The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II (38 page)

“We left most of our supplies behind,” Swanson said, “but our weapons were always ready. Throughout this entire journey our men made their way, cold, tired, miserable, stumbling, cursing the Army, the weather and the Germans, yet none gave up.”

They arrived on the ridge around midnight, and although “we were beyond exhaustion,” the men dug in. A good thing, because at dawn a German artillery shelling came down on them. Too late, the Germans had realized the critical importance of Elsenborn. Swanson’s company was well dug in, but nevertheless took seven casualties. Four of them were sergeants, “which opened up the field for promotions.” One of those hit was Swanson, who got wounded in the neck by shrapnel. “I couldn’t make a sound because blood was pouring down my throat.” Litter bearers brought him to an aid station, where a chaplain bent over him. “I could dimly make out his collar ornament which was a Star of David. He, in turn, misread my dogtag, thought I was a Catholic and gave me last rites. I remember thinking that I really had all bases covered.”

Elsenborn was the Little Round Top of the Battle of the Bulge. Lt. Col. Jochen Peiper, commander of the 1st Panzer Division, could have taken it without difficulty on the seventeenth or eighteenth, but he stuck with Hitler’s orders and moved west rather than north once through the American line. The low ridge lay across the direct line from the Eifel to Antwerp and should have been the main objective of the Germans on the northern flank. But the Americans got there first and dug in. Only a direct frontal assault could oust them from the position.

The Germans tried. “The first night at Elsenborn is unforgettable,” Captain Roland of the 99th wrote fifty years later. “The flash and roar of exploding shells was incessant. In all directions the landscape was a Dante’s inferno of burning towns and villages.” The men of his regiment, the 394th Infantry, dug furiously throughout the night. “We distributed ammunition and field rations, cleaned and oiled weapons, dug foxholes and gun emplacements in the frozen earth, planted antitank mines, strung barbed wire, studied maps and aerial photographs by shielded flashlights, plotted fire zones for machine guns, mortars, and artillery, put in field telephone lines to the various command posts, and set up an aid station to receive a fresh harvest of casualties.  “Everyone was aware that there would be no further withdrawal, whatever the cost. Moreover, I could sense in the demeanor of the troops at all ranks that this resolution was written in their hearts.”

Enemy mortar and artillery fire hit the 99th. American artillery fired continuously. At night the temperature fell well below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. No GI had winter clothing. “The wind blew in a gale that drove the pellets of snow almost like shot into our faces. Providing hot food on the front line became impossible, and we were obliged to live exclusively on K rations.  Remaining stationary in damp, cold foxholes, with physical activity extremely limited, we began to suffer casualties from trenchfoot. . . . In time the combination of extreme cold, fatigue, boredom, and hazard became maddening. A few men broke under the strain, wetting themselves repeatedly, weeping, vomiting, or showing other physical symptoms.” But there was no more retreating.  The fighting was at its most furious in the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt, on the eastern edge of the ridge. There a battalion from the 2nd Infantry Division engaged a German armored division. The Germans and Americans were intermingled in a wild melee that included hand-to-hand combat. American tank crews knew they could not take on the big German tanks toe-to-toe, so they allowed the Panthers and Tigers to close on their positions for an intricate game of cat and mouse among the twin villages’ streets and alleys. Shermans remained hidden and quiet behind walls, buildings, and hedgerows, waiting for a German tank to cross their sights. Most engagements took place at ranges of less than twenty-five meters. The 741st Tank Battalion knocked out twenty-seven panzers at a cost of eleven Shermans. The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion destroyed seventeen enemy tanks at a cost of two of their own vehicles.  On December 21 Eisenhower expressed his mood and perception of the enemy in a rare Order of the Day. “We cannot be content with his mere repulse,” he said of the Germans. “By rushing out from his fixed defenses the enemy may give us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat. . . . Let everyone hold before him a single thought-to destroy the enemy on the ground, in the air, everywhere-destroy him!”

His confidence was great because his basic situation was so good. He was rushing reinforcements to the battle to take advantage of the German audacity, men and equipment in great numbers. Maj. John Harrison, at First Army headquarters, wrote his wife on December 22: “There is something quite thrilling about seeing all of the troops and armour moving in on the Kraut. There has been a steady stream for days and tho the Belgians are mighty worried I am sure they are amazed at the sights they see. The armor moves about 25 miles an hour in and out of towns and to see and hear a tank roar thru a fair sized town, turn on one tread and never slow down is quite a sight. The Belgians still line the streets and tho they are not as joyous as when we first moved in, they still wave and show their appreciation.”

