Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (32 page)

Patton had achieved miracles by regrouping his Third Army so rapidly, but he was hardly enthusiastic about having to concentrate on the relief of Bastogne. He would have much preferred to head for St Vith to cut off the Germans. He was also reluctant to wait until he had a larger force, as Eisenhower had ordered.
‘Ike and [Major General] Bull [the G-3 at SHAEF]
are getting jittery about my attacking too soon and too weak,’ he wrote in his diary that day. ‘I have all I can get. If I wait, I will lose surprise.’ Never one to suffer from humility, Patton also wrote to his wife that day: ‘We should get well into the guts of the enemy and cut his supply lines. Destiny sent for me in a hurry when things got tight. Perhaps God saved me for this effort.’ But Patton’s hubris was to embarrass him over the next few days when the breakthrough to Bastogne proved so much harder than he had imagined.

The reconnaissance battalion commanded by Major Rolf Kunkel and the 39th Fusilier Regiment from Kokott’s 26th Volksgrenadier-Division were already seizing villages along the southern perimeter of Bastogne. They were followed by the lead Kampfgruppe
of the Panzer Lehr. General Cota of the 28th Division, who had established his headquarters in Sibret, nearly seven kilometres south-west of Bastogne, attempted to organize its defence with a scratch force of stragglers. But they broke under the force of the attack, and Cota had to pull out rapidly. Kokott, visiting the sector, witnessed stragglers from the 28th Division and thought that they came from the Bastogne garrison. A Belgian he spoke to at Sibret assured him that the defenders of Bastogne were falling apart. He became much more hopeful, thinking that perhaps Lüttwitz’s optimism was justified after all.

Kunkel’s Kampfgruppe
pushed north, causing considerable alarm in McAuliffe’s headquarters because the VIII Corps artillery based round Senonchamps was vulnerable. Soldiers panicked in one field artillery battalion and fled; but a rapidly improvised force, backed by anti-aircraft half-tracks with quadruple .50 machine guns, arrived just in time. The ‘
meat-choppers
’ did their gruesome work, and Kunkel’s attack collapsed.

The famished German troops took over farmhouses and villages, glad of shelter now that the temperature was dropping sharply. They slaughtered pigs and cows, seized food from families and exulted when they discovered abandoned stocks of American equipment and rations. They treated villagers with as much suspicion as many American soldiers treated the Belgians within the encirclement.

Further to the south the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division had reached the road from Bastogne to Arlon, ready to block Patton’s advance. The other German divisions had little confidence in their ability to halt a major counter-attack.

The fight to crush the German incursion along the railway track to Bastogne between Bizôry and Foy continued in the fog. Platoons of paratroopers advanced cautiously through pinewoods planted densely in neat rows with no underbrush.
‘It was like a tremendous hall
with a green roof supported by many brown columns,’ wrote Major Robert Harwick, who commanded the 1st Battalion of the 506th which had escaped from Noville the day before. They paused at every firebreak and
logging trail to observe, before crossing. Orders were given in whispers or by hand signals. From time to time shells from German guns exploded in the tree tops.

The German positions were well concealed, so the paratroopers had no idea where the shots were coming from when they were fired on. Once the enemy foxholes were spotted, the men in an extended skirmish line began to advance in short sprints, while others covered them in classic ‘fire and maneuver’. Attacked from two directions, a number of the volksgrenadiers panicked. Some fled straight into the arms of Harwick’s men and surrendered.
‘Two prisoners came back,’
Harwick wrote. ‘They were terribly scared and kept ducking their heads as the bullets buzzed and whined. Finally, a close burst and they dove for a foxhole. The guard took no chances and threw a grenade in after them. He walked up to the hole and fired four shots from his carbine and returned to the fighting in front … The fight was not long, but it was hard – it was bitter, as all close fighting is. A wounded man lay near to where I had moved. I crawled over. He needed help badly. Beside him was an aid man, still holding a bandage in his hand but with a bullet through his head.’

His men brought in more prisoners once the battle was truly finished.
‘One, terrified, kept falling
on his knees, gibbering in German, his eyes continually here and there. He kept repeating in English, “Don’t shoot me!” He finally fell sobbing on the ground and screamed as we lifted him. The rest had an attitude between this man and the coldly aloof lieutenant, who was so aloof, that somehow, somewhere, he got a good stiff punch in the nose.’ The prisoners were forced to carry the American wounded back to the nearest aid station.

