannführer Sternebeck describes what next followed, ’The armored advance force rumbles into Büllingen in full career, with all guns blazing. This created total confusion among the enemy. We had managed to catch them by surprise, and met no organized resistance.’⁵⁹

According to Hugh M. Cole, there is evidence that the Germans executed prisoners—in total fifty—at this place too.⁶⁰ However, U.S. military historian Charles B. MacDonald is of another opinion. He wrote, ’There were to be reports later that in Büllingen, Peiper’s men killed fifty American prisoners who had helped them fill their vehicles with gasoline. The reports were false. Kampfgruppe Peiper took about two hundred prisoners in and around Büllingen […] but there was no repetition of the mass atrocities committed in Honsfeld.’⁶¹

One of SS-Kampfgruppe Peipers armored personnel carriers enters Honsfeld. When this photograph was taken, the Germans had already conquered the village and seized a large number of U.S. combat vehicles, including the M3 half-track left in the road side. (NARA, IU-SC-198248)

The men of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper had no reason to feel frustrated after the seizure of Büllingen, where they not only captured twelve aircraft on the airfield; one of the residents, an elderly man with a swastika armlet, showed them the way to the location outside of the town where the Americans had stockpiled fuel, all of which proved to be unscathed.⁶²

The C.O. of the 99th Infantry Division, Lauer, nevertheless managed to slip away. The fact that a Panzer IV a couple of hours later was destroyed by an American anti-tank gun north of Büllingen, whereby the commander got killed, hardly would have made the SS men as furious as when they were attacked by a force that they imagined had surrendered in Honsfeld. This tank was part of SS-Obersturmbannführer Sternebeck’s lead force, which during the rapid advance through Büllingen mistakenly took the wrong exit road, and continued a mile or so to the north—towards Wirtzfeld—instead of to the south, towards Möderscheid, as the plan prescribed. If there was any reason to feel frustrated on the German side, this would have been due to the strict orders which told them to continue straight ahead, towards River Meuse, without any regard to the circumstances.

American prisoners of war killed in Honsfeld on 17 December 1944. At the trough in the picture, a memorial to the American soldiers has now been erected. (NARA, 111-SC-198245)

In Büllingen, Peiper’s Kampfgruppe stood only slightly more than a mile south of Wirtzfeld. Had Peiper been allowed to make just a small deviation from the assigned march route to capture this location—which his task force without any doubt could have accomplished in a couple of hours—the road would have been opened to the 12. SS-Panzer-Division, which thus had been spared the costly battle of the ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt (see pp. 191). Such a maneuver also would have enabled the two panzer divisions of the I. SS-Panzerkorps to carry out a pincer movement to surround and annihilate both U.S. 2nd and 99th Infantry divisions. This in turn would probably have resulted in a total collapse for the U.S. defenses in the sector assigned to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee, possibly allowing Sepp Dietrich’s troops to reach the Meuse within a couple of days. Moreover, von der Heydte’s paratroopers could have been relieved. But, as we have seen, Hitler had made it quite clear to the 6. SS-Panzerarmee that on no condition was it allowed to deviate from the assigned march route, and hence, Peiper continued westwards.

U.S. 2nd Infantry Division’s commander, Major General Robertson, felt a moment of strong anxiety. Early on the morning of 17 December he phoned the commandant of the Division’s Special Troops and told him that the Germans had broken through, and wanted him to get every man he could bring up—even cooks, truck drivers, and clerks—to form a last ditch defense of the command post. These were the troops that Sternebeck’s tanks had encountered north of Büllingen. But as the feared German attack from the south never materialized, Robertson soon was able to concentrate on the defense of the ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt.

After Büllingen, Peiper’s column continued along the paved main road N 32, and about a thousand yards from Büllingen’s western exit they reached the estate of Domane Bütgenbach. ’The Americans had established a dressing-station at that place,’ said SS-Obersturmbannführer Sternebeck. ’Although the doctors approached us in order to surrender their station, we turned left and entered the road Büllingen - Möderscheid.’⁶³ While Peiper’s force kept surging ahead, the bulk of the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division was left far behind. As it would turn out, the regiment assigned by U.S. 1st Infantry Division to the 99th Division would make it to Domane Bütgenbach before these paratroopers—which would cost the 12. SS-Panzer-Division dearly a couple of days later.

In front of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, all American resistance collapsed. By noon on 17 December, news about the powerful German panzer column had caused widespread panic on the American side. Major Donald P. Boyer, operations officer in U.S. 38th Armored Infantry Battalion—part of Combat Command Reserve, 7th Armored Division, which was underway to join the 106th Infantry Division in the Sankt Vith area—describes the sight that met him at around one in the afternoon on 17 December, as he reached the road intersection at Poteau, some ten miles southwest of Büllingen:

A squadron of Piper L-4 Grasshopper U.S. Army artillery observation aircraft at an airfield in Belgium in the winter of 1944/1945. Although Grasshopper was the official designation, this military aircraft usually was known under its civilian name, Cub. The L-4 was used extensively in several roles—as a reconnaissance aircraft, a liaison aircraft, as an air ambulance, and in the role of an artillery observer. With its low cruising speed, 75 m.p.h., and a stall speed of only 38 m.p.h., coupled with its long flight endurance, three hours, the L-4 was an excellent artillery observer. Equipped with a radio transmitter the pilot of an L-4 could direct the fire of his own artillery while the Germans on the ground often did not dare to fire on his aircraft for fear of themselves becoming the next target for the artillery. (US Army)

’We were hit by a sight that we could not comprehend, at first; a constant stream of traffic hurtling to the rear (to the west) and nothing going to the front (to the east). We realized that this was not a convoy moving to the rear; it was a case of “every dog for himself”; it was a retreat, a rout.

Here would come a two and one-half ton [truck] with only a driver, then another with several men in it (most of them bareheaded and in various stages of undress), next perhaps an engineer crane truck or an armored car, then several artillery prime movers—perhaps one of them towing a gun, command cars with officers in them, one quarter ton [jeep]—anything which would run and which would get the driver and a few others away from the front; it wasn’t a pretty sight—we were seeing American soldiers running away.

About a mile farther up the road at the little town of Petit-Thier, all traffic had stopped. In fact, it was the most perfect traffic jam I had ever seen. We had run into this hopeless mass of vehicles fleeing to the rear on a narrow road which would barely support two-way traffic at slow speeds. Vehicles streaming to the rear had attempted to pass each other in the intervals between the tanks of the 31st Tank Battalion, which was leading CCB, and now no one could move…’⁶⁴

This was the traffic jam that prevented Combat Command Reserve, 7th Armored Division and Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division from relieving the 106th Infantry Division in time. At around two in the afternoon on 17 December, the C.O. of the latter unit, Brigadier General Bruce Clarke, held a meeting with the 106th Infantry Division’s C.O., Major General Jones, at the latter’s command post in Sankt Vith, when suddenly the 14th Cavalry Group’s commander, Colonel Mark Devine burst in, his face red.⁶⁵ ‘General,’ Devine gasped, ’we’ve got to run. I was practically chased into this building by a Tiger tank, and we all have to get out of here!’⁶⁶

After Büllingen and Domane Bütgenbach, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper barely encountered any American troops for several hours. ’Every now and then a few stray jeeps would enter our main route of advance from side roads, apparently not realizing that we had penetrated that far,’ Peiper said.⁶⁷The Germans pushed on through the terrain as though it was nothing but a simple transfer in friendly territory. A bit to the west of Möderscheid, two to three miles southwest of Büllingen, they captured a group of U.S. officers and soldiers from the 3rd Armored Division’s 32nd Armored Regiment. These were interrogated by Peiper personally, who thus learned that Brigadier General Edward W. ’Big Ed’ Timberlake, C.O. of the 49th Antiaircraft Artillery Brigade, had established his command post in Ligneuville, two miles further on. This meant that the Germans perhaps would be able to capture some quite valuable documents on U.S. troop positions, so Peiper ordered full speed ahead. In the next little village, Schoppen, one of the residents, Frau Dollendorf, stood at the small chapel as the huge tanks came clanking up the hill that leads to the village. ’How does one get to the coast from here?’ asked one of the tank commanders as he stood in his turret hatch.⁶⁸

The same German paratroopers on the Königstiger as on the previous image are offered captured American Camel cigarettes from an orderly on a DKW NZ-500 motorcycle. The paratrooper standing up on the tank to the left is armed with a Gerät Potsdam submachine gun type, a German copy of the British 9mm STEN gun. (NARA, III-SC-341622)

A German soldier contemplates at military equipment and personal gear left behind by American troops during their retreat to escape the advancing 6. SS-Panzerarmee in December 1944.(NARA, III-SC-197571)

American troops leaving Malmedy in December 1944. (Via Warren Watson)

At eleven in the forenoon on 17 December, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper entered Thirimont, seven miles from Büllingen. By that time, the Königstigers had been left behind. As these at about this time left Büllingen, they were attacked by eleven Thunderbolt fighter-bombers of the 366th Fighter Group. As we have seen previously, U.S. 9th Air Force took advantage of a slight improvement inthe weather on 17 December to despatch 647 fighter-bombers, but an even larger Luftwaffe activity prevented these from interfering with any efficiency on the battlefield. Nevertheless, a couple of American aircraft managed to get through, and the bombs dropped by these Thunderbolts damaged the tracks of one of the Königstigers so that it had to be abandoned; later on, when the Germans withdrew from the area, it was lost. But the fighter-bombers would not accomplish anything more against the SS-Kampfgruppe on this occasion; in the next moment, they were attacked by around a dozen Messerschmitt 109 and Focke Wulf 190 fighters, which forced the Americans to jettison the remainder of their bombs and defend themselves.

Peiper—who meanwhile was in Thirimont— knew nothing of this; his mind was occupied with other matters. In Thirimont the mud road bent sharply to the right, towards Baugnez, slightly more than a mile farther north, where a paved road led to Ligneuville. Slightly before Peiper’s lead force had reached this area, the long vehicle columns of the 7th Armored Division’s Combat Command Reserve had passed from the north to the south on the same road, heading for Sankt Vith.⁶⁹ Most of these barely evaded SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, but an artillery battery did not have the same fortune.

In his eagerness to reach Ligneuville in shortest possible time, Peiper ordered his vehicles to take a shortcut through the moist wooded area of Hauts Sarts in the west, but there a couple of his tanks got stuck, so the column had to turn back and take the mud road northwards from Thirimont. In that moment, ’B’ Battery, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion passed the road intersection at Baugnez, two miles southeast of the town of Malmédy. SS-Obersturmführer Sternebeck describes what happened there:

On their way west on muddy roads, Königstiger-tanks of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 pass by columns of American POWs. (NARA, III-SC-198241)

On the road leading northwestwards from Thirimont, I made a reconnaissance halt about 900 to 1,200 yards east of the road junction at Baugnez, and saw an enemy vehicle column passing the crossroads heading south. Our armored lead force opened fire with explosive shells against the enemy column, which by that time was about two to three hundred yards from the junction. Some of the vehicles immediately caught fire, and the column dispersed and stopped. The vehicle crews bailed out and took cover. In that situation we advanced towards the crossroads, along the road between Waimes and Baugnez. Before we had arrived, we were subject to machine gun and small arms fire. We fired back, using the machine guns of our tanks, and increased speed against the halted enemy column. When my tank, which took the lead, had reached within sixty to seventy yards from the enemy, the Americans stood up from the road ditch, their hands raised.

We slowly approached the column. By signs with the hands I made the Americans understand that they were to march back towards the crossroads. I radioed a report on the firefight and its result to the armored group. Once again I was ordered to continue at full speed to Engelsdorf [Ligneuville]. Between the armored lead force and the main force, where the command post was, there was a time lapse of about ten minutes.⁷⁰

’Eleven to fifteen of their trucks were destroyed, and we moved through their convoy with little difficulty and pushed into Ligneuville,’ Peiper reported.⁷¹ What next took place at the road intersection at Baugnez was a great and well-known tragedy. A large number of the U.S. soldiers that surrendered at Baugnez were mowed down in cold blood by German troops.

Meanwhile, Peiper’s efforts to catch the Americans at Ligneuville by surprise, failed. Brigadier General Timberlake had been warned via radio about the German breakthrough already on the morning of 17 December. He thus had the time to destroy all vital documents at the command post, and to prepare its evacuation. ’Big Ed’ Timberlake even took his time to have lunch at Hötel du Moulin before he left the small town. However, a small group of stragglers from the 14th Tank Battalion of 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command B—en route from the Malmédy area to Sankt Vith—remained in the town as the leading SS tanks approached. The Americans had two Shermans—one of which was an M4A3 with the new 76mm Ml gun —and an M10 tank destroyer. Even though the German entrance into Ligneuville was accompanied by fire from their tank guns, the Americans were not fully prepared as Peiper’s column, shortly before three in the afternoon, began to move downhill on the main street.⁷²

THE BLOODBATH AT BAUGNEZ

In May and June 1946, a U.S. military court sentenced forty-three former SS soldiers—among them Jochen Peiper—to death for the events at Baugnez on 17 December 1944. Others received lengthy prison terms, like Sepp Dietrich. However, the trial and the verdicts would soon be challenged. The defense attorney, Colonel Willis M. Everett, Jr., took hold on the prisoners’ sworn descriptions of beatings, torture, starvation diet, threats of reprisals against their families, and more if they did not admit what they were accused of.¹

All of the death sentences—none of which were carried out—were converted into prison sentences. The famous U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy later appeared to defend the prisoners, and over the course of the 1950s, they were all released— the last to be released was Jochen Peiper, in 1956. These acquittals also stirred up strong emotions and created controversy. On 14 July 1976, Peiper’s house in France was attacked by six unknown persons with fire bombs. Afterwards, Peiper’s charred corpse was found in the remains of his burned home. The identities of the assaulters, who called themselves ‘the Avengers,’ have never been identified.

There is no doubt that the American proceedings against the accused SS soldiers were conducted in a most remarkable way. This has created an unfortunate situation where there still is no real consensus as to what exactly occurred at Baugnez south of Malmédy on 17 December 1944. Military historian and the international expert on the SS Martin Månsson, however says:

‘Countless books and articles have claimed to tell the “truth” about this tragedy. But even today, not all records are public, so we will have to wait to get the full picture. Clearly, however, there is no doubt that this was a massacre and that many of the American soldiers were executed at close range, that is, with a shot in the head from a distance of less than three feet.’ ²

This is supported by, among others, German historian Jens Westemeier.³

After the war, Samuel Dobyns, Private First Class and an ambulance driver in the 575th Ambulance Company who managed to escape at Baugnez, testified in the so-called Malmédy trial: ‘I saw three or four German soldiers shoot the wounded that were crying for help. ’⁴ Another U.S. soldier who survived the massacre gave this testimony: ‘Then they stopped shooting them and went around kicking them. Anything that moved, they shot them.’⁵

No one questions that a large numbers of American soldiers were shot dead in Baugnez. In the trial of the suspected culprits, the number of fatalities was given at eighty-four. According to writer Gerd J. Gust Cuppens, however, six of these men were killed in other places and on other dates.⁶Those who managed to escape told of how the American soldiers who surrendered to SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper at Baugnez were ordered to line up on a field, whereafter German soldiers suddenly opened fire.⁷ Everyone agrees that a large group of American POWs were shot dead on the field, but the circumstances have never been fully clarified. It has been asserted that a certain number of the fatalities in fact were killed when Sternebeck’s troops attacked the vehicle convoy, before the Americans had surrendered.⁸ Cuppens also refers to eyewitnesses who claim that some of the American POWs who were in the back of the peloton tried to sneak away, and that this was the reason why the Germans opened fire. ⁹ Cuppens points out that an American officer was supposed to have shouted ‘stand firm.’

In Samuel Dobyns’ testimony at the 1946 trial, he said that the German whom witnesses had identified as the one who had fired the first shots against the prisoners with his pistol, had waved this pistol for a while, and as a reaction to this, an American prisoner had shouted ‘stand firm’ to his comrades. It was then that this gun-toting German had opened fire, hitting one of the soldiers in the first line. Dobyns said that he himself then broke the line and ran backwards, and it was only when he was a bit away that the German machine guns opened fire.¹⁰

According Cuppens, one of the officers in SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper after the war commented that in such a situation it takes little to trigger a disaster.¹¹ Due to that version, the Americans scattered in panic and tried to escape the gunfire— which caused more German soldiers to open fire.

The American side gives a different version. For example, according to military historian Charles B. MacDonald, someone on the German side is supposed to have shouted ‘kill them all,’ after which machine guns opened fire on the defenseless prisoners.¹² According to Jens Westemeier’s Peiper-biography, SS commanders in place gave explicit orders to his subordinates to shoot the Americans.¹³

Owing to mistakes committed by the U.S. military during the 1946 trial, the true circumstances of the carnage at Baugnez on 17 December 1944 may never be fully clarified. To the disadvantage of the SS soldiers, there was not only several other incidents during these days when they executed American prisoners or Belgian civilians, but also a long list of Waffen-SS atrocities against POWs and civilians during World War II. Many of the men of ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ had been brutalized in the German war of extermination on the Eastern Front.

The autopsy conducted by the U.S. military after the dead Americans had been found in January 1945, came to the following conclusions: Among 82 dead American soldiers, the cause of death for forty-one was gunshot in the head— with, in most cases, gunpowder injuries showing gunfire at close range.¹⁴ In the cases of nineteen others, the cause of death was bullet wounds from machine guns and small-caliber weapons, another four died by bleeding, three of blows to the head, three by shrapnel, three by grenade explosions, and twelve due to other causes.¹⁵

In any event, the ‘Malmédy massacre’—as the incident came to be known as—immediately had far-reaching consequences. The very next day the stories of those Americans who managed to escape appeared in a report widely distributed among the Allied troops:

’SS troops in vicinity L8199 captured U.S. soldiers, traffic MP with about two hundred other U.S. soldiers. American prisoners searched. When finished, Germans lined up Americans and shot them with machine pistols and machine guns.’¹⁶

That soldiers who surrendered individually or in small groups simply were shot down in the heat of battle, was nothing unusual, and something not only the Germans were guilty of. But what happened on 17 December 1944 still was different. Because the U.S. Army immediately gave this incident the widest possible publicity, the news of the ‘Malmédy Massacre’ came to put a mark on the Ardennes Battle. In a situation where many of the soldiers on the American side were demoralized, confused, and wavered in their confidence in their own military leadership, the news of the German atrocity had an electrifying effect: ’The Malmédy massacre would have repercussions reaching far wider than one might expect of a single battlefield atrocity in a long and bitter war. This “incident” undoubtedly stiffened the will of the American combatants.’¹⁷ Not least the soldiers of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper would soon notice this new, hardened attitude of their opponents.

