CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CRAMMED ONTO OPEN FLATBED TRUCKS THE 101ST MOVED OUT on the morning of December 18, though a third of its strength was not present for duty, most on leave in France.
“Where are we goin'?” asked Albers, slinging his hastily assembled gear aboard.
“Someplace called Bass-tog-nee,” Dziepak yelled back over the roar of the idling convoy. It was dark but all headlights were on. Security was to be sacrificed for speed, an ominous omen for I Company. This wasn't going to be a gold-brick, backup reserve job. Something real bad was happening, as was evident when the convoy began bucking a tide of vehicles going the other way, their drivers' faces blanched with fright. Yes, they were just legs, but the Screaming Eagles had never before seen American troops racing headlong for the rear. At least it wasn't too cold, Albers reflected, and there was no snow.
As they trudged over the cobblestones of Bastogne (population 5,000), few civilian faces peeped from windows as dark and hollow as the absent eyes in a skull. The Belgians, like the Dutch, had rejoiced in September when American forces liberated them. The approaching barrages of Wehr-macht artillery now suggested what could be expected if Bastogne were reoccupied by the Nazis, a fear subsequently confirmed by SS Einsatzgruppen who brought pictures and addresses of suspected Allied collaborators identified during the four-year German occupation. The reprisal teams were never able to enter Bastogne but held public executions in outlying villages. This was terror's high-water mark on the Western Front for the rest of the war. The tide had turned, as expressed by Geronimo lieutenant Bill Russo:
“I think the Germans had gotten so confident in their terror—you know, scare the shit out of everybody in Poland the Low Countries, Russia. They got onto terrorizing this and terrorizing that…. Well, when they met us we didn't terrorize. That's when it all started going the other way, really.”
SENT BY MCAULIFFE to the village of Noville, five miles northeast of Bastogne, Currahees bucked a reeling counterflow Like panhandlers, they stuck out their hands for clips of ammo from panicked legs. “You'll never stop 'em, boys,” an outbound officer said, shaking his head in despair. “But you want ammo? You really do? Sure, take it all—and good luck.”
Troopers were glad to see the likes of him gone. Others in the retreat, often Keystone Kops, were willing to turn around and face the enemy. McAuliffe had them formed into a tough rabble he named Task Force SNAFU, a last-ditch reserve, and they fought well. His other supporting forces were Combat Command B from the 10th Armored Division, elements of the 9th Armored, and the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Eventually there would be about ten thousand Screaming Eagles defending encircled Bastogne and nearly the same number of armor troops, the latter ensuring a reverse outcome from that of the British 1st Airborne Division encircled and destroyed at Arnhem.
“Encircled?” Albers recalls. “Well, that's what we were trained for. When we land behind enemy lines—that's what we always do—we're encircled. When we heard on the radio that the 101st was encircled at Bastogne, we said, So what? What's new? Someone in the 502nd said something that became famous: ‘They got us surrounded, the poor bastards.’”
Lugging a machine gun, Albers followed Dziepak on the road to Noville, an ordinary country road in the Ardennes but one remembered by Currahees as overhung by a presence of gloom and high danger. Outside Bastogne they'd awoken under a light snow, the first of the winter. The squad had increased in strength since the Island—replacements had doubled its number to six. Dziepak had trouble remembering their names, so recently had they been assigned.
From the side of his mouth, as I Company huffed along, he gave them a fast course on how to kill and not be killed by the krauts. Those evergreens over there—it's like the biggest Christmas-tree farm you ever seen, right?—well, panzers won't want to go in there. We will. Hope we set up on that wood line. We can stop 'em if you know where the nearest bazooka man is. You might see a panzer before he does. You got to cover it with fire. Keep the crew buttoned up. You know how to shoot a bazooka? The three rookies nod but without confidence. Good. Where's the best place to hit a tank? In the engine, Sarge. That's right. So don't try to shoot 'em head-on. Wait and get 'em when they go by. Don't we need some ammo, Sarge? Dziepak nodded. Ammo was what worried him most.
Ahead boomed a crossfire of artillery, each side feeling out the other. Artillery, Albers remembered, did not often duel (because of range) but usually fired on enemy infantry. On the Bastogne-Houffalize road there was this exchange of locating fire, more unnerving for the Currahees because the krauts had many more and much heavier howitzers. Listen to the artillery, Dziepak instructed the cherries. It'll tell you what's comin' up.
Up ahead at Noville a brave band of tankers (Team Deso-bry) was holding off a regiment of the 2nd Panzer Division whose colonel had almost as difficult a decision attacking as Sink did defending: how many chips to play, how long to hold a hand? The German's question was whether to crash through, with significant losses, to Bastogne or obey orders and stop for nothing in the charge for the Meuse River. The panzer colonel opted to go for the critical hub of Bastogne (where seven roads and two rail lines converged) but faced a changed equation when First Battalion of the 506th reached Noville. Here their excellent commander, Lieutenant Colonel Laprade, was killed in action. Stepping up was Major Harwick, who had escaped with Joe into the Normandy marshes.
