18

Golden Lions

OF ALL THE attacks in the Ardennes, one of the most dramatic was on the patch of rolling high ground known as the Schnee (Snow) Eifel where Major-General Alan W. Jones’ 106th Golden Lions Division were deployed. Jones, fifty-one, was born in Glendale, Washington, graduated from its university as a chemical engineer and was commissioned in 1917. Although anxious to see action in France, Jones shared the fate of Eisenhower and Bradley in remaining in the USA for the remaining months of the First World War, despite attempts to be sent overseas. Alert-looking, with a fashionable Clark Gable pencil-line moustache, in 1943 Jones raised the new 106th Infantry Division at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, trained it and took it to war. It comprised the usual three infantry regiments, three 105mm artillery battalions, one of heavy 155mm howitzers, and support units.

In the years since the Bulge a degree of ‘scapegoating’ has been levelled at the leaders of the Golden Lions, with frequent observations along the lines of ‘not only did the enlisted men lack any combat experience, but most of its officers did as well. Even General Jones, the division commander, had never heard a shot fired in anger.’¹ Much of what subsequently happened to the Golden Lions was predetermined by events before it left the United States, however. The fact that Jones ‘had never heard a shot fired in anger’ would have little to do with his command abilities, as Bradley and Eisenhower aptly demonstrated, though other officers and men, scattered through the levels of command had seen recent action in the Mediterranean and France. Several had received Bronze and Silver Stars for their valour, when serving with other units, before arrival in Belgium.

Jones was one of a group of officers who had come to George C. Marshall’s attention as the future of the US Army, which also included Eisenhower, Bradley, the SHAEF chief of staff Walter Bedell ‘Beetle’ Smith, J. Lawton Collins and Matthew Ridgway. Considered a high-flyer, he joined the staff of General Lesley J. McNair’s Army Ground Forces Command in Washington, DC, and was rapidly promoted to brigadier-general. Soon, he was appointed Assistant Division Commander of the 90th Infantry Division, clearly being groomed for higher things, and gained his own formation in March 1943. Hard training followed until the Golden Lions were considered ready to enter combat. However Jones’s formation began to be ‘raided’ for trained personnel because of higher than expected casualties in the Italian and Normandy campaigns. Several tranches of junior officers and NCOs were transferred out to Europe with the result that, by August 1944, a staggering total of 7,247 men had been removed, among them the sub-unit leaders who would have bonded the division in combat. Training replacements, who knew their men and would command equal respect, would take almost as much time again. As one historian of the campaign noted, ‘regardless of how well trained a unit is, it cannot lose over 60 percent of its best and brightest and retain a high level of combat efficiency’.² It is impossible to believe that, had the Golden Lions deployed to France in July–August, as originally scheduled, with most of their original personnel, the debacle of December would have happened just the same.

Numbers were made up by reassigning men from coastal artillery, anti-aircraft, and rear-echelon service units; many volunteered to transfer, others had no option. In addition, 1,100 recruits from the Air Corps and 1,200 from the Army Specialised Training Program (ASTP) were redirected to the 106th. By December 1943, the ASTP had enrolled about 150,000 bright young scholars into college courses with the intention of producing highly skilled, qualified young officers for the armed forces. It was also a subtle bit of horse-trading with American universities that were resistant to the lowering of the draft age from twenty to eighteen, which they considered would endanger their institutions. Because of combat casualties, in 1944 the ASTP courses were scaled down and the aspirant officer-scholars absorbed into infantry divisions as enlisted men. Among those who were selected for ASTP courses but were re-employed in combat was future New York City mayor Ed Koch, who fought on the northern flank of the Bulge with 104th Division; Henry Kissinger, who arrived in the Bulge with 84th Division; actor-director Mel Brooks, who likewise served in the Ardennes with 78th Infantry Division; and author Kurt Vonnegut Jr, whom we shall meet shortly with the 106th Division.

With a paper strength of roughly 700 officers, 40 warrant officers and 12,500 enlisted men, Jones’s division passed the Statue of Liberty on 21 October 1944, arrived in England six days later and were soon shipped over to France. PFC Frederick Smallwood was with HQ Company of 423rd Infantry Regiment and arrived in Le Havre on 1 December where he received his first ‘war currency. It was not real French francs, but GI issue. It looked like play money, different sizes and different colors for each denomination. It was all paper even down to the one franc notes. The exchange rate was about 50 francs to the dollar. I was now getting $65 a month as I had received my PFC stripe and gotten my Good Conduct Medal while we were in England, plus we now received $10 per month extra for overseas pay, less insurance. I bought a money order and sent most of it home for Daddy to put in the bank.’³