In the middle of the Bulge, the Germans had been unable to exploit the breakthrough because the 101st Airborne and elements of the 10th Armored Division got to Bastogne before they did. Although the Germans surrounded the Americans they were denied the use of the roads, and flowing around Bastogne was time-consuming. So from December 19 on they tried to overrun the place, with apparently overwhelming strength. Altogether they launched fifteen divisions at Bastogne, four of them armored, supported by heavy artillery.

Inside the perimeter, casualties piled up in the aid stations. Most went

untreated because on December 19 a German party had captured the division’s

medical supplies and doctors. Nevertheless, spirits stayed strong. Cpl. Gordon

Carson took some shrapnel in his leg and was brought into town. At the aid

station “I looked around and never saw so many wounded men. I called a medic

over and said, ‘Hey, how come you got so many wounded people around here? Aren’t

we evacuating anybody?’ “

“Haven’t you heard?” the medic replied.

“I haven’t heard a damn thing.”

“They’ve got us surrounded-the poor bastards.”

As the battle for Bastogne raged, it caught the attention of the world. The inherent drama, the circled-wagons image, the heroic resistance, the daily front-page maps showing Bastogne surrounded, the early identification of the division by PR men in the War Department, combined to make the 101st the most famous American division of the war. As the division history put it, the legend of the 101st was aided by those maps “showing one spot holding out inside the rolling tide of the worst American military debacle of modern times.” At Bastogne, the encircled 101st Airborne won its head-to-head battles with a dozen crack German armored and infantry divisions. The Americans went through a much more miserable month than the Germans, who had an open and bountiful supply line. For the 101st, surrounded, there were no supplies in the first week and insufficient supplies thereafter. Those were the weeks that tried the souls of men who were inadequately fed, clothed, and armed. This was war at its harshest, horrible to experience. The 101st, hungry, cold, underarmed, fought the finest units Nazi Germany could produce at this stage of the war. Those Wehrmacht and SS troops were well fed, warm, and fully armed, and they heavily outnumbered the 101st.

It was a test of arms, will, and national systems, matching the best the Nazis had against the best the Americans had, with all the advantages on the German side. The 101st not only endured, it prevailed. It is an epic tale as much for what it revealed as what happened. The defeat of the Germans in their biggest offensive in the West in World War II, and the turning of that defeat into a major opportunity “to kill Germans west of the Rhine,” as Eisenhower put it, was a superb feat of arms. The Americans established a moral superiority over the Germans. It was based not on equipment or quantity of arms but on teamwork, coordination, leadership, and mutual trust in a line that ran straight from Ike’s HQ right on down to the companies. The Germans had little in the way of such qualities. The moral superiority was based on better training methods, better selection methods for command positions, ultimately on a more open army reflecting a more open society. Democracy proved better able to produce young men who could be made into superb soldiers than Nazi Germany.  Still, there were Germans of high quality in the battle. Lt. Gottfried Kischkel, an infantry officer outside Bastogne, was in his foxhole on the afternoon of December 22. An American tank was hit and began burning. Kischkel heard cries for help from the tank. “So I crawled to it. An American was hanging out of the hatch, badly wounded. I pulled him out and dragged him to a ditch, where I applied first aid.”

Kischkel looked up from his bandaging and saw several Americans staring down with their M-1s pointed at him. An American lieutenant asked, in German, “What are you doing?”

“He cried for help and I helped,” Kischkel replied. The Americans put their heads together. Then the lieutenant asked, “Do you want to be taken prisoner, or do you want to go back to your comrades?”

“I must return to my comrades.”

“I expected no other answer,” the American said. He told Kischkel to take off.  The scenery was like a Christmas card. It drew oohs and ahs from even the most hardened warrior. One lieutenant said later, “If it hadn’t been for the fighting, that would have been . . . the most beautiful Christmas. . . .The rolling hills, the snow-covered fields and mountains, and the tall, majestic pines and firs really made it a Christmas I’ll never forget in spite of the fighting.”

The towns evoked memories. In Arlon, Belgium, on December 20, Sgt. Bruce Egger of the 26th was amazed: “This area seemed to be untouched by the war, as the city and stores were bedecked with decorations and Christmas trees.” Lt. Lee Otts, who was with Egger, remarked that “the streets were crowded with shoppers and people going home from work. . . . Everything had a holiday look about it.  It really made us homesick.”

