by Leo Barron
Close to midnight, Tuesday, 19 December 1944
101st Division Headquarters, Heinz Barracks
Bastogne, Belgium
Lieutenant Miller and his reconnaissance platoon had pulled up to the division headquarters and parked their vehicles in the barracks courtyard. The lights were out because of blackout restrictions, and an eerie quiet settled over the foggy barracks, much like a ghost town, save for the nervous sentries who challenged anyone and everyone who approached them. Miller could see that most of the men on staff were trying to catch some sleep.
Templeton and the headquarters staff of the 705th were inside discussing the deployment tasks for the battalion with McAuliffe and his headquarters crew. Miller decided not to interrupt Templeton with his report until later. Everyone in Miller’s platoon was tired but edgy. One of his men whispered, “I never thought we’d make it, Lieutenant.”
Miller nodded and replied, “We almost didn’t,” remembering his brush with death when the German plane nearly strafed their column that morning. He shook his head in disbelief. They had all been incredibly lucky today. He hoped their good fortune would hold out.40
Danahy’s intelligence boys had been earning their pay: acquiring information from the few German prisoners who had been captured, interviewing active patrols, grilling the departing VIII Corps staff, and going over reports from the staffs of the 9th and 10th Armored, as well as some of the 28th Division stragglers, who had already been up against the enemy’s forces.
Danahy prepared a quick intelligence summary. Before he turned it in to the “boss,” he decided to read over his work one more time: Elements of the 101st had already reported contact with the Germans at Noville, Margeret, and Neffe. Prisoners had been captured by the 501st and 506th from the 2nd Panzer Division, as well as the 902nd Panzergrenadier Regiment of the Panzer Lehr. Disturbingly, Danahy noted that the prisoners mentioned that their units had received replacements and new equipment before the attack. Reports from the interrogators mentioned another sobering fact: Morale among the Germans, because they were once more on the offensive, was excellent. Danahy read more bad news. The Panzer Lehr Division, one of the finest German armored units, was pushing against Bastogne. Also, according to a captured map, the 26th Volksgrenadier, a large division in its own right, had been tasked with capturing Bastogne.
Danahy had concluded the report by mentioning that at this point, it seemed there was little holding the Germans back from grabbing Bastogne. Reserves and lines of supply for the Germans seemed adequate. Combined with the reconstitution of the enemy divisions and the spirit of the men, this did not bode well for the Americans.41
It was clear to all that the Germans were going to keep up the pressure until Bastogne broke under the weight. For the commanders and the staff, the question now was how to keep the Germans from cracking Bastogne like a fragile nut. Satisfied with his report, Danahy typed up the final administration data at the bottom and went to hand it to McAuliffe in person. It didn’t paint a pretty picture, Danahy knew, but in wartime, the truth was typically pretty ugly.
Setting up his new office at the barracks that evening, McAuliffe ruminated over the next day’s operations. To McAuliffe, the best way to deal with the oncoming Germans was artillery. Particularly because of his background in that branch, he had made sure to take stock of the 101st’s own artillery as it arrived from Mourmelon. The divisional artillery’s field guns were smaller versions of their big cousins, but just as lethal, and light enough to be dropped by parachute or delivered in gliders. In total, the 101st had two battalions of the light 75mm Pack howitzers (Elkin’s 377th and Cooper’s recently added 463rd) and two medium artillery battalions of “snub-nosed” 105mm howitzers—the 321st and 907th Glider Field Artillery. These units were typically assigned the role of support for one of the four infantry regiments. More powerful defensive fire would have to come from the few large-caliber artillery units that Middleton had left him.42
Middleton had attached two heavy field artillery battalions and the remnants of one, the 755th and 333rd Field Artillery Group (333rd and 969th Field Artillery battalions) to McAuliffe’s command. Some of these guns were the massive towed 155mm “Long Toms.” In addition to those guns, Combat Command B, under Colonel Roberts, had the 420th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, which included the mobile M7 “Priest” 105mm tracked Howitzer Motor Carriages. Combined with the 101st’s artillery, McAuliffe now had a total of eight artillery battalions under his direct control. All of these guns could fire from central Bastogne and hit almost anything in any direction within a seven-mile radius.
