Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (23 page)

After their extended combat role in Holland in waterlogged foxholes, both the 82nd and the 101st Airborne Divisions were recuperating at the French camp of Mourmelon-le-Grand near Reims. Their rest period had consisted of playing football, compulsive gambling, drinking cheap champagne and indulging in bar-room brawls between the two divisions. The decision taken that morning in Versailles to pass XVIII Airborne Corps from SHAEF reserve to the First Army at first led to a good deal of confusion. A number of senior officers were absent. Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, the corps commander, happened to be in England. Major General Maxwell D. Taylor, the commander of the 101st, was back in the United States. His deputy, Brigadier General Gerald J. Higgins, was also in England, lecturing on Operation Market Garden. So Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, the 101st Division’s artillery commander, had to take their men into battle.

McAuliffe, on receiving the order at 20.30 hours to prepare to move, immediately summoned unit commanders and staff for a meeting.
‘All I know of the situation’
, he told them, ‘is that there has been a breakthrough and we have got to get up there.’ Many of their men were on leave in Paris, determined to enjoy themselves in an unrestrained airborne way, especially those who, following their wartime tradition, had pinned their ‘Dear John’ letters from unfaithful sweethearts on the unit noticeboard. Orders went out to the military police in Paris to round up all the airborne personnel, while an officer commandeered a train to bring them back. Many of those snatched back from leave were the worse for wear from their excesses. And
‘most of them, to hear them tell it,’
remarked Louis Simpson, ‘were suffering from
coitus interruptus
’. There had been a good deal of jealousy from those who had lost all their back pay gambling and could not afford to go.

The 101st was well below strength and had not yet been re-equipped. Some 3,500 men had been lost during the fighting in Holland, and the division received comparatively few replacements during its time at Mourmelon. So after receipt of the movement order, prisoners on disciplinary sentences, mostly for fighting or striking an NCO, were released from the stockade and ordered to report immediately to their companies. Officers went to the military hospital and called for those almost cured to discharge themselves. On the other hand, some commanders advised their officers to leave behind any men whose nerves were still badly shaken. There had been several suicides from combat fatigue in the previous ten days, including the divisional chief of staff who had put his .45 automatic in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The 82nd had had more time to integrate replacements and re-equip after the losses in Holland, while the 101st was short of everything, especially winter clothing. During that night, everyone tried to beg, borrow or steal whatever they were missing. Quartermasters simply opened their stores. Com Z, meanwhile, rose to the challenge of assembling enough ten-ton trucks to move two divisions. Their exhausted drivers, who had been with the Red Ball Express, were not exactly enthusiastic at the prospect of delivering airborne troops to the front line in the Ardennes, but they more than did their duty.

Even though SHAEF tried to suppress news of the German advance, word spread rapidly. The rumour was that the Germans were heading for Paris. French collaborators in prison began to celebrate and taunt their guards. This was unwise. Many of their jailers came from the
Resistance and they swore that they would shoot every one of them before the Germans arrived.

Partly due to the lack of clear information, anxiety in Paris had reached a feverish level. General Alphonse Juin accompanied by other senior French officers came to SHAEF at Versailles to discuss the breakthrough. They were met by General Bedell Smith.
‘As we walked through the halls,’
Bedell Smith wrote later, ‘I saw the officers casting puzzled glances into offices where normal routine seemed to be going on. Then a French general behind me said to our Intelligence Chief, General Strong: “What! You are not packing?”’

Ernest Hemingway heard of the German attack at the Ritz in the Place Vendôme, where he was installed with his paramour, Mary Welsh. She had returned from a dinner with the air force commander Lieutenant General ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, during which aides had rushed in and out bearing urgent messages. The Ritz lobby was in chaos, with officers running backwards and forwards. Although still not recovered from the bronchitis he had picked up in the Hürtgen Forest, Hemingway was determined to rejoin the 4th Infantry Division. He started to pack and assemble his illegal armoury.
‘There’s been a complete breakthrough,’
he told his brother Leicester, who was passing through Paris. ‘This thing could cost us the works. Their armor is pouring in. They’re taking no prisoners … Load those clips. Wipe every cartridge clean.’