Bastogne itself was relatively well provided with food and large supplies of flour, but there was a distinct shortage of rations for the front line. The K-Rations brought for the first three days were soon used up, so soldiers survived mainly on hotcakes and pancakes.

McAuliffe’s main concern was the shortage of artillery shells, especially the 105mm for the short-barrelled howitzers of the 101st Airborne field artillery. Fuel stocks were also a major worry. The tank destroyers and Shermans consumed a vast amount and they were essential in the defence. But, ever since the loss of the field hospital, the mounting number of wounded and the shortage of doctors haunted everyone. The low
cloud cover meant that airdrops were out of the question. Like Patton and Bradley in Luxembourg, in fact like every commander and American soldier in the Ardennes, medical staff prayed for flying weather.

The German artillery began to concentrate that day on the town of Bastogne itself. The accuracy of their fire led to unjustified suspicions among the military police that there were fifth columnists among the refugees and civilians directing German fire. The town was an easy target, and those in the cellars of the Institut de Notre-Dame could feel the ground trembling. One shell hit a small ammunition dump, causing a huge explosion. McAuliffe had to move his headquarters down into cellars. He had been joined by Colonel Roberts, who, having conducted the operations of his 10th Armored Division combat command independently, was now under McAuliffe. The two men worked well together, and McAuliffe’s expertise as an artilleryman was very useful in a defence which depended so much on that arm.

Since the 26th Volksgrenadier-Division was to be left with just a Kampfgruppe
of the Panzer Lehr to take Bastogne, Lüttwitz the corps commander ordered General Bayerlein to send in a negotiator to demand the town’s surrender to avoid total annihilation. Lüttwitz was under strict instructions from Führer headquarters not to divert any more troops for the capture of Bastogne, so this demand for surrender, which was to be delivered next day, was simply a bluff.

The defensive perimeter around Bastogne was porous to say the least, as the infiltration along the railway line had proved. Darkness in the long nights and bad visibility by day made it easy for German groups to slip through and cut a road behind forward positions, in an attempt to provoke a retreat. Whenever this happened, reserve platoons were sent off to deal with them, so there was a lot of ‘rat-hunting’ in damp woods as patrols searched for survivors. The low-lying fog also led to returning patrols being fired on by their own side, and to soldiers on both sides wandering into enemy-held territory by mistake. Captain Richard Winters, the executive officer with the 2nd Battalion of the 506th near Foy, even saw a German soldier with his trousers down, relieving himself behind their command post.
‘After he was finished
, I hollered to him in my best German, “Kommen sie hier!”
(Come here), which he did. All the poor fellow had in his pockets were a few pictures, trinkets and the butt end of a loaf of black bread, which was very hard.’

The only reserve held back in Bastogne for emergencies was a scratch battalion of some 600 men known as ‘Team SNAFU’ (Situation Normal All Fucked Up). Stragglers from the 28th Infantry Division and survivors from the destruction of the 9th Armored Division combat command east of Bastogne, as well as soldiers suffering from borderline combat fatigue, were all drafted into it. One advantage of the encirclement meant that the defenders, using interior lines, could reinforce threatened sectors rapidly along the roads out of Bastogne. In the meantime, Team SNAFU was used to man roadblocks close to the town and to provide individual replacements for casualties in front-line units.

That night, it began to snow again, and a hard frost was about to set in. It brought mixed blessings, both for Hasbrouck’s force holding on west of St Vith and for the 101st Airborne at Bastogne.

West of St Vith, the falling snow could have allowed Hasbrouck’s depleted forces to disengage, but no permission to withdraw had arrived. General Ridgway still wanted them to hold out between St Vith and the River Salm.

In the early hours of the morning, Remer’s
Führer Begleit
Brigade launched an attack on the small town of Rodt some four kilometres west of St Vith. Rodt was defended by American service troops – drivers, cooks and signallers – and by late in the morning Remer’s well-armed force had cleared the place.

