Grunts (25 page)

On one thing there was no confusion, though. As the number of stragglers petered out, every 2nd Division soldier understood that the Germans were close behind them and would soon attack. Shortly after noon, enemy infantry soldiers began clashing with all three of the 3rd Battalion rifle companies. Their attack was not unlike a quick-forming, violent thunderstorm. In a matter of seconds, the air was filled with bullets. One soldier described it as a “crackling crescendo.” Anyone who raised his head risked getting it blown off. Tracer rounds bounced off trees. At the leading edge of L Company’s line along a narrow forest trail, Private First Class Bartkiewicz saw the Germans erupt from the line of trees that were across the road. “There was all kinds of ammunition flying in all sorts of directions. Our machine gun could cut a person’s body right in half if he was in front of it within about twenty feet. That’s what happened.” A German soldier tried to throw a grenade at the machine-gun team. The gunners cut him down before he could let go of the grenade. The ensuing explosion maimed the man’s already cooling corpse. Bartkiewicz captured two survivors.

The Germans soldiers were close enough to I Company that Captain Mac-Donald’s men could clearly see the billed caps indicative of SS infantrymen. The enemy troops were working their way through and up a slight draw in front of I Company’s holes. “Wave after wave of fanatically screaming Germans stormed the slight tree-covered rise,” Captain MacDonald later wrote. “A continuous hail of fire exuded from their weapons, answered by volley after volley from the defenders. Germans fell right and left.”

German artillery and Nebelwerfer rounds were exploding behind I Company. In front of them, several rounds of U.S. artillery exploded among the attackers. “We could hear their screams of pain when the small-arms fire would slacken. But still they came!” The fire was so thick that Captain MacDonald was lying flat on his back in his shallow CP foxhole, with a phone to his platoons in one ear and a battalion radio in the other ear, trying to talk and hear amid the noisy maelstrom. Lieutenant Goffigan’s platoon was bearing the brunt of the assault. He needed artillery support. Several men were wounded and the captain was calling for litter bearers. MacDonald was also talking to his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tuttle, requesting more ammunition and artillery support. All he could get in response was a promise that “we’re doing all we can” and another order to “hold at all costs.” Goffigan was now reporting the presence of tanks in the distance.

To I Company’s right, the Germans were also furiously attacking K Company. For the hard-pressed Americans, the stress level was extreme. When the shooting started, Smith was serving as executive officer, the company’s second in command. Then Lieutenant Dillard Boland, one of the platoon leaders, came to Smith’s hole and told him that he “couldn’t take any more.” He had been in combat for months and he had reached his limit. He left for the rear. Smith claimed that soon thereafter the company commander broke. “[He] . . . was hysterical. He was a martinet and I never saw a martinet that did well under fire. [He] chickened out and went to the rear.”

Assuming command, Lieutenant Smith held K Company together the best he could in the face of unrelenting infantry and armor attacks. “Instead of running and falling the way we did they just walked and used marching fire. Then they would stop and fall down and the tanks would come on. Then the tanks would go back for them and they would mill around, then here they would come again.” Like MacDonald, Smith spent much of his time talking with battalion, asking for help, listening to imprecations that he must hold on. All around him, he could hear “the crump of artillery . . . the high-pitched ripping sound of the submachine guns and the double rapid rate of the German machine guns as compared with ours.” When soldiers got hit, they generally did not scream “or cry out or make any sort of audible sound.” All the while, Lieutenant Smith was worried that his front could not hold out much longer, especially because he had few weapons with which to fight the tanks.

A few dozen yards to the left, the SS men were flinging themselves repeatedly at I Company. Captain MacDonald’s men bitterly resisted each enemy push. “Seven times the enemy infantry assaulted, and seven times they were greeted by a hail of small-arms fire and hand grenades that sent them reeling down the hill, leaving behind a growing pile of dead and wounded.” Each attack was poorly organized, with little artillery support, almost like a German version of banzai, yet with a distinct geographic objective. “There was only the suicidal wave of fanatical infantrymen, whooping and yelling and brandishing their rifles like men possessed.” Many of these Germans were teenaged members of the Hitler Youth. With the oblivious idealism of youth, they were all too eager to turn the war back in their führer’s favor. Some of them fell dead within ten yards of the company’s lead foxholes.