The dead bodies of the executed Americans as they were found when the area was recaptured in January 1945. (US Army)

1 National Archives and Records Administration: Malmedy massacre Investigation–Report of the Subcommittee of Committee on Armed Services. United States Senate Eighty-fi rst Congress, fi rst session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of Army with Respect to Trial of Persons Responsible for the Massacre of American Soldiers, Battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944. 13 October 1949.

2 Martin Månsson, “Historien om en tysk pansarchef “. Pennan & Svärdet, No. 4/2008. www.omforintelsen.se/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/peiper.pdf 16 Aug. 2010.

3 Westemeier, Joachim Peiper: A Biography of Himmler’s SS Commander, p. 151.

4 Testimony Samuel Dobyns on 10/21/1946 and 06/22/1946. NA U.S. vs. Bersin, 153/1/000526 (513). Quoted in Westemeier, Joachim Peiper: A Biography of Himmler’s SS Commander, p. 160.

5 Parker, Fatal Crossroads: Th e Untold Story of the Malmédy Massacre at the Battle of the Bulge, p. 179.

6 Cuppens, Was wirklich geschah: Malmedy-Baugnez – 17. Dezember 1944, p. 124.

7 Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, p. 261.

8 Cuppens, p. 124.

9 Ibid., p. 121.

10 Weingartner, Crossroads of Death: Th e Story of the Malmedy Massacre and Trial, p. 109.

11 Cuppens, p. 122.

12 MacDonald, p. 219.

13 Westemeier, Joachim Peiper: A Biography of Himmler’s SS Commander, p. 151.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 National Archives and Records Administration: Report of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forde Court of Inquiry re Shooting of Allied Prisoners of War by German Armed Forces near Malmedy, Liege, Belgium, 17 December 1944. NARA, Modern Military Branch, Record Group 319; Weingartner, p. 65.

17 Cole, p. 261.

SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Sternebeck stopped in front of Hötel du Moulin, located just after the entrance into the town, jumped out of his vehicle and rushed inside. There he was met by the hotelkeeper, Peter Rupp, who addressed the SS officer in perfect German: ’Guten Tag, Herr Offizier, the Herr General has left with his staff a few minutes ago, but will return by Christmas.’ To his great surprise, Sternebeck found that a table in the hotel restaurant in the room to the left had still not been cleared, and in an ashtray were still burning cigarettes!

In that moment, Sternebeck heard loud detonations from outside, followed by excited screams and more bangs. The American force had taken up positions on the little hill above the main street that runs downhill straight through Ligneuville. A hundred yards farther down the road, a Panther stood in flames. This had just passed the church on the left hand side of the street and reached the adjacent Hôtel des Ardennes when a 76mm grenade hit the rear of the chassis, where the top armor was only half an inch thick. Peiper saw the tank commander, his personal friend SS-Untersturmführer Arndt Fischer, bail out, his uniform on fire. Peiper grabbed a Panzerfaust, but a Königstiger destroyed one of the Shermans with its 88mm gun, and the second Sherman also soon was neutralized. With their hands above their heads, twenty-two U.S. soldiers came staggering down the hill above Hôtel du Moulin. The SS men were raging at what they apprehended as a cowardly ambush.

Some years after the war, Peter Rupp told of how he saw two SS NCOs shoot down eight of the American prisoners just next to the hotel.^* Next, the two SS soldiers took the remaining fourteen prisoners into the hotel lobby. ’Murderer! You killed eight of them! I saw you put the pistol in their mouths!’ Rupp exclaimed. The SS trooper struck Rupp across his mouth. At that moment, an SS officer emerged and said, ’Shoot them all, the Belgian swine too!’ The situation looked grim when a senior SS officer suddenly entered the hotel and put an end to any further killings. ’Leave them alone,’ he barked at the NCOs, and turning to Rupp he said, ’You are right, mein Herr. It’s a shame how some people treat prisoners.’ Then he gave the NCOs an order: ’Put these men in that room and treat them as you’d want the Amis to treat you.’⁷³

At that stage, Peiper’s task force had become spread out all the way from Honsfeld—where the bulk of the paratroop battalion still remained—to Ligneuville. He had lost five Panthers, two Panzer IVs, and a Königstiger, and another eight Panthers, four Panzer IVs, and no less than about twenty Konigstigers had been left standing along the road due to technical malfunctions, so Peiper decided to pause in Ligneuville in order to assemble his troops, and to snatch a meal.

Peiper’s pause in Ligneuville not only saved U.S. 7th Armored Division’s artillery column, which en route to Sankt Vith had been forced to turn around in Malmédy— because the Germans had reached Baugnez—and instead take Highway N 23 from Malmédy via Stavelot; it in fact also decided the outcome of whole SS offensive. After only two hours, at five in the afternoon on 17 December, Peiper gave his men a new march order. By then it was already dark. While Peiper himself chose to remain in Ligneuville—where the C.O. of the 1. SS-Panzer-Division, SS-Brigadeführer Mohnke, arrived for a meeting—he ordered a company of Panther tanks to continue to the town of Stavelot. The Germans tanks took the nearest way—straight westwards, through the small villages of Villers Beaumont and Lodomez.

Although the distance to Stavelot was less than six miles, and hardly any American resistance could be expected, the Panther force would not reach the town with its vital bridge across River Amblève on that day. In the darkness and without a clue as to where the enemy was, the Germans moved cautiously along a narrow, winding road, lined with trees to the right and steep cliffs rising to the left. In two places the road bended so sharply that the tanks first had to reverse before they, one by one, could get past. Still, one of them damaged its gun barrel when it bumped against the cliffs on the roadside at one of these hairpin bends. At that time the scouting unit had been on the road for two hours, and only a few miles remained to Stavelot. The Panther had barely damaged the barrel in the collision with the cliff, when an explosion occurred. The lead tank had been hit by a Bazooka. Even though the tank was only slightly damaged, it sufficed to halt the SS force.

Unbeknown to the Germans, they had encountered nothing more than an American rearguard troop consisting of exactly twelve men (plus a truck driver) under the command of 21-year-old Sergeant Charles W. Hensel of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion. These had arrived to the site to set up a roadblock just half an hour before the Germans. Hensel and his men fired their weapons more in panic than anything else when the Germans appeared in the darkness, and then promptly left the scene. Their effort halted the strongest single armored force that stood against the Western Allied armies, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper.

When Peiper himself received the report that the tanks had been stopped outside Stavelot, he went there to see for himself. He arrived at eleven in the evening on 17 December. By that time, both sides had, to put it mildly, a quite unclear image of just where the enemy was. While the Panther group stood south of Stavelot, U.S. 7th Armored Division’s artillery column was passing through the town on their way from Malmédy to Sankt Vith. As Peiper saw how the Americans fearlessly had their headlamps switched on, he thought that his own force faced a very strong enemy unit, so he decided to wait until daylight before he launched an attack. Indeed, a platoon of SS panzer grenadiers waded across the narrow river a bit upstream, and took control of some of the houses closest to the bridge on the northern side of Amblève, but apparently these also failed to detect how weak the Americans actually were.⁷⁴

If Peiper, instead of pausing at Ligneuville, had carried out an attack on the afternoon of 17 December, his armor would have been able to get around along the narrow road to Stavelot in daylight, this vital town could have been captured before nightfall, and Peiper would probably have been able to reach the Meuse over the course of 18 December.

When Peiper, on the evening on 17 December, halted his powerful Kampfgruppe at Stavelot, with its unmolested stone bridge over River Amblève, the U.S. forces in the region were in a state that can only be described as on the verge of a breakdown. Sergeant Lloyd Jelleberg from the 99th Infantry Battalion, which marched from Spa to Malmédy that same evening, describes the situation on the U.S. side, ’On the way to Malmédy, the road was full of rear area people coming out. They were scared. Some with no helmets or weapons saying to us you can’t go. The Germans were behind them. They were so wild and scared they wouldn’t get off the road, especially officers and their cars. I was ashamed that they were Americans.’⁷⁵

The 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate) was an independent ‘Norwegian’ infantry battalion, called the ’Viking Battalion,’ in the U.S. Army. It was composed mainly of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, second generation Norwegian Americans, and Norwegian sailors who had volunteered. The 526th Armored Infantry Battalion—which at the time was being trained in rear area—and ’A’ Company of the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion, equipped with anti-tank guns, were attached to the 99th Infantry Battalion to form Task Force Hansen under the 99th Infantry Battalion’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harold D. Hansen. In the evening on 17 December, these units received orders to depart from the Spa area to take up positions at Malmédy.⁷⁶ Meanwhile, the 30th Infantry Division was instructed to shift from U.S. Ninth Army in the north to the V Corps and First Army. Two of its regiments were set marching to Malmédy and the third to Aywaille, west of Spa.

While Peiper thus got the Norwegian-American Task Force Hansen on his northern flank (which was supposed to be covered by the 12. SS-Panzer-Division), his southern flank was covered by the SS troops of SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen under SS-Standartenfuhrer Max Hansen, with about four thousand men and twenty Panzer IV/70s. Although the American resistance on Hansen’s southern Rollbahn was broken up already on the first day—owing to the 5. Panzerarmee’s 18. Volksgrenadier-Division—it took until the morning of day two before Hansen’s motorized task force could begin its advance. There was not much the Americans could launch against SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen, which raced forward at a Blitzkrieg speed. As we saw in Chapter 4, SS-Standartenfuhrer Hansen chased Combat Command Reserve, 7th Armored Division, and Colonel Devine’s 14th Cavalry Group from Recht and Poteau, northwest of Sankt Vith, in the evening on 17 December. But then SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen had to halt because no fuel reserves could get through on the jammed roads in the east.

After the war, this memorial was erected to honor the American POWs who were gunned down in cold blood at Hötel du Moulin in Ligneuville on 17 December 1944. (Photo: The author)

THE BATTLE OF THE ’TWIN VILLAGES’

Meanwhile, the other panzer division of the I. SS-Panzerkorps—the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ under SS-Brigadeführer Hugo Kraas—had got stuck in some of the bloodiest battles during the entire Ardennes Offensive.

As we have seen, the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division failed in its task to break up the U.S. Army in the forests west of Hollerath and Udenbroth on the first day of the attack: this division was almost completely obliterated by the so-called ‘green’ American troops of the 99th Infantry Division. Therefore, the commander of I. SS-Panzerkorps, SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Priess, instructed 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ already on the first day of the attack to take over from the 277. Volksgrenadier-Division, and advance towards the ’twin villages’ Rocherath and Krinkelt, and then on towards the Elsenborn Ridge.⁷⁷

The condition of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division when the Ardennes Offensive began is described by the divisional commander, SS-Standartenfuhrer Fuhrer Hugo Kraas, ’This young division had been formed as recently as mid-1943, and had been fighting in France, where it sustained very heavy casualties, creating a particular shortage in combat experienced soldiers, NCOs, and officers. The replacements consisted of volunteers who had received a very brief training. There was only left a small core of older, combat experienced soldiers. Most officers, especially the staff officers, lacked combat experience as well as combat command experience. This deficiency was particularly evident in the panzer grenadier regiments, which in no way could be described as powerful and cohesive units, and therefore not suited for offensive tasks.’⁷⁸ However, according to Kraas, the division’s panzer regiment had ’seasoned and experienced soldiers, NCOs, and officers.’⁷⁹

The 12. SS-Panzer-Division began its march to the front at four in the afternoon, just before sunset on 16 December. It would be a slow advance. The entire division moved along a single, muddy and narrow forest road. With its surface softened up by the snow and rain that fell throughout the day, this road became completely broken, as more and more heavy vehicles passed, and in the darkness, confusion soon arose in traffic. SS-Untersturmfuhrer Willi Engel, platoon commander in 3. Kompanie, I. Abteilung/ SS-Panzer-Regiment 12, depicts the arduous march:

The 3. Kompanie had just left the resort Hollerath and drove up the mountain. For two hours it was night, with the typical December darkness that almost seems to wrap all the contours in black velvet. It felt like we were running inside a tunnel, anxious about what awaited us on the other end. You could only imagine the dampened lighting on the vehicle ahead, so the pace in which we rolled along was extremely slow. […] At low altitude—and with a terrible noise—V 1 rockets, blinking as if position lights on aircraft, passed above our heads. In front of us we could see the muzzle fire of the American artillery, which made a row of treetops get silhouetted against the horizon.⁸⁰

About three miles west of Hollerath, the thick forest ended and open fields took over all the way to Rocherath and Krinkelt. Here the U.S. artillery on the Elsenborn Ridge lay such a heavy artillery barrage that the Germans were held back throughout the entire day on 17 December.⁸¹ Hereby, SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Roy, the leading ‘Panzer ace’ of SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 12, was killed. Sitting in the open hatch of his Panzer IV/70, he was hit in the head by a bullet from an American sniper.

Only after dark in the late afternoon on 17 December were the Germans able to resume their advance on the ’twin villages’ The attack was carried out by SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 25 with three Panzer IV/70s under SS-Obersturmführer Helmut Zeiner, supported by about forty panzer grenadiers from SS-Sturmbannführer Siegfried Müller’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25. The Germans advanced along the dirt road that leads from the east into the center of the ’twin villages’ When the engine noise from the tank destroyers reached the U.S. soldiers who were in foxholes on the fields east of the Rocherath, two of the Americans rose and walked towards the road in the belief that it was their own reinforcements. The sight that met them made their blood freeze in their veins: Without paying any notice at the two Americans, the SS men passed by, unconcernedly romping and laughing. After them followed the low-profiled Panzer IV/70s. They reminded of giant tortoises as they crawled on through the darkness on the muddy road. One of the American soldiers afterwards swore that he had seen the commander in the top hatch on one of these put up a middle finger to the two completely paralyzed Americans.⁸²

SS-Untersturmfuhrer Siegfried Stiewe, SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Knittel’s adjutant, and an SS-Rottenfuhrer take a breather under the shelter of a captured U.S. M8 armored car. Stiewe survived the Ardennes Battle but was killed in combat on the Eastern Front on 27 March1945. (NARA, III-SC-341640)

A group from the 1. SS-Panzer-Division is taking a rest during the advance westwards on 18 December 1944.The soldiers in the picture have been described as SS-Oberscharführer Persin and SS-Unterscharführer Ochsner from the 3. Kompanie/ SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 1, but none of the surviving veterans of this unit can recall anyone with these names in the unit. Behind the soldiers, a Sd.Kfz. 250 half-track vehicle has parked at the roadside. The place is Kaiserbaracke, 8 miles southeast of Malmedy and 5 miles northwest of Sankt Vith, as is evidenced by the road sign (on which someone has hung a U.S. rifle). (NARA, III-SC-341658)

The smiling SS soldier sitting on the side of a Volkswagen 166 Schwimmwagen, has sometimes been misidentified as Jochen Peiper. Some sources claim that it is SS-UnterscharfÜhrer Ochsner, which has not either been possible to confirm. (NARA, III-SC-341620)

While the two Americans rushed away, the German force entered the village along the uphill leading to the church, located on a hill in the center of the community. Apparently they took the Americans by surprise. Some shots were fired, but the panzer grenadiers could clear the houses on both sides of the road rapidly, and soon had taken eighty enemy soldiers as prisoners. Three Sherman tanks lined up on the other side of the large stone church were hit and caught fire as soon as they came forward to meet the German force. They continued to burn throughout the night.

It was only now that most of the American soldiers in and around Rocherath-Krinkelt became aware that the enemy penetrated the village. One of them, Staff Sergeant Richard H. Byers, recalled, ’ About 10 pm we woke up to the sound of a firefight and tank battle in Krinkelt/Rocherat. I saw a scene I can’t forget. There was a fire blazing in front of Krinkelt’s church. It was a burning Sherman, one of three knocked out by Panthers. The flames lit the height of the church spire. Through binoculars I could see figures running back and forth silhouetted by fire, and watched tracers from tanks at either side of the town’

In the bold thrust, which was crowned by the seizure of the center point of the elongated ’twin villages,’ and the destruction of three U.S. tanks, Zeiner’s small force gave the impression of being much stronger than it really was. The Americans, who had been able to rapidly drive them out of the village, had they only known how weak they were, decided to stay on the defensive. Throughout the night, Germans and Americans lay opposite each other in a semicircle around the eastern fringes of community, while the open area around the church was lit by firelight from the three burning Shermans and, eventually, the growing flames from the church tower. But when the intended reinforcements from the rest of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 still was held up by fighting in the woods east and northeast of Rocherath-Krinkelt, Zeiner decided to withdraw. Under the cover of darkness the Germans slipped back to their own lines.

Zeiner could report the presence of very strong American forces in Rocherath-Krinkelt. This was also confirmed by the information that the Germans were able to gather from the American POWs.⁸³ By defying Hodges’ orders to continue the attack against the Roer dams, the C.O. of U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, Major General Robertson, had been able to concentrate the entire 38th Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion of 9th Infantry Regiment to this section. These were supported by the 741st Tank Battalion, the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and elements of 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, plus a powerful artillery. Additionally, the defenders integrated retreating troops from three of the 99th Infantry Division’s infantry battalions over the course of 17 and 18 December.

In this situation, the 12. SS-Panzer-Division could have easily circumvented Rocherath and Krinkelt in the south, to take the road over Büllingen, just a mile and a half farther to the southwest—which had been captured by SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper on the morning of 17 December— and Bütgenbach, three miles northwest of Büllingen. This also would have had the advantage that this road, Highway N 32, was significantly better than the small roads from Udenbreth and Hollerath. By this time, this area also was held by nothing but small and disorganized U.S. forces that the German panzers could have swept aside without any difficulty. All of this could have been readily carried out by the forces that arrived at the front during the night of 17 December—two Panther companies and two Panzer IV companies from SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Jurgensen’s I. Panzer-Abteilung/SS Panzer -Regiment 12, along with the ’Hitler Jugend’ Division’s artillery regiment and a Nebelwerfer battalion. But instead, the order was given that the tanks were to take the main road straight into Rocherath and Krinkelt on the morning of 18 December, although only a weak supporting infantry force—two battalions of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25—was available.