The division was immediately trucked along the Red Ball Express route to the Ardennes in order to acclimatise to combat and the European weather, completing a relief in place with 2nd Infantry Division by 12 December. The latter were amazed that the Golden Lions were still wearing their neckties in a combat zone. The ‘Ghost Front’ was a perfectly logical place to put the newly arrived division, as comments from the departing veterans of the 2nd Indianhead Divisions made to the Golden Lions, that they were ‘entering a rest camp’, illustrated. ‘It has been very quiet up here and your men will learn the easy way,’ Colonel Boos of the outgoing 38th Infantry Regiment had said to the incoming Golden Lions when the latter took over their twenty-two-mile sector of the line.⁴

‘The defensive positions were well-prepared, the product of two months’ work,’ wrote a 2nd Division officer who had overseen their construction. ‘Almost all foxholes had log cover, and the troops had dry sleeping quarters in pillboxes or in squad huts constructed from logs.’⁵ PFC Smallwood recalled his log bunker ‘half dug in the ground and half-logs above with logs and dirt for a roof and a blanket for a door. We had navy type cots inside and a bottle of gasoline with a rag wick for a light, of course it smoked. We had a two-man OP foxhole, dug chest deep in the ground, with a log roof also to keep the snow off us. There was snow all over the ground and it kept falling. Being from the south, I was not used to snow or that much cold.’⁶

George R. Kester, from Albia, Iowa, had just finished junior college when his draft notice arrived in January 1943. Following basic training, he was assigned to the 527th Army Engineers Light Pontoon Company and trained to build Bailey bridges. Kester’s engineer unit sailed out of New York on 1 September, arriving in Normandy two weeks later. On reaching Belgium by truck convoy it was attached to Middleton’s VIII Corps. Kester, twenty-one, spent the next two months on ‘engineering tasks such as road maintenance, logging [building corduroy roads made of logs], constructing Bailey bridges and building squad huts for the 2nd and 106th Infantry Divisions’ up on the Schnee Eifel. His most valuable weapon was his ‘General Purpose Vehicle or Jeep, which was liked by everyone who used it. It was useful as a point vehicle on a motorized march. You could use it as a command car. Throw two or three litters on and it was an ambulance. It was used for a scout car and went ahead of a convoy where it left off road guides at key points. It was a great stand-up bar for eating a can of C-rations or a box of K-rations. Its motor could even warm up the can! Because it was an all-terrain vehicle, it simply went around traffic grid locks.’⁷ Armoured and cavalry units called them ‘Peeps’.

Snowfalls and a low ceiling added to the sense of a dormant front, where for the previous ten weeks there had been only light patrol activity, just as for the 28th Division to their south. The wintry climate took its toll straightaway – this affected every unit along the front – with cases of sickness and trench foot caused by the icy, driving rain and muddy terrain. Weather apart, the 2,000-feet-high plateau of Schnee Eifel was challenging terrain to defend, and not simply an endless carpet of pine woods covering the gentle, rolling landscape that some historians and movie-makers have suggested.

Sergeant John P. Kline of Glen Ayre, Indiana, was drafted into the army aged eighteen, one week after completing his high school education. Enrolled on an ASTP degree course, he was transferred into the Golden Lions in March 1944 and found himself in Company ‘M’ of the 423rd Regiment, assigned to positions along a tree-covered ridge on the Schnee Eifel. His heavy weapons company was equipped with 81mm mortars and water-cooled .30-inch calibre machine guns. He remembered of his first night on 12 December, ‘I can personally confirm that a snow covered tree stump will actually move. That is, if you stare at it long enough – and if you are a young, nineteen-year-old machine-gun squad leader peering into the darkness towards the enemy through a slit in a machine-gun bunker. Every sound was amplified. Every bush could be an enemy crawling towards you. Your eyes grow bleary from staring into the darkness. You are happy when the relief crew shows up. The next day, you take a good long look at the stump that moved during the night. You take note of all unusual objects, and then things start to settle down.’⁸

When building the Westwall in 1938–9, the Germans had found this sector just as challenging when considering where to site a series of worthwhile, interconnected defences. They opted instead for a sparse line of bunkers in which mobile artillery units could shelter, and situated their main positions further east, deeper into Germany, where visible lines of approach were covered by anti-tank ditches and rows of ‘dragon’s teeth’ concrete obstacles – our classic image of the Siegfried Line. Both sides were aware that on Jones’s northern flank was the Losheim gap, a five-mile-wide patch of very different terrain where the road network was much improved. It had been used historically as an invasion route into what is today southern Belgium and north-east France. In that sector, Jones placed Colonel Mark A. Devine’s 14th Cavalry Group, attached to his division.

They used their mobility to cover the vital roads of this vulnerable sector, a sure bet for an attack – not that one was anticipated. Devine owned the 32nd and 18th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadrons, each battalion-sized outfit designed for speed, normally equipped with jeeps and M-8 armoured cars, with the latter Squadron in the line. Middleton was nevertheless worried enough about Losheim to site eight battalions of his field artillery, representing most of his corps guns, to cover the sector with pre-registered fire. The gap was doubly vulnerable, as it also represented the boundary of Middleton’s VIII Corps and the northern V Corps of Major-General Leonard T. Gerow. Considered ‘rock solid’ and unflappable, ‘Gee’ Gerow, who had graduated from the Infantry School with Omar Bradley and the Command and General Staff College with Eisenhower, was the first corps commander ashore on D-Day. If the northern Ardennes needed an unflinching commander, trusted by both Bradley and Ike, then Gerow was the perfect choice.