As had been the case with the 393rd to the east, the presence of German armor was decisive against the 3rd Battalion of the 23rd Infantry. Five Mark V Panthers were closing in on Lieutenant Goffigan’s platoon. In the lieutenant’s recollection, the tanks “were firing into foxholes and cutting off trees like matchsticks.” He called Captain MacDonald to plead for help. The captain arranged for some artillery fire but it did no good. A bazooka man in Goffigan’s platoon fired two shots of precious ammunition at the lead tank but missed. Within moments, he was killed by enemy fire and the bazooka was destroyed. The tanks were now within seventy-five yards of the platoon holes. Lieutenant Miller’s Shermans were the last hope of salvation for Goffigan’s men. Half sobbing, Lieutenant Goffigan called Captain MacDonald: “For God’s sake, Cap’n, get those tanks down here. Do something, for God’s sake.” But the friendly tanks had moved south, closer to K Company, in search of a more advantageous position.

Goffigan’s gallant infantrymen were left to fight the enemy tanks with little else besides rifles, machine guns, and courage. “Within a short time the tanks, with German infantry disposed on both sides of each tank, had approached where they could fire AP [armor piercing] ammo point blank into the foxholes,” a post-battle report recounted. “A section of heavy machine guns held their positions and took a heavy toll of the enemy infantrymen until they ran out of ammunition.”

At this point, when the Germans overwhelmed Goffigan’s platoon, caving in the left flank, I Company’s front began to collapse. The fighting was at extremely close range. The Germans were blasting everything in front of them, cleaning out hole after hole. “The sound of battle reached a height which I had never thought possible before,” MacDonald wrote. “The burst of the . . . shells in the woods vied with the sounds of hundreds of lesser weapons.” MacDonald was doing everything in his power to hold his outfit together, but events had moved beyond his control.

Throughout the forest, men were engaged in private death struggles. Private Hugh Burger was on the move, looking for a place to dodge the explosions. He jumped into a foxhole and literally bumped into an SS soldier. Stunned, the German staggered to his feet. The two enemies were now intimate participants in the evil of war. They could have mutually decided to live and let live, go their separate ways, but this was not the mood of the battle in the Krinkelter Wald. At this harrowing moment, Burger knew he had to act fast or die. “I grabbed his rifle with my left hand while gripping my knife in my right. I made a [lightning] thrust into his stomach and jerked up with all my strength. I felt hot blood squirt out on my hand and my arm as I pulled the knife out then rammed it home again as his body sagged and slid to the ground. To me it was sickening, but that was my job if I wanted to live.” There were few more traumatic ways to kill than this, and Burger’s nausea was standard for anyone having to take life in this elemental fashion. He wiped the blade of his knife against his pants, ran away in the direction of the villages, and later rubbed snow on his bloodstained arms and hands.

Captain MacDonald first attempted to pull the remnants of his company back to new positions, but in spite of the bravery of Private First Class Richard Cowan, a machine gunner who held off the Germans for a few minutes, the situation was way too chaotic for that. Overhead the trees were bursting as artillery shells exploded. Machine-gun and rifle bullets were smashing into trees and men alike. The captain ordered his CP group to destroy their maps and radios and retreat. They made it as far as K Company, whose soldiers were also in close combat with enemy infantrymen and tanks. Lieutenant Miller’s Shermans, having displaced here earlier, destroyed two of the enemy Panthers before German fire blew the American tanks up, killing Miller and several of his men. Some of the American soldiers were fighting the enemy with bayonets (the rarest form of combat in modern war) and using their rifles as clubs. One bazooka gunner swung his empty tube at a German, in an attempt to bludgeon him to death. Enemy soldiers with burp guns cut down the gunner.

The 3rd Battalion was disintegrating. Stragglers were already streaming out of the forest, into Krinkelt and Rocherath. Lieutenant Smith agonized over whether to keep trying to “hold at all costs” or retreat. His K Company soldiers held off the Germans as long as they could—helping many 3rd Battalion men escape—before Smith reluctantly ordered a withdrawal. The remnants of the company streamed west, out of the forest.