Just before sunrise on 18 December, SS-Sturmbannführer Jurgensen’s armor rumbled towards Rocherath along the country road from the northeast. There, six hundred men of the 1st Battalion, U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment attempted to hold positions. Here the American and the German accounts differ widely. According to the American version, the U.S. troops held out for several hours, fighting an uneven battle outside of Rocherath. Hereby, the Americans called the own artillery by radio and requested that they would direct their fire against the own positions. For thirty minutes, artillery shells kept coming in on this section.⁸⁴ German SS-Unterscharführer Heinz Stork, commander of a Panzer IV in 6. Kompanie/SS-Panzer-Regiment 12, tells a different story: ‘We reached the outskirts of the village without any difficulty, apart from some sporadic artillery fire and a couple of rifle shots’⁸⁵ Whatever happened, only 217 men of the American battalion managed to withdraw to Rocherath. Of ‘A’ Company, no more than twelve men remained.

German soldiers advance in the Ardennes fog in December 1944. (NARA, III-SC-341637)

The twin villages Rocherath and Krinkelt extend for a mile from the northeast to the southwest. The community is bounded to the east and west by two longitudinal streets two to three hundred yards apart. The entire community is located on a ridge, in the middle of which the church is located. In the surrounding lowlands, large, open fields spread out. Since the fields on both sides of SS-Sturmbannführer Jurgensens tanks were expected to be mined, and also were quite marshy, all the tanks drove in a single column on the road which runs in a drawn-out, rising left turn into Rocherath. Inside the village, the road, Wahlscheider Strasse, continues, with a slight ascent, and after about six hundred yards it reaches the church in the center of the twin villages.

This time, the Americans were prepared. In the two-story stout stone buildings that lined Wahlscheider Strasse, soldiers had prepared firing positions. In alleys and behind walls and house corners, anti-tank guns, Sherman tanks and tank destroyers lured. It was, as SS-Oberscharführer Willi Fischer, one of the German tank commanders, later would put it, ’a perfect tank grave’⁸⁶

The Americans waited until the entire armored column was lined up along the narrow village street. Two dug down Shermans, with Sergeant Neidrich and Corporal Curtis Hall as tank commanders, opened the battle when the leading Panthers came clanking towards the still burning church. Neidrich and Hall fired against the side armor of the Panthers, which was less thick. Within minutes they had knocked out five Panthers, and the whole German advance stalled.⁸⁷ SS-Untersturmfuhrer Engel, tank commander on a Panther in the same company as Fischer, remembered:

As I approached the church I was met by a horrific sight. [SS-Oberscharführer Johann] Beutelhauser’s tank was knocked out in front of me. […] Beutelhauser managed to jump out and reach safety. The gunner was killed by a bullet when he tried to jump out. I brought my tank in cover behind a house without knowing what would happen.

Next to me stood [SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt] Brodel’s tank [No. 318], lightly burning, with Brodel hanging lifeless in the turret hatch. All tanks along the street in front of me had been put out of action, and some of them were burning. One tank was still moving—I think it was Freier’s—and thanks to my cover fire it managed to withdraw to the Battalion CP. […]

Behind me came SS-Sturmbannführer Jurgensens tank. I realized that I had to abandon my position and intended to pull back behind the road crossing. At the same time, I realized that the American anti-tank gun crew figured had this out and was ready to open fire at the crossing. This also took place! The first shot was a miss, but the second hit the track and the side of the tank. Luckily it cost no loss of life, but the radio was destroyed and the track almost broke. I just managed to follow Jurgensens instructions when the track broke and the drive wheels on one of the sides sank into the mud.⁸⁸

Rocherath-Krinkelt turned out to be a death trap for the tanks. Additional armor losses were inflicted by artillery fire guided by observers who were hiding in the immediate vicinity of the tanks. One of the tanks hit by artillery inside Rocherath-Krinkelt was the Panzer IV with SS-Sturmmann Max Söllner as gunner. A shell slammed into the tank’s turret, ripped open a hole three feet wide and killed the driver and injured two other crew members.⁸⁹

The battle that raged all day and well into the 19th was like a Stalingrad in miniature. The sight that met Hedwig Droesch, one of Rocherath’s residents, who during a break in the fighting, ventured up from the basement where she had sought shelter, was someting she would never forget: Wounded German soldiers lay moaning on the floor of the house, and when she stepped out the front door, she saw the houses on both sides of the street in flames, and the street was riddled with gas masks, steel helmets and rubble.⁹⁰ A veteran of U.S. 741st Tank Battalion afterwards said, ’Never since St Lo had we been through such fighting, suffered such losses or felt such utter weariness and exhaustion.’⁹¹

It was only on the night of 20 December that the Americans left Rocherath-Krinkelt and withdrew to the Elsenborn ridge in the west. By that time, the 2nd and 99th Infantry divisions each had sustained about twelve hundred casualties since 16 December. By holding out for so long in the ’twin villages’—combined with the German decision to send their armor headlong into the community—the Americans gained valuable time. By now, their 2nd Infantry Division and the remnants of the 99th Infantry Division had entrenched themselves well on the Elsenborn Ridge behind Rocherath and Krinkelt, heavily supported by artillery and three battalions of tank destroyers, and south of this ridge, at Bütgenbach, the 1st Infantry Division’s regiment had taken up positions. The Germans never would break through these defenses.

A destroyed American M10 tank destroyer. (David E. Brown)

The fact that the 12. SS-Panzer-Division got stuck in Rocherath-Krinkelt and was unable tomove forward, also compelled Hitler to cancel the planned attack from the north by German 15. Armee, which according to the original plan would have attacked in connection with the breakthrough on the I. SS- Panzerkorps’ northern flank. This decision indeed was also influenced by the bloody losses inflicted on LXVII. Armeekorps (272. Volksgrenadier-Division and 326. Volksgrenadier-Division) on 16 December, but the 12. SS-Panzer-Division’s failure was what prompted Hitler to make the final decision.⁹²

The true German losses in the Battle of Rocherath and Krinkelt have never been clarified, since the relevant German documents apparently have been lost. The participating U.S. troops claimed to have destroyed far more than one hundred German tanks. This is a huge exaggeration, which probably is due to both an underestimation of the ruggedness of the German tanks, and that the Americans left the scene after the battle—which meant that they were not able to verify the German losses, while the Germans could salvage damaged combat vehicles. Military historian Samuel W. Mitcham claims that the real figure was sixty-seven destroyed German tanks.⁹³ Steven J. Zaloga presents lower figures, thirty-one German tanks and tank destroyers lost in Rocherath and Krinkelt.⁹⁴

But even these figures seem too high. According to documents available to Jeff Dugdale—a military historian who studied the loss statistics for German armor in close detail—the 12. SS-Panzer-Division lost a total of not more than eighteen Panthers, eight Panzer IVs, and eight Jagdpanzers through the period 16-31 December 1944.⁹⁵These figures correspond well with other sources. Hence, on 17 December, the 12. SS-Panzer-Division reported a strength of thirty serviceable Panzer IVs (with an additional nine in repair works), thirty-four Panthers, and fifty Jagdpanzers.⁹⁶ These figures had dropped by eighteen Panthers, twelve Panzer IVs, and twenty-four Jagdpanzers on 20 December, but the decrease also includes damaged vehicles that were under repair. As we shall see, this division also sustained the bulk of its Jagdpanzer losses at Domane Bütgenbach on 19-20 December.

Due to historian Michael Reynolds, there are photographs of fifteen different Panthers, a Panzer IV, and two Panzer (Jagdpanzer) IV/70s abandoned in or near the ’twin villages.’⁹⁷ Taking all these facts into account, it can be assumed that these photographs represent virtually all tanks and tank destroyers lost by the Germans in Rocherath and Krinkelt. Since a large number of damaged tanks and tank destroyers must be added to these figures, it represented a quite strong depletion of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division, and hitherto the largest single German tank losses during the Ardennes Offensive.

Generalmajor Walter Denkert, whose 3. Panzergrenadier-Division was called in to take over from the 12. SS-Panzer-Division at Rocherath-Krinkelt on 20 December, describes the harrowing sight that met him on the road to the ’twin villages’:

The road through the forest west of Hollerath (which formerly was in American hands) was in exceptionally bad condition due to the terrain and the bad weather. Bogged down and turned over vehicles, mostly from the 12 SS Pz Div, blocked the road, and minefields made a detour impossible. After a short while, I had to continue my reconnaissance by foot and it took me hours to get to the edge of the wooded area east of Rocherath-Krinkelt. One could see, especially in the small and narrow paths, the fury of the past battles.

This walk in wet and cold weather, through knee deep mud, past destroyed and bogged down vehicles, and the horrible sight of the dead and disfigured soldiers will always remain one of my most horrible war remembrances. ⁹⁸

While the battle for Rocherath-Krinkelt was raging, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper had advanced far to the west and lost contact with the other units of I. SS-Panzerkorps. That was the reason why the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ eventually was withdrawn from the ’twin villages’ and was directed westwards, south of Krinkelt—the path the division could have taken instead of slamming in among the houses in Rocherath and Krinkelt. After the war, former SS-Untersturmfuhrer Willi Engel of 3. Panzer-Kompanie in the 12. SS-Panzer-Division’s Panzer Regiment was interrogated by an American major who participated in the Battle of Rocherath-Krinkelt. The American told him that what had puzzled him was why the Germans had not simply bypassed the twin villages via the Jans-brook gorge in the south: this was not mined and at that time there were no available anti-tank weapons in that sector. Fischer simply had no answer.⁹⁹

SS-KAMPFGRUPPE PEIPER CROSSES RIVER AMBLEVE

When the ’Hitler Jugend’ Division finally resumed its march to the west, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper had ended up in real trouble—mainly as a result of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division’s loss of time, resources, and human lives in the ’twin villages.’

As we have seen, a dozen American soldiers under Sergeant Charles Hensel had caused Peiper to believe that the small town of Stavelot—twelve miles west of Rocherath-Krinkelt—was too heavily defended for him to venture on an assault in the dark evening of 17 December. While Peiper during the wee hours of 18 December lay asleep in Ligneuville, and his tank crews waited in front of an initially practically undefended Stavelot, more U.S. unit arrived at the town.

In the afternoon on 17 December, Task Force Hansen, led by Lieutenant Colonel Harold Hansen, had been ordered to decamp from Spa and move into position in Malmédy, the slightly larger town just northeast of Stavelot. ’As we marched towards Malmédy that night, we went against the current,’ recalls Sergeant Morten Tuftedahl from the Norwegian-American 99th Infantry Battalion ’Viking,’ the main unit in Task Force Hansen. ’We met American troops who were suddenly chased by the Germans. We did not see any Germans yet, but our own troops came toward us. At a checkpoint, we were stopped and the guard asked us where the heck we were going. When we replied that we were going to Malmédy, he said that we must be absolutely mad.’¹⁰⁰

When Lieutenant Colonel Hansen and Major Bjørnstad reached the town at half past nine in the evening on 17 December, they found it vacated by all U.S. units except for sixty men of the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion under a quite young lieutenant colonel by the name of David Pergrin. These were fully engaged in the mining of bridges and planting thread mines in trees. Sergeant Lloyd Jelleberg, one of the men of the 99th Infantry Battalion, recalls the obvious signs of a hasty departure from the town by the American forces who had been there: ’The kitchen of a medical unit was empty but food was on the stoves. We had our last hot meal for a long time.’¹⁰¹

Hansen took command of Pergrin’s little force and decided to position the bulk of his troops—the 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate), the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, and ’B’ Company of 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion—to the defense of Malmédy. He placed the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion’s ’A’ Company and a platoon of anti-tank guns under the command of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion’s deputy commander, Major Paul J. Solis, and sent them off to Stavelot.

Solis’ small force fought bravely against Peiper’s leading units—the I. Panzer-Abteilung’s 1. Kompanie under SS-Obersturmführer Karl Kremser, and 2. Kompanie under SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Christ—which at dawn on 18 December came blasting down the hill that leads into Stavelot, aiming for the bridge across River Amblève. SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Tomhardt, who led the attack, was wounded, one of his platoon commanders was killed, and even SS-Obersturmführer Kremser was wounded when his Panther was hit by a 57mm anti-tank gun. Panther No. 111 with SS-Untersturmfuhrer Hans Hennecke as commander also was hit by a 57mm anti-tank gun and caught fire. But the relation of forces was too uneven. Peiper afterwards described the battle: ’The first Panther tank was hit, and it burned, but it had so much initial speed that it penetrated the anti-tank obstacle at the curve and damaged two Sherman tanks. The second Panther used this opportunity to drive through and seize the bridge in Stavelot. We followed up with other vehicles, and the Americans evacuated the town, leaving some materiel.’¹⁰²

Peiper now had a foothold on the north side of the Amblève, and the road to the Meuse basically lay open to his panzers. It would have seemed as though the most logical thing would have been for Peiper to continue the road up the steep hill to the north—in the direction of Spa, ten miles further on. Had the Germans done so, they would have, less than three miles north of Stavelot, rolled right into one of U.S. Army’s largest fuel dumps in Belgium, which in this case could have provided SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper with enough fuel to reach the Meuse. But it did not suffice with this. The American units that were available in this area on 18 December, hardly would have been able to halt Peiper’s mighty force if this would have had all the fuel it needed.

One of the 12. SS-Panzer-Divisions Panther tanks, burning at Krinkelt on 18 December 1944. The American units that took part in the battle of the ‘twin villages’ reported major successes against the German tanks. The 741st Tank Battalion, which was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for its exploits in the battle, reported the destruction of 27 German tanks (mostly Panthers), a Jagdpanzer IV, two armored cars, two half-track vehicles, and two trucks against own losses of eleven Shermans. (NARA Unit Journal, 741st Tank B, 1 December 44 to 31 Dec 44. RG40, Box 16703, ARBN-741-0.1.) The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, equipped with M10 tank destroyers, reported the destruction of 17 tanks, with three more put out of action, plus two German tank destroyers knocked out. (NARA After Action Report, 644th Tank Destroyer Bn, 1 December 44-31 Dec 44. RG407, Box 23636, TDBN-644-0.3.) The 801st Tank Destroyer Battalion, equipped with M5 anti-tank guns, reported 12 Panzer IVs and two Panzer VI Tigers destroyed, against own losses of 17 anti-tank guns. (NARA After Action Report, 801st Tank Battalion Dest. June 44 thru Feb 45, Apr 45. AAR # 581 U.) The infantry of U.S. 2nd Infantry Division was reported to have destroyed 56 German tanks, including 37 with Bazookas and 19 with anti-tank guns. (NARA, 111-SC-198469/PFC J.F. Clancy)

Stavelot. This photograph was taken from the hills above the northern, American-controlled area of Stavelot during the fighting on 18 or 19 December 1944. Several buildings have been demolished by German artillery. Beneath the tall house at the center of the image, the stone bridge across River Amblève can be seen. On the other side of the town, the road winds down from the hills to the south. This was where SS-Kampf-gruppe Peiper made their attack at dawn on 18 December. To the left, on the far side of the river, stands a Königstiger of schwere SS-Panzer-Ab-teilung 501. At either end of the bridge and on the bridge itself, destroyed military vehicles can be viewed. (NARA, 111-SC-198340)

’I have no doubt that the 99th Battalion was lucky,’ said one of the veterans of the Norwegian-American Battalion, Sergeant Claus Høie. ’If they [SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper] decided to go north, they could easily have overrun one battalion. There is no doubt about it; we could not have kept them back. They drove over whole divisions in this battle; they could just as easily have overrun a thousand men who were trying to hold the road through Malmédy. By pulling the headquarters out of Spa, they had probably expected them there. I don’t know where the headquarters were, but they must have pulled them back to another place. It was a panic situation. It was unbelievable, unbelievable, because the front was so lightly manned by us. And the Germans arrived with their most experienced forces, tough panzer divisions through this weak line.’

Indeed, U.S. 30th Infantry Division also was being redeployed to the area from the Ninth Army in the north. Its 117th Infantry Regiment had been ordered to march towards Stavelot, the 120th Infantry to Malmédy, and the 119th Infantry Regiment to First Army’s headquarters in Spa. But by 18 December these units still were en route, and moreover, the 30th Infantry Division hardly had the strength to withstand SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper if this was well supplied with fuel and ammunition—as it might well have been.^*

The large fuel depot north of Stavelot was only one of a whole series of major U.S. Army depots in the area. Within a twenty by twenty mile-wide area around the towns of Spa, Verviers, and Liège, the Allies had laid a huge network of depots with ammunition, fuel, military equipment, and provisions. This had been stored for the planned major offensive against the Rhine. The distance from Spa to Verviers—the railway junction where most of these supplies were unloaded—was only eleven miles. And from the latter place, there were no more than about twenty miles of excellent highways to Liège and River Meuse. It is hard to imagine that the Americans would have been able to assemble forces sufficient to prevent Peiper from reaching there if he had chosen the northern route—and if the 12. SS-Panzer-Division immediately had followed suit to cover his flank.

This also was the advance route that the Americans feared that Peiper would take, and therefore Lieutenant General Hodges decided to evacuate the headquarters of his First U.S. Army from Spa to Chaudfontaine near Liège, seventeen miles to the northwest. Even in Verviers, six miles north of Spa, American headquarters hurried to pack. Brigadier General ’Pete’ Quesada remembered what it looked like in the headquarters of his IX Tactical Air Command, which was housed in the old courthouse Palace de Justice in Verviers:

’Up to 1130 hours on 18 December we continued to work as usual, and only occasionally we thought of the heavy fighting going on nearby Monschau and Malmedy. But our complacency was shaken at 1145 when we were told that all administrative personnel would IMMEDIATELY go to Charleroi. By noon a tremendous change had taken place in the Palace de Justice and all the staff sections were hastily packing up their equipment.’¹⁰³

Hodges nevertheless took the time to meet two important unit commanders over the course of 18 December. The first among these was Major General ’Slim Jim’ Gavin, whose 82nd Airborne Division was on its way from the Reims area in France to take up positions at River Salm, three miles southwest of Stavelot. Later—when the First Army’s headquarters had moved to Chaudfontaine— Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, arrived. He had just flown to Belgium from England. Ridgway was informed at once that his Corps was to command not only the 82nd Airborne Division, but also the 30th Infantry Division and Combat Command B, 3rd Armored Division. But neither the 82nd Airborne Division nor Combat Command B, 3rd Armored Division would have a chance to beat the Germans to Spa if Peiper had chosen to take the road to the north.

