Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (22 page)

While the Peiper Kampfgruppe forged west down the valley of the Amblève, more battalions from the US 1st Division arrived to strengthen the southern approach to the Elsenborn ridge. The 2nd Battalion of the 26th Infantry prepared positions facing Büllingen during the afternoon. It was ready with four M-10 tank destroyers in support, to take on the advancing Germans who had been held back by American artillery fire from the ridge behind them.

The vital battle to defend the ridge was already taking place on its eastern flank around Rocherath–Krinkelt. General Robertson of the 2nd Division, having thrown his 23rd Infantry Regiment into a line east of the twin villages as the 99th Division was beaten back, began bringing the 38th Infantry back down the road from Wahlerscheid. A barrage by American artillery at midday kept the Germans’ heads down as they pulled back from their forward positions. In such a confused situation, friendly fire was a real danger. That morning, a P-47 Thunderbolt pilot jettisoned his bombs to engage a Messerschmitt over the 3rd Battalion and caused twelve casualties.

With reinforced platoons flanking the eastern side of the Wahlerscheid–Rocherath road, General Robertson himself went out to meet the battalions with trucks to take them to the new positions near Rocherath.

At least the far left of the line, some fourteen kilometres north of Elsenborn, appeared solid. The 326th Volksgrenadier-Division had attempted one attack after another on either side of Monschau, but American
artillery had broken each one. The new top-secret proximity, or Pozit, fuse was used on shells for the first time in action, without authority from higher command, but with great success as they exploded over the attackers in accurate air bursts.

An armoured infantry battalion from the 5th Armored Division would reach Mützenich to strengthen the line not long after dark. And to their rear the 18th Regiment from the 1st Infantry Division was starting its sweep of the forests south of Eupen, to deal with Heydte’s isolated paratroopers. General Gerow was puzzled as to why the Sixth Panzer Army had not attacked in much greater strength on the northern flank, rather than concentrate its forces just south of the Elsenborn ridge. This was of course at Hitler’s insistence, but Manteuffel still felt that Dietrich had made a great mistake in restricting himself to such a narrow frontage, with so little room for manoeuvre.

East of Rocherath–Krinkelt, as the light began to fade and the sound of firing came closer, the soldiers of Robertson’s 2nd Division dug harder and harder to make their foxholes deep enough under the snow before the tanks of the SS
Hitler Jugend
Division hit them. Their sweat would turn very cold as soon as they stopped. There were chaotic scenes as the 1st Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment moved into its positions under fire from the wooded high ground to its east. Many of the men from the shattered 99th Division were so determined to escape that they would not listen to orders to halt and join the defensive line.
‘Against this demoralizing picture, the Battalion moved in with orders to hold,’
its commander, Lieutenant Colonel McKinley, reported. ‘Streams of men and vehicles were pouring down the forest roads through the junction in wild confusion and disorder. Control in the 99th Division had been irretrievably lost and the stragglers echoed each other with remarks that their units had been surrounded and annihilated. One of our own battalions from the 23rd Infantry had also been engulfed in what actually was a flight to the rear.’

McKinley’s men laid ‘daisy-chains’ or ‘necklaces’ of six anti-tank mines each across any track or approach likely to be used by German tanks. The first attack came as darkness fell. Artillery fire along the length of the approach road proved effective
, to judge by the
‘screaming among the enemy’
. During a lull, men slipped forward to lay anti-tank mines borrowed from the tank-destroyer battalion, and two-man bazooka teams improved their positions covering the road, knowing full well that they were in the target zone of their own artillery.

The American infantry’s 57mm anti-tank gun stood little chance of knocking out a German Panther tank except from the side or rear, at close range. And tank-destroyer units with towed guns were at a severe disadvantage in the mud and snow, when limbering up to pull back.
‘In heavy and close combat,’
one analysis stated, ‘the towing vehicle was often destroyed while the gun, dug in, remained intact.’

Lieutenant Colonel Barsanti of the 38th Infantry warned his platoon commanders that because of all the men from the 99th Division pulling back through their positions, they were not to open fire until they had positively identified the enemy. In the darkness it was impossible to be sure until they came close. As a result, two German tanks got through his K Company using their spotlights to blind the men looking out from their foxholes. But the two tanks were knocked out, one by artillery, the other by a bazooka team. Panzergrenadiers came close behind.
‘One enemy soldier
came so close to the position that he grabbed the barrel of a light machinegun and the gunner was forced to finish him off with a .45 pistol.’