As Cota had found further south, because of his frontage, Jones was obliged to deploy all three infantry regiments to the front; normal military custom would be to keep one back as a reserve. His chief concern was that two of his forward regiments, the 422nd and 423rd, both in exposed positions on the Schnee Eifel, could be surrounded by attacks to either flank. In the south, a three-mile gap yawned between the Schnee Eifel and the positions of Jones’s third outfit, the 424th Infantry. In the gap lay the town of Bleialf. In order to surround the two forward regiments, all the Germans would have to do was control the Schonberg to Bleialf road.

To hold the little town and plug the gap between regiments, like their 2nd Division predecessors, the Golden Lions had to deploy a mix of support units. The 423rd’s Anti-tank Company, which fielded nine 57mm guns, and other units, acted as infantry, and occupied the town and immediate vicinity, along with a company from the 820th Tank Destroyer (towed) Battalion. The nearby railway station was held by a troop detached from the 18th Cavalry, with their armoured cars. Regular patrols made contact with the 424th Infantry further south, but they were out of view, half a mile away through heavy forest. The Bleialf garrison made repeated requests for more mines, barbed wire and ammunition of all types to strengthen the defences. More, they were told, would be available on 16 December.

Up on the Schnee Eifel itself, Colonel George L. Descheneaux’s 422nd Infantry Regiment occupied the northern sector of the high ground, his southern neighbour being Colonel Charles C. Cavander’s 423rd. The tiny Bleialf garrison bridged the gap with Jones’s other infantry formation, 424th Regiment, led by Colonel Alexander D. Reid, with his headquarters in Winterspelt. Reid held the front line as far south as Lützkampen, the boundary with Cota’s Bloody Bucket division. Delbert P. Berninghaus from West Bend, Iowa, was a newly promoted corporal with Descheneaux’s 422nd Infantry. On the Schnee Eifel he was assigned lookout duty in an OP, remembering, ‘The forest of oak, beech, and fir trees was behind us, a vast white field of snow spread out before us. The snow clung to the trees and covered the terrain. Occasionally, we would catch sight of one of our scouts, dressed all in white to camouflage their movements, steal across the field. They were called “white cow” patrols.’ ⁹

In Cavander’s regiment, Sergeant John Kline remembered his own company commander had set up his headquarters in ‘one of the enormous Siegfried Line bunkers. He had taken a room several flights down. The command bunker was on a crest of a hill. The firing apertures faced west towards Belgium, the backside towards the present German lines. There were steep slopes on either side, with signs and white caution tape warning of minefields. There was a pistol belt and canteen hanging in one of the trees on the slope. Apparently, some GI had wandered into the minefield.’¹⁰

At thirty-two, Descheneaux was one of the youngest colonels in the US Army and considered a high-flyer; his HQ was in the village Gasthaus at Schlausenbach. Cavander, commanding from the village of Buchet, near Oberlascheid, was a forty-seven-year-old Texan who had served in the Argonne in 1918 as a PFC, subsequently winning a place to West Point; General Jones’s only son, Alan W. Jones Jr, was an officer in one of his battalions. Jones Sr put his headquarters in St Vith at the St Josef’s Convent, formerly a school that had been used as the local German HQ, about twelve miles from his forward positions, and no more than forty minutes’ drive in a jeep, using the road network of the day.

Then numbering around 2,000 souls, St Vith has since quadrupled in size, but remains the hub of six roads. The most important of these ran via Houffalize to Bastogne, nearly thirty miles to the south; another twelve miles north, to Malmedy, while a third stretched a similar distance west to Vielsalm. Additionally, the only railway line along the entire front that crossed from the Reich into Belgium passed through St Vith. Thus for Field Marshal Model, the roads and railway leading to the town represented one of two main supply routes (MSR) for Herbstnebel, the other being through Bastogne. Model had hedged his bets in the planning processes, for St Vith lay in the centre of the Fifth and Sixth Armies’ thrusts. If necessary, either could incorporate the town into its advance, for both would need to be supplied through it. Manteuffel assessed that the success or failure of Herbstnebel would be measured by the speed with which St Vith was captured. Accordingly, St Vith’s retention was as vital to the Americans as its capture was to the Germans.