Panic grew in Spa. To the great relief of Hodges’ staff personnel, the evacuation columns started moving on the evening of 18 December, and rolled out onto the highway towards Chaudfontaine, where Hodges settled in at Palace Hôtel. On the way north, the staff vehicles met other columns—U.S. soldiers on their way to the front. One of them, Frank Towers of the 30th Infantry Division’s 120th Infantry Regiment, expressed what these soldiers felt when they saw the headquarters of the First Army retreating: ’We met convoy after convoy heading north! It was the headquarters of the First Army, which had been in the vicinity of Spa, getting the hell out of there. They had left behind all kinds of maps, orders, etc., integral to the battle that was going on. All they wanted was to get out of there and save their asses!’¹⁰⁴

During the headquarter’s withdrawal from Spa to Chaudfontaine, a V 1 flying bomb hit in the midst of the vehicle column, killing fourteen men. ’On the trip from Verviers to Charleroi,’ recalls IX TAC’s Brigadier General Quesada, ’we saw marker flares dropped on Liège by the German Air Force, and the flying bombs continued to land in that unhappy city with annoying regularity. That night Liège was bombed, and so was Verviers.’ ¹⁰⁵

Panic and chaos were further diluted through the fear of Skorzeny’s commandos who appeared disguised as American soldiers behind the Allied lines. Claus Høie, a veteran of the 99th Infantry Battalion, described his disheartening experiences on 18 December:

Colonel Hansen, who had not received any directives, tried to get instructions from the First Army. After all, we were the First Army’s reserve troops and it was impossible to establish contact. So he said to me, ’Take a driver and drive back to Spa and find out if you can obtain any kind of information.’ At that time, the Germans dropped down a lot of soldiers who were supposed to cause a lot of confusion; they dropped them down in American uniforms. They had trained Germans who spoke with perfect American accents and put our uniforms on them, then dropped them by parachute in order to create complete confusion, make a mess of traffic and send fake messages. That’s dangerous business.

It was afternoon when Colonel Hansen asked me to go, and this driver, a really courageous fellow, and I left. Darkness fell while we tried to find the road in between everyone who was coming down the road. We finally arrived in Spa at midnight on the 18th of December.

Not a soul was there—the place was deserted. And this was the Headquarters of the First Army! The only thing we managed to find was an Air Force troop, so we talked to them and they said, ’Everyone left here yesterday.’ It was impossible to imagine that there was a war going on. Everything was so quiet and peaceful and dark. So we turned around and started on our way back and now everything was in complete confusion, as a result of these Germans in American uniforms arriving in American jeeps. The guards stopped everything that came by. Whether you looked like an American soldier or rode in an American jeep, the suspicion remained that you were in reality a German.

So they started asking all these strange questions like, ’What’s the nickname of the Brooklyn Dodgers?’, questions which only a native-born American would be able to answer. There was a lot of trouble and work finding out who was really whom. Many in the 99th Battalion spoke broken English (with heavy Norwegian accents) and they were taken for Germans and imprisoned by the Americans (not aware of our special force). There was a funny story about a general who was hurrying to get back to the unit and an MP arrested him, holding him for 12 hours, because he could not answer which division some baseball team or other played in. He was under suspicion for being a German in disguise, because of his Norwegian accent. In reality, he had no interest in baseball.

We finally returned to Malmedy. That was my assignment, to try to find out what was going on. No one knew what was going on. The First Army Headquarters had dissolved into thin air. It was a panic situation. It was unbelievable, unbelievable, because the front was so lightly manned by us. And the Germans arrived with their most experienced forces, tough panzer divisions through this weak line.

I found out that there was an enormous gasoline depot south of Spa, enormous, and if the Germans had found out and gotten hold of it, they would have had enough fuel to get all the way to the English Channel. The depot belonged to the American Army and it was practically unguarded.

In Spa, a dramatic change occurred. Residents lowered American flags, removed pictures of President Roosevelt and any other Allied emblems, and released twenty suspected collaborators from the local jail.¹⁰⁶

But instead of doing what his opponents feared most, and continuing north towards Spa, Peiper ordered his force to the left on the Highway N 23—to the west—on the other side of the bridge at Stavelot. The road towards Spa was the one called Rollbahn C in the German attack plan, and this route was assigned to the 12. SS-Panzer-Division— which by that time had become bogged down in street fighting inside Rocherath-Krinkelt far to the west. Peiper’s force remained on Rollbahn D, which in Stavelot followed the N 23 westwards. He only had one thing in view: to reach the Meuse along the designated march route.

According to what he admitted after the war, Peiper actually was aware of at least one major U.S. fuel depot at Spa.¹⁰⁷ His decision to continue westwards instead of at least making an attempt to capture the fuel depot through a quick raid northwards, may have been an expression of his confidence in Hitler’s orders that he on no account may get ’distracted’ by the flanks. Peiper’s decision nevertheless is remarkable for several reasons. Firstly, at that stage Peiper did not know if the 12. SS-Panzer-Division had actually managed to cover his northern flank at Malmedy, or if the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division was ready to secure the territory behind his Kampfgruppe.¹⁰⁸ In fact, both of these units failed to fulfill their task to support Peiper’s force. Because of American radio jamming, Peiper was unable to maintain any regular radio contact with headquarters.¹⁰⁹ In general, but especially in such a situation, any commander would have been expected to send out reconnaissance patrols on his flanks—for instance towards Malmedy—but Peiper failed to do so. The reason is simple—he did not have the fuel required for such a thing.¹¹⁰All in all, under these circumstances, Peiper’s decision to ‘blindly’ follow the assigned route westwards instead of making an attempt to capture the fuel that he knew existed only twenty minutes’ drive from Stavelot is quite difficult to explain.

From Stavelot, Highway N 23 snaked westwards between high, forested mountains on River Amblèves northern side. At Trois-Ponts, about three miles southwest of Stavelot, the Amblève meets large heights to the west and southwest, and therefore bypasses these in two fairly sharp bends, first to the north, and then to the west again. Exactly where this river turns north, the Salm river runs from the south into the Amblève. Just at the river confluence, Highway N 23 at first crossed a bridge to the Amblève’s southern side, and then, some five hundred yards further on, it swung to the right on a bridge across River Salm. Another mile upstream the Salm (to the south), another bridge crossed the Salm—hence the name Trois-Ponts (’three bridges’). According to the plan, Peiper would follow the N 23 on those river crossings, and then continue west towards River Meuse at Huy, forty miles west of Stavelot. Since he did not know if any of these important bridges was demolished, he despatched two separate task forces towards Trois-Ponts. From Stavelot, north of River Amblève, 1. and 2. Kompanie/ I. Panzer Abteilung and 10. (bepanzerte) Kompanie/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 advanced along Highway N 23. In parallel with this force, the II. Panzer-Abteilung’s 6. and 7. Kompanie advanced across the marshy land on the river’s south side, on much worse roads, virtually nothing but farm tracks.¹¹¹

By that time, ’C’ Company of U.S. 51st Engineer Combat Battalion had just set up a roadblock near Trois-Ponts. This small force perhaps had not been able to perform so well, had it not been for the unexpected arrival of reinforcements in the shape of a 57mm M1 anti-tank gun, which together with two half-track vehicles had lagged behind when the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion marched to Malmedy during the previous night. In addition to these, a group of engineers from Lieutenant Colonel Pergrin’s 291st Engineer Combat Battalion—subordinate to the ’Viking’ Battalion—arrived. These engineers primed explosives on the bridge south of Trois-Ponts.

In search of‘Greif’ men, Germans in American uniforms. An American patrol has stopped a jeep and carefully controls the identity of the driver. (NARA, SC 198390)

The anti-tank gun was positioned in the middle of the road, just west of the frail little wooden bridge that connects the Amblève’s northern and southern sides, half a mile east of the main road bridge. Suddenly the Americans saw a German tank appear around the bend a few hundred yards ahead to the east. This was Peiper’s leading armor force— nineteen or twenty Panthers—that came rolling on the narrow road that winds westwards between the steep river gorge to the left and wooded slopes on the right hand side. A group of courageous U.S. soldiers pulled a string of daisy chain mines—a string with anti-tank mines attached—on the road in front of the leading Panther, No. 131. The tank commander, SS-Hauptscharführer Erich Strelow, ordered a halt, jumped to the ground and kicked the mines aside.

With exhaustion painted their faces, two SS officers study the map during the continued advance. (NARA, III-SC-341661)

But no sooner had the German column set in motion again before a loud bang was heard and Strelow’s tank stopped with a jerk. A shell from the American antitank gun had hit and broken one track. Strelow quickly responded with an explosive shell which destroyed the anti-tank gun, while his frontal machine gun sprayed the American position with fire. Captain Robert N. Jewett, in command of the small American force from the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, describes the event from his perspective:

’At approximately 1230 hrs the first tanks approached and were stopped by two men pulling a string of mines in front of the lead tank. Although there were eight tanks visible, the men showed no panic and manned the 57mm anti-tank gun with the result that the lead tank was disabled and possibly the second one. A direct hit in the gun resulted in the gun being disabled and the crew killed. The remainder of the men escaped.’¹¹²

Suddenly, a terrible explosion was heard behind the Americans, and there the great road and rail bridge south of Trois-Ponts came crashing into the river. The engineers had accomplished their task in the last moment.

Peiper could have re-deployed his attack to River Amblève’s southern side—although this area hardly had any suitable roads—but when the Panzer IVs approached the southernmost of the Trois-Ponts bridges that ran across the Salm, U.S. Sergeant Jean Miller of the 51st Engineer Combat Battalion pushed down the detonator to an explosive charge—and this bridge also collapsed.¹¹³

These watercourses were no deeper than Peiper’s men could have waded across, but they would not have been able to bring their vehicles along.¹¹⁴ The river banks simply were too steep. The fact that Peiper’s lead units had not been assigned with any of the vehicle-towed bridge construction equipment that Sepp Dietrich’s SS Army had been fairly richly equipped with, is quite remarkable. The loss of the bridge at Trois-Ponts was a heavy blow against the German the advance on this front section. After the war, Peiper said: ’If we had captured the bridge at Trois-Ponts intact and had had enough fuel, it would have been a simple matter to drive through to the Meuse River early that day.’¹¹⁵

With the crossing at Trois-Ponts blocked, Peiper decided to continue along the Amblève to the next major bridge across the river. This was located about five miles from the first bend in the river at Trois-Ponts. From there, it would be possible to carry on to the southwest, to return to Highway N 23 at Hâbièmont, at the Lienne creek, another ten miles to the southwest. Peiper took this decision although no fuel trucks still had been able to make it to the front on the congested roads from the supply bases, twenty-five miles farther to the east. The first among Peiper’s tanks to stop with empty fuel tanks were the twenty-two Panzer IVs that had been sent towards Trois-Ponts south of the Amblève.

At one o’clock in the afternoon on 18 December, Peiper’s advance force reached La Gleize, four miles northwest of the Amblève’s river bend at Trois-Ponts. While the frightened villagers threw themselves out of the way, the panzer column rumbled straight through the village street, past the small square with a church perched on a hill, and out of the village on the small road that in a long downhill ran down to the Amblève, a few miles to the southwest. When they came out of the woods about four hundred yards above the river—by then it was just before half past one in the afternoon—SS-Untersturmführer Hans Hennecke could see that the stone bridge across the river was unmolested. In the next moment, the first tanks of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper were racing across the Amblève. They carried on straight into the village of Cheneux, where they surprised an American jeep that was shot to smithereens by German machine guns.

But the Americans would strike back sooner than the SS soldiers expected. Already when the Germans were at Trois-Ponts, a Piper L-4 Cub artillery observation aircraft from the U.S. Army had observed their column, and without himself being detected, the pilot of this aircraft shadowed them on their way in the direction of La Gleize while he radioed his sighting to the ground station. The information was passed on to the C.O. of the IX Tactical Air Command, Brigadier General ’Pete’ Quesada. He contacted the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, which despatched two F-6 aircraft—the reconnaissance version of the single-engine fighter plane Mustang. But when the pilots of these aircraft, Captain Richard H. Cassady and Second Lieutenant Abraham Jaffe, spotted the German troops at Stavelot at 1315 hrs, four fighter-bombers were already heading straight for SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper’s lead force southwest of La Gleize.

While Quesada called the reconnaissance unit, the operations officer of IX Tactical Air Command, Colonel Gilbert L. Meyers, had phoned the C.O. of the 365th Fighter Group ’Hell Hawks,’ Colonel Ray J. Meyer, and informed him that the Germans had broken through, and that unless Meyers aviator intervened, ’the bastards will soon be in Liège… there is now nothing between them and the English Channel but service troops, cooks and bakers!’ At 1305 hrs, Major George R. Brooking, Captain James G. Wells, Jr., Lieutenant Robert C. Thoman, and Lieutenant Roy W. Price took off with their bomb-laden Thunderbolt planes from the base at Chièvres, southwest of Brussels, and flew straight into the fog—towards the assigned area. Other four-plane groups would follow at twenty-minute-intervals. The Thunderbolt pilots found the target area covered by thick clouds extending almost to the ground. Brooking decided to make a try to break through the cloud cover, and dived into the ’soup.’ When he came out of the clouds with his Thunderbolt—named ’The Fickle Finger’—at an altitude of no more than a few feet above the Amblève, he immediately caught sight of the German vehicles. Both sides were so surprised that no one came round to open fire.¹¹⁶ But Brooking called his companions, and soon the Thunderbolts came roaring down over the German column with rattling machine guns. It was exactly 1335 hrs.

Captain Wells managed to drop both of his 500lb. bombs in the middle of a formation of eight tanks, with the result that Panther No.131 caught fire and burned with such an intensity that the torsion bar suspension burst of heat, so the tank had to be abandoned.¹¹⁷ Then Major Brooking called the air commander of the IX Tactical Air Command and asked him to send in more fighter-bombers. ’When they get here,’ Brooking said, ’tell them to call me and I’ll put them on the target. There’s plenty for all!’¹¹⁸

Within short, several fighter-bombers appeared, from various units—at first the 365th Fighter Group, then more planes from the 368th, then also from the 366th and 404th Fighter groups.¹¹⁹ In total, Peiper’s column was attacked by thirty-four U.S. Thunderbolts. Two RP-armed Typhoon fighter-bombers of British 2nd Tactical Air Force are also supposed to have participated.¹²⁰

In defiance of the terrible flying weather and German anti-aircraft fire, the pilots continued to attack the German column until ten past four in the afternoon, when the approaching dusk and the thick heavy smoke made it impossible to carry on. One of the American pilots, Captain Neal E. Worley said, ’It was the hairiest and scariest of days for the Hell Hawks. The weather was snowy all over Belgium, with ceilings of 250 to 350 feet and nine-tenths cloud cover. In that fog, squadron-sized missions were impossible. We had to go with individual flights. […] I told my wingman and second element to come in close. We broke out of the clouds so low that off my wing I could see this big black raven sitting on a tree branch.’¹²¹

To the amusement of some of his subordinates, Jochen Peiper dove into a bunker which turned out to be filled with muddy water. But not everyone was to be intimidated by the fighter-bombers. Captain Worley remembered, ’On my first run I spotted the biggest, tallest SS officer I ever saw, standing there in his black uniform, emptying his pistol at me.’¹²²

’When we left,’ said Thunderbolt pilot Worley, ’half-tracks and trucks were burning, and smoke was going up to about three thousand feet.’¹²³ For his efforts against Peiper’s column, Major George R. Brooking was awarded with the Silver Star.

The fact that American airmen made large overestimations of their own successes, is quite characteristic for air strikes against ground targets: They reported the destruction of thirty-two armored vehicles and fifty-six trucks.¹²⁴ Although there is some ambiguity about the real German losses, it is quite clear that they only were a fraction of the U.S. data—between one and three tanks, four or five armored vehicles, and forty wounded soldiers.^* The fact that the German losses after all were quite limited, mainly was due to the two anti-aircraft tanks—each equipped with a quadrupel 20mm automatic cannon—which ’put up a general defensive fire,’ according to SS-Unterscharführer Karl Wortmann, ’making the pilots uncertain, and thus prevented well-aimed attacks. The amount of explosive shells from the eight barrels was phenomenal, and the burst clouds proved it. The faces of the men at the guns were covered with sweat, fear likely in their minds, as they were attacked time and again by the aircraft. The turrets of the panzers swung left or right at lightning speed as they tried to fight off the enemy aircraft again and again. Some of the Panzer crews removed their machine guns from their mounts and also fired at the aircraft, which would just not give up.’¹²⁵

But the most important effect of these air strikes was the delay they caused; without them, Peipers might have captured the bridge across the Lienne at Hâbièmont unmolested. Peiper himself described what happened:

We had a bad break when the weather cleared and American fighter-bombers came over. We lost two to three tanks and five armored half tracks. The tanks blew up in the road, and the road was too narrow to bypass them, thus causing additional delay. About 1800 on 18 December 1944 we moved up towards our old route of advance near Hâbièmont and started to cross the Lienne River. Just when we were starting to cross, this bridge also was blown up.¹²⁶

This 500lb. HE bomb under the wing of a 365th Fighter Group ‘Hell Hawks’ Thunderbolt fighter-bomber carries a quite ironic inscription. It was such bombs, dropped by the 365th Fighter Group, that delayed SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper at Cheneux on the afternoon of 18 December 1944. (Allen Mundt via Don Barnes)

A small group of engineers from U.S. 291st Combat Engineer Battalion managed to blow up the bridge at the last moment. According to a popular story, Peiper sank down on his knees and in frustration hammered his fist against one knee (or threw his officer’s cap in the ground) and cursed, ’The damned engineers! The damned engineers!’