Some of Hasbrouck’s men still remained out of contact north-east of St Vith, unaware of the general retreat. At 04.00 a company of armoured infantry received a radio message passed on by the 275th Field Artillery.
‘Your orders are: Go west. Go west. Go west.’
The company commander ordered his platoons to return from outposts one at a time in single file, with ‘each man firmly gripping the belt or pack-straps of the man in front of him’. Visibility was almost non-existent in the heavy snow. They used a compass to aim west. On the way, trudging through the snow, the men became separated from each other, with most killed or captured. Those who escaped through the woods, small canyons and steep hills finally reached the line of light tanks and armoured cars which formed the rearguard of the 7th Armored Division.

The exhausted intelligence and reconnaissance platoon from the 106th Division, which had escaped St Vith with the three Shermans, was woken before dawn by their engines starting up. The tank crews had
received an order to pull back, but they had not thought of warning the platoon which had been guarding them.
‘We crawled wearily
out of our makeshift foxholes and gathered together in the edge of the woods. Some of the guys had to be supported as they tried to stand, and to a man, walking was painful. Our legs had stiffened up over night and our near frozen feet had become more swollen as we crouched in our defensive positions.’

The tanks attracted German fire as they reached the road to Vielsalm, which revealed that the enemy had advanced beyond them. ‘So, again in the cold wind and snow, we started cautiously southwest through the patch of woods.’ They could hear the heavy fighting in Rodt as the
Führer Begleit
attacked. So ‘taking advantage of scrub growth and the ever present fog, we made our way further southwest over country lanes until we came to the small village of Neundorf. Approaching the village over a small bridge, we came to a cluster of farmhouses at the edge of the village.’

‘As we crossed this bridge,’
another member of the platoon continued, ‘we were met by a large number of Belgians – men, women and children. I explained who we were and what had happened in Saint-Vith. I shall never forget, as long as I live, the actions of these people. There they were, in front of the advancing German armies and in the midst of the fleeing American army. And what did they do? They very quickly divided us into small groups and took us into their homes. The group I was with, was taken to the home of a wonderful Belgian lady. I don’t know how in the world she did it but it seemed, in minutes, she had a long table loaded with food. There was a huge pot of stewed meat, two large pitchers of milk, boiled potatoes, and loaves of hot bread. You can imagine what happened. We just gorged ourselves. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and it wasn’t long before Irish [PFC John P. Sheehan] was asleep in an old rocking chair in front of the fire. We no sooner had finished eating than we heard the sound of German machine guns a short ways behind us. As we scrambled to leave, we took all the money we had been able to salvage, out of our pockets, and put it in the middle of the table. We could do no less for these wonderful people.’

The advance of the
Führer Begleit
had split Hasbrouck’s force in two, so he had to pull back further to avoid encirclement. Hasbrouck was furious with Ridgway and his XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters, who
wanted him to form a ‘goose-egg’-shaped defence east of the River Salm. Hasbrouck was deeply concerned about his southern flank, because during the night he heard that his task force on the right had captured a German officer from the 2nd SS Panzer-Division
Das Reich.
If the
Das Reich
was heading for Gouvy, as the prisoner said, the very weak force there did not stand a chance. Later in the morning of 22 December a fresh German force around Recht, just north of Poteau, was identified as part of the 9th SS Panzer-Division
Hohenstaufen.
If it was heading for the River Salm, as appeared to be the case, then it threatened to cut off the line of retreat of Combat Command A of the 7th Armored Division. Its commander Colonel Rosebaum reacted quickly. He withdrew his tanks fighting the
Führer Begleit
and concentrated his force round Poteau to block the SS
Hohenstaufen
.

That morning one of Montgomery’s British liaison officers appeared at Hasbrouck’s command post in Commanster, twelve kilometres south-west of St Vith. He asked Hasbrouck what he thought should be done. Hasbrouck replied that if higher command believed it essential to maintain an all-round defence, then he would hold on as long as possible, but he considered that withdrawal was preferable because the woods and lack of roads made it an almost impossible terrain to hold. This was reported back to Montgomery.