Jones was uneasy about his two forward regiments, as had been his predecessor, Walter M. Robertson. The latter had asked Middleton back in November if he could withdraw his exposed units, and although the VIII Corps commander agreed, Hodges and Bradley refused, citing the argument that these positions represented a penetration of the Siegfried Line.¹¹ Thus, their men stayed at the front, watching from observation posts by day and sometimes patrolling the terrain at night. Corporal Berninghaus of the 422nd on his first night patrol remembered ‘the winter stretched out its fingers touching us with cold. I wore my combat boots, field jacket, and helmet with liner for protection from the elements. We had no overcoats or overshoes as we stood in the wet snow, stood, watched, listened, then moved on to repeat the cycle in another location. The snow was wet and heavy as it clung to the branches and sides of the trees. I can still see in my mind’s eye the night, moonlit, crisp, cold and silent and then I heard a sound. I froze. Hearing the sound again, I called out in German, Wer ist das? [Who is that?]. No one answered me. I knew, despite my fear, my ears had not played a trick on me; the sound was real. I held my position; not moving a muscle. It came again. It was then I knew my fear; heavy snow was being pulled from the branches by the force of gravity and dropping to the ground. The footsteps I heard were not those of the enemy, but those of the snow stepping down from the trees. Relieved and thankful I rose from the ground to my feet and again started walking.’¹²

Across the divide, Jones’s opponents, Baron von Manteuffel and General Walter Lucht, commanding LXVI Corps, had come to the same conclusion about the Americans’ vulnerable positions on the Schnee Eifel. Lucht instructed Oberst Günther Hoffmann-Schönborn of the 18th Volksgrenadiers to deploy two of his infantry regiments at either end of the high ground to surround the Americans, then move forward and take St Vith with his third. To the south, Oberst Friedrich Kittel’s 62nd Volksgrenadier(Moonshine) Division, with his Hitler Youth from Düsseldorf and Cologne, was to seize bridges over the Our at Steinebrück and screen the southern approaches to St Vith, opposite the US 424th Infantry. His attack would be preceded as elsewhere, with a 05.30 a.m. bombardment, followed by infantry assaults.

Though the region was peaceful, at night PFC Smallwood of the 423rd, like the rest of his regiment, ‘could hear all kinds of noises. There were sounds drifting across the valley, of wheels turning and grinding, and motors running, which indicated to us lots of activity, but what did we know, we were new to combat and anything we heard sounded ominous. We told the officers what we had heard and they reported this back to Regimental HQ … They said it was probably the Germans playing the noises over a PA system to harass us.’¹³

At 05.32 a.m., the S-3 of 423rd Regiment radioed, ‘We’re receiving another bunch of artillery fire in our sector. We haven’t seen this much activity since we’ve been here. My S-2 [intelligence officer] has been listening in on the division net and tells me others are getting hit. Please keep us advised on what’s going on.’¹⁴ Minutes later, at 05.45 a.m., the 14th Cavalry announced the presence of ground troops: ‘We are receiving all types of artillery, mortar and rocket fire on our forward positions. Lasting about fifteen minutes, the Command Post of the 18th Cavalry in Manderfeld received approximately 100 rounds of medium and heavy artillery fire. No report of ground attacks so – [changes subject] The 2nd Platoon, Troop ‘C’ 18th Cavalry in Krewinkel, reports a large enemy column approaching his position. Apparently the enemy doesn’t know his unit is there and Lt. Farrens is holding fire until they get within twenty yards.’¹⁵

Despite losing most of his wire communications to the opening barrage, from radio reports General Jones in St Vith soon realised the Volksgrenadier attacks amounted to a general assault along the length of his wafer-thin forward lines. He was not immune from the shelling, experiencing some of the longer range warheads (from railway guns) landing in St Vith itself. The Golden Lions’ headquarters at St Josef’s Convent had only just established themselves and had yet to settle into a routine before being overwhelmed by multiple reports from nearly every unit within the formation. By 06.00 a.m., the eighth report in the division’s signal log in as many minutes was reporting the first ground combat. ‘From S-3, 14th Cavalry Group: “Large enemy force is attacking Troop ‘A’ in Roth and Kobscheid and Troop ‘C’ in Krewinkel. The enemy troops are pushing hard and both our Troops are engaging with all their weapons at this time. Lt. Farrens, Platoon Leader of 3rd Platoon, Troop ‘C’ 18th Cavalry in Krewinkel reports they’re killing a lot of Germans”.’¹⁶ Farrens beat off his attackers but not before one of them shouted in perfect English, ‘Take a ten-minute break. We’ll be back!’ ‘We’ll be waiting for you, you son-of-a-bitch!’ replied Farrens.