Actually, in terms of gun tubes, McAuliffe had nearly a hundred pieces by December 20, which during most of the siege would actually outnumber the German artillery facing him.43 This was a tremendous advantage, particularly in a defensive position. With this in mind, McAuliffe decided to create an “artillery park” near the western portion of the city and the outlying town of Savy. Here he could keep several of the guns and some of the ammo available and limbered, ready to respond wherever they were needed the most.
By Wednesday, McAuliffe was guessing he held an advantage in artillery. Danahy’s report mentioned that the Germans were using self-propelled guns as artillery to the northeast of Bastogne. Why would they use self-propelled guns as artillery unless they didn’t have the artillery in the first place? He knew that most German divisions, even in 1944, still relied on horse-drawn artillery, and therefore, on the offensive, were too slow to move and deploy. The panzer divisions had motorized and mechanized artillery, but they were the exception and not the rule. On the other hand, almost all American artillery was motorized, and could move to any hot spot a lot quicker than its German counterparts.44
To defend Bastogne, Colonel Kinnard recommended that McAuliffe assign each regiment to protect a sector of the perimeter. The perimeter would be based on the ordinal directions spreading out from Bastogne, with the town center as its hub and headquarters. Each unit would be responsible for that sector’s outlying villages or one of the seven roads leading into the city. McAuliffe and his staff knew that the Germans would try to seize these roads and towns for lines of attack into Bastogne. To McAuliffe, Kinnard’s idea made sense. The German tanks would be forced to use these inroads, as the open fields around Bastogne were soft and muddy. Any remaining land was either too hilly or thick with woodlots—impossible for armored vehicles to penetrate.
In addition, McAuliffe created a centralized designated reserve that could reach any part of the perimeter quickly, as well as instructed each regiment to maintain a local reserve to plug holes or be used for a counterattack if the opportunity presented itself.
Most of all, McAuliffe wanted to use his artillery and the available armor to separate the German infantry from their tanks. McAuliffe’s plan was for the paratroopers to kill the Panzergrenadiers while the tanks, tank destroyers, and antitank guns took care of the panzer.45
With the regiments in place and the artillery ready, the division staff waited for the inevitable German attacks that were sure to start Wednesday morning. The Americans must have felt as if they were reliving ancient European history and “gazing from the ramparts,” like some throwback to a medieval siege. Bastogne was their fortress, with the roaring armor and approaching men of Hitler’s vaunted Wehrmacht gathering like barbarians from all four directions to surround them.
Unfortunately, the Germans had struck the first deadly blow hours earlier. The reports that reached the 327th of gunfire and burning vehicles to the west were true. The 326th Medical Company’s field hospital had been set up northwest of Flamierge in an open field at the intersection of the Marche road and the Barrière Hinck, nicknamed “Crossroads X” by the GIs. The medical company had set up there upon arrival, because at that time no one thought the Germans were close to the western approaches.46 Now reports were filtering in that a supply convoy had also been ambushed in the area. Kinnard and McAuliffe wanted Colonel Ray Allen’s 1/401st men, closest to the cros
sroads, to check it out. Perhaps a firefight had broken out between the Americans and a passing German patrol. In fact, it was worse than that. Early the next morning, Allen’s glidermen would be the first to discover the grim truth—the hospital was gone. Moreover, the Germans were now west of Bastogne. It would be only a matter of time before Hitler’s henchmen would have the town completely surrounded.
CHAPTER FOUR
“If You Don’t Understand What ‘Nuts’ Means, in Plain English It Is the Same As ‘Go to Hell….”
(DECEMBER 20–22)
“The officers and soldiers, with one heart, and one mind, will resolve to surmount every difficulty, with a fortitude and patience, becoming their profession, and the sacred cause in which they are engaged….”