Captain MacDonald and a few of his men made their way west, somehow dodging intense enemy fire. Like Lieutenant Smith, the captain felt guilty for retreating. Moreover, he barely knew what happened to most of his men. His company had simply disintegrated under an avalanche of enemy pressure. MacDonald’s clothes were soaking wet. His mouth was dry. He was sad and dispirited. He and his men made it to a farmhouse near Krinkelt, where Lieutenant Colonel Tuttle had set up his command post in the basement. The captain half expected to be court-martialed. Instead Tuttle greeted him warmly and said: “Nice work, Mac.” The captain stood bewildered as Tuttle explained the big picture of the German Ardennes offensive and the true strength of their attack on the 3rd Battalion. “The Germans are throwing everything they’ve got. You held out much longer than I expected.” MacDonald’s company, along with the others, had held off the Germans for half a day, buying time for other Indian Head units to get into position in and around the twin villages. Moments earlier, MacDonald had believed that his beloved I Company had been lost for nothing more than his own failure as a commander. Now, though, he began to understand the important mission that his men had accomplished, many by making the ultimate sacrifice. Good news though this was, the thought of it all was overwhelming to him. He felt a catch in his throat. A moment later, the catch turned into deep, wracking sobs. In the dimly lit basement, he stood quietly, tears rolling down his cheeks, hands trembling, sadly contemplating his lost company.
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The Manchus at the Lausdell Crossroads

Captain MacDonald, and so many others like him, could at least take solace in the fact that the destruction of the 3rd Battalion, 23rd Infantry, had a purpose. Their self-sacrificial resistance (and the 393rd’s determined stand) bought valuable time for General Robertson to arrange for the defense of Krinkelt and Rocherath. Every significant road in the area went through the two towns. If the Germans were to have any hope of carrying out a lightning advance to the Meuse, they had to control these roads, and thus the two little towns.

Throughout the day on December 17, the general disengaged from his attack at Wahlerscheid, personally supervised the southerly movement of troops to the danger area around Krinkelt and Rocherath, and deployed his men into defensive positions. For the 2nd Division soldiers, the process was exhausting and disorienting. One minute they were assaulting a line of pillboxes at Wahlerscheid. The next minute they abruptly ceased attacking, began a forced march several miles to the south, and soon thereafter they were fighting a defensive battle. Only a well-led unit like the 2nd could have pulled off this dangerous transition with any semblance of order.

As the sun set on December 17, ushering in a cold, dark winter night, this process was well under way, but the general was still scrambling to reinforce the twin villages. He planned to defend the towns with his 38th Infantry Regiment, a stalwart unit with the moniker “Rock of the Marne” for its part in blunting a major German offensive in World War I. Much of the 38th was still strung out in long columns along the narrow road that led into the villages. These soldiers were under enemy artillery fire, which, of course, inflicted casualties on them and impeded their movement. Moreover, retreating GIs and vehicles crowded the road and sowed confusion among the “Marne” soldiers. Robertson needed several more hours to sort this mess out and deploy the 38th’s rifle companies, plus their armored support, in and around the villages. In the meantime, Robertson decided that soldiers from another one of his regiments, the 9th, absolutely had to hold a key crossroads—generally known as the Lausdell junction—about one thousand yards east of Rocherath, right in the path of the onrushing German advance. If the Germans captured the crossroads and succeeded in getting large numbers of troops and tanks into the village this evening, they could slaughter the 38th Infantry soldiers along the roads before they could hide in buildings or dig foxholes overlooking the road.

The 9th was one of the most storied infantry regiments in the Army. The unit had fought in nearly every war since its activation in 1812. In 1900, soldiers from this regiment had helped crush the Boxer Rebellion in China, earning themselves the colorful nickname “Manchus.” Now, on this frigid Ardennes evening, they were once again at the center of momentous events. On the road north of Rocherath, General Robertson collared twenty-eight-year-old Lieutenant Colonel William McKinley, commander of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry, and gave him the job of defending the Lausdell crossroads. In the recollection of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Steele, the regimental executive officer, the general emphasized that the battalion “must hold at all costs in order to ensure . . . an effective defense position.”