All the earliest reports of infantry incursions came from the 14th Cavalry on the northern flank, between Losheim and the Schnee Eifel; most of Hoffmann-Schönborn’s 18th Volksgrenadiers were moving round to outflank Jones’s two forward regiments and there were few grenadiers left to feint or demonstrate against the fronts of the 422nd and 423rd Infantry. The forward troops up on the Schnee Eifel heights saw almost no action throughout 16 December, as most of the combat took place miles off to their flanks, as PFC Smallwood of the 423rd remembered: ‘My immediate area was never attacked,’ he said. But perhaps some clever opponents infiltrated the lines for later, when he was on guard duty in his observation post, ‘a big blond lieutenant came walking down the trail and asked me where Company ‘A’ was. I told him that I didn’t know, which was the truth, so he asked if Company ‘C’ was farther down the trail. Again I answered him if he wanted to go into Company HQ that they could tell him. He replied “No, he would just go on down the trail”. I’m not sure how good his English was or exactly how he sounded but, to me being from Georgia, all the soldiers from “up north” talked funny.’¹⁷

Middleton’s first message to Jones was at 06.32 a.m: ‘Enemy ground units are using searchlights, bouncing the light off clouds to provide artificial moonlight. North of the 106th Infantry Division, the 99th Infantry Division is under heavy attack. A patrol the 99th sent to gain contact with 14th Cavalry Group, reported the Losheim Gap was overrun with enemy troops. That was the last report from the patrol and it appears they were killed or captured.’¹⁸

Meanwhile, at first light, Reid’s 424th Regiment in the south reported a long line of German skirmishers to their front. They seemed inexperienced and ‘fired their weapons wildly without regard for specific targets. They also appeared to be either drunk or doped.’ Some of the 424th were challenged in other ways. PFC Jim D. Forsythe, a former ASTP student and latterly runner with Company ‘A’ in Reid’s regiment, recalled being billeted in the village of Lommersweiller in various houses. He was issued only forty rounds of ammunition for his M-1 Garand rifle; this equated to five eight-round clips, but, as Forsythe observed, ‘At this time we did not anticipate a battle and forty rounds appeared to be more than adequate … by the evening our forty rounds were gone within a few minutes.’ ¹⁹

By contrast an experienced GI recorded of the same time, ‘I had thrown away my gas mask, had an ample supply of toilet paper inside my helmet, and my pockets were stuffed with “K” rations, candle stubs, cigarettes, grenades and two 2½-pound blocks of TNT complete with fuse to blow myself a hole in the frozen ground, if necessary. I had my good old M-1 with the regulation belt load of eight clips ball, two clips A[rmour]P[iercing], two extra bandoliers of ammo (each carrying six more clips), bayonet, canteen, first-aid pouch, plus three bazooka rounds.’²⁰ This equated to 176 rounds of Garand ammunition. After the eight rounds had been fired, the Garand automatically ejected the empty clip with an audible ‘ping’, and the Ardennes forest floors are still littered with the old clips.

The 424th’s opponents were the Hitler Youth from Kittel’s 62nd Volksgrenadier (Moonshine) Division, led by Leutnant Kurt Schwerdtfeger, who was adjutant of the 164th Grenadier Regiment under the legendary thirty-six-year-old Oberst Arthur Jüttner. The latter, already bearer of a Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, was one of the few to have escaped the collapse of Army Group Centre (he trekked for 300 miles with five soldiers), though nearly all in his old regiment had been killed or captured. I interviewed Schwerdtfeger, also highly decorated, at his home in Biedenkopf in 1994, whence he’d retired after a career as a lawyer in Munich. His background was typical of many junior officers in 1944. After compulsory service in the RAD, he’d joined his father’s old infantry regiment and served in Poland as a corporal and in France as a sergeant. Commissioned soon after, he led a platoon into Russia but was badly wounded twice, losing the use of both hands, necessitating extensive hospitalisation until he voluntarily returned to the front in 1944, aged twenty-five.

Found on the body of a dead German, this image was given to the author at St Vith on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the offensive, 16 December 1994, by a former GI from the US 424th Infantry Regiment of the ‘Golden Lions’ Division. The boys on this Hitlerjugend camp were drafted into the 62nd VolksGrenadier Division and in their first battle most died, in a hail of artillery fire at Winterspelt. (Author’s collection)

Schwerdtfeger recalled particularly the fate of his young conscripts: ‘they’d had minimal training and were still just boys; some openly cried with fear before this, their first and last battle’. As each wave of his former Hitlerjugend were blasted by American artillery, ‘our line would waver, but with strong exhortations from my NCOs to “remember the Fatherland”, we got them to reform and continue,’ he recalled, still visibly distressed by the memory. ‘Some of my NCOs resorted to shouting and blowing whistles, which reminded the frightened Hitler Youths of discipline they had learned on their summer camps.’ Eventually they continued forward. ‘One of my boys had brought along his HJ trumpet, which he played to urge his comrades into battle, until American fire cut him down.’²¹

Harry F. Martin Jr, with Company ‘L’ of the 424th, witnessed ‘hundreds of shadowy heads bobbing up and down, coming over the crest of the hill … They acted like they were drunk or on drugs. They came over the hill screaming and shrieking. Their shrill screams went right through my head. I was absolutely terrified. They had already outflanked our company, and now they were coming to finish us off. In the middle of this terrifying battle, I heard a very confident calm voice inside my head say, “squeeze the trigger”. I instantly calmed down, took careful aim at one of the charging Germans … and squeezed the trigger. He flung his arms over his head and fell down … At this moment I was a veteran combat soldier … [Eventually] The battle was over. After such intense fighting it was very strange how suddenly the battle ended, how quiet everything had become … I had conquered my worst fears and stood to fight the enemy.’²² These observations of possible German drug use were correct. Since at least May 1940, the Wehrmacht had routinely issued its soldiers with Pervitin tablets (made from methamphetamine, commonly known today as crystal meth). Tested on inmates at Sachsenhausen and Dachau, the pills enabled the Reich’s soldiers to fight for longer and without rest.²³ In my interview, the former Leutnant Schwerdtfeger was reluctant to discuss the use of any stimulants by his troops.