The main attack against the last battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division in front of Rocherath–Krinkelt came at 06.45 hours, more than an hour before dawn. The Germans followed their usual practice of making the maximum amount of noise in night attacks, with
‘yells, catcalls and many
other forms of noises including banging on mess gear’. The battle continued for four hours, with the American field artillery taking on fire mission after fire mission in support of the forward infantry foxholes. In a number of cases, companies were calling for fire on their own positions as they were overrun. Lieutenant Colonel McKinley’s 1st Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment had covered other units as they pulled back to the twin villages.

Again at first light twelve panzers, each escorted by a platoon of panzergrenadiers, advanced out of the mist until halted by artillery fire. The 2nd Division found that it would have been far more useful to have a dozen bazooka teams than three
‘cumbersome’
57mm anti-tank guns in the anti-tank platoon. ‘The 57mm anti-tank guns proved very unsatisfactory, only one effective hit being scored on the turret of one enemy tank,’ an after-action report stated. Another officer described it as ‘practically a useless weapon’. Lieutenant Colonel McKinley thought the 57mm had ‘no place in an infantry battalion’, because it was so hard to manoeuvre in mud, and it was impossible to put into position if the enemy was already in contact. He wanted tank destroyers as an integral part of the unit so that they did not disappear whenever they felt like it. But that day at Rocherath–Krinkelt, tank destroyers, as well as Shermans,
bazookas and the artillery accounted for a number of Panther and Mark IV tanks.

The Americans always tried to prevent the Germans from recovering and repairing disabled panzers, or from using them as temporary firing positions just in front of their lines. So whenever the SS
panzergrenadiers were forced back
‘tanks knocked out
of action, but not destroyed, were set afire with gasoline-oil mixes poured on them, and with thermite grenades set in gunbarrels which burned through the barrels’.

But then another attack overran the front line. Panzers fired down into the foxholes, and twisted back and forth on top to bury the men in them. Only twelve soldiers from one platoon of around thirty men emerged alive. The left-hand platoon of one company had no anti-tank ammunition left, so some six or seven men started to run towards the rear in despair. McKinley stopped them and sent them back to their platoon. Aid men, struggling heroically to evacuate the wounded through the snow, improvised sleds by nailing raised crosspieces to a pair of skis to carry a litter.

In due course the battalion received orders to pull back, but the fighting was so close that McKinley felt that he would not be able to extricate any of his men. At the critical moment, however, four Shermans from the 741st Tank Battalion appeared. They were able to cover the withdrawal, even scoring hits on three German tanks.
‘When the Battalion assembled in Rocherath,’
McKinley recorded, ‘it was found that of the total strength of 600 men that had started the fight, 197 were left, including attachments.’ Yet only nine men from the whole of the 2nd Division abandoned the battle and headed for the rear. They were picked up by military police as ‘stragglers’. Most men found that they did not get the ‘shakes’ at the height of a battle: it hit them afterwards when the firing had died away.

The sacrificial stand of the 1st Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment helped save the rest of the 2nd Division, and thwart the breakthrough of the 12th SS Panzer-Division. But even McKinley acknowledged afterwards that
‘it was artillery
that did the job’, saving his unit from complete destruction. All the time remnants of the 99th Division, which had faced the initial onslaught, continued to slip through to American lines. They were directed back to Camp Elsenborn where they were fed and ammunitioned, then placed in a new line behind Rocherath–Krinkelt. One
battalion commander, accused by his own officers of ‘cowardice and incompetence’, was relieved.

Around 10.00, a group of seven American trucks approached. A tank destroyer fired a round over the leading truck at a range of 500 metres, compelling it to halt. A patrol went forward to make sure that the trucks were genuine, and not captured vehicles. But as they came close, men in the trucks opened fire. It had been a
‘Trojan Horse trick’
to penetrate American lines in the confusion. Around 140 German soldiers leaped from the trucks and tried to escape back towards the woods. The battalion’s mortars and heavy machine guns opened up, and the battalion commander estimated that three-quarters of them were killed, but a number may have feigned death and crept away later. Several of the wounded were taken prisoner, and proved to be members of the 12th SS Division
Hitler Jugend
. One of the more badly hit refused a transfusion of American blood at the aid station.

