Behind Hitler's Lines (37 page)

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.
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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:
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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 & Stripes
and every stateside newspaper bannered their defense as a matchless feat of arms.
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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.