An hour later, pressure was evident against the boundary of 423rd and 424th Regiments, as the former’s commander, Colonel Cavander, was on the radio:

Enemy advancing on Bleialf is threatening to cut off Troop ‘B’, 18th Cavalry and I [pauses] Enemy is now in Bleialf, Repeat, enemy are in Bleialf now! They wiped out one of my platoons defending there and I urgently need permission to use my 2nd Battalion so I can launch a counterattack. I fully understand that it is part of the division reserve, but the Bleialf situation is serious and is a threat to the division’s defence. Have alerted Service Company and Cannon Company to move to the support of Bleialf. I’ll try and do my best with what I have, but if we want to kick those people out, I need my 2nd Battalion released to me now!²⁴

Since around 06.15 a.m., the Bleialf defenders had been hit from three directions by hundreds of ghostly looking Volksgrenadiers, who emerged out of the fog in their white snowsuits. Cavander’s seeming panic reflected his awareness that, should the Germans (they were Hoffmann-Schönborn’s 293rd Volksgrenadier Regiment) manage to push beyond Bleialf, then a good road to St Vith would be open and the GIs on the Schnee Eifel surrounded.

In the north, Descheneaux’s 422nd Regiment also reported German troops in white snowsuits, supported by assault guns, attacking Auw and then his headquarters in Schlausenbach. Initially, the division’s leaders responded as Jones had trained them, committing units from the division’s small reserves to threatened areas, all the while keeping Middleton at VIII Corps in Bastogne abreast of developments. Meanwhile, Jones sent his Assistant Divisional Commander, Brigadier-General Herbert T. Perrin, forward to Winterspelt, near the boundary between 423rd and 424th Regiments, where he was able to exert some calm and control the application of reserves.

This is when Bradley’s gamble of using Middleton to garrison almost the entire Ardennes was exposed, for VIII Corps was so thinly spread that it had precious few assets with which to help Jones. At 11.20 a.m., Middleton released a battalion of his corps engineers for use as riflemen, and Brigadier-General William H. Hoge’s Combat Command ‘B’ (CCB) of the 9th Armored Division, to the Golden Lions – but they were to be committed only on Middleton’s orders. CCB had originally been slated to assist the 2nd Division in their assault on the Roer dams, hence their presence in the area; their colleagues of CCA had already been sucked into the fighting alongside Barton’s 4th Ivy Division, down in Luxembourg.

By 11.45 a.m. Jones had released a battalion to help Colonel Reid’s 424th Regiment in the south, and at midday one of the division’s engineer companies was deployed as infantry to help reassert control over Bleialf, two-thirds of which was now in German hands. Around noon, Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick W. Nagle, the 423rd’s regimental executive officer, assumed overall command of the vital Bleialf sector. Aided by artillery support, GIs, including the engineers, cooks, clerks and military policemen, counter-attacked their opponents and by mid-afternoon had snatched seventy-five German prisoners from the little town.

The much-battered cavalry troop belonging to Colonel Devine were eventually authorised to withdraw from their lonely outpost in the railway station and support the 424th Regiment near Winterspelt. This still left a two-mile gap about which Jones could do nothing for the time being, unless CCB of the Ninth Armored arrived early. At the same time defensive fire from his field artillery batteries dried up when they came under attack, as Descheneaux of the 422th Regiment in the north reported: ‘The 589th and the 592nd Field Artillery Battalions are both under artillery and ground, Repeat, ground attack. The artillerymen are defending their guns and holding, but obviously they can’t provide much fire support if they have to defend their firing positions from ground attacks.’²⁵

This was disastrous, for the only immediate fire support the Golden Lions could receive was from their own artillery, the 105mm guns having a maximum range of about six miles, and their single battalion of 155s, nine miles. Once on the move, the cannon were silent, and some batteries in any case withdrew beyond range, so as to be out of harm’s way from a German ground assault. Their accuracy relied on forward artillery observers and spotter planes – but the latter were unable to fly in the grey weather.