The Lienne runs down from the hills at Lierneux, and about ten miles further north it joins River Amblève at Târgnôn, four miles west of La Gleize. This little creek hardly would have constituted any serious obstacle to SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper—demolished bridge or not. Although the current, due to the recent rainfalls, was quite a strong by this time, the watercourse at Hâbièmont was no deeper than than what woud be possible to wade across, and the creek was only a few dozen yards wide. Moreover, the riverbanks here were quite low, without any dramatic elevation changes. The construction of a provisional crossing of stone from the demolished bridge and timber from the spruce forest on the eastern side of the creek, could have been readily carried out within a matter of hours. In fact, the Americans were able to quickly construct two temporary bridges across the Lienne in this area on the following day, when Peiper’s force had retreated.¹²⁷

Peiper despatched two companies of armored troop carriers downstream along the creek in order to search for another suitable bridge, able to carry a tank. At Forges, about a thousand yards to the north, the crews of two armored personnel carriers from the 11. (gepanzerte) Kompanie/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 found a bridge across the creek.¹²⁸ This was deemed to be indeed strong enough to carry tanks, but it was too narrow for them. However, the Germans could cross it with their Hanomag (SdKfz 251) armored personnel carriers. With no Americans in sight, a couple of these traversed the bridge and continued south on the western side of the creek. One of the vehicles was blown up by a mine, but the others carried on. In the darkness, however, the Germans missed Highway N 23, and instead ended up at Trous de Bra, almost two miles south of the demolished bridge at Hâbièmont. There they received an order via radio to return to the main unit.¹²⁹

The second reconnaissance force, from the 10. (gepanzerte) Kompanie/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 under SS-Obersturmführer Georg Preuss, found and crossed a bridge at Moulin Rahier, another mile downstreams from the Forges. This bridge proved to be too fragile for tanks, but Preuss’ five armored reconnaissance vehicles came across with ease and advanced southwards.

While Peiper’s column approached the Lienne from the east, the 2nd Battalion of U.S. 30th Infantry Division’s 119th Infantry Regiment, along with four M10 tank destroyers from ’A’ Company, 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, were heading south towards the area at Hâbièmont on the other side of Lienne. They stayed away when one of Peiper’s Königstigers shelled Hâbièmont from the road above the demolished bridge. But on the forest road south of Chevron, right next to the bridge at Forges, ’F’ Company under Lieutenant Edward Arn, supported by two M10s, ambushed SS-Obersturmführer Preuss’ reconnaissance force.

An M10 set the leading German armored personnel carrier burning. A second vehicle was hit as it tried to turn around on the narrow road. The third armored vehicle was quickly abandoned by its soldiers, and the two rearmost vehicles were destroyed by Bazooka hits. This cost the Germans a loss of fifteen panzer grenadiers. Shortly afterwards, the Americans also blew up the bridge at Forges. It is likely that this clash had a major influence on Peiper’s decision late in the evening on 18 December not to attempt to construct a provisional bridge across the Lienne, but instead withdraw his combat force north. However, had the bridge been intact, he might have attempted a tank assault to mow down the Americans. At this site, a monument was erected after the war to honor the U.S. engineers.

However, the bad news that arrived from Stavelot on that day, probably also contributed to Peiper’s decision to call back his force from the Lienne. SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper’s lifeline back to the rest of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee consisted of two bridges across River Amblève. The nearest one was at Petit Spay, just east of Trois-Ponts. But this was a frail wooden bridge, unable to carry tanks. Therefore, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper was completely dependent on the hefty stone bridge at Stavelot. But according to orders, Peiper had left only a rather small force in the town, and the 3. Fallschirmjäger Division’s main force was tied down in fighting with U.S. reinforcements from the V Corps that rushed forward to the area left behind by Peiper, far to the east of Stavelot.

When he detected SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper at Cheneux on 18 December 1944, Major George R. Brooking flew this P-47 Thunderbolt. The mostly unpainted aircraft had the tactical call-code ‘D5: F’ (Robert Brooking via Don Barnes)

SS-Kampfgruppe Sandig was supposed to have followed immediately in the wake of Peiper’s force. Led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Sandig, this consisted of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 (except III. Bataillon), an artillery battalion, and most of the air defense and engineer units in 1. SS-Panzer-Division. But because of the congestions on the small and increasingly rutting roads, Sandig’s force was unable to leave its departure positions at the West Wall until 18 December, and thus had not reached Stavelot by the time the American 117th Infantry Regiment counter-attacked to retake this vital town.

Over the course of 18 December, the 117th Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion, supported by three tank destroyers from the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, three Shermans from the 743rd Tank Battalion, and—most importantly—the 118th Field Artillery Battalion arrived at the outskirts of Stavelot, and immediately launched a counter-attack. Soon, the Americans had captured several blocks in the town. In the midst of this battle, a column of six Panzer IVs and four Königstigers appeared at the turn of the road. These were part of 1. Kompanie/ schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 under SS-Obersturmführer Jurgen Wessel. The tank crews had not been informed of the ongoing battle, but were subjected to ferocious attacks by Thunderbolt fighter-bombers. One of the American soldiers, Private Lee Galloway in ’A’ Company, 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, managed to accomplish the almost impossible—to knock out a Königstiger with a Bazooka. He hit SS-Obersturmführer Wessel’s Königstiger No. 105 in the front with the result that Wessel ordered his driver to reverse. The driver gave full throttle and backed right into a three-story building, which collapsed with the result that the huge tank got stuck in the rubble.

At dusk on 18 December, the Germans attempted to take back what had been lost in Stavelot, but were repulsed by the Americans, with great help from artillery. By now, the 117th Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion also had arrived at the scene, and Stavelot—Peiper’s main link to the rear area—had been turned into a battlefield. Peiper found that he had to act both offensively, in the west, and defensively in the east, in order to break the American blockade at Stavelot, while he seriously began to run out of fuel. Hence, it should not be surprising that he refrained from crossing the Lienne to rush forward towards the Meuse at Huy; he did not have the strength to hold the bridgehead at La Gleize and at the same time advance across the Lienne in the southwest. The most rational choice in that situation was to gather his forces at La Gleize, lest what happened at Stavelot would not be repeated at that place too.

Peiper, however, also decided to try to establish a new bridgehead across the Amblève. Just three miles west of La Gleize there was another bridge that led across the Amblève on the western side of the Lienne. If the Germans managed to secure that river crossing, they would, as soon as new fuel arrived, be able to continue the road down to the main road N 23 at Hâbièmont, another six miles farther to the south. On the way to this bridge lay a village called Stoumont, two miles west of La Gleize, where the Americans had assembled some troops. At first, the Germans attempted a surprise attack during the night of 19 December, in the dark and fog, but when an armored personnel carrier hit a mine and exploded in a bright flash of light, the Americans were alerted.¹³⁰ An intense fire from the American positions effectively held the Germans down for several hours.

The small community of Stoumont is located on a hill above the Amblève river gorge in the south. To get there from La Gleize, the Germans had to take the road in a long uphill, with rising ground to the right and a fairly steep incline to the left (south) of the road. During the final five hundred yards to Stoumont, the road ran across open fields, denying the attacker the opportunity to sneak up on his enemy. Moreover, Stoumont was quite heavily defended— by the 3rd Battalion of U.S. 30th Infantry Division’s 119th Infantry Regiment, supported by ’A’ Company of the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, ten Shermans from the 743rd Tank Battalion, and an ‘C’ Battery from the 143rd AntiAircraft Artillery Gun Battalion.¹³¹

When the Germans finally resumed their attack, their tanks drove in a column on the highway. As they rounded the last road bend and had passed the first houses on the outskirts of Stoumont, the leading Panther was hit by fire from a 90mm M1 anti-aircraft gun. Six hits not only set the Panther ablaze, but also brought the German attack to a halt. According to what Jochen Peiper later said, the commander of the assault force, SS-Sturmbannführer Werner Potschke—a veteran decorated with the Knight’s Cross for his exploits on the Eastern Front—intervened resolutely. He stood up in front of the leading tank and yelled ’Fahren —’Carry on!’—while he pointed a Panzerfaust against the vehicle. Whether the story is true or not, the Germans stormed into Stoumont at full speed, prompting the defense to collapse. All of this was documented by a pair of ’embedded’ German war photographers, whose film has become an important part of the documentation of the Ardennes Offensive.

Two hundred and eighty-four American soldiers who were unable to get out in time, surrendered. Additionally, eight of the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion’s anti-tank guns, two 90mm anti-aircraft guns, and three 57mm anti-tank guns were captured.¹³² However, the ten Sherman tanks managed to get away.

While Americans fled in more or less disorder westwards, the Germans pursued them with five Panthers, which soon were reinforced by more tanks and troops. Without incidents, the Germans raced along Highway N 33 through deciduous forests northwest of Stoumont, and quickly passed through the village of Târgnôn, a mile and a half farther ahead. But in the meantime, the 119th Infantry Regiment’s C.O., Colonel Edward M. Sutherland, managed to halt the retreating U.S. troops. Reinforced by a company each from the regiment’s 1st Battalion and the 740th Tank Battalion, plus a 90mm gun from another anti-aircraft battalion, these forces established a defensive position at Stoumont’s railway station, just west of Târgnôn.¹³³ Moreover, the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion’s ’A’ Company was bolstered with four 3-in M5 anti-tank guns and two previously captured German 75mm PaK 40 anti-tank guns.^* The leading Panther, No. 222 with SS-Oberscharführer Walter Ropeter as the commander, was set on fire by the 90mm gun, and trying to bypass the burning wreck, the next Panther also was badly damaged by multiple hits from the American gun. Next the Americans destroyed Panther tanks Nos. 211, 215, and 232 in quick succession, plus several other combat vehicles. The German attack already was in tatters, with thick smoke covering the battlefield, when the Americans sent in their artillery. That was just too much for the Germans, who hastily fled back to Stoumont. Thus, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper was definitely halted.

During the Battle of Stavelot on 18 December 1944, a Bazooka managed to neutralize a Königstiger. This took place when four Königstigers from the 1. Kompanie of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 worked their way up the narrow and steep Rue Haut Riva-ge street on the northern side of River Amblève in Stavelot, and Private Lee Galloway in A’ Company, U.S. 526th Armored Infantry Battalion scored a hit in the front of the leading tank, No. 105. The grenade could not penetrate the tank’s almost six inches thick, 40° sloped frontal armor, but the explosion caused the tank commander, SS-Obersturmführer Jurgen Wessel, to order the driver to reverse. The tank then drove straight into a three-story building, which collapsed over the vehicle, with the result that it had to be abandoned. It should, however, be noted that the 825th Tank Destroyer Battalion (825th Tank Destroyer Bn. After Action Report: Appendix B’ From 17 to 31 December 1944) argues that it was a hit by its tank destroyers that made this Königstiger drive into the house. (NARA,111-SC-198341)

While this fight still was raging on—it would continue well into the afternoon on 19 December— Peiper received further negative reports from Stavelot. As soon as the first units of SS-Kampfgruppe Sandig arrived at the battlefield on the morning of 19 December, they were launched against Stavelot in an attack that can be described as nothing but premature. ’When half of us reached the north side of the bridge we were shot to pieces,’ recalled Friedrich Pfeifer, by that time a 19-year-old SS-Untersturmführer participating in the unfortunate attack. The northern side of Stavelot now was in American hands.

On the afternoon of 19 December, the two companies of SS-Kampfgruppe Knittel that had joined Peiper’s force, attacked Stavelot from the west, on the northern side of the Amblève, only to meet a similar fate. From their positions on the heights north and northeast of Stavelot, the 105mm howitzers of U.S. 118th Field Artillery Battalion fired no less than three thousand shells against the attacking enemy.¹³⁴ Moreover, according to what was reported to Peiper, the American soldiers here fought with far greater resolve than earlier.¹³⁵ Peiper assumed that this was because the 30th Infantry Division was generally better than other units that he had encountered. It is possible that this was the case, but the SS itself played a not insignificant role in the increasing motivation among the Americans. The news of the massacre in Baugnez had just reached out. In addition, the U.S. troops that retook Stavelot met a ghastly sight. Everywhere in the little town lay the corpses of civilians who clearly had been brutally murdered by the Germans. The Americans were determined to never again surrender the residents of Stavelot to those killers. When SS-Kampfgruppe Knittel attempted to recapture Stavelot on 19 December, the American defenders inflicted over three hundred casualties on the attackers—more than one third of Knittel’s original strength—who soon had to cancel the attack.¹³⁶

The situation grew more and more precarious to the Germans in La Gleize, where Peiper’s first priority now was to get fuel. For this purpose he finally despatched patrols northwards on 19 December, in an effort to capture two fuel dumps that he had been informed of. But at both these locations, the Americans were well prepared, and after repulsing the attackers, they evacuated the fuel.¹³⁷

In the evening on December 19, the bridge in Stavelot—by then in no-man’s land—was blown up by American engineers while the artillery shelled the German positions on the river’s south side with explosives and smoke grenades.

American prisoners are herded up the Rue du Village street in Stoumont. It is Tuesday, 19 December. On Saturday the German offensive had caught the Americans completely unprepared, and these G.I.s have yet to really grasp what has happened. The German officer in the foreground is SS-Hauptsturm-fuhrer Josef ‘Jupp’ Diefenthal, the commander of the III. (gepanzerte) Abteilung / SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 2. Diefenthal was awarded with the Knight’s Cross on 5 February 1945. After the war Diefenthal was tried for war crimes and was sentenced to death in the same trial as Peiper. The verdict was changed into imprisonment and Diefenthal was released in 1956. He died in 2001. (BArch, Bild 183-J28619/Buschel)

THE BATTLE FOR DOMÄNE BÜTGENBACH

In this situation, SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Sepp Dietrich decided to shift the emphasis of his offensive to the northeast, in order to reestablish the link with Peiper via the town of Malmedy, three miles northeast of Stavelot. But instead of concentrating all available forces against Malmedy, the 6. SS- Panzerarmee divided its forces. At a conference in Manderfeld on the night of the 18th, Dietrich ordered SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny to attack Malmedy from the south with his little SS-Panzer Brigade 150. This idea came from Skorzeny himself, who thought that Malmedy was almost undefended, and that it thus would be possible to take it through a surprise attack with his group of vehicles disguised as U.S. tank destroyers. The significantly stronger 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ was set to attack six miles farther east, from Büllingen, where it was regrouped from the ’twin villages’ Rocherath-Krinkelt.

This was a double mistake. When the ’Hitler Jugend’ Division on 19 December was deployed to relieve SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, Highway N 32 from Büllingen to Bütgenbach was no longer ‘open.’ There were two major obstacles in front of the Germans—the farm estate Domäne Bütgenbach, and Schwarzenbüchel, the wooded hill just northwest of Büllingen.

Domäne Bütgenbach is located slightly less than a mile west of Büllingen, just on the northern side of Highway N 32 (today N 632), between Büllingen in the east and, a mile and a half farther northwest, Bütgenbach. On the farm’s northern side was a small ridge. South of the farmyard, on the other side of the N 32, was a large, open field, split in half by a planted hedge of trees and shrubs that ran diagonally up to the road. On the other side of the field, about a thousand yards away, was a thick forest called Bütgenbacher Heck. It was at Domäne Bütgenbach that the Americans had a dressing station when SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper arrived on 17 December. However, by this time, two days later, this had been evacuated. Just half an hour after SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper drove past at dawn on 17 December, U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment and elements of the 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion and the 745th Tank Battalion arrived to establish a blocking position at Domäne Bütgenbach and Schwarzenbüchel. This alone was an impressive force for such a small area. In addition, the task to hold defensive positions here was facilitated by the fact that the Germans attacked piecemeal.

When 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ began its attack on the night of 19 December, most of SS-Sturmbannführer Jürgensen’s tank regiment has not yet arrived from Rocherath. The available forces— schwere Pänzerjager-Abteilung 560, two battalions of SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 26, the staff of SS-Panzer-Regiment 12, and an artillery battalion—however almost immediately were rushed into an attack.^* The attack on Schwarzenbüchel was repulsed already on the slope.

To the southwest, Domäne Bütgenbach was attacked by 200-300 men from SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 26 and Twelve Panzer IV/70 tank destroyers.¹³⁸ In the darkness, the tank destroyers painstakingly crawled through the damp, softened mud towards the farm in the northwest. The Panzer IV/70 was ideal to sneak up unseen on the enemy— it had a height of only 6 ft 1 in (compared with the U.S. tank destroyer’s 8 ft 4 in or the Panther tank’s 9 ft 10 in)—but the Germans were unable to take any advantage of this at Domäne Bütgenbach, despite the darkness and the fog. In the marshy terrain that the German vehicles crawled out on, several Panzer IV/70s became mired. The noise when drivers revved the heavy Maybach engines, which ran on impure synthetic fuel, alerted the Americans, and soon starshells sank down above the field.¹³⁹From the top of the little ridge on the other side of the road, the Americans were able to spray the Germans with a terrible fire from machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank guns, and they also could provide the artillery with an excellent fire observation.

With a triumphant smile, this German soldier leads the American POWs away from Stoumont. (BArch, Bild 183-J28533/Büschel)

U.S. soldiers of the 117th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division during the street fighting in Stavelot. The soldier on the left is Private First Class James A. Insalaco, and next to him is Sergeant Joseph A. Martini with a 22mm grenade on an M7grenade launcher mounted on his Ml Garand rifle. With an M7, grenades could be fired at up to 350 feet. The third soldier is unidentified, but all were part of the B’ Company’s 1st Platoon. (Via Warren Watson.)

A U.S. 3 inch Gun M5 L/50 anti-tank has taken up position to stem the German advance. (NARA, SC 198389)

THE MASSACRE IN STAVELOT

The fighting in conjunction with the German capture of Stavelot cost about thirty fatalities among the residents. But when the town had been taken by the Germans, these exacted a terrible revenge for what they perceived as part of the civilian population having taken part in the fighting on the American side. Peter Schrijvers describes how the Waffen-SS soldiers ‘for no apparent reason’ shot down two women and a man while the fighting still was in progress. Shortly afterwards, nine residents, accused of having fired on the Germans, were put against the walls of their homes and executed.¹ The worst single massacre occurred in the garden outside the Legaye family’s house, where SS soldiers rounded up twenty-six people and then opened fire on them, with all but three getting killed. While inching along the road towards the west, the Germans continued to kill civilians. In Renardmont west of Stavelot, the SS soldiers forced twenty-one civilians into a washhouse and then opened fire straight into the crowd, killing all but eight— who escaped with gunshot wounds.²

There are different data on the number of victims of the killings in and around Stavelot on 18-19 December 1944. According to an American inquiry made in cooperation with the Red Cross after the war, 93 civilians were killed in Stavelot and adjacent villages, and 10 in Trois-Ponts.³According to Schrijvers, the number of executed in Stavelot was 130.⁴ The memorial plaque in Stavelot says that 164 men, women and children were murdered by the Waffen-SS in December 1944.