Members of one company, forced to pull back from its forward position in a wood,
‘plunged through the thickly
interlaced branches of little firs. Bullets followed us,’ their commander wrote, ‘lashing the firs on all sides, and I wondered if maybe I had been hit. I felt no pain, but I could not see how any human being could endure those hails of bullets and not be wounded.’ He wrote later of their escape back to Rocherath:
‘I felt like
we were helpless little bugs scurrying blindly about now that some man monster had lifted the log under which we had been hiding.’

The SS panzergrenadiers attacked using automatic weapons and throwing potato-masher grenades. One SS man seized a prisoner, and forced him to walk and answer challenges. Both he and his luckless human shield were shot down. Yet some stragglers who arrived from the 99th Division in the middle of this night battle were identified in time and not killed by their own side. A medic from the 99th also arrived, but he was a prisoner sent by the Germans. Apparently, some 150 Americans were surrounded by 200 Germans in the area shelled by the field
artillery battalions on the Elsenborn ridge.
‘The Germans had sent
him to the US positions to try to get them to surrender on threat of annihilation of the prisoner GIs.’

During a lull in the battle, to the astonishment of the defenders, a large convoy of trucks full of troops from the 99th Division appeared. Their officers asked for directions to Camp Elsenborn. It was a miracle that they had come through the German units without being identified as American.

In the holding battle forward of Rocherath–Krinkelt, bazooka teams were sent to deal with the panzers. Whenever they achieved a hit, forcing the Germans inside to bale out,
‘the crews were picked off by American riflemen’
, as Lieutenant Colonel McKinley observed. At 22.00 hours, two sergeants from his battalion grabbed a can of gasoline and crept up in the dark on a panzer, which although immobilized was causing heavy casualties with its machine gun and main armament. They poured the fuel over the tank and set it alight. Fifteen minutes later, a lieutenant stalked a Mark VI Tiger with a bazooka and knocked it out. But the attacks continued throughout the night in waves, and the main assault would not come until shortly before dawn the next morning.

In the south, Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army was having greater success against Cota’s 28th Infantry Division due east of Bastogne. The 28th, which had been badly weakened in the Hürtgen Forest, was still short of men and weapons. But even though battered by the 116th Panzer-Division, the 2nd Panzer-Division and the Panzer Lehr, Cota’s men managed to inflict considerable casualties and slow them down by holding crossroads and villages for as long as possible. The German corps commander considered the 28th to be
‘a mediocre division with no reputation as a great fighting unit’
. But although the 28th had certainly lost most of its experienced men in the Hürtgen Forest, some of its companies performed a heroic and vital role.

When fighting to defend a small town east of Wiltz, soldiers from Cota’s 109th Infantry Regiment sighted tanks. They thought they were Mark VI Tigers, but they might have been Mark IVs which looked similar although much smaller. They had no anti-tank gun.
‘A group of men nearby had a couple of bazookas and ammunition,’
an officer recorded later, ‘but said that they did not know how to use them. I took one and
bumped right into a Tiger as I came round a corner. The tank was head on but I let it have one anyway, hitting it right in front. The tank stopped but was not damaged and fired its 88 at the house I had ducked behind. I then got up in the second story of an adjoining house where I was to the flank and above the tank. I fired two more shots at it; the first striking the rear deck at an angle. It exploded but the tank did not appear to notice it. My third shot hit the turret just above where it joins the hull of the tank. It didn’t penetrate but a lot of sparks flew and it must have jarred the crew as the tank immediately backed up and withdrew to a position about 800 yards away from which they shelled us.’ The bazooka was not as powerful as its shoulder-launched counterpart, the German Panzerfaust. From the front, all that could be achieved was a broken track. But if hunting groups managed to get round the back of a Tiger or a Panther with a bazooka, then they stood a chance. It was generally agreed that the anti-tank rifle grenade was a dangerous waste of time.