The battle for the twin villages continued, with civilians trapped and deafened from explosions in their cellars. As the fog lifted at about 08.30 hours and daylight strengthened a little, the woods beyond the snowfields became visible. More Panther and
Mark IV tanks advanced accompanied by groups of panzergrenadiers and some broke into Rocherath–Krinkelt. The mortar officer in the 38th Infantry Regiment formed four bazooka teams, for stalking tanks around the village. Some men wore goggles because of the flash when firing, but only noticed the burns on their face later. The worst fate was to find a dud round stuck in the bazooka and see the enemy tank traverse its gun towards you. Guile was needed.
‘A tank was observed approaching on a road,’
V Corps reported. ‘A sergeant stationed a bazooka in concealment on each side of the road, and then drove a herd of cows out in front of the tank. The tank slowed to a halt, was knocked out by bazooka fire, and the crew killed by small arms fire as they baled out.’

German tanks began blasting houses at point-blank range, even sticking their gun through a window.
‘The bayonet was little used,’
another American officer observed later, ‘even in close-in fighting in Rocherath where rifle butts or bare fists seemingly took preference.’ Two Shermans parked by the battalion command post in Rocherath and crewed by a mixture of
‘gunners, drivers, assistant drivers, cooks and mechanics’
fought back. Lieutenant Colonel Robert N. Skaggs suddenly saw a Mark VI Tiger tank approaching some American soldiers guarding German prisoners of war. Skaggs alerted the two tanks and they both opened fire. They missed. The Tiger halted and traversed its turret to fire back at both of them, but both of its shots also missed. Allowed a second chance, the scratch crews of the two Shermans made sure that they did not miss again, and the Tiger burst into flames. As soon as a German tank was hit, American infantry brought their rifles up to their shoulders ready to shoot down any of the crew trying to escape from the turret or hull. If they were on fire and screaming, then they were simply putting the poor bastard out of his misery. Captain MacDonald of the 2nd Division
‘saw a soldier silhouetted
against the tracers, throw a can of gasoline at a tank. The tank burst into flames.’

In another incident in the twin villages, the crew of a Sherman of the 741st Tank Battalion
‘observed a Mark VI
[Tiger] approaching frontally. The tank commander knew the difficulty of penetrating the frontal armor, and desired to utilize the faster turret action of the Sherman. The tank was quickly turned round and routed round a small group of buildings to enable the Sherman to bring fire to bear on the side or rear of the Mark VI. The German simultaneously sensing the maneuver followed, and the two tanks were chasing each other round in a circle endeavoring to get into position to fire. The team mate of the Sherman observed the action, [and] as the Mark VI in its course around the buildings exposed its rear, brought fire to bear on it and knocked it out.’ The two commanders jumped out to shake hands jubilantly, climbed back into their tanks and then went back to work.

Rifle grenades again proved useless, and only one tank was disabled in this way. A sergeant saw a
‘man from another outfit’
fire six or seven rounds of anti-tank grenades at a panzer, and although they were hitting the target they had no effect. In other cases too, the grenades ‘just glanced off’.

One Mark VI Tiger in Krinkelt in front of the church began firing at the battalion command post. Lieutenant Colonel Barsanti sent out five bazooka teams to stalk the tank. They achieved two hits, but the Tiger was barely damaged. Even so, its commander decided that it was too exposed in the village and made a run for it towards Wirtzfeld. But as the tank charged off, it rounded a corner at full speed and flattened a Jeep. The two occupants had managed to throw themselves into a ditch
just in time. This slowed the Tiger just enough for the crew of a 57mm anti-tank gun to get off a round which wrecked the turret traverse mechanism. As it continued on its way, a Sherman fired and missed, but a tank destroyer further down the road brought it to a halt with two rounds. Riflemen then picked off the black-uniformed crew as they tried to escape.
‘None of them got away.’

The 2nd Division later claimed that in the extended battle around Rocherath–Krinkelt seventy-three panzers had been knocked out by Shermans, bazookas, tank destroyers and artillery, while two Mark VI Tigers had been knocked out by bazookas. These, of course, were rare victories during that onslaught. American losses in men and tanks were very heavy. On the other hand, the determination to fight back and make the enemy pay dearly for every step of his advance proved probably the most important contribution to the eventual outcome of the Ardennes offensive. The Sixth Panzer Army had underestimated both the power of American artillery and the commanding position of the Elsenborn ridge. The SS divisions were sharply disabused of their arrogant assumptions about the low quality of American infantry units.

