Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (49 page)

1. US Infantry advancing through a hole blasted in the Siegfried Line, or Westwall, in October 1944.

2. Fallschirmjäger mortar crew in the Hürtgen Forest. Mortars accounted for the highest number of casualties on both sides.

3. 1st Infantry Division in the Hürtgen Forest.

4. Medics with wounded soldier.

5. French troops in the Vosges. The North African soldiers in the First French Army attacking the Colmar Gap south-west of Strasbourg suffered terribly from the cold.

6. 7 December 1944, Maastricht meeting with (
l
to
r
) Bradley, Tedder, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Simpson.

7. German prisoners captured in early December in the Hürtgen Forest near Düren.

8. Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model, commander-in-chief Army Group B.

9. Field Marshal Montgomery appears to be lecturing an increasingly exasperated Eisenhower once again.

10. General der Panzertruppe Hasso-Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel of the Fifth Panzer Army.

11. Oberstgruppenführer-SS Sepp Dietrich of the Sixth Panzer Army wearing his Knight’s Cross with oak leaves.

12. Oberst then Generalmajor Heinz Kokott, the rather more enlightened commander of the 26th Volksgrenadier-Division at Bastogne.