Hearing First Battalion's fight north of Noville, Blues were eager to join it but still lacked ammunition. Then, as if by providence, a pyramid of all calibers appeared on the road next to an abandoned jeep and trailer. Sink had it dumped there. Blues dipped in as if the pile were warm popcorn. They felt like King Arthur presented with Excalibur.
Because of a roll in the road, all they could see of Noville was a glow from where the village was burning, and they heard the sounds of a surging frrenght. Hold up, came the order from Captain Anderson, who went ahead for a reconnaissance. I Company was thirsty and formed cupfuls of water from newly fallen snow as they awaited an order to attack. Attack in what direction? There were Germans everywhere, but they were equally confused. For three days they had been attacking, overcoming, overrunning, overtaking routed American troops. Now what was this? Amis coming toward them, not with white flags but with well-aimed weapons.
The Currahee yearbook described how it looked from the Amis'side:
Our mortar shells, evenly spaced ahead, echoing off the low hills on either flank. Across the valley onto a wooded hill where the company halted…. From the woods into an open field. Across the field and a frozen marsh, over a stream, into more woods and up a hill. [Not much German fire up till then.] On the reverse side the enemy waited. What an enemy! Seven Tiger Royal tanks, the dreadnoughts of a panzer army.
One Tiger was burning, smoke swirled up in a cone shaped column. Bullets, shrapnel ripped by us. Loud bursts of artillery and mortars vibrated the frozen earth. Machine-guns chattered, ours and theirs. Men were being hit, men groaning, but orders were shouted. The last one was to withdraw! We'd never done that before in the face of the enemy! We obeyed in a pissed-off way, with the wounded limping or carried by their buddies. Some of the dead had to be left behind, and that was hard to accept. We'd be back to get them, no one doubted that, and we sure were—about six times! But in everyone's mind was a hated word— defeat—yes, it was defeat. Our first. Noville was lost. The wind blew the smoke of its burning back at us, the smell of defeat.
At a cost of a dozen officers and two hundred enlisted men, First Battalion had bought McAuliffe a precious forty-eight hours.
So began a swirl of attack and counterattack that would continue for a month on the Bastogne-Houffalize road. The 502nd dashed in on Sink's left flank to hold off the next German drive, coming from the north. McAuliffe's loop around Bastogne was completed by the 327th, who had the longest line to defend—over ten miles, half the division front, but mostly full of woods, to the point where the glider men tied in with the 501st. No supplies could enter on any of the seven roads, but now neither could the Wehrmacht, not without a helluva fight.
Pushed back to the hamlet (seven buildings) of Foy, the 506th regrouped and took stock. They with dogged tankers now prepared to defend against massive attacks that were sure to come. Anderson said he'd never heard so many panzers that he couldn't see: from the sound they must have stretched all the way back to Houffalize, ten miles north. Their engines wouldn't idle long. If the weather cleared they'd have to get off the roads for fear of Jabos. If the weather cleared, the 101st could be resupplied by parachute. So the snow clouds were a German ally; however, the eerie pale ground fog was Sink's.
Currahee Don Burgett described it “like looking into a glass of skim milk.” Another trooper marveled at how the fog went up and down like a theater curtain. When it lifted for a while, panzers poking toward Bastogne were exposed to close-range bazooka fire from Screaming Eagles who had heard them coming and even stalked them in the fog. American tanks, dug in to defilade, had the road zeroed in and could fire blind on preregistered choke points. To counter these tactics, the Germans had to bring up infantry to accompany then-armor. There wasn't a lot of infantry in the Fifth Panzer Army, designed for blitzkrieg rather than slugging through woodsy hills where paratroopers could ambush them like Indians.
But in the impartial fog, Indians were infiltrated and ambushed too. Vehicles evacuating wounded were shot up by squads of Germans lurking along ditches they'd been ordered to follow into Bastogne. Each lift of the curtain revealed a new scene, tragic for one or both players; then it descended over an all-directional firefight that turned into a tableau, melting further into milky mist till even the huge, dark silhouettes of panzers disappeared and there was only the sound of tapering fire and the wounded screaming in two languages.
Goethe was a Currahee, Ross Goethe from Nebraska, whose hatred for the Germans was more vicious than his buddies could understand. One very dark night his company was on line in a dense pine forest when he heard kraut scouts slipping toward them. In inky fog, Goethe felt a hand grip the rim of his foxhole. He ducked back before a bayonet swept from side to side like an antenna, checking to see if the hole was occupied. Goethe grabbed the wrist, yanked the German in, stabbed him repeatedly with the bayonet, then flung the dying man out in the direction whence he'd come. Nice work, said Goethe's platoon leader next morning, killing without firing your weapon and giving away your position. But finish him off next time, trooper. That kraut was gurgling all night.