On the 28th Division’s northern flank, the ancient town of Clervaux above the River Clerf came under threat. The attack of the 116th Panzer-Division to the north was pushing back the 112th Infantry of the 28th Division up into the 106th Division’s sector, where it became the far-right flank in the defence of St Vith. Clervaux, where Colonel Fuller commanding the 110th Infantry had set up his command post in a hotel, was partly shielded by the resolute defence of Marnach by one of his companies. But the 2nd Panzer-Division forced on past this obstacle. At 05.00 on 17 December, a field artillery battery five kilometres north-east of Clervaux was overrun by panzergrenadiers.

Before dawn German patrols reached Clervaux, which had already been infiltrated by an artillery observation team equipped with a radio. Then infantry slipped in unobserved and concealed themselves in the pharmacy just below the mainly fifteenth-century castle, with round towers surmounted by spires like witches’ hats. The castle still stands on a rocky spur projecting into the middle of the town, which curves round it in a horseshoe. By 09.30, Panther tanks and self-propelled assault guns were in action from the high ground overlooking Clervaux. General Cota sent a platoon of Shermans and some infantry to help Fuller, who had no more than his regimental headquarters personnel and sixty men retrieved from the divisional rest centre. As darkness fell that afternoon, Fuller reported to Cota in Wiltz that the town was surrounded
and a panzer was
‘sitting in his front
door firing in’. At an aid station someone called out,
‘If you’re a Jewish GI
, throw your dog tags away because there are SS troops here.’ At least one soldier tossed his, marked with an ‘H’ for ‘Hebrew’, into a pot-bellied stove.

The headquarters personnel with soldiers from the rest centre pulled back to the castle, where they continued to hold out on the following day. Among the civilians sheltering in the castle was the sixteen-year-old Jean Servé, who described how in one room a GI was playing the piano while an American sniper, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, was calmly shooting Germans, one after another. Servé watched as one of his victims rolled down the hill behind the Hôtel du Parc. As the battle continued, the wounded were placed in the cellars along with the civilians. But soon the defenders ran out of ammunition, and with the castle on fire they had no choice but to surrender.

Next to the 28th Division on the southern flank was General Barton’s 4th Infantry Division. It too had been badly weakened in the Hürtgen Forest, but at least its attackers were less formidable than Manteuffel’s panzer divisions. Barton’s 12th Infantry Regiment held the towns of Dickweiler, Echternach, Osweiler, Lauterborn and Berdorf against the 212th Volksgrenadier-Division. His plan had been to deny the Germans use of the road network west of the Sauer by occupying villages and hamlets at key intersections with a company apiece. The main thrust hit the 2nd Battalion of the 22nd Infantry Regiment, but it held its ground. Almost all these defended points were surrounded. But by the evening of 17 December the situation had been stabilized with the arrival of task forces from the 10th Armored Division, and they were soon relieved.

The ‘Tigers of the Tenth’ moved north through Luxembourg on 17 December. The news that they were to lead the fight back against the offensive was greeted with elation, for they had feared they were destined to be a rearguard. Late that afternoon, Combat Command A under Brigadier General Edwin W. Piburn
‘rolled headlong into a very surprised German force’
near the Schwarz Erntz gorge. The battle continued for three days, but the German advance was halted. The southern shoulder was secure.

At First Army headquarters in Spa, however, the mood on the evening of 17 December was sombre, with the Peiper Kampfgruppe forging
west and the 28th Division unable to hold back Manteuffel’s panzer divisions.
‘The G-2 estimate tonight’
, the war diary recorded, ‘says that the enemy is capable of attempting to exploit his initial gains by driving through our rear areas and seizing bridgeheads over the Meuse river.’

The greatest threat was to Bastogne. The Panzer Lehr Division was heading due west straight for its southern side, while the 2nd Panzer-Division was aiming to circumvent it to the north. The 26th Volksgrenadier-Division was to take the town. They all received orders from General der Panzertruppe Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, who commanded the XLVII Panzer Corps. The 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division to the south was held up at Wiltz by Cota’s 28th Division. There was no mention of Bastogne in its orders from the Seventh Army. It was just told
‘to advance as rapidly
as possible, to secure a large enough area for General von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army to maneuver in’. But that afternoon Lüttwitz suddenly became aware of Bastogne’s importance to the Americans. His headquarters intercepted a radio message saying that an airborne division would be coming to Bastogne in convoys of trucks. This presumably came from the US military police radio net, which broadcast in clear and gave the Germans some of their best intelligence. Lüttwitz was confident that his panzer divisions would get there first.