U.S. war reporter Jean Marin at the site of the massacre at the Legaye house in Stavelot. (Via Warren Watson)

1 Schrijvers, The Unknown Dead, p. 42.

2 Ibid., p. 47.

3 National Archives and Records Administration: Malmedy massacre Investigation–Report of the Subcommittee of Committee on Armed Services. United States Senate Eighty-first Congress, first session, pursuant to S. res. 42, Investigation of action of Army with Respect to Trial of Persons Responsible for the Massacre of American Soldiers, Battle of the Bulge, near Malmedy, Belgium, December 1944. 13 October 1949, p. 2; Weingartner, Crossroads of Death: The Story of the Malmedy Massacre and Trial, p. 248.

4 Schrijvers, p. 48.

Five Panzer IV/70s managed to work their way up to the American positions, but there two of them were knocked out by Bazookas, and the others retreated when their crews found that the infantry supposed to support them had been halted in the field. American patrols that ventured into the attack area in daylight found over 100 dead Germans and three destroyed Panzer IV/70s.¹⁴⁰

Although it was obvious that the terrain was ideal for defense but hopeless to attack in, the Germans repeated their attack at dawn on 21 December—from exactly the same direction. By that time, the tanks of SS-Panzer-Regiment 12 had arrived, and were hurled into the attack. Elements of 12. Volksgrenadier-Division also took part.

The American artillery met this attack with a veritable firestorm. In the space of eight hours, the artillery of three infantry divisions—the 1st, 2nd, and 99th—fired more than ten thousand shells against the German forces who were advancing unprotected in the open fields south of Bütgenbach.¹⁴¹ One of the German tank commanders, SS- Oberscharführer Willy Kretzschmar, recalled:

Half of the right driving spocket of our Panzer was blown away and we rolled off the track. We were immobile. A row of trees and hedges located approximately 150 meters away was still occupied by American infantry. Using our turret and hull MGs, as well as explosive shells, we were able to keep them at bay for the time being. For two hours we played dead’ because of the intense artillery fire. The previously white, snow-covered pasture had turned black. When there was a break in the fire, I ran over to the closest Panzer IV, to ask that it pull mine back from the track. Regrettably, it had been knocked out. The other Panzer IVs and the self-propelled gun had suffered the same fate, most were knocked out by artillery and heavy mortar hits.¹⁴²

‘We were hit in the tracks, which immobilized us,’ recalls another SS tank commander, SS-Oberscharführer Karl Hollander. ‘I ordered the crew to bail out, and we crawled back in the tracks created in the soft ground by our tank. Thereby, I was wounded in my right arm by grenade splinters. Shortly afterward, our tank received further hits and burned.’¹⁴³

U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Derrill M. Daniel, who commanded the 26th Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, later said, ’The artillery did a great job. I don’t know where they got the ammo or when they took time out to flush the guns but we wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for them.’

At that stage, the fields south of Domäne Bütgenbach resembled a slaughterhouse with hundreds of dead German soldiers—many of them shred beyond recognition—scattered between dozens of knocked out tanks, tank destroyers, and armored personnel carriers. But the SS commanders would not give in, and ordered a third similar attack at dawn on 22 December, this time with all that remained of SS-Sturmbannführer Jürgensen’s SS-Panzer-Regiment 12. Once again the Germans attacked straight across the field south of Domäne Bütgenbach, with five Panther tanks in the lead, followed by Panzer IV tanks from the 5. and 6. Kompanie in Jürgensen’s armored regiment, Jagdpanthers from schwere Pänzerjager-Abteilung 560, and finally infantry in armored personnel carriers.¹⁴⁴

Everything went well until the Germans were about 150 yards from the farm estate’s main building. What then followed is depicted in one of SS-Panzer-Regiment 12’s combat reports: ’Untersturmführer Schittenhelm has just reached the tree edge when a large flame shoots up from the rear of his tank. The vehicle is covered by thick, black smoke, and two men jump out. Hauptmann Hils assigns the order to go into position. He stands in the turret hatch on his tank and studies the map to find the orientation. Then he fires a flare to mark the final attack direction. The flare gleams over the terrain at the farm. Now we wait for “Marsch, marsch ”—the attack order. But when nothing happens I poke my head out of the turret hatch in my tank, only to see that Hauptmann Hils’ tank is on fire! […] Suddenly a completely indescribable American artillery fire sets in. The entire field is torn to pieces and several tanks receive direct hits.’¹⁴⁵

Günther Burdack continues, ’The continually increasing fire from tank and anti-tank guns leads to increasing casualties among our tanks, but the panzer grenadiers also are lying unprotected as on a serving plate. About 100 yards in front of the Domaine, to the left of the forest track, the command tank of [Sturmbannführer] Jürgensen is knocked out; it immediately catches fire. […] The killed Panther and the trench of the forest track offers us protection from the increasing enemy fire, but a further retreat is out of the question. Every move draws mortar fire down on us, antitank guns even fire on individual soldiers who want to treat or recover the wounded. Only under cover of darkness do the remaining elements of 9. Company withdraw, taking all the wounded with them.’¹⁴⁶

Among those evacuated with injuries, was SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Jürgensen. His life could not be saved—he died of his wounds on 23 December. At that point—on the morning of 23 December—the 12. SS-Panzer-Division had even executed a fourth assault against Domäne Bütgenbach. SS-Unterscharführer Burdack reported that the advance initially was not disrupted by the Americans, who, he said, might not have been expecting a new attack after costly German effort on 22 December.¹⁴⁷Indeed! But as soon as the American artillery opened fire again, the Germans withdrew as fast as they could across the blood-stained fields. Finally the battle of Domäne Bütgenbach was over.

Afterwards, U.S. patrols sent out into the fields south of Domäne Bütgenbach reported that they encountered dead German soldiers ’as common as grass.’ A Graves Registration unit counted 782 dead bodies. In addition, the Americans claimed to have knocked out forty tanks and tank destroyers against 250 own casualties.¹⁴⁸

There is no reason to doubt the figure for killed German soldiers. Between 16 and 23 December, the12. SS-Panzer-Division sustained 568, and the 12. Volksgrenadier-Division 753 casualties.¹⁴⁹ However, it is clear that the U.S. reports once again overestimated the German armor losses. The 12. SS-Panzer-Division indeed was dealt a terrible bloodletting, but not possibly as extensive as the American reports indicated. No compilation of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division’s losses in armor and tank destroyers at Domäne Bütgenbach exists, but a maximum can be calculated by subtracting the minimum of losses that the division sustained at the ’twin villages’ from the total losses during the month of December 1944. This shows that the 12. SS-Panzer-Division at most may have lost ten Panthers, seven Panzer IVs, and six Panzer IV/70s at Domäne Bütgenbach.¹⁵⁰ To these total losses should be added a far greater number of combat vehicles that were put out of action, but afterwards could be salvaged and repaired. Hence, for instance, 3. Kompanie of I. Abteilung/ SS-Panzer-Regiment 12 was left without a single operational tank after the battle of Domäne Bütgenbach—out of twenty Panzer IVs at hand on 16 December.¹⁵¹ (Total losses in Panzer IVs in the 12. SS-Panzer-Division amounted to eight in December 1944.) The 12. SS-Panzer-Division definitely was inflicted even greater losses at Domäne Bütgenbach than at the ’twin villages.’

SKORZENY'S COUP ATTEMPT AGAINST MALMEDY

The American victory at Domäne Bütgenbach decided the outcome of the battle on 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s northern sector. It was not just that the Germans failed to break through, but the 12. SS-Panzer-Division was entirely neutralized for the next crucial days, and this enabled the Americans to extend their defensive victory all along the northern flank of the German breakthrough in the Ardennes. This in turn also sealed the fate of three other prominent task forces in the 6. SS-Panzerarmee—Peiper’s and von der Heydte’s two cutoff units, and Skorzeny’s SS-Panzer Brigade 150, which was deployed against Malmedy.

As we have seen, the Norwegian-American Task Force Hansen had moved into position at Malmedy already on the evening of 17 December, and while Skorzeny was assembling his forces for the attack, the 120th Infantry Regiment of U.S. 30th Infantry Division, the 740th Tank Battalion, and two platoons from the 823d Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived to bolster Hansen’s defensive positions. Also at this site, the Americans enjoyed the support of a powerful artillery, including a number of 155mm Long Tom guns.

A German Panzer IV/70 (Sd.Kfz.162/1) tank destroyer. This was a development of the Jagdpanzer IV, and entered production in August 1944. With a 75mm StuK 42 L/70 Sturmkanone anti-tank gun and an 80mm frontal armor at a 45° slope, it was both better armed and better armored than its predecessor. Both versions, however, were built on the chassis of a Panzer IV tank. (NARA, III-SC-341654)

Skorzeny’s troops opened their attack against Malmedy during the wee hours of 21 December, with their force divided into two columns. The 120 men in one of these, Kampfgruppe Y, left Ligneuville, five miles south of Malmedy, at three in the morning. They advanced in three jeeps, a half-track vehicle, an American M8 armored car, and a Sherman. The commander of Kampfgruppe Y, Hauptmann Walter Scherf, describes the situation: ’The road was edged by steep slopes to the left and impassable terrain dropping steeply to the right of our advance direction. In addition the advance route to Baugnez passed through about a mile of dense forest. An additional obstacle was snow which, depending on the situation of the terrain, was 5 to 8 inches deep. It was impossible to advance in any kind of formation, particularly as it was pitch black. Enemy fire increased particularly at the bend in the road about 1,000 yards south of Baugnez. […] It was clear to us that the Americans had already been alerted.’¹⁵² The Germans might have guessed that the patrol that failed to return from a reconnaissance mission towards Malmedy on the day before, had been captured and revealed the German plan: in any case this was exactly what had happened.

Along with the 26th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division and the M10 tank destroyers of the 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion, U.S. 745th Tank Battalion played a crucial role during the Battle of Domäne Bütgenbach. When the battle began this tank battalion had 66 Sherman tanks, of which 10 were equipped with the new 76mm cannon, and 18 Stuarts. A few days later, 22 of the Sherman tanks had been lost, but the Americans held their position and the 12. SS-Panzer-Division was at least temporarily neutralized. (NARA, SC 198343)

The defenders were well prepared. ’B’ Company of 99th Infantry Battalion ’Viking’ was in position just on the road that Kampfgruppe Y took on its way north. On the railway embankment at Bellevue, just east of Malmedy, the ’Viking’ Battalion had placed its 81mm mortars.¹⁵³ To the right (west) of the Norwegian-Americans, most of the 120th Infantry Regiment had dug in.

The battle for Domäne Bütgenbach is over. This Sherman from the 745th Tank Battalion has survived, unlike the German Panzer IV tank a few yards away. (NARA, 111-SC-198278) And owing to the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion, they also were alerted. Just hours before the German attack began, the men of this unit had planted mines along the road that the Germans would take, and the leading German combat vehicle—the half-track—set off a mine that blew up in a bright explosion.

In fact, no other American battalion gave a greater contribution to the halting of the entire German 6. SS-Panzerarmee than the 291st Engineer Combat Battalion: On 17 December, a dozen of its men under Sergeant Hensel compelled SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper to halt south of Stavelot, on the 18th it halted Peiper’s advance decisively by first blowing up the bridges at Trois-Ponts, and then the one at Hâbièmont, and now it contributed to halt Skorzeny’s attack against Malmedy. The 291st would receive the Presidential Unit Citation for its performances during these crucial days, and its commander, 27-year-old Lieutenant Colonel David Pergrin, was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.

No sooner had the half-track gone up in flames, the men of the ’Viking’ Battalion heard, to their great surprise, Germans screaming in English: ’Surrender or die!’ Sergeant Lloyd Jelleberg, one of the Norwegian- American soldiers, remembers thow ’they acted like they thought we would run. We thought they were drunk as they acted silly and made stupid decisions. They came across an open field. We were dug in and the engineers were covering the road overpasses with anti-tank guns. We lost a few men but the Germans were killed by the dozens. Our mortars ran out of 81mm but there was a German dump nearby so they used their 80mm. They were lucky they didn’t blow their barrels up.’¹⁵⁴

Then the American artillery joined in—six entire artillery battalions and two anti-aircraft battalions. The top secret POZIT air burst grenades had promptly been brought forward to defend Malmedy, and now these were used for the second time in the war. Overall it was, to put it mildly, a clear case of ’overkill.’ When the POZIT shells detonated in the air, spraying razor-sharp steel fragments over the men, the small German force collapsed. Everywhere soldiers were torn up beyond recognition by the deadly metal bursts. Between sixty and seventy men were killed or wounded, others panicked and fled or surrendered. One of the latter, however, pulled himself together to address his captivators in a haughty tone, telling them, ’you can never win the war, we have so many secret weapons.’¹⁵⁵ Apparently it did not strike him that that it was an Americansecret weapon that had defeated his unit, while the Germans had had no such asset at Malmedy. ’The artillery which we had behind us helped an awful lot,’ Jelleberg commented laconically.¹⁵⁶_

Skorzeny’s main attack force—Kampfgruppe X under Hauptmann Adrian von Folkersam—began their advance to the chilling sound of the massive artillery fire that was laid over Scherf’s men. They knew that this could only be American fire, since there was no German artillery in the area. But von Folkersam still hoped to take the Americans by surprise. His force, two infantry companies and a tank company, had a Sherman and four of the brigade’s Panther tanks—the latter equipped with metal sheets and repainted with U.S. markings so that they would resemble M10 tank destroyers. They took the narrow little road that runs across the fields south of Malmedy—about a mile west of Scherf’s force—to the village of Falize, just above Malmedy. The German infantry moved into position at that place at midnight, without the Americans noticing anything. But when the Germans at half past five in the morning set off at full speed down the slope that leads into the town, something unexpected happened. The dark night changed into day as the whole area suddenly was brilliantly illuminated. The U.S. engineers had laid a web of tripwire mines and flares, and all of this pyrotechnics now went off.¹⁵⁷

Two Panthers clanked down the road from Falize that winds down to Malmedy, but they did not come far. The leading tank, with Leutnant Peter Mandt as commander, struck a mine that detonated, and had to be abandoned. The other Panther turned back. The infantry and the other three tanks crossed the field down to the southern part of Malmedy. One of the U.S. soldiers in ’K’ Company, 3rd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, Sergeant Francis S. Currey, personally gave a considerable contribution to the American victory, for which he later received the highest U.S. military award, the Medal of Honor, and Belgium’s highest award, the Ordre de Leopold. The citation for his Medal of Honor reads:

He was an automatic rifleman with the 3rd Platoon defending a strong point near Malmedy, Belgium, on 21 December 1944, when the enemy launched a powerful attack. Overrunning tank destroyers and antitank guns located near the strong point, German tanks advanced to the 3rd Platoon’s position, and, after prolonged fighting, forced the withdrawal of this group to a nearby factory. Sergeant Currey found a bazooka in the building and crossed the street to secure rockets meanwhile enduring intense fire from enemy tanks and hostile infantrymen who had taken up a position at a house a short distance away. In the face of small-arms, machinegun, and artillery fire, he, with a companion, knocked out a tank with one shot. Moving to another position, he observed three Germans in the doorway of an enemy-held house. He killed or wounded all three with his automatic rifle. He emerged from cover and advanced alone to within 50 yards of the house, intent on wrecking it with rockets. Covered by friendly fire, he stood erect, and fired a shot which knocked down half of a wall. While in this forward position, he observed five Americans who had been pinned down for hours by fire from the house and three tanks. Realizing that they could not escape until the enemy tank and infantry guns had been silenced, Sergeant Currey crossed the street to a vehicle, where he procured an armful of antitank grenades. These he launched while under heavy enemy fire, driving the tankmen from the vehicles into the house. He then climbed onto a half-track in full view of the Germans and fired a machinegun at the house. Once again changing his position, he manned another machinegun whose crew had been killed; under his covering fire the five soldiers were able to retire to safety. Deprived of tanks and with heavy infantry casualties, the enemy was forced to withdraw. Through his extensive knowledge of weapons and by his heroic and repeated braving of murderous enemy fire, Sergeant Currey was greatly responsible for inflicting heavy losses in men and material on the enemy, for rescuing five comrades, two of whom were wounded, and for stemming an attack which threatened to flank his battalion’s position.¹⁵⁸

Leaving more than two hundred killed men behind, SS-Panzer Brigade 150 pulled back. Skorzeny wrote, ’I had no artillery with my brigade, and when I realized the strength of the enemy, I ordered a withdrawal to defensive positions south of Malmedy. We remained in these positions until 29 December, when we withdrew because of continuous losses to enemy artillery fire.’¹⁵⁹

Meanwhile, von der Heydte’s paratroopers also met their final destiny. As we saw earlier, the air droppings of Oberstleutnant Friedrich Freiherr von der Heydte’s paratroopers in the spruce forests north of Malmedy became a failure. Since this force became widely dispersed, and von der Heydte himself only was able to assemble a few hundred men at the crossroads Baraque Michel north of Malmedy, these hid in the woods that today constitute the national park Hautes Fagnes-Eifel. After three days in cold and rain, with dwindling supplies and without any relief force in sight, von der Heydte realized that the mission was doomed. On the night of 19 December, he took off towards the east with his men in an effort to reach the German lines. They left their wounded in the hands of the thirty American prisoners that had been taken, along with a letter to Major General Maxwell Taylor, the commander of U.S. 101st Airborne Division, who was asked to ensure that the wounded were taken good care of. (Von der Heydte believed that his old adversary from Normandy was in the area.)