—George Washington, Orders of the Day,
Valley Forge, 17781
16–22 December 1944
Bastogne, Belgium
The sudden shock of the German offensive had caught the people of Bastogne unawares. The city had been occupied and controlled by the Germans twice in two wars. Worse yet, the population had only recently celebrated being liberated in September, as the Allies had confidently sped through Belgium on their way to the German frontier. Now it looked to its denizens as if German jackboots would once again be heard marching through the streets, for a third time.
On December 16, though German tanks and troops were poised to launch their attack only twenty miles from town, and rumors of the buildup were flying through the farmsteads of eastern Belgium, the townspeople went about their daily routines. It was going to be the first Christmas since liberation, and many were excited to celebrate the holiday. The muffled blasts of artillery emanating from the east troubled only a few. It was the usual distant sounds of war that most had simply gotten used to over the past years. If there was a minor probe by the Germans or a shelling from the German border, certainly the Americans would deal with it.
Some, though, were not so sure. Xavier Gaspard, a local pharmacist, continued to go about his business at the Bastogne Apothecary serving the needs of the local townspeople. At the same time, he nervously noticed the buildup of American forces in town. Farmers from the outlying villages whispered nervous chatter when they visited his shop, mentioning conversations with Belgian relatives they had spoken with farther to the east. Those relatives had reported troubling sounds of vehicle movement from just over the border with Germany.2
After December 16, the sounds of battle continued to grow in intensity in the distance. By Sunday morning, the seventeenth, the Bastognards began to worry about what was happening east of their town. Alas, the American soldiers of VIII Corps had more pressing issues, and information was scant. As a result, greater rumors started to fly. Was the Boche (The Germans) launching a grand attack? The local GIs of General Middleton’s headquarters were irritable and provided no real information when questioned by some of the inhabitants.3
By Sunday night, it was clear to the townspeople that something was amiss when the electricity went out. The Germans had cut the power lines between Malmedy and Bastogne. To add to the restlessness and uncertainty, Middleton’s civil affairs officers declared a curfew for all civilians that would begin at 1800 hours that night. Despite the curfew and power outage, some of the local schools continued with their winter exams, which began that Monday morning.4
However, the business-as-usual attitude changed dramatically as Monday morning wore on. The first indication of disaster that day was the crush of refugees coming from Luxembourg with frantic tales of panzers and retreat. Around 1500 that afternoon, the first artillery shells slammed into Bastogne near the Chapel of Ste. Thérèse, announcing to the townspeople that the Germans were back. As a result, the schools canceled their exams and promptly sent the students home. That afternoon, when McAuliffe and his staff were driving into Bastogne, the first Bastognards were attempting to escape before their town was invaded or surrounded. Few were able to make good their escape. To add to their frustration over the lack of information, the townspeople were never officially told to evacuate. It seemed the American authorities had never taken an evacuation of Bastogne into account, and therefore didn’t really have a plan to deal with thousands of civilians fleeing to the west. Realistically, there was no way to evacuate all the civilians. Hence, no word went out.5
By Tuesday, the nineteenth of December, it was almost too late to leave. As the first trucks from the 101st rolled into Mande Saint-Etienne, Belgian gendarmes and MPs were forced to establish checkpoints to prevent people from leaving and jamming the roads west of Bastogne. It was vital to keep the roads open for the American paratroopers, glidermen, tanks, and supplies heading in the opposite direction—arriving in Bastogne. A few intrepid individuals attempted to leave the town anyway, but now their chief obstacle was not the gendarmes but machine gun fire. Some were seen precariously riding on the outside of U.S. supply trucks, or hitching rides in American jeeps. The whole scene, many civilians recalled, was terrifying, reminding the older citizens of the exodus of refugees that followed the Nazi invasion four years earlier.