Hasbrouck then sent a detailed assessment of his position to Ridgway. German artillery would soon be able to shell his men from all sides, and his supply route via Vielsalm was in danger with the advance of the SS
Das Reich
. He argued that his remaining forces would be of more use strengthening the 82nd Airborne to resist the
Das Reich
. Losses in infantry especially had been so great that he doubted whether they would be able to withstand another all-out attack. He added a postscript.
‘I am throwing in
my last chips to halt [the Germans] … In my opinion if we don’t get out of here and up north of the 82nd before night, we will not have a 7th Armored Division left.’

Ridgway still rejected the recommendation to withdraw, but Montgomery overruled him in the middle of the afternoon during a visit to First Army headquarters. He sent a signal to Hasbrouck:
‘You have accomplished
your mission – a mission well done. It is time to withdraw.’ It was indeed well done. Hasbrouck’s very mixed force had managed to delay the Fifth Panzer Army’s advance by nearly a whole week.

Fortunately for the Americans, the German stampede into St Vith had caused a massive jam. Many of the vehicles were American Jeeps and trucks captured in the Schnee Eifel, and their new owners refused to let them go. The Feldgendarmerie lost control, and a furious Generalfeldmarschall Model was forced to dismount and walk into the ruins of the town his troops had taken so long to seize. The chaos around the key road junction meant that the German commanders would take some time to redeploy their forces. This breathing space gave Brigadier General Clarke the chance to pull back his Combat Command B to a new line. Then an even greater miracle occurred. Hasbrouck’s artillery had been down to their last rounds when a convoy of ninety trucks unexpectedly arrived that morning via circuitous back routes, with 5,000 shells for the 105mm howitzers.

The intelligence and reconnaissance platoon joined up with the 424th Infantry, the only regiment of the 106th Division to escape, having formed the right wing of Hasbrouck’s force. For the first time they heard of the massacre near Malmédy.
‘The line troops vowed
that no prisoners would be taken in their sector,’ wrote one of them. ‘Two of the platoon, on liaison to one of the companies, were visiting the front line foxholes of one of the rifle platoons. Across a fifty yard gap in the woods, a white flag appeared, whereby a sergeant stood up and motioned the Germans to advance. About twenty men emerged out of the woods. After they had advanced closer to the line, the sergeant gave the command to open fire. No prisoners were taken.’

Only German troops who had circumvented St Vith were in a position to advance. That evening panzers and infantry attacked along the railway line to Crombach. The fight for Crombach was furious. One company fired 600 rounds in twenty minutes from its 81mm mortars and
‘broke the base plates which were welded to the floor of the half-track’
. German panzer crews used their trick of firing bright flares to blind American gunners and thus got off their rounds first with devastating effect.

As Hasbrouck had predicted, nearly the whole division was now coming under heavy shellfire. Orders for the withdrawal were issued, and the artillery began moving out at midnight. It began to freeze hard. To the joyful disbelief of Brigadier General Clarke, the ground finally became solid enough not only for cross-country movement, but also
along the deeply mired woodland tracks. This was essential if they were to extricate all the different components towards the three-kilometre gap between Vielsalm and Salmchâteau, and the two bridges over the river. But German attacks during the night prevented the two combat commands from pulling out during darkness. The careful plan for the withdrawal was thrown out of synchronization, but despite many rearguard skirmishes the bulk of the retreating forces managed to cross the River Salm on 23 December.

A survivor from one infantry company, who managed to escape with the 17th Tank Battalion, recounted how after several running firefights they finally reached the lines of the 82nd Airborne. A paratrooper digging a foxhole put down his shovel and said:
‘What the hell are you guys
running from? We been here two days and ain’t seen a German yet.’ The exhausted infantryman retorted: ‘Stay right where you are, buddy. In a little while you won’t even have to look for ’em.’

On the southern slope of the Elsenborn ridge, the 12th SS Panzer-Division
Hitler Jugend
again tried to break through with tanks at Bütgenbach. The American defenders herded civilians into the convent’s cellars and provided them with food. In houses outside and on the edge of the town, women and children cowered in cellars as the house above them was fought over, captured and recaptured by both sides. Bazooka teams stalked panzers which had broken into the town. American fighter-bombers then attacked the village. One explosion threw a cow on to a farm roof. By the time the fighting had finished, the bodies of twenty-one civilians had been wrapped in blankets, ready for burial when the opportunity arose. Most were elderly and disabled residents from the nursing home.