THE FIRST SNOWS WERE followed by deepening cold, a more implacable killer than even the renowned German formations, which in turn came at Bastogne from all compass points. What stopped them was a centralized defense and their own chain of command, which never designated a single commander to coordinate an all-out assault on the 101st's oval perimeter. McAuliffe, however, could hoard small tank-infantry teams to rush like firemen to whichever regiment was receiving the attack of the day. Furthermore, within “the hole in the doughnut,” as the press would call it, he could mass his artillery fire on any threatened sector; what had been a major problem in the Netherlands, concentration of artillery, was a trump card in Belgium. For the first six days in Bastogne, McAuliffe had precious few howitzer rounds, but he knew how to use them, and when “Divarty” spoke, the Germans listened and rethought their plans.
Exasperated the attackers called upon their own artillery to end what had become a siege. On December 23, Lieutenant General Heinrich von Liittwitz, a monocled Prussian who commanded the panzer corps controlling most of the surrounding forces, sent two officers toward American lines under a white flag. This wasn't particularly notable; brief local truces had been carried out previously, always for evacuation of wounded from between the lines. On these occasions Screaming Eagles were grateful to rise from frozen foxholes, stretch, yawn, and even shave without drawing sniper or mortar fire.
The Germans this time had a different request, though one, by their lights, with a humanitarian aura similar to succoring the wounded. The message, written on a captured American typewriter, was from Liittwitz (identifying himself only as “the German Commander”) and addressed to “the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.” The 130-word text demanded surrender, otherwise “total annihilation” by more than a corps of German artillery. “All serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.” McAuliffe was granted two hours to “think it over” before this bombardment commenced.
McAuliffe was far too busy planning how to parry Lutt-witz's next thrust to devote two minutes, never mind two hours, to thinking over a reply. Upon being read the translation, his first words were “Aw, nuts.” In 1944 that meant “Tell them to go to hell.” No one on his staff could improve on “nuts,” so that was the message sent back to the Germans, out to the world, and into history.*
The rumor spread around the 101st perimeter as quick as the cold: the krauts had recognized futility and offered to surrender. Albers was skeptical. Yeah, we're killing a lot more of them than they are of us, but there're some pretty good enemy troops out there, not the kind to surrender. I think they'll try again.
They did that night, preceded by the first Luftwaffe air raid and the hardest of the 101st's thirty days of fighting in the Bulge was yet to come. Hard-bitten troopers brushed mud and snow off with the same sort of sardonic outlook that had allowed them to briefly consider that the krauts might be ready to surrender. If the Luftwaffe was aloft, C-47s could not be far behind.
That's exactly what was on McAuliffe's mind. Nuts was sangfroid, relished by his staff, who clapped like the audience in a nightclub when he announced his one-word reply; but they, like him, were best aware that though tactically the 101st was holding its own against 4-1 odds, logistically there was deep crisis. When surrender was refused, only two hundred howitzer rounds were available to support each of the four infantry regiments. Against a major coordinated attack, two hundred rounds could be expended in ten minutes. It had come down to this policy for artillery economy announced by G-3: only if there were “four hundred Germans in a one-hundred-yard area would howitzers be fired at them—but no more than two rounds.”
Though there was a small resupply by parachute on December 23, the shortage of small arms and machine-gun ammo was only slightly less severe than for howitzers. Orders came down that the infantry positions now occupied were the last. The perimeter had been compressed to implosion, and there was nowhere to withdraw. “Defend in place” is the military euphemism for hold at all costs. It was the order of the day on Christmas Eve, when on the firing line friends shivered with cold and shook hands as if for the last time while darkness fell. With few rounds per man, the only way to produce firepower was to get it from the enemy. Dziepak reviewed the most desirable German weapons. Stay low during their attack, kill a kraut, grab his Schmeisser, and there's your ammo resupply. And, oh, yeah, before you fire a kraut weapon, yell “Friendly” or you might get return fire from your buddies.
Christmas Day produced a lull. Down in the foxholes men could hear their counterparts singing “Silent Night” in its original German. They also broadcast Bing Crosby's “White Christmas” on a loudspeaker. Listening were troopers in shallow foxholes lined with tree boughs. As body temperature melted the frozen pine branches, water penetrated clothing. Out went wet boughs while new were gathered in, preventing cold immersion but also preventing anyone from getting more than twenty minutes of sleep. With the Germans so close, snoring was a grave offense.
The big Christmas present came the next day, delivered by air as if by Santa. Riddled by copious flak, waves of C-47s bore in to drop cargo from five hundred feet, low enough to prevent chutes from drifting into German hands. Gliders coasted in with tons of ammo. Almost every Screaming Eagle could see the daylight drop. It was all they needed to keep the faith. Soon previously muted howitzers began to cough and roar like long-unused cars. Companies of Germans had been seen roaming unconcerned around the perimeter outside small-arms range. Now there was abundant artillery to rain on their movements. Divarty's radios were swamped with calls for fire missions. One of them began, “It's like Forty-second and Broadway out there!”
