Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (33 page)

The change in the weather meant that uniforms stood out conspicuously against the snow. In Bastogne and surrounding villages, American officers asked the local mayor if they could obtain sheets to be used as camouflage. In Hemroulle, the burgomaster went straight to the church and began to toll the bell. Villagers came running and he told them to bring their sheets as the American soldiers needed them. Some 200 were provided. The paratroopers began cutting them up to make helmet covers, or strips to wrap round rifle and machine-gun barrels. Those
who made poncho-style capes for going out on patrol soon found, however, that they became damp and froze. This made them crackle and rustle as they moved. Other soldiers scoured Bastogne and its surrounding villages for cans of whitewash to camouflage their vehicles and tanks.

In their foxholes round the Bastogne perimeter, the ill-equipped paratroopers of the 101st suffered badly in the freezing temperatures, especially with their feet in sodden boots. Some soldiers discovered a store in Bastogne with a couple of thousand burlap sacks. These and others were distributed rapidly for the soldiers to wrap around their feet, yet non-battle casualties from trench foot and frostbite were soon to rise alarmingly.

Despite the wretched conditions, the paratroopers surprised the Germans by the vigour of their counter-attacks on that day. The Germans had begun by attacking the Mande-Saint-Etienne sector at dawn. During the fighting there, a family of refugees sought shelter along with others in the last house in the village. The two brothers who owned the farm milked the cows and brought in pails of it for their guests to drink in the attached stable. Suddenly, the door was kicked open and two German soldiers with ‘Schmeisser’ MP-40 sub-machine guns entered. The refugees cowered against the wall, because the two men appeared drunk. While one of them trained his weapon on the civilians, the other walked over to the pails of milk, undid his trousers and urinated in them one by one. They both thought that this was funny.

The 26th Volksgrenadier-Division lost just on 400 men in its attacks that day, and it had to bring in replacements from the divisional supply battalion and the artillery regiment as infantrymen to make up numbers. Because of the counter-attacks, Generalmajor Kokott even thought that the defenders were about to attempt a breakout from the encirclement. His men had heard from civilian refugees leaving Bastogne that there was great tension in the town and that vehicles were being loaded up. German shells during the night had hit the 101st Division’s command post and killed several officers in their sleeping bags.

An airdrop planned for that day had to be cancelled because of the bad visibility. The 101st was running very short of artillery ammunition and the number of barely treated wounded was mounting fast. Yet morale was high, particularly when news of the rejected demand to surrender
rapidly made the rounds. Some senior officers at SHAEF, particularly Major General Strong, the British chief of intelligence, feared that the 101st Airborne would not be able to defend Bastogne.
‘I was never worried about the operation,’
Bedell Smith said later. ‘Strong was, however. He asked me three times in one day if I thought we would hold at Bastogne. I thought [we could]. He said, “How do you know?” I said: “Because the commanders there think they can hold.” We had at Bastogne our best division. When the commander said [they were] OK, I believed he would [hold].’

Major General ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins wasted little time in organizing his VII Corps to resist the advance of the German panzer divisions heading for the Meuse. For the moment he had only the 84th Infantry Division, but the 2nd Armored Division was on its way, and so was the 75th Infantry Division. He travelled in an armoured car to reach the town of Marche-en-Famenne.
‘The fog was sitting right on the tree tops,’
he recorded later. There he found Brigadier General Alex Bolling, the commander of the 84th Infantry Division, who had pushed out reconnaissance forces to identify the enemy’s line of approach. He was reassured to find Bolling ‘very calm’, but their conversation convinced him that Bradley was wrong to believe that his entire corps should be held back for a counter-attack. VII Corps was about to be
‘engaged in a fight for its life’
. Collins decided to set up his corps headquarters in a small chateau at Méan, fifteen kilometres due north of Marche.

The advance Kampfgruppe
of the 2nd Panzer-Division had started early on 22 December heading for Marche. It met no resistance until it clashed with a detachment of Bolling’s 335th Infantry Regiment at a crossroads two kilometres south of Marche, in rolling country of fields and woods. While a force of panzergrenadiers continued the battle, the lead elements of the 2nd Panzer turned west towards Dinant. Alarm was caused by an unconfirmed report from the British 23rd Hussars, forward of the Meuse crossing at Givet, that panzers had been sighted at Vonêche, a dozen kilometres to the south-east.

The lead elements of the 2nd Panzer were by then only twenty-five kilometres from the Meuse bridge at Dinant, but constant attacks by Bolling’s division forced the 2nd Panzer to detach troops for flank protection. An attack from Marche by American infantry in the morning
failed, but another, stronger attempt supported by tanks in the afternoon retook the high ground south-west of the town. A major reverse was prevented by the 2nd Panzer’s anti-aircraft battalion taking on the Shermans in the open, but it suffered heavy losses in the process. That night the panzergrenadiers managed to retake part of the heights and open the road to the west.

American service troops and other detachments in the area soon woke up to the danger. One group, who had billeted themselves in the ancient Château d’Hargimont between Marche and Rochefort, slept in their uniforms and boots with grenades to hand in case they were surprised in the night by the German advance. On hearing gunfire, they pulled out rapidly and headed back towards Dinant. So too did most of the young Belgian men, either on bicycles or on foot. They had a well-justified fear of reprisals for the attacks by the Resistance in September, and they also knew that if they stayed, they risked being marched off to Germany for forced labour.

