Behind Hitler's Lines (36 page)

“I felt exactly what they were doing, felt it but at the same time watched. It was a terrible zone. That's the end point of terror. You don't get through it; you survive it or you don't, and if you do, you wish you hadn't. I was witnessing while
having my body twisted and destroyed. It was burning and freezing at the same time. I was broken down into coals. I survived but was never made whole. And I was one of their luckiest prisoners.”

CRAMMED ONTO OPEN FLATBED TRUCKS THE 101ST MOVED OUT
on the morning of December 18, though a third of its strength was not present for duty, most on leave in France.

“Where are we goin'?” asked Albers, slinging his hastily assembled gear aboard.

“Someplace called Bass-tog-nee,” Dziepak yelled back over the roar of the idling convoy. It was dark but all headlights were on. Security was to be sacrificed for speed, an ominous omen for I Company. This wasn't going to be a gold-brick, backup reserve job. Something real bad was happening, as was evident when the convoy began bucking a tide of vehicles going the other way, their drivers' faces blanched with fright. Yes, they were just legs, but the Screaming Eagles had never before seen American troops racing headlong for the rear. At least it wasn't too cold, Albers reflected, and there was no snow.

As they trudged over the cobblestones of Bastogne (population 5,000), few civilian faces peeped from windows as dark and hollow as the absent eyes in a skull. The Belgians, like the Dutch, had rejoiced in September when American forces liberated them. The approaching barrages of Wehr-macht artillery now suggested what could be expected if Bastogne were reoccupied by the Nazis, a fear subsequently confirmed by SS
Einsatzgruppen
who brought pictures and
addresses of suspected Allied collaborators identified during the four-year German occupation. The reprisal teams were never able to enter Bastogne but held public executions in outlying villages. This was terror's high-water mark on the Western Front for the rest of the war. The tide had turned, as expressed by Geronimo lieutenant Bill Russo:

“I think the Germans had gotten so confident in their terror—you know, scare the shit out of everybody in Poland the Low Countries, Russia. They got onto terrorizing this and terrorizing that…. Well, when they met us we didn't terrorize. That's when it all started going the other way, really.”

SENT BY MCAULIFFE
to the village of Noville, five miles northeast of Bastogne, Currahees bucked a reeling counterflow Like panhandlers, they stuck out their hands for clips of ammo from panicked legs. “You'll never stop 'em, boys,” an outbound officer said, shaking his head in despair. “But you want ammo? You really do? Sure, take it all—and good luck.”

Troopers were glad to see the likes of him gone. Others in the retreat, often Keystone Kops, were willing to turn around and face the enemy. McAuliffe had them formed into a tough rabble he named Task Force SNAFU, a last-ditch reserve, and they fought well. His other supporting forces were Combat Command B from the 10th Armored Division, elements of the 9th Armored, and the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Eventually there would be about ten thousand Screaming Eagles defending encircled Bastogne and nearly the same number of armor troops, the latter ensuring a reverse outcome from that of the British 1st Airborne Division encircled and destroyed at Arnhem.

“Encircled?” Albers recalls. “Well, that's what we were trained for. When we land behind enemy lines—that's what we always do—we're encircled. When we heard on the radio that the 101st was encircled at Bastogne, we said, So what? What's new? Someone in the 502nd said something that became famous: ‘They got us surrounded, the poor bastards.’”

Lugging a machine gun, Albers followed Dziepak on the
road to Noville, an ordinary country road in the Ardennes but one remembered by Currahees as overhung by a presence of gloom and high danger. Outside Bastogne they'd awoken under a light snow, the first of the winter. The squad had increased in strength since the Island—replacements had doubled its number to six. Dziepak had trouble remembering their names, so recently had they been assigned.

From the side of his mouth, as I Company huffed along, he gave them a fast course on how to kill and not be killed by the krauts. Those evergreens over there—it's like the biggest Christmas-tree farm you ever seen, right?—well, panzers won't want to go in there. We will. Hope we set up on that wood line. We can stop 'em if you know where the nearest bazooka man is. You might see a panzer before he does. You got to cover it with fire. Keep the crew buttoned up. You know how to shoot a bazooka? The three rookies nod but without confidence. Good. Where's the best place to hit a tank? In the engine, Sarge. That's right. So don't try to shoot 'em head-on. Wait and get 'em when they go by. Don't we need some ammo, Sarge? Dziepak nodded. Ammo was what worried him most.

Ahead boomed a crossfire of artillery, each side feeling out the other. Artillery, Albers remembered, did not often duel (because of range) but usually fired on enemy infantry. On the Bastogne-Houffalize road there was this exchange of locating fire, more unnerving for the Currahees because the krauts had many more and much heavier howitzers. Listen to the artillery, Dziepak instructed the cherries. It'll tell you what's comin' up.

Up ahead at Noville a brave band of tankers (Team Deso-bry) was holding off a regiment of the 2nd Panzer Division whose colonel had almost as difficult a decision attacking as Sink did defending: how many chips to play, how long to hold a hand? The German's question was whether to crash through, with significant losses, to Bastogne or obey orders and stop for nothing in the charge for the Meuse River. The panzer colonel opted to go for the critical hub of Bastogne (where seven roads and two rail lines converged) but faced a changed
equation when First Battalion of the 506th reached Noville. Here their excellent commander, Lieutenant Colonel Laprade, was killed in action. Stepping up was Major Harwick, who had escaped with Joe into the Normandy marshes.