December 26 was also the day Patton's 4th Armored Divi-sion made its breakthrough to Bastogne from the south. It was tough going over ice that sent tanks lurching off roads, and a third of them were lost to 88s and Tiger Royals dug in on every hill. Ralph Ingersoll described his first view of Bastogne:*
Riding through the Ardennes I wore woolen underwear, a woolen uniform, combat overalls, a sweater, a tanker field jacket, a muffler, a lined trenchcoat, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, combat boots with galoshes over them—and cannot remember ever being warm. There was a mean dampness in the air and a cutting wind that never seemed to stop.
On the edges of the town you could see, like a picture story in a book, where the German columns had broken through the perimeter defense and come right up to the edge of houses. You could see this from the burned-out panzers. They had come in one by one and been bazookaed. The trail of them was like a snake cut into little pieces, winding up the low plateau on which Bastogne stands. Here and there, black in the bright sun, were little basketfuls of charred junk, all that's left when an aircraft hits the ground at three or four hundred miles an hour.
What Ingersoll saw was the history, recorded by Colonel Harper of the 327th in his after-action report: “All we commanders at Bastogne could do was put our men on what we considered the critical ground. When that was done the battle was delivered into their hands. Whether we were to win, even survive, was then up to the individual soldier…. He stayed and froze, where he was put and often died rather than give an inch.”
Even Hitler had something to say about the defenders of Bastogne: “I should like to see the German general who would fight on with the same stubborn resistance in a situation which seemed just as hopeless.” December 26 was also a momentous day for him when his staff announced, with uncharacteristic bravery, that “we cannot force the Meuse River” (they never got closer than five miles). In an all-day conference Hitler acquiesced to fighting decisively east of the Meuse where the Bastogne salient constricted his supply lines like a finger poking into the trachea. Bastogne was to be taken with every resource in the Bulge. Overnight the 101st G-2's map sprouted with new symbols: 15th Panzer Division, Panzer Lehr, 1st SS Panzer, 3rd and 4th SS Panzer Grenadiers, Kampfgruppe Remer, and a bewildering array of lesser units, including two infantry divisions, pulling back now, contracting the Bulge to go into defense of the strategic penetration. They meant to stay—because Hitler wouldn't allow them to leave—and turned with a new intensity on Bastogne, what they called an abscess in their side.
Albers recalls: “They liked to attack just as it was getting dark. That was pretty early, maybe three-thirty or four. They'd shoot handheld flares in front of 'em. Without exposing themselves, flares illuminated where they wanted to go. We shot into the dark where the flares came from, shot right down at the ground, the snow. The flares started zooming in all directions like skyrockets on the Fourth of July. We were hitting the guys shooting the flares, and the krauts became confused about where they were headed.”
The to-and-fro in bitter cold began to take a toll, even for veterans. There had been no resupply of grit. What they had was all they had, and even with the savvy and poise developed in Normandy and Holland, it was a finite quantity. In contrast with their senior commanders' confidence, troopers were coming down with “battle rattles,” what was called shell shock in World War I, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after Vietnam. A 10th Armored man came walking by after a German attack, his helmet dripping blood. “Where you going?” a trooper asked. “I gotta get a new tank….”
Barren Duber had acquitted himself well till after Christmas. Cagey, cunning, an accomplished sniper, Duber was never more happy than when he captured German “shoe” mines, explosives enclosed in wood to defy mine detectors. He found that freezing weather deactivated their detonators, so he collected them for the thawing day when he could go out on a patrol and strew them behind German lines. But after a freezing night in the woods around Foy, Duber never thawed out himself. He shook in his foxhole from battle rattle and had to be hauled out by his armpits, shuddering like an epileptic. Now that the 101st had an umbilical cord to Brad-ley's army, Duber was evacuated, gone forever. After V-E Day, someone in I Company saw him, no longer in the 101st, driving a truck in a convoy headed for Brest. “Hey, Barren!” the trooper called. Duber looked straight ahead as though he'd never heard his name.
During the siege, a certain defiant contempt for wounds developed. The division surgical hospital, with all its doctors, had been captured in toto on the road up from Mour-melon, so till after Christmas there was little but first aid for the wounded. Frostbite and trench foot were treated by changing to larger boots if there were any available from other wounded. The only way to prevent frostbite was burlap bags wrapped around the feet or taking the well-insulated boots of dead Germans. After four winters in Russia they had the best arctic gear in the world, including, of course, white camouflage.
What the 101st had were bedclothes, sheets worn like ponchos, pillowcases over helmets, all readily donated by Belgians. One gave up a bridal dress intended for her Christmas Eve wedding. McAuliffe was so touched by the gesture that on December 26 he had a white parachute delivered to her house. With it was a note expressing his hope that she could make a new wedding dress, this time with silk. She never had the chance. That day her house was destroyed by German shelling. The bride was found dead in the rubble.