Taking refuge in cellars as artillery shells began to fall, Belgians had no idea of the state of the battle. They could, however, identify the different sounds made in the street by American boots with rubber soles and the hobnailed jackboots of the Germans. They backed away when Germans entered, not just from a fear of violence, but also because they knew the enemy soldiers were covered in lice. German troops during that advance were intent on searching for Americans in hiding or for members of the Resistance. Any young Belgian who had been unwise enough to pick up a couple of live rounds was liable to be shot as a ‘terrorist’ if searched. And when the Germans decided to make themselves at home, they stacked their rifles and Panzerfausts in a corner, which the civilians could not help eyeing nervously. The locals spoke Walloon among themselves, knowing that the soldiers could not understand, unless one of them happened to be a conscript from the eastern cantons.

In cellars, lit by storm-lamps or candles, the Ardennais sometimes sang folk-songs when there was a long lull. But when the shelling started again in earnest, people began reciting the rosary, their lips moving fast. Conditions during long periods of bombardment rapidly deteriorated, encouraging dysentery. Buckets could be taken up and emptied on the dung-heap only when there was a lull in the firing. Farmers and their sons would also rush out to milk cows in the byre and feed the pigs.
They brought back pails of milk for those sheltering downstairs to improve the diet of potatoes. If there was time, they would rapidly butcher livestock killed by shellfire. The fortunate would have brought an Ardennes ham, which they shared out. Many stuffed pails and bottles with snow and waited for it to melt as drinking water, because going to the pump was too dangerous. Those who fled to the woods when their homes were shelled could do no more than pack together for warmth. Their only water came from sucking icicles.

All over the Ardennes, the old and infirm were looked after in a community spirit; in fact examples of selfishness seem to have been rare. People whose houses had stone cellars would shelter neighbours who only had floorboards over theirs. And the owner of a local chateau with deep cellars would invite the villagers to take shelter there, but such a prominent building was always likely to attract the interest of artillery observers, whether Allied or German.

Generalmajor von Waldenburg, the commander of the 116th Panzer-Division, was in a bad mood that morning. At 04.00 hours, he had received an order from his corps commander to stop his attack on Hotton from east of the River Ourthe, which was valiantly defended by an American engineer battalion and service troops. Manteuffel wrongly believed that the defence was too strong and would hold up Waldenburg’s division. He ordered the 560th Volksgrenadier-Division to take over at Hotton, while the 116th Panzer was to go back through Samrée and La Roche-en-Ardenne, then proceed north-west again on the other side of the Ourthe to break through between Hotton and Marche. Waldenburg was convinced that if they had been sent that way earlier, they could have advanced well beyond Marche by then. This diversion certainly allowed General Collins more time to organize his defence line further to the west.

In Luxembourg, General Bradley’s staff noticed that he now seldom left his bedroom or office. But that morning Hansen entered Bradley’s office to find him on his knees bent over a map on the floor, peering through his bifocals at the road net being used by the Germans, and marking routes with brown crayon. It was the day on which General Patton’s attack from the south towards Bastogne began with III Corps, including
the 4th Armored Division and the 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions on its right. XII Corps, starting behind the 4th Infantry Division on the southern shoulder, would also advance north with the 5th Division and part of the 10th Armored.

After the heavy snowfall of the night before, Hansen described the view from the hotel as
‘a veritable postcard scene with tiny snow covered houses’
. The fog had eased and the temperature had dropped, but low cloud cover still prevented the deployment of Allied airpower in all its strength. As the population of Luxembourg was still anxious, the 12th Army Group civil affairs officer decided to take Prince Jean, the son of the Grand Duchess Charlotte, round the city in a car, to reassure the people that he had remained with them. Bradley’s staff were angry that Radio Luxembourg, with the most powerful transmitter in Europe, had gone off air when its staff pulled out in a panic, taking most of their technical equipment with them.

Fears over Skorzeny’s commandos had still not been put to rest. Counter Intelligence Corps men were
‘acutely worried over the safety of our generals’
, Hansen noted in his diary that day. ‘German agents in American uniforms are supposedly identified by their pink or blue scarves, by two [finger] taps on their helmets and by the open top button on their coats and jackets. When Charlie Wertenbaker [of
Time
magazine] came this evening, we pointed to his maroon scarf, warned him of a shade of pink and he promptly removed it.’

Eisenhower, also suffocating under security precautions at Versailles, issued an order of the day to all formations.
‘The enemy is making his supreme effort to break out
of the desperate plight into which you forced him by your brilliant victories of the summer and fall. He is fighting savagely to take back all that you have won and is using every treacherous trick to deceive and kill you. He is gambling everything, but already in this battle, your unparalleled gallantry has done much to foil his plans. In the face of your proven bravery and fortitude, he will completely fail.’

The day before, in an attempt to defend Bradley from any suggestion that he had been caught off-guard in the Ardennes, Eisenhower recommended his promotion to full general. He wrote to General Marshall to say that the 12th Army Group commander had
‘kept his head magnificently and
… proceeded methodically and energetically to meet the situation. In no quarter is there any tendency to place any blame on Bradley.’

Bradley, egged on by his staff according to Bedell Smith, convinced himself that Montgomery had panicked. If nothing else, this completely distorted view demonstrated that his Eagle Tac headquarters in Luxembourg was totally out of touch with the reality on the ground.
‘We learned that the entire British Army was in retreat,’
wrote one of his staff officers. ‘Leaving only a skeleton force in the line, and with remarkable agility for a man who was often so cautious, Montgomery moved the bulk of the British Second and the Canadian First Armies back from Holland to a defensive semicircle round Antwerp, prepared for the last ditch battle he apparently thought he would have to fight there.’ Bradley’s staff clearly had no idea that Horrocks’s XXX Corps was on the Meuse, with the 29th Armoured Brigade already on the east bank, ready to link up with the right wing of Collins’s VII Corps.