The American artillery played a decisive role in the Battle of Malmedy. The picture shows a battery 155mm M1 howitzers in firing position. (US Army)

When the breakout-force on the morning of 20 December were discovered by U.S. infantry and had to flee back into the forest again, von der Heydte decided to divide the force into small groups of three men, each of which was to try to make it back to the German lines. 150 of the paratroopers managed to do so, but not their commander. After wandering about in the wintry countryside for two whole days, von der Heydte reached the town of Monschau, which he thought was in German hands, in the morning on 22 December. When it turned out that this was not the case, the exhausted paratroop officer felt that he had had enough. He knocked on a housedoor and was let in. There he wrote a letter of surrender which he conveyed to the American soldiers in the town. Thus ended Kampfgruppe von der Heydte’s saga.

Both sides now went over to the defensive along the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s entire northern front sector, from Rocherath-Krinkelt and Wirtzfeld in front of the Elsenborn Ridge in the east, across the Domäne Bütgenbach section, and on to the section south of Malmedy and Stavelot. As the emphasis of the German offensive was shifted to the 5. Panzerarmee, the front here would remain more or less static and ’dormant’ for more than three weeks.

THE END OF SS-KAMPFGRUPPE PEIPER

In the meantime, SS Kampfgruppe Peiper also approached its inevitable end. Since the Americans had managed to demolish the important Amblève bridge in Stavelot on 19 December, all supplies to the German armored spearhead at La Gleize, Stoumont, and Cheneux had to be brought across the frail wooden bridge at Petit Spay, east of Trois-Ponts. But owing to the bad road conditions on the southern side of River Amblève, so far no more than a small supply column had arrived. On 20 December, the British code breakers at Bletchley Park intercepted a message from SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper in Stoumont about an acute fuel shortage.¹⁶⁰

It is possible that SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen with its twenty Panzer IV/70s could have come to the relief, but this unit was stranded in Recht, six miles southeast of Stavelot. Due to the road congestions in the rear area, it was extremely difficult to bring any fuel at all to Hansen’s vehicles. As if this was not enough, the 9. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hohenstaufen’ was ordered forward from the rear area on 17 December, and, two days later, also the 2. SS-Panzer-Division ’Das Reich.’ According to the original plan, these two divisions should have been deployed only as part of the second assault wave, when the I. SS-Panzerkorps had crossed the Meuse. But now they were straight away brought in with the task to relieve SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper.

The commander of SS- Panzergrenadier-Regiment 4 ’Der Führer’ of 2. SS- Panzer-Division, SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Weidinger, describes the 6. SS- Panzerarmee’s chaotic supply situation: ’The difficulties regarding the fuel supply led to severe clashes between [the headquarters of] the Division and [the 6. SS-Panzerarmee headquarters]. Among other things, the. SS-Panzerarmee’s headquarters reported to the Army’s chief of supplies that supplies had arrived, while in reality this was not the case. No precautionary measures in the event railway filling stations were lost had been taken, so in a number of cases we lost much time sending trucks to places where there was no fuel available.’¹⁶¹

No wonder that von Rundstedt on the evening of 20 December decided to shift the main emphasis of the offensive from Sepp Dietrich’s SS Army to von Manteuffel’s 5. Panzerarmee. With this, the 2. and 9. SS-Panzer divisions were regrouped towards the Sankt Vith section, which meant that the relief of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper was assigned a lower priority. As far as the 2. SS-Panzer-Division is concerned, this unit, as mentioned in Chapter 4, was ordered to march from Blankenheim, twelve miles northeast of the Losheimer-Graben—in an arc over Hillesheim and Schönecken in Germany—to Reuland, in front of the American strongpoint at Oudler, six miles south of Sankt Vith. This fifty-mile mileage was carried out on clogged and icy small roads. For 20 December, Weidinger noted, ’Road congestions continued. […] At 1545 came the order to depart. Soon we started to run out of fuel. We still saw no supply transports.’¹⁶² Between noon on the 21st and forenoon on 22 December, the 2. SS-Panzerdivision remained stuck in the vicinity of Reuland.¹⁶³

Although the 9. SS-Panzer-Division was sent straight to the west from its point of departure, it also ran into severe difficulties. Its vehicles—particularly fuel trucks—became hopelessly jammed on the congested roads. The division’s various sub-units arrived piecemeal at the front, where they immediately were hurled into the battle. This had severe repercussions for the armored reconnaissance battalion when this unit on 19 December was despatched against Poteau, northwest of Sankt Vith.

By the time SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen finally received the fuel required to resume its advance—in the evening on 19 December—the American steel ring around SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper had been further strengthened. Combat Command B of U.S. 3rd Armored Division was approaching from the north. In the southwest, the 82nd Airborne Division, with four regiments with tank support, was preparing to establish positions on a nine-mile-front along the western side of River Salm, from Trois-Ponts in the north to Salmchâteau in the south.

The operation to wipe out the enveloped SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper began on 20 December with a concerted attack from all sides. Meanwhile, a powerful U.S. artillery force subjected La Gleize, Stoumont, and Cheneux to intense shelling.

Combat Command B, 3rd Armored Division was composed of three Task forces. The most powerful among these, Task Force Lovelady under Lieutenant Colonel William B. Lovelady, mustered fifty-one tanks, including thirty-nine Shermans, of the 33rd Armored Regiment.¹⁶⁴In order to cut the supply line to Peiper at Petit Spay, just east of Trois-Ponts, where the small wooden bridge led across the Amblève, Task Force Lovelady set off in the afternoon on 20 December down the road that leads south a mile east of La Gleize. During the advance, the American armor surprised and annihilated two smaller German vehicle columns heading for La Gleize.^*

SS soldiers during the advance in the Ardennes. (NARA, III-SC-341656)

At the point where River Amblève bends from a southerly to an easterly direction at Trois-Ponts, three miles southeast of La Gleize, the road forms a ledge between steep, wooded cliffs immediately to the left of the road (in the American direction), and a sharp descent down to the river on the right side. The road also went under a railway viaduct on the line Trois-Ponts - Stavelot. As the American tanks passed under the viaduct and around the turn of the road at this point, they immediately became aware that the Germans were alerted and were waiting for them. A raging fire from at least one Königstiger (No. 132 with SS-Unterscharführer Willi Otterbein as commander), an antitank gun, and several Panzerfausts hit the Americans. Four or six Shermans caught fire and the remainder of the force quickly retreated into cover behind the trees at the road bend.¹⁶⁵ Owing to fuel shortage, the Germans were unable to counter-attack in order to push back the American armored force to its point of departure.¹⁶⁶ With Task Force Lovelady in position north of Trois-Ponts, SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper’s last supply line, across the Amblève at Petit Spay, was cut off.

However, the other U.S. attack forces did not succeed equally well. To the right of Lovelady, Task Force McGeorge—reinforced with A’ Company, 743rd Tank Battalion—attacked La Gleize along two small roads from the northeast. But here Peiper had positioned six Königstigers, and these effectively blocked the American advance. After losing five of his eighteen Shermans, the American unit commander, Major Kenneth McGeorge, withdrew his troops.¹⁶⁷ The attacks conducted against Stoumont on 20 December—by the tanks of Task Force Jordan and 740th Tank Battalion, supported by 1st Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment—also were repulsed. Americans and Germans fought bitterly throughout the night and into the next day for Saint Edouard Sanitorium, a nursing home for children located in a large stone building in the village’s northwestern outskirts. During all of this, at least two hundred and sixty terrified civilians—patients, nuns and villagers who had taken refuge at this place— huddled in the large building’s basement. What they were told by the grim-looking SS soldiers who called the nursing home ’Fortress Saint Edouard’ did little to reassure them: ’You have nothing to fear from us if you do not harm us. But we had to execute some people from Stavelot who fired at our troops from the windows of their houses.’¹⁶⁸ Early on 21 December the Americans were pushed back, leaving the burnt-out hulks of four Shermans behind.¹⁶⁹

A destroyed Sherman tank. (National Museum of Military history, Diekirch)

Across the Amblève, southwest of La Gleize, a bloody battle raged throughout the night. When Peiper had withdrawn from the Lienne creek during the night of 18 December, he left Flak-Abteilung 84 under Luftwaffe Major Wolfgang von Sacken south of Amblève, at the first village after the bridge, Cheneux. Meanwhile, the 504th and 505th Parachute Infantry regiments of U.S. 82nd Airborne Division arrived at Werbomont, west of the Lienne. The commander of the 504th, Colonel Reuben Tucker, was ordered to immediately cross the little creek and advance towards Trois-Ponts. That same night Tucker’s regiment marched across a hastily prepared Bailey Bridge at Forges—where the bridge some of Peiper’s armored reconnaissance vehicles had used just a few hours earlier, had been demolished by the Americans.¹⁷⁰At three in the morning the Americans bivouacked in the village of Rahier, slightly more than a mile southwest of Cheneux.¹⁷¹ At dawn on 20 December, Tucker despatched reconnaissance patrols that could establish that Cheneux was occupied by the enemy, and the decision was made to attack this village.

But by that time the German garrison had been reinforced by 11. (gepanzerte) Kompanie/ SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 2 under SS-Oberscharführer Rudi Rayer. Historians Luc Rivet and Yvan Sevenans describe how these SS soldiers trudged into the village, being ’in a foul mood,’ vandalizing houses and assaulting villagers.¹⁷² 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment received reinforcement in the shape of some 703rd Tank Destroyer Battalion M36 Jackson tank destroyers that crossed on the Bailey bridge built at Hâbièmont. The M36 Jackson had been developed in response to the German heavily armored tanks, and was armed with a 90mm M3 anti-tank gun, which in principle could knock out any German tank. The first Jacksons were introduced at the front as late as in September 1944 and in December, there still were relatively few available. But now some of these were launched against Peiper’s outpost at Cheneux.

U.S. paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division arrive at Werbomont, to the west of the Lienne. (NARA, 111-SC-2000487)

The Americans opened their attack on the afternoon of 20 December. They advanced uphill straight across the open terrain, and were met by fire from two 20mm anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, and mortars.¹⁷³ The attack immediately stalled. Colonel Tucker decided to wait until after dark, and then he ordered the 1st Battalion to renew the attack, supported by Jackson TDs, while the 3rd Battalion circumvented the village to attack from the north. What followed was a bloodbath. Technical Sergeant George W. Corporan in 1st Battalion describes the nocturnal attack on Cheneux:

At 1930 the Battalion pushed off. Company B had to cross four hundred yards of flat terrain, giving the enemy perfect grazing fields of fire. Company C attacked over flat ground through a system of barbed wire fences vertical to the line of attack. The wire caught at the men’s clothing and equipment, slowing them and making them easy targets.

Company B, coming out of the woods in skirmish formation, moved through several fences and reached a point within 200 yards of the road block at the edge of Cheneux. Suddenly the 20mm guns, machine guns, mortars and artillery pieces in the town opened up, inflicting heavy casualties on the men who had no cover or concealment and could only keep advancing by short rushes. The two tank destroyers, supposed to move up the road with the companies, remained in the rear. The flak wagons swept the area, having full deflectional fire on the attackers. Staff Sergeant James M Boyd, third platoon sergeant Company B, said, ‘The men were falling like flies.’ The first two waves were almost completely wiped out.

Spearheading a group of other tanks, a Sherman tank with a 76mm gun works its way through the mud on the battlefield. (NARA, SC 196105)

Company C moved out of the woods in a skirmish line, described as ‘dress right dress,’ on the left side of the road with the right man guiding on the road. At first the waves waited for the tank destroyers to move up. When they did not, the men moved on, since Company B was already advancing. MG 42 machine guns on Company C’s left flank opened up, inflicting numerous casualties as the men hit the first string of barbed wire fences. When the assault waves were in the open, where grazing fire was possible, the flak wagons in Cheneux opened up. The attack bogged down momentarily as the first assault wave was pinned down. The second wave moved up to the first in order to build a firing line. Men of Company B on the right side of the road, were yelling, ‘Come on!’ From then on, the advance had to be made over and through the barbed wire fences since no wire-cutters were available.

With the attack apparently stopped, Staff Sergeant Walsh of Company B stood up and yelled, ‘Let’s get the sons of bitches!’ His cry served to start the attack again as the men who were able stood up, yelling and screaming and drove forward toward the enemy road block at the edge of the town. The men fired until their ammunition was exhausted; then they used their rifles as clubs and drew trench knives as they converged on the road block and engaged the enemy in close-in fighting.

Sergeant Walsh crept to within 20 yards of a 20mm flak wagon in order to hurl a grenade at it. Because of a wound in his wrist, he was unable to pull the pin. He crawled back to one of his men, had him pull the pin, then returned to the cannon and knocked it out with the grenade. Private Barkley, Company C, flanked another 20mm, clambered aboard and slit the gunner’s throat. Men of Company C alone killed 20 of the enemy in close-in fighting.

Finally the two tank destroyers moved forward and fired into the enemy positions in the town and facilitated the advance of the men left in the companies. At 2200, the Battalion had gained the edge of the town, the enemy having withdrawn within the town itself.¹⁷⁴

By that time, the 1st Battalion had lost two hundred and twenty-five men. ‘B’ Company was particularly badly hit—the Company had lost all officers and all but eighteen enlisted men. Of the original 119 enlisted men and eight officers in ’C’ Company, thirty-eight enlisted men and three officers remained.¹⁷⁵ And the Americans had only managed to captured a couple of houses in the southern outskirts of Cheneux! The 703rd Tank Destroyer Battalion’s after action report reads, ’Throughout 21 December, the infantry held their ground and prepared to attack again that night. The Germans were offering stiff resistance and it was evident that they had no intention of giving up the remainder of the town.’¹⁷⁶

While this took place, U.S. 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment crossed the Lienne, passed south of Cheneux and advanced through a no-man’s-land against Trois-Ponts. On the evening of 20 December the Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin H. Vandervoort, was issued with ’a Regimental order to cross the Salm River with one company and set up a defensive position on the adjacent high ground.’¹⁷⁷ ’E’ Company crossed the river on a makeshift bridge of planks.¹⁷⁸

To the east of River Salm, SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen meanwhile pushed forward with the greatest difficulty on waterlogged small rural roads in the countryside between Recht in the southeast and Trois-Ponts, where Hansen was intended to come to Peiper’s relief. Although the distance was not more than eight miles as the crow flies, it took the Germans most of the day to traverse this distance. They reached the area southeast of Trois-Ponts just after the U.S. ’E’ Company had crossed the Salm in this section to establish its small bridgehead. Hansen’s task force—where twenty-one Panzer IV/70s had constituted the main force on 16 December—joined the Panzer IV tanks from the 6. and 7. Kompanie/ SS-Panzer-Regiment 1, which had been stranded with empty fuel tanks southwest of Stavelot two days earlier. On the morning of 21 December, this sizable force attacked ’E’ Company, which was virtually destroyed. Only forty to fifty men of the American company made it back to the western side of the Salm.

However, the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s contribution to save the situation on the American side during these days, by far outweighed the faux pas with ’E’ Company. By advancing to Trois-Ponts so rapidly, its 2nd Battalion could prevent SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen from laying a bridge across the Salm to relieve SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, and three miles farther south its 3rd Battalion prevented another German force—SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9. SS-Panzer-Division—from crossing the Salm at Grand-Halleux, whence Peiper’s men also could have been relieved. Thus, U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, and especially its 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, played a crucial role in the destruction of 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s spearhead.

U.S. paratroopers from Colonel Reuben Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division with their captive, a noticeably startled young SS soldier. The soldier at the front is Lieutenant Richard G. ‘Rivers’ Lariviere, a platoon commander in ‘H’ Company. He was at that time 26 years old. Lariviere, who frequently appears in James Megellas’ autobiography All the Way to Berlin, passed away on 13 February 1995, at the age of 82. (US Army)

In this new situation, SS-Standartenführer Hansen instead received the task of securing the eastern side of River Salm, from Trois-Ponts down to Grand-Halleux in the south, and to cross the Amblève at Petit Spay in order to attack Stavelot from the west, so that this supply route to Peiper could be reopened. SS-Sturmbannführer Emil Karst led the men in the I. Bataillon / SS- Panzergrenadie-Regiment 1 over the small wooden bridge at Petit Spay and then they climbed up the slippery, wooded ridge on the other side of the road, until they reached the railway track on the crest. There they proceeded on foot towards Stavelot.

But when the I. SS- Pänzerjager-Abteilung would follow, disaster struck. When the first tank destroyer, a Panzer IV/70 commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Holst, crawled across the river, the small wooden bridge collapsed under the 25-ton vehicle, which became helplessly stuck in five-foot-deep water right up the steep northern river bank. The efforts to establish a temporary bridge had to be abandoned when the Americans directed artillery fire against the place.

Attacked by the armor of Task Force Lovelady, SS-Sturmbannführer Karst’s SS grenadiers, lacking heavy weapons, met the same fate as that of of ’E’ Company in the U.S. airborne battalion when it was attacked by the SS-Kampfgruppe Hansen east of the Salm. Thus failed this attempt to relieve SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, which nevertheless continued to successfully repel all U.S. attacks throughout 21 December. That day’s fighting cost the 1st Battalion, U.S. 119th Infantry Regiment alone a loss of nearly two hundred men, and the commander of the 2nd Battalion, Major Hal McCown, was taken prisoner. McCown was brought to La Gleize, where he was received by Peiper. John M. Nolan, who by that time served as a Platoon Sergeant in the 2nd Battalion, 119th Infantry Regiment, remembers:

’G Company received the order to move over a high ridge and down the other side to establish a roadblock. We were told it would close the last escape route for the German force that we had surrounded. It was a difficult climb to the top of the ridge with all of the equipment we carried, including anti-tank mines, but easier down the other side. When we were about to set-up the roadblock we were ordered to turn around and go back to where we began. We were told that our battalion commander, Major Hal McCown, had been captured and we needed to get out of there in a hurry.’ Nolan continues:

‘Several days before we had heard of what has been called the “Malmedy Massacre” and we feared for the life of our battalion commander. I believe our fears resulted in the order we received to ”Take No Prisoners” before we prepared to attack La Gleize on 24 December. Major Nathaniel Laney, the battalion executive officer, took over the unit as the acting battalion commander of our 2nd Battalion. It wasn’t until after our attack on LaGleize that we heard the good news that Major McCown had escaped. He returned to resume command of the battalion.’¹⁷⁹

Peiper now decided to concentrate his forces at La Gleize, and after dark in the evening on 21 December, both Stoumont and Cheneux were evacuated. At the latter place the Germans abandoned fourteen anti-aircraft guns, five 105mm howitzers, two 75mm anti-tank guns, six armored personnel carriers, and four trucks.