No one faked a wound. No one in I Company doubted that Duber had indeed fallen to battle rattle and could fight no longer. He'd given his all for as long as he could, more than he had to give. Men with physical wounds took pride in refusing morphine, giving it to someone worse off. Such selflessness did not find expression, however, in sympathy. There had just been too many wounds inflicted on too many men. What numbed a wounded man's buddies was his loss: one less in the squad, a wider gap to cover, a longer period of night watch for the survivors. Often a casualty's main pain was the realization that his evacuation weakened the front so long defended at such cost. Disappointed in himself for being hit, he would need to be cheered by medics, reassured that no one held a wound against him. Medics were scarce. Men knew not to call for one just because they'd been hit. One would come running and perhaps get hit himself. Use your first-aid kit, veterans told rookies; that's what it's for. Call for a medic, if you have to, after the shooting stops.
Often it took more than one wound before a man went to the facsimile of a hospital, a basement in the ruins of Bas-togne where patients lay in rows on the stone floor. The unofficial, unenviable division record for multiple wounds belonged to Charlie Eckman, a machine gunner in Second Battalion, 501st, who came to Bastogne by way of Toccoa, Normandy, and Holland. At five feet four and 120 pounds Eckman was a small target, but the Germans hit him seventeen times in six months. That was a rigorous count: several small fragments from one grenade counted as only one wound, though two bullet holes from a single Schmeisser burst were both counted. His seventeenth was a nine-millimeter slug in the ankle that drove a boot eyelet into his leg. This meant the boot had to be removed—it hadn't been for two weeks—something Eckman dreaded, and he heard from the medic, “My God, trooper, your leg's gotta come off! The foot's completely frozen!”
He went to the rear on a stretcher, the only time in seventeen he hadn't made it to an aid station on his own power. The surgeon was in the midst of amputations and had a less-than-perfect bedside manner. “You're next” was all he said to Eckman.
“No, I'm not, Doc!” he cried, and bolted out of the aid station. Medical aides tried to stop him. “Let him go,” the surgeon grumbled. “He's going to die anyway.”
Eckman was too weak to get back to his unit and Bastogne was no longer encircled, so he turned himself in at a tent hospital. He couldn't talk because of diphtheria in his throat, so he couldn't argue with a second opinion that gangrene had set in and that both legs had to come off. Eckman shook his head and whispered that all he needed was to warm up. The surgeon tried to convince him. “You don't understand son.” He ran a needle along the soles of Eckman's feet. “See? No feeling.”
“Give me a chance.”
“What do you want to do, die?” Then the surgeon was called away for another emergency. He was gone twenty minutes. Left alone, Eckman did push-ups, squat jumps, and rubbed his legs so hard the skin came off. He plunged back into bed when he heard the surgeon returning.
“Check my circulation now, Doc.” Indeed it was noticeably improved. “Gimme a couple of more days. If I'm not better then, you can have my legs.”
“You're battle-rattled, trooper. In a couple of days you'll have your dog tag between your teeth. But that's up to you. I've got plenty to do with guys who want to live.”
Whenever no medical staff was around, Eckman resumed stationary but strenous exercise, much of it all night. To do so he had to disconnect intravenous tubes, then stick them back in when doctors made their morning rounds. They were wide-eyed over his improvement:
“Eckman, this is almost a miracle. We were going to amputate your left leg above the knee and the right one below Now we can cut off the left at the knee and the right at the ankle.”
“Gimme another day, Doc.” After another night of anaerobic calisthenics, the new prognosis was even better: “It must be because you're so damned young! [Eckman was nineteen.] Great circulation. Never seen anything like it. You're going to get out of this war with just four toes off the left foot and three on the right.”
“Sir, can we talk about that tomorrow?”
But tomorrow Eckman was gone, AWOL from the hospital, and hitchhiking back to Bastogne. The division had departed for Alsace, but he joined them in Germany.
UPON FIRST ARRIVING AT division CP on the afternoon of December 27, General Taylor received the situation report from McAuliffe. “Sir, we're ready to attack” was the first sentence. Far from true, a statement of sangfroid like “nuts,” but Eisenhower had ordered an attack to seize Houffalize, Patton was eager to get on with it, and the 101st was the nearest available division to spearhead it, notwithstanding its winnowing to less than 50 percent strength and the fact that many of them, like Eckman, were holding on from sheer will so as not to let their buddies down. Stars & Stripesand every stateside newspaper bannered their defense as a matchless feat of arms.* They'd done more than anyone, Allied or Axis, could ever have expected, and more than any other division in Ike's armies, the Screaming Eagles deserved and needed relief and rest. What they got instead was fighting so vicious and unremitting that they would look back on the siege as then-easier days in the Bulge.