This was the last major attempt to break the American defence of the Elsenborn ridge. The 12th SS
Hitler Jugend
Division was ordered to pull out and reorganize before being diverted to join the Fifth Panzer Army further south. Gerow’s V Corps had defeated the attempt of the Sixth Panzer Army to break through.

In the early hours of 22 December, German Junkers 52 transport planes dropped fuel, rations and ammunition to Peiper’s Kampfgruppe, but only about a tenth of the supplies could be recovered from the restricted
drop zone. The Luftwaffe refused Sixth Panzer Army’s requests for further missions. Attempts by the 1st SS Panzer-Division to break through to support and resupply Peiper were thwarted at Trois-Ponts by a regiment of the 82nd Airborne defending the line of the River Salm just below its confluence with the Amblève. General Ridgway knew that he needed to eliminate the Peiper Kampfgruppe
in its pocket at La Gleize and Stoumont as soon as possible so that he could redeploy the 30th Division and the 3rd Armored Division. The threat was growing further west with the advance of the 116th Panzer-Division to Hotton, and the 2nd Panzer-Division on its left.

Ridgway had hoped for a clear sky that day, after the hard frost of the night before, but he soon heard that no aircraft would be flying in their support. At least Stoumont was finally cleared by the infantry from the 30th Division supported by Sherman tanks. The Germans pulled out, leaving wounded from all three battalions of the 2nd SS Panzergrenadier-Regiment. But west of Stavelot a panzergrenadier company slipped in to block the road and captured an American aid station. This was retaken by combat engineers and tanks next day.

Peiper acknowledged that his situation was
‘very grave’
. There was house-to-house fighting in La Gleize, where some buildings were burning from American artillery firing phosphorus shells. Peiper claimed that the church in La Gleize, ‘conspicuously marked with a red cross’, had been targeted by US tanks and artillery. His men, most of them still teenagers, were exhausted and half starved. Most of them wore articles of American uniform taken from the dead and prisoners because their own were falling to pieces. Since all attempts to break through by the relief force from his division had failed, Peiper decided that evening that his Kampfgruppe
would have to fight its way out.

While Peiper’s morale was sinking, Generalmajor Kokott on the south side of Bastogne began to feel much more optimistic. His 26th Volksgrenadier command post had just heard reports of the rapid advance of the panzer divisions towards the Meuse. He also began to think that perhaps Lüttwitz’s corps headquarters must have good intelligence on the state of the American defenders of Bastogne, otherwise it would not have ordered just
‘a single infantry division’
to surround and capture the town. Lüttwitz, visited the night before by General der Panzertruppe
Brandenberger, was assured that the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division could hold the southern flank against Patton’s drive north from Arlon.

In bitterly cold weather, with more flurries of snow and the ground frozen hard, Kokott began a concentric attack. His 39th Regiment advanced on Mande-Saint-Etienne in the west, while his reconnaissance battalion, Kampfgruppe
Kunkel, fought around Senonchamps and Villeroux, south-west of Bastogne.
‘In the course of the [day],’
Kokott recorded, ‘news arrived from Korps [headquarters] to the effect that the commander in charge of the Bastogne forces had declined a surrender with remarkable brevity.’

When soldiers of the 327th Glider Infantry had seen four Germans coming towards them, waving a white flag, they assumed that they wanted to surrender. A German officer speaking English announced that according to the Geneva and Hague conventions they had the right to deliver an ultimatum. They produced their own blindfolds and were led to the company command post. Their letter was then sent to divisional headquarters. Brigadier General McAuliffe, who had been up all night, was catching up on sleep in the cellar. The acting chief of staff shook him awake, and told him that the Germans had sent emissaries asking the Bastogne defenders to capitulate or face annihilation by artillery fire. McAuliffe, still half asleep, muttered ‘Nuts!’ Not knowing what to recommend as a reply, one member of the 101st staff suggested that McAuliffe should use the same reply as he had given to the chief of staff. So back went the message to the unidentified ‘German commander’, who was in fact Lüttwitz, with the single word. Manteuffel was furious with Lüttwitz when he heard about the ultimatum. He regarded it as a stupid bluff, because the Germans simply did not have the artillery ammunition to carry out the threat. McAuliffe, on the other hand, could not be sure that it was a bluff.