Nearly every one of those four million men on the Western Front was homesick.  Loneliness was their most shared emotion. Christmas meant family, and reminders of Christmas were all around these men at war. Family and home meant life. The yearning for home was overpowering. Beyond thinking of loved ones, the men in the holes thought of the most ordinary day-to-day activities of civilian life-being able to flick a switch to light a room, no need for blackout curtains, able to smoke at night, hot food on dishes served at a table, cold beer, a bed!, clean sheets, regular showers, changes of clothes, nobody shooting at you!-they thought of these things and could have cried for missing them.  One of the loneliest GIs on the Western Front on Christmas Day was Pvt. Donald Chumley, a replacement assigned to the 90th Division. “I was nineteen, just out of high school-a farm boy with little experience in anything.” He was led to his one-man foxhole and told to get in and watch for Germans. Chumley didn’t catch the sergeant’s name. He couldn’t see the men to his right and left. He didn’t know what squad, platoon, company, or battalion he was in.  For Pvt. Bill Butler of the 106th it was a day of “fog, rain, snow, freezing sleet combined with someone trying to kill you. I was in a fox hole alone. I had no one to wish me a Merry Christmas.” For Pvt. Wesley Peyton of the 99th Division, it was a turning-point day. He was on Elsenborn Ridge. “Christmas Day dawned clear, bright and cold.” American planes were in the air, hot food came forward, along with ammunition and replacements. “I began to believe I might celebrate my 20th birthday after all.”

Many men were in houses. That is where most rear-echelon people lived and slept.  Sometimes front-line men, too, but only when the line ran down the middle of a village. But if the houses were within the enemy’s artillery range the GIs were staying in the cellars. In many cases the second and first floors had been blown away anyway, and if they weren’t they made inviting targets. So even in town men lived below ground level.

Almost any civilian walking into one of those cellars would have immediately declared it uninhabitable. The air was a mixture of sweat, brick dust, soot, and cigarette smoke. It could not be breathed. It was too dark to see much more than outlines. It was either too hot or too cold and it had no running water.  Every front-line soldier who walked into one of those cellars thought it the most desirable place in his entire world. The cellars were secure from all but a direct hit. They were dry. There was coffee on the stove. The cooks provided hot food. Sometimes there was a radio and “Axis Sally” playing American music. The exhausted GI could push some straw into a corner, lie down, and plunge into a deep sleep, completely relaxed because he felt secure.  Usually, he was right-he was secure. Even during heavy shellings, direct hits on cellars were rare. Still, they happened. Capt. Gunter Materne of the German artillery was in Belgium. “On Christmas Eve of 1944, my men and I were lying in the basement of a corner house. I was lying near the back on some straw. At about 2200 a shell exploded in our cellar. It came through the wall before it exploded.” Materne’s two radiomen were killed instantly. His sergeant was badly wounded and he had shrapnel in his back. As he was being pulled out the house burned down with the others still inside.

Pvt. Phillip Stark was a nineteen-year-old machine gunner in the 84th Division.  He arrived on Christmas Eve at a position outside the Belgian village of Verdenne on the northern shoulder of the Bulge. His company had been on the offensive for a month and as a result lost 175 out of the original 200 men.  Replacements had brought it back to strength. “Upon arrival in this sector,” Stark wrote three years later, recording his experiences on paper for fear of forgetting details, “we were told no prisoners. They didn’t say, ‘Shoot any German who surrenders,’ but there was no alternative. Our forces were spread thin. We had no one to take care of those who surrendered or were wounded. Few people back home were aware of or could understand the necessity of the thing.” At twilight the German troops in Verdenne began to celebrate. “Sounds and songs carried well across the cold clear air.” Too well for Stark’s safety-officers at regimental level heard the songs and decided to give the Germans a reminder of Washington crossing the Delaware to attack the Hessian troops on Christmas Eve 1776. Stark’s platoon was ordered to attack and drive the Germans from the town.  That meant going up a hill. In the dark the company got to the top, only to be shelled by American artillery. Stark and his buddy Wib tried to dig in, but below the frozen earth there was rock. They were digging from the prone position, and despite frantic efforts, when dawn came “our hole was only about a foot deep and six feet long. Wib was 6’2” and I’m 6’6”, but at least we were able to keep ourselves below the all important ground level.  “This is how we spent Christmas Eve in 1944.”