Hearing First Battalion's fight north of Noville, Blues were eager to join it but still lacked ammunition. Then, as if by providence, a pyramid of all calibers appeared on the road next to an abandoned jeep and trailer. Sink had it dumped there. Blues dipped in as if the pile were warm popcorn. They felt like King Arthur presented with Excalibur.

Because of a roll in the road, all they could see of Noville was a glow from where the village was burning, and they heard the sounds of a surging frrenght. Hold up, came the order from Captain Anderson, who went ahead for a reconnaissance. I Company was thirsty and formed cupfuls of water from newly fallen snow as they awaited an order to attack. Attack in what direction? There were Germans everywhere, but they were equally confused. For three days
they
had been attacking, overcoming, overrunning, overtaking routed American troops. Now what was this? Amis coming toward them, not with white flags but with well-aimed weapons.

The Currahee yearbook described how it looked from the Amis'side:

At a cost of a dozen officers and two hundred enlisted men, First Battalion had bought McAuliffe a precious forty-eight hours.

So began a swirl of attack and counterattack that would continue for a month on the Bastogne-Houffalize road. The 502nd dashed in on Sink's left flank to hold off the next German drive, coming from the north. McAuliffe's loop around Bastogne was completed by the 327th, who had the longest line to defend—over ten miles, half the division front, but mostly full of woods, to the point where the glider men tied in with the 501st. No supplies could enter on any of the seven roads, but now neither could the Wehrmacht, not without a helluva fight.

Pushed back to the hamlet (seven buildings) of Foy, the 506th regrouped and took stock. They with dogged tankers now prepared to defend against massive attacks that were sure to come. Anderson said he'd never heard so many panzers that he couldn't see: from the sound they must have stretched all the way back to Houffalize, ten miles north. Their engines wouldn't idle long. If the weather cleared they'd have to get off the roads for fear of
Jabos.
If the weather cleared, the 101st could be resupplied by parachute. So the snow clouds were a German ally; however, the eerie pale ground fog was Sink's.

Currahee Don Burgett described it “like looking into a glass of skim milk.” Another trooper marveled at how the fog went up and down like a theater curtain. When it lifted for a
while, panzers poking toward Bastogne were exposed to close-range bazooka fire from Screaming Eagles who had heard them coming and even stalked them in the fog. American tanks, dug in to defilade, had the road zeroed in and could fire blind on preregistered choke points. To counter these tactics, the Germans had to bring up infantry to accompany then-armor. There wasn't a lot of infantry in the Fifth Panzer Army, designed for blitzkrieg rather than slugging through woodsy hills where paratroopers could ambush them like Indians.

But in the impartial fog, Indians were infiltrated and ambushed too. Vehicles evacuating wounded were shot up by squads of Germans lurking along ditches they'd been ordered to follow into Bastogne. Each lift of the curtain revealed a new scene, tragic for one or both players; then it descended over an all-directional firefight that turned into a tableau, melting further into milky mist till even the huge, dark silhouettes of panzers disappeared and there was only the sound of tapering fire and the wounded screaming in two languages.

Goethe was a Currahee, Ross Goethe from Nebraska, whose hatred for the Germans was more vicious than his buddies could understand. One very dark night his company was on line in a dense pine forest when he heard kraut scouts slipping toward them. In inky fog, Goethe felt a hand grip the rim of his foxhole. He ducked back before a bayonet swept from side to side like an antenna, checking to see if the hole was occupied. Goethe grabbed the wrist, yanked the German in, stabbed him repeatedly with the bayonet, then flung the dying man out in the direction whence he'd come. Nice work, said Goethe's platoon leader next morning, killing without firing your weapon and giving away your position. But finish him off next time, trooper. That kraut was gurgling all night.

THE FIRST SNOWS WERE
followed by deepening cold, a more implacable killer than even the renowned German formations, which in turn came at Bastogne from all compass points. What stopped them was a centralized defense and their own chain of command, which never designated a single
commander to coordinate an all-out assault on the 101st's oval perimeter. McAuliffe, however, could hoard small tank-infantry teams to rush like firemen to whichever regiment was receiving the attack of the day. Furthermore, within “the hole in the doughnut,” as the press would call it, he could mass his artillery fire on any threatened sector; what had been a major problem in the Netherlands, concentration of artillery, was a trump card in Belgium. For the first six days in Bastogne, McAuliffe had precious few howitzer rounds, but he knew how to use them, and when “Divarty” spoke, the Germans listened and rethought their plans.

Exasperated the attackers called upon their own artillery to end what had become a siege. On December 23, Lieutenant General Heinrich von Liittwitz, a monocled Prussian who commanded the panzer corps controlling most of the surrounding forces, sent two officers toward American lines under a white flag. This wasn't particularly notable; brief local truces had been carried out previously, always for evacuation of wounded from between the lines. On these occasions Screaming Eagles were grateful to rise from frozen foxholes, stretch, yawn, and even shave without drawing sniper or mortar fire.

The Germans this time had a different request, though one, by their lights, with a humanitarian aura similar to succoring the wounded. The message, written on a captured American typewriter, was from Liittwitz (identifying himself only as “the German Commander”) and addressed to “the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.” The 130-word text demanded surrender, otherwise “total annihilation” by more than a corps of German artillery. “All serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.” McAuliffe was granted two hours to “think it over” before this bombardment commenced.