During the week between Christmas and New Year's Cur-rahees astride the Bastogne-Houffalize road attacked and defended on alternate days. Attacking was more difficult. The temperature was zero, the snow waist deep. They had to clear the wooded hills the Wehrmacht had occupied for weeks and fortified expertly, better than any other army in Europe could. There were log bunkers and slit-firing machine-gun nests, with overlapping fields of fire, registered on approaches by which the Germans knew the Americans would come— through dense stands of pine, with branches so low and the snow so high, a trooper couldn't help but rustle foliage as he wallowed forward; when he did the enemy saw him coming. The first action they took was to call for artillery, which they had in abundance and larger than any guns in the 101st. About thirty feet high, the forests were ideal for “tree bursts,” explosions that added splinters to shrapnel blasted down on attackers who had to close within hand-grenade range before they could detect German infantry positions. The thin-trunked trees were no protection from their fire.
American tanks, and there were plenty after New Year's, were of scant help in the battle for forests. Because of thick ice, often blanketed in snow, tanks were roadbound, ducks in a shooting gallery for well-sited 88s. In Russia the Wehr-macht had developed antitank mines that worked in snow, so fields of mines awaited American armored forces that dared venture off the narrow roads. Only on the Siegfried Line were the Germans in better defensive positions. For the attack to cut off the base of the Bulge, the 101st were like Marines assaulting Japs in palm-tree bunkers on Tarawa—with deep fog, cold, and snow giving the defenders more advantage.
Model himself visited Houffalize to ensure that no matter how hard and heavily Patton attacked from Bastogne, he would not prevent extraction of the bulk of German forces from the shrinking Bulge. Model had accomplished similar feats, even more difficult ones, in Russia, and this time he had a shorter front manned by better and better-equipped divisions. He was said to have assured Hitler that as Bastogne had been for the Americans, so too would Houffalize be a vital hub held for as long as necessary by the Wehrmacht.
Spearheading Patton's drive, it was for the 101st to prove Model wrong, but with plenty of help. Their attacking zone was narrow, about five miles wide, pinched by the 17th Airborne and 11th Armored Divisions (though both were without combat experience) on the left, the 6th Armored on the right. It was the first time in the war that the Screaming Eagles' flanks were protected. Heavy-caliber artillery salvos of an entire corps supporting them made them flinch at first, much as the ground flinched as volley after outgoing volley seemed a redux of Bastogne in reverse.
On the Bastogne-Houffalize road, the 506th and 501st attacked in combination like left and right fists. The Currahees' first objective was to recover Foy and Noville, the hamlet and town from which they'd been ordered to retreat in the first days of Bastogne. Some of their dead were still there, frozen, it seemed, like the Snow Princess waiting for love to restore them. Foy was in a hollow; whoever controlled the hills could have it, and it changed hands innumerable times. To take those hills Blues set forth into the woods.
Albers recalls: “We hated to leave our foxholes. We'd been in 'em for a while, and it had been some job digging 'em deep in the frozen ground. Then we'd put down a layer of boughs, pine mattresses we called them. They'd get wet and we'd pile on another layer. Well, the layers got so high they were almost to ground level, so I guess it was time to leave.
“It was the most snafued attack I've ever been in. As soon as we started climbing through those woods we lost sight of each other. We couldn't make any noise or the krauts would hear us. All of I Company was following a compass azimuth. That's all we had to guide by, but no one except a couple of guys beside the compass man could see where he was going.
“We heard a Mauser. One round. The krauts are damn good snipers. One of'em hit Harry Watson in the throat. He'd had his head shaved by a bullet in Normandy. He was still lucky, still alive, so two men dragged him back through the snow. It was ass deep. Captain Anderson chose the two strongest men because lugging anything extra, like a case of machine-gun ammo, made you stop and pant like somebody climbing Mount Everest. So the krauts got Harry but put three men out of action.”
Sometimes shooting, sometimes being shot at, I Company was floundering, exhausted, and most of all lost. The worst of a bad situation was the cold, not so much now but what it would be later. During the wait to find direction and objectives they could squat down, their helmets dimples on the disturbed snow, wiggle their toes, and cup a cigarette, for it was still light, not much past noon. In three, definitely no more than four hours, I Company would have to find shelter before darkness, or else the cold would disable them more than a regiment of krauts.
Silently they removed snow from boughs and pushed it into canteens. After the melt from body heat, fifteen handfuls of snow would fill a canteen. There was time for that as they awaited a decision from the CO. In the thick forest Anderson had garbled radio contact with Third Battalion, but he knew that by heading east I Company would run into the Foy-Noville road. Better there than here, for sure. He asked for volunteers for a patrol, a few good men to go ahead and see what krauts might be on the road. Inspired by the grit of Sheeran, who had turned urine yellow and staggered from jaundice, Albers volunteered. If Sheeran could stay the course, everyone could.
“Yesterday we'd been watching 'em,” Albers says. “Krauts were thick covering the road. I said, ‘Sir, I'll go down that road whistling “The Star-Spangled Banner” if you want me to, but we know damn well they're there. They're there.’ “ Anderson was as spent as his men, more so for having their lives depend on his decisions. His decision this time was for I Company to swing over to the road. Fortuitously it arrived just in time to take part in a momentous push beyond Foy That's what attacks had come to be called, pushes. The Americans would push for a while, then the Germans would push back and vice versa, back and forth in a Siberian landscape.
