Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble (41 page)

On the southern side of Bastogne, the 35th Infantry Division, which had been greatly weakened during the battles in Lorraine, arrived to fill the gap between the 4th Armored Division and the 26th Infantry Division. The 35th was to attack north-east towards Marvie and the Longvilly–Bastogne road while the rest of the 4th Armored helped clear the villages east of the Arlon road. The infantry, with sodden boots from fording streams, were suffering as many cases of frostbite and trench foot as battle casualties.
‘It was so cold
… that the water in our canteens froze right on our bodies,’ an officer in the 51st Armored Infantry wrote in his diary. ‘We ate snow or melted it down to drink or make coffee.’ His battalion, which had been 600 strong, suffered 461 battle and non-battle casualties in three weeks.

To the west, the 9th Armored Division’s Combat Command A advanced up the road from Neufchâteau which ran close to Sibret, an important American objective. German reinforcements also began to arrive as the fighting for Bastogne intensified. On Thursday 28 December the
Führer
Begleit
took over the Sibret sector on the south-west side. Oberst Remer claimed that, on the way down from the northern front, their medical company was shot up during
‘a fighter-bomber attack
lasting 35 minutes, although all vehicles were painted white and bore the red cross’. Manteuffel believed that Remer’s formation would make all the difference, and its Panthers and Mark IVs went straight into action against the 9th Armored’s tanks, setting a number of them on fire.

Remer was angry and mortified to learn that he was now under the orders of the greatly reduced 3rd Panzergrenadier-Division. The
Führer Begleit
, despite being less than half the size of a standard division, was heavily armed at a time when the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division was left with little artillery support, and the 26th Volksgrenadier had no more armour-piercing shells. Remer, who had a battery of 105mm anti-aircraft guns, transferred them to Chenogne ready to take on Patton’s tanks. His 88mm batteries were deployed five kilometres further north round Flamierge where they claimed to have shot down
‘ten cargo-carrying gliders’
. But the
Führer Begleit
was too late to save the key village of Sibret. After a heavy artillery bombardment, the Americans forced the Germans out that night. A shot-down glider pilot had been captured by the Germans near by. He hid in a potato bin when they withdrew, and found himself a free man again.

The loss of Sibret dismayed Manteuffel as well as Lüttwitz, for now their chances of re-establishing the encirclement of Bastogne were greatly reduced. Lüttwitz ordered Remer to recapture Sibret the next morning with help from a Kampfgruppe
from the 3rd Panzergrenadier-Division.
‘If this attack failed,’
Lüttwitz wrote, ‘the Corps believed that it would be necessary to begin the immediate withdrawal of the front salient.’ But Hitler, refusing yet again to accept reality, announced the creation of a so-called ‘Army Group Lüttwitz’ to crush Bastogne. In theory, it included the 2nd Panzer-Division, the Panzer Lehr, the 9th Panzer-Division, the 3rd and the 15th Panzergrenadier-Divisions, the 1st SS Panzer-Division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
, the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division and the
Führer Begleit
Brigade. But, despite its typically Hitlerian appellation, most of the formations designated were little more than remnants.

During the early hours of Friday 29 December, the
Führer Begleit
Brigade assembled on the southern edge of the woods near Chenogne for its counter-attack against Sibret. But as soon as Remer’s troops emerged from
the trees they were greeted by a massive concentration of fire from the field artillery battalions brought up to crush this expected riposte. Flanking fire from Villeroux to the east, which the Americans had taken after a fierce fight on 28 December, also caused many casualties. The woods south-east of Chenogne changed hands several times. One of Remer’s 105mm anti-aircraft guns knocked out several American tanks during the fighting, but eventually its crew, despite defending their gun as infantrymen in close-combat fighting, were overwhelmed. A Sherman tank crushed their gun under its tracks. That evening Remer reported that the
Führer Begleit
was now too weak to attempt another attack against Sibret.

Luftwaffe bombers raided Bastogne on the night of Friday 29 December just as the weather turned, with snow and mist now coming down from Scandinavia. But at least the corridor was secure, so hundreds of trucks ferried in large quantities of supplies for the defenders of Bastogne as well as 400 replacements for the 101st Airborne. General Taylor visited his troops in the front line of the perimeter to congratulate them. Some found his manner irritating.
‘His instructions before leaving us’
, recorded Major Dick Winters of the 506th, ‘were “Watch those woods in front of you!” What the hell did he think we had been doing while he was in Washington?’