The fighting went on all day and into the night, with more and more buildings ablaze. The artillery observer from the 99th Division who had been sent forward to Buchholz on the first evening gazed at the conflagration in Rocherath–Krinkelt and kept thinking of a line from an Alan Seeger poem:
‘But I’ve a rendezvous with death at midnight in some flaming town.’

While the fighting in Rocherath–Krinkelt reached its climax, part of the 1st Infantry Division five kilometres to the south-west was consolidating its positions and patrolling to establish the direction and strength of the German advance. Sepp Dietrich, frustrated by the fierce American defence of the twin villages, ordered the 277th Volksgrenadier-Division to continue the attack there. The 12th SS Panzer meanwhile was to move to the south-west, and advance from Büllingen and push further west towards Waimes. The small town of Waimes contained the 47th Evacuation Hospital and part of the 99th Division’s medical battalion. General Gerow ordered a mixed force from the 1st Division with tank destroyers, light tanks and engineers to extricate the medics and the wounded in time.

The
Hitler Jugend
was to find that the southern flank of the Elsenborn ridge was as strongly held as the eastern flank. The 1st Division alone was backed by six battalions of artillery and a battery of 8-inch guns. The Americans were also fortunate that the ground was so soft in many places that it made off-road movement for the German tanks almost impossible. When American anti-tank guns and tank destroyers knocked out the leading panzer on a road, the others were blocked. Anti-aircraft half-tracks with quadruple .50 machine guns known as ‘meatchoppers’ then proved very effective in forcing back the SS panzergrenadiers.

Neither General Gerow nor General Hodges had any idea that Hitler had forbidden the Sixth Panzer Army to head north towards Liège. The Führer, wanting to avoid the concentration of American forces around Aachen, had dictated that the SS panzer divisions strike due west towards the Meuse and not vary their route. But Peiper’s direction of advance had already convinced the American command that they had to extend the northern shoulder westward. General Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps was to establish a defensive line from Stavelot, deploying both the experienced 30th Infantry Division and the 82nd Airborne, which was already heading for Werbomont.

Following the Malmédy massacre of the day before, the American command issued an urgent warning to all troops:
‘It is dangerous at any time
to surrender to German tank crews, and especially so to tanks unaccompanied by infantry; or to surrender to any units making a rapid advance. These units have few means for handling prisoners, and a solution used is merely to kill the prisoners.’ The lesson was: ‘Those that fought it out received fewer losses. Those that surrendered did not have a chance.’

Peiper launched his attack on Stavelot at dawn, having let his exhausted men catch up on sleep during the night. Major Paul J. Solis had arrived in the early hours with a company of the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion, a platoon of anti-tank guns and a platoon of towed tank destroyers. He was still positioning his men and guns when they were surprised by two Panther tanks and a company of panzergrenadiers, charging around the hillside on the road to the bridge over the Amblève. The first Panther was hit and caught fire, but it had built up such momentum that it smashed into the anti-tank barrier erected across the road. The second
Panther pushed on and occupied the bridge in Stavelot, to be followed rapidly by the panzergrenadiers.

The Americans did not have time to blow up the bridge. Solis’s force was driven back into the town. Peiper’s men alleged, without any justification, that Belgian civilians fired on them and they proceeded to shoot twenty-three of them, including women. After heavy fighting throughout the morning, Solis’s small force had to withdraw a little way up the road to Francorchamps and Spa. The main American fuel dump at Francorchamps had not been marked on Peiper’s map, and he decided to carry on west along the valley of the Amblève. In any case, General Lee’s Communications Zone troops had succeeded in evacuating the bulk of the fuel supplies potentially within Peiper’s grasp. Between 17 and 19 December, American supply troops removed more than 3 million gallons of fuel from the Spa–Stavelot area. The biggest Allied loss was 400,000 gallons, destroyed on 17 December by a V-1 strike on Liège.