At about this time in 424th’s southern sector, an officer from Company ‘K’ took possession of a map case worn by a wounded German officer. It contained details of Operation Greif, the employment of German troops wearing US uniforms, and was rushed back to Jones’s headquarters in St Vith, the first confirmation of this ploy. An hour further on and Jones’s headquarters had to admit to Middleton at 1.16 p.m., ‘Due to the tactical situation in this sector, the 106th Infantry Division no longer has the capability to maintain physical contact with the 99th Infantry Division, or V Corps.’²⁶ This was a tragic admission that their front had been penetrated successfully and a gap created in the north, which the Germans would not be slow to exploit. Middleton and Jones would be able to do very little about this in the immediate short term, due to their lack of sizeable reserve formations. Jones meanwhile threw in most of the rest of his paltry divisional forces later in the afternoon, as other areas were threatened. The 422nd in the north had committed its own regimental reserve early but requested extra help from the division at 5.00 p.m. Jones was aware that with one breakthrough in the north, all the Germans needed to do was punch through at Bleialf in the south, and two-thirds of his division would be swept away in the ensuing chaos.

By early evening, at 6.05 p.m., the 106th’s divisional artillery commander, Brigadier-General L.T. McMahon, had ordered his guns to move back: ‘To COs of the 589th and 592th Field Artillery Battalions: “You will, Repeat, will break contact with the enemy and begin displacing as soon as possible. The 589th will go into position three miles south of Schönberg and the 592nd will displace to St Vith”.’²⁷ At the same time, Hoge of Combat Command ‘B’ arrived at St Vith, whereupon Jones told him to counter-attack and clear the Losheim gap the following morning. In much older age Hoge remembered, ‘I was making a reconnaissance at Monschau, I saw an attack come over against the 99th Division … Then I got a message to call corps – I was attached to V Corps at that time – as soon as I could. They told me that I had been reassigned to VIII Corps and was to go back to St Vith … A new division had just come over, the 106th. Well, that division had lost two of its regiments in the attack [they had yet to lose them at the time Hoge was describing, on the 16th] and was a shambles. But I got there, reported in to the commanding general [Jones]. He was jittery and knew nothing.’ ²⁸

By 8.00 p.m., Middleton had updated Jones on the wider situation: ‘Enemy attacking 110th Infantry Regiment just east of Clervaux. Men on R and R [Rest and Relaxation] are being organised for defence of the town. Enemy artillery is falling on Clervaux.’²⁹ At this stage Middleton in Bastogne told Jones by phone that he was sending him Brigadier-General Robert W. Hasbrouck’s entire 7th Armored Division, whom we last met in October, at the Peel Marshes in Holland. They were several long hours’ drive away, but the 7th’s CCB, under Brigadier-General Bruce C. Clarke, were racing to get to St Vith as soon as possible. With the prospect of these fresh reserves, Jones rethought his orders to Hoge, putting his CCB into Losheim. Instead, he decided to push Hoge’s CCB forward to help his 424th Infantry in Winterspelt, and use Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division to support his two regiments up on the Schnee Eifel. Although Reid’s 424th Infantry was in no immediate danger of encirclement, if Winterspelt fell the Germans would have another direct route to St Vith, a risk Jones could not take. He could read a map as well as Manteuffel and knew the Germans needed St Vith in order to break through to the Meuse. At all costs Jones had to stop them.

This in turn prompted Jones to rethink the state of his 422nd and 423rd Regiments, whose flanks were being threatened. If possible he would like to pull them back, off the high ground, to relative safety. A little later, at 8.47 p.m., Jones was logged as speaking to his staff, saying, ‘I have decided to call and suggest to General Middleton that I withdraw my forward regiments’, meaning the pair on the Schnee Eifel.³⁰ It was almost an hour before Jones and Middleton were able to speak on a secure but intermittent phone line; their important conversation was pieced together by the author John Toland, who interviewed both men for Battle, his work on the Bulge published in 1959. Both commanders spoke hurriedly, but guardedly, aware the Germans might be monitoring their call. The line was often bad and both men sometimes had to shout and repeat, to make themselves understood.

Jones – I’m worried about some of my people.

[He was referring to his two regiments on the Schnee Eifel]

Middleton – I know. How are they?

J – Not well. And very lonely.

M – I’m sending up a big friend, ‘Workshop’ [codeword for Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division]. It should reach you about 07.00 a.m. tomorrow.

J – Now about my people. Don’t you think I should call them out?

[Middleton did not hear this last sentence from Jones, as the line momentarily cut out, but said]

M – You know how things are up there better than I do, but don’t you think your troops should be withdrawn?