The paratroopers were dejected to find that, despite their heroic treatment in the press, they were not to be replaced and returned to Mourmelon-le-Grand. At least they had received their mail and Christmas packages from home. The contents were shared with other platoon members or Belgian civilians. And finally they had enough to eat, with their preferred ‘ten-in-one’ ration packs. Some paratroopers also managed to ‘liberate’ the store of spirits which VIII Corps headquarters had left behind: it had been revealed when one of the Luftwaffe bombs had blown down the wall of a building. But the bitter cold and the routine of deadly skirmishes and dangerous patrols at night continued. Their commanders still wanted intelligence on the enemy units opposite, so snatch squads had to go out to seize a ‘tongue’ for interrogation. (German officers had confiscated their men’s paybooks because they revealed too much information about their unit.) But moving silently at night was impossible, since every step made a noise as each foot crunched through the hard crust on top of the snow. And their white capes, frozen stiff, crackled as they moved. Experiments with bleached fatigue suits
for camouflage were not very successful. Paratroopers envied the Germans’ reversible jacket with a white lining, which was far better.

Since it was common practice to set up dummies out in front of defensive positions to prompt an enemy patrol to open fire prematurely, paratroopers resorted to using frozen German corpses propped up in the snow. One was called
‘Oscar’
after the unit’s puppet-like mascot, which parachuted with them. It also served as a directional marker for fire orders in the event of a surprise attack. Paratroopers had been surprised to find that the faces of men who died in that extreme cold did not have the usual grey tinge, but went a burgundy colour as the blood capillaries froze rapidly under the skin.

As well as trench foot and frostbite many paratroopers, already filthy and bearded, were suffering from dysentery, largely due to the impossibility of cleaning mess kits properly. Temperatures as low as minus 20 Centigrade could make the cooling jackets of their heavy machine guns burst. These weapons could be seen by their muzzle flash from a great distance, while its German equivalent could not be spotted at over a hundred metres. Paratroopers were not alone in preferring to use captured German MG-42 machine guns. New replacements needed to learn to avoid firing too long a burst which gave away their position.

Many soldiers liked to debate the best way to throw a grenade: whether like a baseball, a shot-put or an overarm lob. The baseball throw was rejected by many as it was liable to wrench the arm and shoulder. To prevent the Germans catching it and throwing it back, experienced soldiers would pull the pin, count to two or three and then throw. Grenades were often carried with the lever hooked into buttonholes. Officers despaired, knowing that they would fall off and be lost when men lay down. Clueless replacements were also found attaching them to their equipment by the rings, which was a quick way of blowing yourself up. A spare canteen cover usually proved the best carrier.

On 30 December, General Patton entered Bastogne wearing his famous pearl-handled revolvers. He congratulated officers and men in his curiously high-pitched voice, presented medals, had his photograph taken in many places, examined burned-out German tanks and visited the main battle sites. They included the Château de Rolley, where he slept for a few hours before continuing his tour. An artillery observation
officer with the 327th Glider Infantry, already under fire on a ridge from German tanks, was infuriated to see a group walking up quite openly from behind to join him. He swore at them to get down only to find an imperturbable General Patton who had come to watch. Having ranged in with a single gun, the captain ordered ‘fire for effect’ from his field battalion on the panzers. One lucky round scored a direct hit on the turret, setting off the ammunition inside and blasting the tank to pieces.
‘Now by God that is good firing!’
a triumphant Patton exclaimed. It had clearly made his day.

While the
Führer Begleit
and the 3rd Panzergrenadiers attacked from the west, a Kampfgruppe
from the 1st SS Panzer-Division together with the 14th Fallschirmjäger-Regiment and the 167th Volksgrenadier-Division, newly arrived from Hungary, attacked from the east around Lutrebois. A battalion of the American 35th Infantry Division in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau was taken by surprise in the fog before dawn. Two companies were wiped out, but the field artillery once again played a major role in saving the situation. With divisional and corps guns firing shells with the new Pozit fuses, the 167th Volksgrenadiers were
‘cut to pieces’
, in the words of their commander.