“We heard tanks coming from the right [south]. The sound scared us. Tanks moving always meant enemy. We parted the branches and looked at them. Shermans! Hell, says, Engel-brecht, let's get in on this.”
His platoon wallowed through snow to parallel the tankers' flank. Turrets swiveled toward them, and luckily the tank commanders recognized the tatterdemalion, improvised white camouflage of the now famous “battered bastards of Bastogne.” Artillery from both sides had destroyed Foy and cratered all the ground around it.
“We used the craters for cover. We yelled from one crater to another: ‘You shoot, I'll move.’ ‘Okay’ We'd do that like leap-frogging. That's the way we advanced. Somewhere between Foy and Noville was this big barn. We wanted it real bad because it could be our shelter for the night.”
The alternative was “tripods,” a cluster of men putting arms around one another and leaning toward the center for mutual support. As profoundly exhausted as they were, they could sleep that way for minutes till their feet told them they had to move, which they would, regaining circulation, then re-forming tripods throughout the night.
“Tankers shot up the barn till we told them to stop. We didn't want it to catch fire and burn down. There were krauts in there, they said. Yeah, we know it, but we'll get 'em out. Engelbrecht had us shoot at the windows. Scare the hell out of 'em so they'll come out without a fight. Didn't know who was in there. If it was SS, they'd go down fighting. Under our covering fire a squad went up to the barn yelling and screaming. A kraut lieutenant dumps a sheet out. We're happy as hell, but Engelbrecht thinks it's a trick if they're SS. ‘Who're we fighting?’ he asks Anderson. Latest intelligence is Volksgrenadiers— sort of the German national guard. They give up easy. Sure enough the lieutenant surrenders what's left of his platoon, three walking wounded and two ‘mortals.’ ”
Now Engelbrecht's platoon, down to fifteen men, had the barn and ground around it, but he knew the Wehrmacht's S.O.P. was to counterattack as soon as they'd lost a position. So Dziepak set up his machine gun in the hayloft for a great field of fire. It was like the upstairs of the farmhouse in Holland but without thick stone walls. If an 88 hit at the level of the loft, it would fall and with it the squad's main weapon. Better put it at ground level. No, Albers argues, all he'll see is snow before he sees a potato masher. He prevails, and the machine gun stays in the loft.
As if by script the Germans came back in a counterattack, panzers supporting like artillery. The barn roof came off as if in a tornado. Damn, it's going to be colder without that roof, but no kraut is going to sleep here tonight. Tracers were added to Albers's machine-gun belts as a statement of strength: I Company owns this barn, and trespassers will be shot. The VolL. grenadiers backed off.
“The next morning we were feeling pretty good,” Albers recalls. “Anderson had some pancakes sent up. They were frozen, felt like hubcaps. There wasn't any syrup, but some Belgian had soaked them with cognac. I've heard that's called crepes suzette. What happened next is confused in my mind.”
Albers was acting squad leader when G Company pulled out without notice on his flank. After leaving the barn, his squad was left hanging in no-man's-land, so short of men that single foxholes were more than twenty-five yards apart, within shouting distance but invisible from one another. German attack time was again twilight. There was much sudden shouting, grenades muffled by snow, a flurry of two-way fire, then silence except for the moaning wind.
The most dangerous approach in war, whether toward a friendly or enemy position, is at night. It was quiet over there, so either Albers's troopers, four of them, had held their own or krauts owned their foxholes. Albers investigated the next morning. The first thing he noticed was a bulge among the trees, a kraut silhouette. Easy to drill it, but it was so stationary, no condensed breath coming out of it. A frozen corpse from an earlier fight, Albers decided, and crept on. There was another snow-laden statue, this one American; it seemed his rifle pointed at him. No visible exhalations, so Albers continued silently.
One by one he found recently occupied foxholes, M-l clips, expended shells in the snow, some blood around the foxholes and within grenade-range depressions in the snow, depressions containing krauts. Albers tore away white camouflage smocks; yes, there was the double lightning bolt of the SS on the collar. Forensically he looked for more evidence of what happened. The krauts hadn't removed their own corpses, so they certainly wouldn't have done so for American dead. Therefore Albers's four troopers, three of them rookies, must be prisoners. Indeed, there was an oval of tramped-down snow; easy to imagine it to be where the four had been herded together by the krauts and led away. A narrow trail through the snow led back toward German lines.
“I felt like a mother who'd lost my kids when the house burned down. A long time ago I could have been promoted to squad leader, but I liked being a machine gunner and didn't want to be responsible for other guys. Now I'd lost four … Jankoviac, Clever.
“I'd rather defend anytime, but I was glad when we started attacking again. The platoon was down to squad size. We were like the survivors of a shipwreck, sad and glad both. Sort of celebrating being alive because no one had a right to be, and because everything was moving forward. We could hear big outgoing shells headed for Houffalize. That was the divison objective, where we could stand down.”