On the other hand, many Bastognards chose to wait it out in the cellars and basements of their homes. Nearly a third of the population decided to settle in one of three community shelters throughout the town. The Institute of the Sisters of Notre Dame housed nearly six hundred people, including the one hundred young female students who had been unable to escape. The Franciscan fathers took an additional 150 into their church and stuffed them in the shelter beneath their chapel, while the Récollets (the French branch of the Franciscans) sheltered around a hundred more in their seventeenth-century monastery. By Wednesday, nobody else was leaving Bastogne. Their cellars and shelters would become their homes for the foreseeable future.6
For the Americans, several thousand civilians trapped in Bastogne needed more than a few civil affair officers to calm and oversee them, and since most of the town officials had fled, the Americans were forced to appoint an interim town leader. They were lucky to find Léon Jacqmin, who was a World War I veteran and a well-known businessman in town. More important to the Allies, he was also a superb organizer. He quickly set about the task of feeding and housing all of the civilians. First he established a medical section: Two local doctors volunteered to treat the civilian wounded and sick. Then Jacqmin designated the Institute of the Sisters of Notre Dame as the central node for food preparation and distribution. The bakers were Louis Renquin and Justin Gierens, who prepared and baked all the bread. In addition, Jacqmin could provide ample meat to the populace, since they had carefully sent out teams of young men from farm families to collect scores of abandoned pigs from the surrounding countryside. As a result, the civilians were actually well fed during the siege.7
If anyone in Bastogne doubted that the Americans were willing to fight for every block and every building, the buildup of forces on December 19–20 dispelled these notions. Xavier Gaspard remembered the Sherman tanks from Combat Command B parked in the main town square on Wednesday. One of them was stationed right outside his pharmacy. Gaspard, like many Bastognards, briefly debated the option of leaving, but many of his customers warned him against it. Still, his parents, who were older, would be less likely to survive a long siege. Gaspard wanted to send them to Hemroulle, where he had family. Hemroulle was a smaller village on the northwestern periphery of town.8
Xavier Gaspard and many others like him felt these villages that lined the perimeter were havens from the impending combat. They were wrong. Some of these villages would become a virtual no-man’s-land between the lines. Others would quickly be occupied by the Germans as they completed their encirclement of the American forces in Bastogne. Unknown to Gaspard and many others, these villages would be the scenes of the heaviest fighting, because it was there that the Americans planned to stop the Germans.
The villagers learned this bitter lesson shortly afterward. On December 21, a German patrol stumbled into an American patrol in Rouette while the villagers had gathered in the
center of town to find out what was going on. The shoot-out was brief, and the Americans won, killing a German officer. Despite the storm of bullets, none of the townspeople were killed in the cross fire. However, it served as a warning to them that these tiny outlying villages were key terrain in the battle for Bastogne. Over the next couple of weeks, major battles would occur in places like Champs, Marvie, Noville, and elsewhere. In those hotly contested engagements, scores of civilians would be killed—a lasting reminder that the casualties in war were not always from the two armies fighting for possession of Bastogne.9
Wednesday, 20 December 1944
Area of operations, 101st Airborne Division
Bastogne and environs
December 20 was a rough day for the Americans. The 2nd Panzer Division was pushing hard into Noville and Foy, while to the east elements of the Panzer Lehr and the 26th Volksgrenadier, respectively, continued to pound their way past Wardin and into the villages directly east of Bastogne. For the men of Baker Company of 1/401st Glider Infantry, their search of Crossroads X resulted in a grim discovery. After destroying a small German force left at the crossroads, the glidermen cleared the area and searched for survivors. It was to no avail. The 326th Medical Company field hospital was gone, with all its men and equipment. The Germans had left little but empty tents and bodies. As a result, the division had little in the way of medical supplies. More important, it had lost many of its surgeons, who were either dead or prisoners of war. The only bright spot of the day was the discovery of several .50-caliber machine guns in the wrecked convoy trucks near the hospital. The glidermen grabbed them up, knowing they might come in handy later.