When Shermans and tank destroyers from the 4th Armored, drawn by the sound of battle, joined in this chaotic battle, the infantry passed on their sightings of German tanks in the woods. The 134th Infantry Regiment claimed that twenty-seven tanks had been knocked out and the estimates of other units brought the total to over fifty, but this was a gross exaggeration. Even so the
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
had suffered heavy losses, and blamed its failure on the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division. According to its commander, Generalmajor Heilmann,
‘The SS spread the rumor that
[my] paratroopers sat down in peace with Americans in the cellar of a house in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau and made a toast to brotherhood.’ The
Leibstandarte
commander Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke wanted to court-martial the officers of the 14th Fallschirmjäger-Regiment for cowardice, and apparently said that a ‘National Socialist leadership officer
^*
should be set at the throat of the Fallschirmjäger division’.

The mutual dislike between the Waffen-SS and other Wehrmacht formations reached new depths. The SS Panzer formations demanded priority on every route, causing chaos.
‘These road conditions reached
their peak when SS formations arrived in the Bastogne combat sector,’ wrote Generalmajor Kokott. ‘These units – unduly boastful and arrogant anyway – with their total lack of discipline so typical of them, with their well-known ruthlessness combined with considerable lack of logic, had a downright devastating effect and in all cases proved a handicap for any systematic conduct of fighting.’ This hatred of the SS did not exist solely at senior officer level. Feldwebel Rösner in Kokott’s division described how the SS
‘broke into houses in Luxembourg and out of vandalism destroyed everything’
. They had also destroyed holy pictures in the German Eifel, because the region was very Catholic.

The most encouraging event for Patton’s III Corps was the arrival of forward elements of the 6th Armored Division to take over from the exhausted 4th Armored. This formation was both at full strength and experienced, a rare combination at that time. Some of their Shermans had the new 76mm gun – based on the British 17-pounder – which could finally take on a Mark VI Tiger with confidence. Although one combat command was delayed on its approach by having to share the same road as the 11th Armored, the other one moved into position on the south-east of the perimeter near Neffe ready to attack Wardin the next day.

Not all mistaken attacks on American troops came from Thunderbolt and Lightning fighter-bombers. On 31 December Third Army reported that
‘bombers from the Eighth Air Force
unfortunately bombed the headquarters of 4th Armored Division, the town of Wecker, and that part of the 4th Infantry Division at Echternach’. An urgent meeting was called with the air force generals Doolittle and Spaatz to discuss accidental bombing of ‘our own forces’ and ‘inversely the firing upon our own airplanes by our own anti-aircraft guns’. The ‘accidental bombing’ was hushed up in order ‘not to shake the faith of the troops’. Faults lay on both sides, but after several incidents many American troops reverted to the slogan from Normandy ‘If it flies, it dies’, and they frequently opened fire at any aircraft approaching whether in or out of range. The army was also openly sceptical about the air force’s inflated estimates of the number of panzers it had destroyed.
‘It is obvious that Air Corps claims must be exaggerated,’
12th Army Group observed, ‘otherwise the Germans would be without tanks whereas our recon indicates plenty of them.’

The Luftwaffe still made night bombing raids on Bastogne. On 1 January, German prisoners of war under guard were clearing debris near Bastogne’s central square when one of them stepped on a ‘Butterfly’ bomblet dropped in the previous night’s raid. It exploded upward into his groin. He fell to the ground screaming. The scene was witnessed by soldiers from the 52nd Armored Infantry of the 9th Armored Division. One of their officers wrote later:
‘You could hear laughter coming from the throats of our GIs in the trucks.’

On the First Army front to the north, Montgomery had now moved in the 53rd Welsh Division and the American 83rd Infantry Division to relieve the 2nd Armored in the west and the 84th Infantry Division round Marche. The 51st Highland Division became a First Army reserve. As more of Horrocks’s XXX Corps arrived, the rest of Collins’s VII Corps could pull back to redeploy ready for the counter-attack on 3 January.
^*
The British 6th Airborne Division which moved in east of Celles tried to dig defensive positions, but the ground was frozen so hard that the men’s spades were useless. They resorted instead to hammering hollow camouflet rods into the ground, and then filled them with explosive to blast holes. They soon found that dealing with Teller mines buried under the snow was a dangerous task.