On the night between 21 and 22 December, the Luftwaffe made its first—and only—attempt to supply SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper from the air.¹⁸⁰ Twenty transport aircraft were despatched with instructions to drop supplies by parachute over Stoumont—not knowing that Peiper’s force had just withdrawn from that place. Only about ten percent of the dropped supplies—fuel, ammunition, and provisions—landed in German-held territory, the rest was taken care of by grateful American G.I.s. One of the SS men in La Gleize, SS-Rottenführer Rolf Ehrhardt, recalls:

’Since 13 December, we hadn’t had any more warm rations. We only received rations for three days. For days none of us ever had our fill. Many hadn’t eaten for days. It was similar with our sleep. We couldn’t even think about that. I believe that since the attack began I had only slept for more than an hour two or three times. For the most part all of the comrades, whether simple soldier or commander, were no different concerning their condition. We were well beyond the border of our performance capabilities and well overburdened. Our faces were unshaven and dirty. Our eyes burned and we all had a cold.’¹⁸¹

Throughout 22 December the Germans in La Gleize sent repeated requests for further air-dropped supplies, but to no avail. The weather simply rendered any further transport flights impossible.¹⁸² Peter Schrijvers describes the battle for the enveloped La Gleize, now subject to a deadly rain of U.S. artillery rounds: ’The church was being converted into a first-aid station. At dark the building rapidly filled with wounded SS men and American prisoners evacuated from Stoumont. The injured were white as chalk and moaned and cried. Straw on the floor soaked up the blood. Soldiers died before the eyes of the villagers who crept into a corner afraid to move. On the other side of the thick church wall a German tank blasted away at regular intervals. The civilians prayed with their priest that they might live for just a few more hours; they did not hope for more.’¹⁸³

Charles B. MacDonald gives the perspective of the beleaguerers: ’Soon after midday [on 22 December], the commander of the 740th Tank Battalion, Colonel [George] Rubel, set up his borrowed 155mm self-propelled artillery piece alongside the Chateau de Froid-Cour, and close by the 105mm pieces he had found at the ordnance depot at Sprimont. With a clear view of La Gleize, the gunners wreaked havoc on the buildings in the village, and one of the rounds from the 155 chopped the top off the spire of the village church. From farther away, the 155mm howitzers of the 30th Division’s 113th Field Artillery Battalion added the fury of their fire, much of its shells armed with the VT fuse. Little would be left of La Gleize but rubble.’^184 *

On the afternoon of 22 December, the tanks of Task Force McGeorge made a new attack against the village. The battle was fought between the tanks on both sides. Rolf Ehrhardt, who had taken shelter in the basement of the main building of the farm estate Wèrimont in the southern outskirt of La Gleize, recalled, ’The cellar was overcrowded with people, waiting for a break in the firing to count the number of Shermans destroyed. Pieces of stone and chalk rained down from the ceiling. The firing of our Tigers’ super guns could be clearly distinguished from the explosions of the enemy rounds. Each round fired from an 88 was a hit in our minds. Suddenly Tiger commander Hantusch burst into the cellar with both hands pressed to his head and yelled: ’’That was Hantusch’s last stand!” His Tiger had been hit several times, which so jolted the sensitive weapons system that the electrical firing system broke down. Then a hit on the turret had lightly wounded Hantusch in the head, and he was forced to abandon the smoking tank which could have burst into flames at any moment. Minutes later, the second Tiger commander, Obersturmführer Dollinger, arrived speechless in the cellar, bleeding heavily from the head. After he had been bandaged, he reported that the smoke from his gun had made it impossible to fire and adjust, and the enemy’s immediate response had taken away any last chance to hit them. The numerical superiority of the eight to ten Sherman and their continous fire more than compensated for the superior weapons in our hands. Dollinger’s tank had then been hit once more by a round which amputated the front third of his gun.’^{185 **}

Three M4 (105) Shermans, equipped with 105mm howitzers, shelling German positions. Of the 3rd Armored Division’s 240 serviceable Shermans on 18 December 1944, 29 were armed with 105mm howitzers. (NARA, SC 198396)

In spite of all hardships, Peiper’s men continued to offer a dogged resistance. Their POW Major McCown afterwards described his observations concerning SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper: ’Morale was high throughout the entire period. I was with them despite the extremely trying conditions. The discipline was very good […] The relationship between officers and men, particularly the commanding officer, Colonel Peiper, was closer and more friendly than I would have expected. […] He and I talked [Peiper spoke an excellent English] […] He was completely confident of Germany’s ability to whip the Allies.’¹⁸⁶

However, not all the SS men were able to withstand the pressure. After the war, SS-Rottenführer Water Lehn told that ’morale was very muted, almost fatalistic’ in La Gleize.¹⁸⁷ According to what emerged during interrogations after the war, Peiper had one of his soldiers executed on 22 December because this man had ripped his SS insignia from his uniform during a critical situation.¹⁸⁸

Tiger No. 213 with SS-Obersturmführer Wilhelm Dollinger as tank commander was put out of action when a projectile from a Sherman knocked off the front third of the barrel. The otherwise almost intact Königstiger, which was heavily scarred after several hits, was captured by the Americans when they took La Gleize two days later. Today, this Königstiger stands outside the Historical Museum December 1944 in La Gleize. A new wooden ‘barrel’ had been made, onto which a muzzle brake from one of the Panther tanks abandoned by Skorzeny’s forces at Malmedy has been fitted. (Photo: The author)

However, the attempts made by Task Force McGeorge to break into La Gleize on 22 December were repelled, with heavy losses inflicted on the Americans. On the afternoon of 23 December they returned, and this time managed to make their way to the northeastern outskirts of La Gleize with infantry and armor. But there SS panzer grenadiers stormed out of the houses, destroyed six Shermans with anti-tank weapons and forced the remainder into a hasty retreat along the road to the north.

In American captivity after the war, Peiper was asked about when he had realized that the operation was a failure. The response was: When he at 1700 hrs on 23 December via radio was ordered to break out with men and materiel.¹⁸⁹ However, due to fuel shortage, it was impossible to bring along any of the heavy equipment, so the breakout had to be carried out on foot, through the sector in the south where there were no American troops. At one o’clock on the morning of 24 December, Peiper departed, leading eight hundred of his soldiers. Commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Willibald Dittmann, the wounded Germans, the majority of the American prisoners, and all heavy equipment were left behind in La Gleize.

A few hours later, the Americans mounted another attack against La Gleize, prepared to face a stiff resistance. Sergeant John M. Nolan was one of the first to enter the village. He said:

Shortly after daylight the artillery opened fire on the village. When their barrage ceased we were to begin our move to the objective. We began our movement on the high ground above the village. I was in the attack column with the lead Squad as we moved down on a sunken road leading into the village. To my surprise the road was lined with German Army vehicles parked ’bumper to bumper’ They were personnel carriers, tracked and wheeled. We began to sense that the Jerries had departed the area, and we would not have to fight our way into the village.

We finally arrived at the village limits and entered an area I would call a ’Town Square’ which was an open space. A large church building was at one end and in the middle of the ’Square’ I saw three Jerry’s with white armbands with a Red Cross on a sleeve of their uniforms. One of them was an officer wearing a beautiful ‘great coat.’ I noticed there was a band near the cuff of one sleeve, and written on it was ‘Adolf Hitler’s 1st SS Panzer Division.’ I took my knife and cut this strip from his sleeve and kept it for a souvenir. This was the first time that I became aware that the German Army unit opposing us was an SS unit. Years latter when I read an account of our action I discovered the name of the German Medical Officer was ’SS Lieutenant Colonel Doctor Willi Dittmann.’

We began searching all the buildings for possible enemy. I went into a school building and found a wounded paratroop officer lying on the floor with a Nazi flag partially covering him. On the way out I told a sergeant of what I had seen. He entered, and I soon heard a shot, and he came out of the building with a P38 Pistol in his hand. We heard later that one of our platoons that searched the church had found a number of U.S. Army prisoners, some of them wounded. ^190 *

By that time, all the American soldiers had been informed that SS men had killed American POWs at Baugnez, and they also knew that Skorzeny’s troops operated behind Allied lines dressed in American uniforms. First Lieutenant Donald J. Strand in ’D’ Company, 119th Infantry Regiment, remembers how the Americans reacted when they discovered that several of the SS soldiers that were taken prisoner in La Gleize carried items of equipment from the U.S. Army:

’Our Battalion Commander in looking over the German soldiers saw many of them wearing brand new G.I. boots and wool trousers and here our own soldiers had on boots that the soles were wore thru and worn out wool trousers. He marched the German soldiers into the town square and made them in the snow and bitter cold take off their trousers and boots. We then handed them back to our own G.I.’s who needed them. I can still see the young arrogant German SS troops cry like babies over this as they stood barefoot in the snow and some without trousers on.’¹⁹¹

After a thirty-six-hour-march, Peiper and 770 of his men, exhausted, frozen, and starved, reached the German lines east of the Salm. They left behind considerable quantities of heavy equipment that had been essentially destroyed by the rearguard. Most of this was found by the Americans among the trees and bushes in the small valley south of the village. According to the first American report, compiled during the night of 24 December, twenty-eight tanks (fifteen Panthers, six Panzer IVs, and seven Königstigers), seventy half-track vehicles, eight armored cars, four anti-aircraft vehicles, six SPGs, two 75mm tank destroyers, eleven other vehicles, five 20mm anti-aircraft guns, six 120mm mortars, and an 88mm anti-aircraft gun were captured in La Gleize.* The personnel losses of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper amounted to 888 men.¹⁹² To this should be added the losses inflicted on other units that had joined Peiper’s task force during the advance, including SS-Kampfgruppe Knittel and Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 9.

This was the end not only of SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper, but also of the entire German offensive on this front sector.

CONCLUSIONS AND RESULTS

On the whole, the I. SS-Panzerkorps’ and the 6. SS Panzerarmee’s participation in the offensive’s first eight to ten days were marked by a series of serious German mistakes. Although this mighty armored army initially stood against less than an entire U.S. infantry division (the 99th), and in spite of an almost total lack of American armor in the first line in this front sector, the 6. SS- Panzerarmee ran into great difficulties right from the start. The main explanation for this lies in inadequate strategic insights in the command of this army, while the U.S. units here were decidedly better commanded than farther south. Thereby, the 12. SS-Panzer-Division ’Hitler Jugend’ sustained grievous losses in front of two American strongholds— Rocherath-Krinkelt and Domäne Bütgenbach—and then fell out of the 6. SS- Panzerarmee’s further offensive. This was obviously very serious in itself, since it concerned one of the two best equipped German divisions in Operation ’Herbstnebel.’

The other armored division in the I. SS-Panzerkorps, the 1. SS-Panzer-Division ’Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,’ indeed made significant progress on 1718 December, when it advanced twenty-five miles and reached Stavelot. But essentially, this was nothing more than a pure transfer over an area quickly evacuated by only weak American units. That the I. SS-Panzerkorps and the 6. SS-Panzerarmee failed to assign sufficient forces to hold strategic points such as the river crossing at Stavelot, was due to a combination of orders assigned to SS-Kampfgruppe Peiper to race on towards the Meuse without any consideration to either the flanks or the rear area, and the fact that the German units supposed to occupy the areas left behind by this Kampfgruppe for various reasons were unable to keep pace with Peiper’s armored spearhead. The large amounts of military equipment that the Germans as a result had to abandon La Gleize, is an eloquent expression of the 6. SS-Panzerarmee’s failure.

Private Glen T. Beymer from the 30th Infantry Division is guarding a German prisoner of war who is forced to take off his captured U.S. Army fatigue in the snow and cold. (NARA, SC 198678s, via Warren Watson.)

A comparison of the losses sustained by the SS Army and those sustained by the two Wehrmacht armies, also is quite illustrative. Between 16 and 23 December, the 6. SS-Panzerarmee inflicted a loss of more than 5,000 men killed, wounded, and missing on its opponent, while its own losses amounted to 7,630 men. During the same period, German 5. Panzerarmee admittedly also lost around 7,000 men, but inflicted around three times as high losses on its opponent.¹⁹³

On the U.S. side, the commanders of the V Corps and the 2nd Infantry Division—Major Generals Gerow and Robertson—reacted with exemplary swiftness to the German attack, and took measures that within four or five days had neutralized the threat from the I. SS-Panzerkorps’ northern wing, which in turn created the conditions to deal with the threat from its southern flank. This is particularly remarkable in view of the relations of forces: Against in all about 50,000 troops with 78 tanks on the I. SS- Panzerkorps’ northern wing, the Americans could mount no more than about 35,000 men with 61 Sherman tanks between 16 and 21 December.** When the 6. SS-Panzerarmee opened its attack, the relations of forces were even more uneven: On 16 December, Sepp Dietrich’s army enjoyed a numerical superiority of more than four to one in troops (in the 5. Panzerarmee’s sector the Germans were threefold stronger than the Americans), and against 303 German tanks and tank destroyers in the I. SS-Panzerkorps, stood only a handful of tanks of U.S. 14th Cavalry Group in the first line.

Although the reactions by U.S. First Army’s headquarters in the early days were marked by a certain confusion, three U.S. divisions—the 30th Infantry, the 82nd Airborne, and the 3rd Armored—were mobilized relatively quickly to stem the 1. SS-Panzer-Division’s advance. By Christmas 1944, U.S. ground forces had succeeded in halting the I. SS-Panzerkorps.

* However, there also were several seasoned veterans with voluminous track records. So, for example, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Möbius, who led the 2. Kompanie in schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, was credited with the destruction of nearly one hundred enemy tanks. The famous SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann (killed in August 1944)—credited with the destruction of 138 enemy tanks, including 14 British in a single day in June 1944—had served with the same unit. Among the men of the ‘Hitler Jugend’ Division was to be found the ‘ace’ SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Roy, who during the fighting in Normandy in the previous summer had knocked out twenty-six Allied tanks in five days (including 13 on 9 August alone).

* Each regiment’s headquarters company in the U.S. Army included an Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon. This usually consisted of 18 men, in two reconnaissance squads, each with three jeeps—one equipped with a radio transmitter—and a platoon lead with a jeep. The task of such a reconnaissance platoon consisted of reconnaissance and patrol to obtain such intelligence about the enemy and the terrain that was not available to the battalion and regimental infantry companies.

* After liberation, a monument was erected over the eight Americans murdered in Ligneuville—John M. Borcina, Gerald R. Carter, Joseph Collins, Michael B. Penney, Casper S. Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Clifford H. Pitts, and Nick C. Sulivan.

* In addition, the major railway junctions Hasselt and Neerpelt north of Liège were attacked by twenty Messerschmitt 262 jet bombers from I. Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 51. Eighteen of these took off between 0744 and 0818 hrs on 18 December 1944. (National Archives, Kew: Ultra files HW 5/633. CX / MSS / T 402/56. West.)

* According to Peiper, two Panthers, a Panzer IV, and five other armored vehicles were destroyed in the U.S. air strike. (Peiper, An Interview with Obst Joachim Peiper: 1st SS Pz Regt (11 to 24 December 1944), p. 20.) According to Ralf Tiemann’s unit chronicle, three Panthers and five other armored vehicles were lost. (Tiemann, Die Leibstandarte, Band IV / 2, p. 85.) Thorough studies by the research team Haasler et al came up with the result that four armored vehicles and only Panther, No. 131, were total losses, while one or two other tanks temporarily were put out of commission. (Haasler MacDougall, Vosters, and Weber, Duel in the Mist: The Leibstandarte During the Ardennes offensive, Vol. 2, p.113.)

* According to Meyer et al, Duel in the Mist: The Leibstandarte During The Ardennes offensive, Vol. 1, p. 132, ‘A’ Company, 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion received four M10 tank destroyers, but the American Battalion’s after action report (823rd tank destr. Bn. after action report No. VII. From 010001 December 44 To 312400 December 44) mentions ‘four 3” guns, half tracks and necessary equipment with 2 German 75mm guns.’

* According to certain accounts, the first German major attack was carried out by twelve Panzer IV/70s already during the early hours on 19 December. But this finds no support in German reports, and according to U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment’s after action report, a German thrust was made at 0225 hrs on 19 December with no more than ‘twenty trucks with infantry and some tanks,’ which probably was nothing else than a reconnaissance thrust with armored vehicles from SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 26, which arrived at Büllingen on the evening of 18 December. This is supported by Hubert Meyer’s chronicle of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division, see Meyer, pp. 289 forward. See also Reynolds, pp. 90 forward.

* For an excellent and detailed description, see Haasler, MacDougall, Vosters, and Weber, pp. 80ff.

* A castle located a mile to the west of La Gleize, south of the road to Stoumont.

*™ Hantusch’s Königstiger No. 221 and Dollinger’s No. 213 fired at around fifteen U.S. tanks coming in from the east, but without hitting any of them, while the Americans put both German tanks out of commission through repeated hits. The Königstiger which today is parked outside the museum in La Gleize, is Dollinger’s No. 213.

* SS-Obersturmführer Dittmann was IVb, i.e. army surgeon, of the III. Bataillon/ SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 2

* 119th Infantry Regiment. Secret Unit Report From 232200 December 1944 To 242200 December 1944. Various sources differ in terms of the American spoils of war. According to the 119th Infantry Regiment’s Unit Journal, 39 tanks (23 Panthers, 8 Panzer IVs, 7 Königstigers, and a captured Sherman), 70 half-track vehicles, 30 other vehicles, and 33 different kinds of artillery pieces were captured or destroyed. (119th Infantry Regiment, Unit Journal, December, 1944.) According to German sources, the 1. SS-Panzer-Division lost, among other equipment, 35 tanks and 60 armored cars in La Gleize. (Tiemann, Die Leibstandarte, Band IV/2, p. 154.)

** Troop strength according to Dupuy, Bongard, and Anderson, Hitler’s Last Gamble; German tank strength according to Dugdale; American tank strength according to Richard C. Anderson Jr., historian and analyst working for the U.S. Government.