[Jones, likewise, failed to hear this sentence of Middleton’s, for the same reason, but asked]

J – I want to know how it looks from where you are. Shall I wait? ³¹

Jones already knew about ‘Workshop’, but realised Middleton’s estimate of a 07.00 a.m. arrival, made in all innocence, was grossly optimistic. More importantly, as Toland observed, ‘Jones was convinced that Middleton meant him to keep his men on the Schnee Eifel’.³² The Golden Lions commander wondered whether he should argue the point with his corps commander, but, being new to battle, was self-conscious and hesitated. Perhaps Middleton knew of other facts that were not in his – Jones’s – possession. In the end he thought he should rely on Middleton’s experience and judgement, and hung up on an already atrocious line. Another historian put it succinctly: ‘Each man thought the other had agreed to just the opposite course of action – Middleton thought Jones was pulling the units back, but Jones believed his corps commander had approved his decision to leave them in place. This disaster was nearly catastrophic for the entire American defence of the Ardennes, for Jones had made the wrong decision.’ ³³

By leaving the units in place, Jones had signed the death warrant for two regiments and other units of his division. This is where his inexperience counted, for a more self-confident leader would have contested his superior’s decision and discovered the awful mistake. We may observe that, whereas Jones may have been physically brave, it was his moral courage that let him down on this occasion, in failing to pursue the issue with Middleton. The 106th signals log recorded at 9.43 p.m. that Jones explained the situation to Middleton and discussed the advisability of withdrawing the forward units; when the phone call ended, Jones said to one of his artillery staff officers, Colonel Malin Craig, ‘Well that’s it. Middleton says we should leave them.’ ³⁴

Yet with General Jones’s knowledge of the intensity of the struggle for Bleialf, the threat to Winterspelt and the fact that the loss of either would jeopardise his own position in St Vith, it is surprising that the Golden Lions’ commander said nothing more to his superior on the subject of his two ‘lonely’ units, for the two headquarters were still in contact through the night. That Jones’s third regiment, Colonel Alexander Reid’s 424th, would subsequently launch a valiant blocking and rearguard action, fighting from ridge to ridge back to Vielsalm during 16–22 December, would be overshadowed by the loss of the other two regiments.

Thereafter the situation continued to deteriorate as messages poured into St Josef’s Convent. Another situational message from VIII Corps arrived at 10.40 p.m.: ‘Enemy has crossed the Our River in the 28th Infantry Division’s sector and most units are cut-off and isolated. Clerf [Clervaux] and Marnach are still in friendly hands, but the situation is changing rapidly.’ Communications were still open to Middleton in Bastogne, but Jones never thought to question his corps commander subsequently, because, in his own mind, his superior’s instructions were quite clear.

Jones would nonetheless have been aware that his losses were heavy. Lieutenant David Millman of Company ‘C’, 331st Medical Battalion supporting the division, recorded the first battle casualties swamping his aid station around 09.00 a.m., and during the course of the day ‘artillery barrages occurred in and around the aid station, injuring many men, including First Lieutenant Bradley, First Battalion Surgeon’s Assistant. The attached ambulance made several trips forward, and under fire, evacuated approximately thirty casualties’. By 02.00 a.m. on 17 December the fighting had forced them to shift position rearwards, but during the day Millman’s company alone had evacuated 123 serious casualties by ambulance.³⁵

The 331st Medical Battalion had only arrived in Rouen by LST on 5 December, and hitherto had been treating a handful of casualties for colds, cuts and bruises. PFC Edward L. Christianson, another former ASTP student and ambulance driver in the same medical unit, recalled receiving casualties very early that first morning. ‘Being inexperienced of the “real” war, there was much confusion at first but that didn’t last long. Training and good common sense soon put order into our efforts. My main job was to transport the seriously wounded from our level of treatment to the clearing station in St Vith where they would get better treatment. I made several trips to St Vith that day; it sure was an exciting baptism to the real war.’ Christianson was twenty years old.³⁶

At 11.00 p.m., the First Army Group’s Intelligence Summary for 16 December, issued by Brigadier-General Sibert at Bradley’s headquarters in Luxembourg, was received. ‘The sudden attacks and seemingly overpowering array of six enemy divisions … should not be misinterpreted. The quality of divisions involved, the piecemeal efforts … and the apparent lack of long-range objectives … seem to limit the enemy threat … the day’s events cannot be regarded as a major long-term threat.’³⁷ This may also have served to nullify Jones’s concerns for his two forward regiments: armoured help was on its way and his army group commander (three levels above him in the chain of command) seemed to downplay any danger. Perhaps, an exhausted Jones may have felt after his first day of combat, he had got it wrong and was overreacting in wanting to call back his two forward regiments. In fact Sibert, Bradley’s intelligence chief, had got it terribly wrong.

Later that night, at 11.32 p.m., 106th Division issued their own Intelligence Report. Included were details of ‘Fifty-eight enemy prisoners were interrogated. They were members of the 62nd Volksgrenadier Division; 116th Panzer Division; and 18th Volksgrenadier Division. A prisoner considers the attack a failure since the losses of the Germans were extremely heavy and most objectives were not reached.’³⁸ A captured copy of Rundstedt’s Order of the Day was attached with a translation. Finally, at ten minutes to midnight on 16 December, VIII Corps in Bastogne passed down the following: ‘The following was announced over Radio Berlin, “Our troops are again on the march. We shall present the Führer with Antwerp by Christmas”.’³⁹