Where the artillery hit, lights went on like a pinball machine. Sink pressed his battalions to follow the glow. All the Currahees had to do was get up there and the game was over.
“The weather was clear, and P-47s were swarming like bees. They must have gotten new high-powered rockets. We'd see panzers flip into the air like toys. In Holland and up till then the 101st had been pretty much by itself. Now we felt the whole army and air corps with us. We had tanks alongside. We learned to work with 'em like a good basketball team. Troopers could see in all directions and pointed out targets. There was this 88 a tank commander couldn't pick out. We kept pointing, faster and faster because the 88 was turning toward his tank. We dove in the snow just as the tank gunner saw it and got off a round. He beat the kraut to the draw like in a Western movie. Bang, our shell goes out, boom on target. The 88's muzzle went down like a flat tire. We cheered and beat the side of the tank. But that was too close. One of our officers banged on the hatch and told the tank commander to get his head out so he could see what we were spotting.
“The tankers liked the way we went out ahead of 'em with bazookas. They said no one else they'd worked with did that. Killing panzers was the tankers' main job, but with the end in sight we were going to get on to Houffalize with or without 'em. We were like rabid dogs. A tank battalion commander asked a 501st officer, ‘Where do you get these men?’ From a dog pound!
“Cyr, Sheeran, and I were leading, huffm' and puffin', heads down with 50-calibers outgoing overhead. Engelbrecht had just pulled some krauts out of their holes. He spoke German and was a great surrender maker. Germans are conditioned to take orders, and he'd yell orders at 'em as he charged. 'Raus! Raus!' ['Out! Out!'], and up would come some krauts. Then he 'd whack 'em in the ass with the stock of his tommy gun. 'Schnell! Schnell!' ['Fast! Fast!'], and they run off to the rear with their hands up. Engelbrecht knew their ranks. If one of them knew something, he was on his back in the snow with a trooper knife at his throat. Ja, his battalion CP was over there! The three of us started that way. Cyr's knocked backwards. Sniper. The bullet hit his metal cigarette case. He's stunned but okay
“The krauts were protecting that CP. We heard a big rumble. This Tiger Royal rolls out like a tyrannosaur. Our supporting tanks stop and take cover, but we took him on. I get a bazooka and hit him. Trouble is the Tiger Royal had chain-link fencing draped all over his hull. Someone else hits him with the same result. We peel off and wave our tanks up. Hell, their 90-millimeter don't do much more. The Tiger rules. Anderson must have been watching because in comes the air corps. That wasn't always good. With everything so mixed up it seemed we got plastered as often by air strikes as the krauts. This time a P-47 identifies the target and nicks it with rockets. The Tiger had enough. That whole action was like a video game. He pulled back and we moved into this CP bunker as big as my living room in Muskegon. It was hard to get us to attack anymore after the warmth of that bunker.”
IN MARCH OF 1945 the 101st was back in Mourmelon. Word got around that some Currahees whose stalag had just been liberated were in a nearby hospital. Bullying the hospital staff, Albers's squad obtained the names. Among them were Jankoviac and Clever, whose capture had been recorded in the bloodied snow near Foy.
“We got their ward number, charged in there with muddy boots, told the head nurse to go to hell.” They were going to see their buddies even if that meant the staff became patients in the hospital. “We looked around, went down the rows of beds. They all looked at us and we looked at them but didn't recognize anybody. Then one of them said, ‘Ed!’”
Albers stared at him, but it still didn't register—Jankoviac, a buddy from Michigan. He was a skeleton, with hair like mutant crabgrass, lice bites that looked like smallpox. Next to him was Clever. He'd been a pretty big guy; now he was nothing. Their eyes were like goggles, bulging and watery. Albers could identify them only by their voices, raspy but still Currahee.
“I'd seen a lot of combat by then, but seeing them I knew I hadn't seen the worst of the war.”
* It took three more days before General Taylor broke into Bastogne with Patton's tanks led by Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams. Years later the author asked Taylor how he would have replied to Liittwitz had he returned in time for the surrender ultimatum. Taylor's answer was that because this was an international communication he would have replied in French, the proper language of diplomacy, and would have said something like, “These are still the Ardennes, but this is no longer 1940.”
* The press described the linkup of the 4th Armored and the 101st as a “relief” or “rescue” of the paratroopers. General McAuliffe took umbrage at such terms, declaring, “We resent any implication that we were rescued or needed rescue…. I know of no man inside Bastogne who ever doubted our ability to hold it.” Not so with men on the perimeter, however, who had many reasons and more occasions to disagree with him.
* Among the accolades that flowed into Bastogne by print and radio from Allied commanders, even some fighting in the Pacific, the most poignant was from another division that experienced a drastically different fate in a similar situation: Arnhem. The message: “Congratulations to all ranks of the 101 Airborne on their magnificent defense of Bastogne. We are full of admiration.” It was signed by the CG of the British 1st Airborne Division.