by Leo Barron
Park’s sister squadron, the 514th, added to the devastation around Bastogne. The pilots of the 514th flew over to Noville, where they quickly discovered a group of German motor transports and tanks, vulnerable and in the open; the column didn’t stand a chance. 514th fighter jockeys also strafed troops outside of Bertogne and Sibret. In addition, they struck motor transports in Morhet, and attacked German units in Rouette.58 A pilot from the 406th later remarked to General McAuliffe when asked about Christmas Day from the air, “This was better hunting than the Falaise pocket and that was the best I ever expected to see.”59
Still, the hunting came with a stiff price tag. Tragically, the 513th lost two pilots flying over Bastogne that Christmas. Both First Lieutenant Myron A. Stone and Second Lieutenant Fred M. Bodden lost their lives providing close air support for McAuliffe’s infantry in Bastogne.60 Park, reflecting on who was killed in the 406th and who survived that deadly winter in the air, believed the difference was experience. Most of the pilots who died during the period between December 23 to 27 were the newer pilots who had not learned how to conduct ground missions in a hostile air environment. The veterans, with more flight time under their belts, fared better. In total, the 406th lost ten pilots in that five-day period.61
There were American deaths on the ground as well. True, McAuliffe’s GIs had thrown out the orange panel markers in front of their positions, but these didn’t always work. There had been several tragedies in which friendly fire from the fighter-bombers had already claimed several paratroopers, artillerymen, and TD crews. These “friendly fire” incidents were tragic, but often unavoidable. Try as they might, for the fighter pilots it was next to impossible to pinpoint with accuracy every marker panel while flying overhead at almost five hundred miles per hour.
In the 463rd, First Sergeant Claude Smith recalled a pilot who flew his aircraft right over the road that afternoon, firing at the 463rd’s headquarters and mess kitchen in Hemroulle: “All the pots and pans had holes in them. Sgt. Thomas Spivey [the mess sergeant] was mad as a wet hen.”62
In a tragic turn of events, Captain Preston Towns, Ray Allen’s tall, courageous leader of C Company of the 1/401st since D-day and Holland, was killed the next day by a strafing P-47 during a friendly-fire incident near Hemroulle. The news of Towns’s death was devastating to men like Allen, who considered Towns one of his best company commanders.63
(The veterans of the 101st Airborne who were at Bastogne seem to universally understand the price of the ground-attack missions that helped them defeat the Germans and break the siege. There are very few hard feelings, understanding that the occasional tragedy was the price to pay in the age of primitive ground-to-air communications in warfare.)
The sacrifice, however, reaped dividends and probably did more to break and demoralize the German effort around Bastogne than has been previously publicized. Through December twenty-third to the twenty-seventh, the 406th Fighter Group flew 529 sorties. During those missions, the 406th alone was credited with destroying or damaging “thirteen enemy aircraft, 610 motor transport, 194 tanks and armored vehicles, 226 gun positions, 59 fortified buildings, 43 horse-drawn vehicles, 12 bridges and 13 ammunition and fuel dumps.”64
Just as Kokott had predicted, the Jabos were everywhere Monday, enjoying the fair and clear flying weather and pinpointing the men and vehicles of the Reich who were still trying to carry out their orders that Christmas Day. Kokott realized his effort to break in before they appeared had failed miserably and his worst fears were realized—he had known that if Maucke’s attack failed to penetrate Bastogne by 0900 Christmas morning, the Jabos of the 406th Fighter Group would ensure that the Germans would never get a second chance. The Americans once again owned the airspace over Bastogne, and after Christmas, it would never again be contested. Simply put, it spelled disaster for any further large-scale German attempts to attack Bastogne during daylight or good weather.
Captain Parker realized the same thing—how valuable an asset the Americans had in their fighter-bomber squadrons that day at Bastogne. He later said, “According to Intelligence of the 101st, the 406th group alone gave air strength comparable to the combined striking power of four armored and infantry divisions. The Thunderbolts flew in above the tree tops and tackled every target assigned to them.”65
For Lieutenant Park, Bastogne was personal for him. “We went out on the mission determined to help our ground forces, especially as we had developed a relationship with the men of the 101st who were bivouacked with us at Mourmelon.”
Park continued in a postwar account: “On each of those missions I think back and believe that I just took a fatalistic turn of mind, figuring I’d do my damnedest to evade the flak but knowing the odds were pretty tough in carrying out the needs of the ground. As Capt. Parker notes… he suggested our target, and we [speaking for myself] never shirked regardless of flak or feelings. Summing up, the Bastogne period was the most significant time in my combat experience of 11½ months and two Purple Hearts.”
The bond between the Screaming Eagles and the fighter pilots was strengthened that December at Bastogne. Dashing flyboys and rough paratroopers had a new level of respect for one another that now transcended the football field or local officers’ club. The 101st Airborne had a partner in victory at Bastogne, and would never forget the valuable service the fighter pilots carried out putting the final deadly touches on the Germans’ Christmas attack.66
Midafternoon, Monday, 25 December 1944
Rouette, Belgium
For some of the German units that decided to hide in the various villages circling Bastogne, Christmas brought a hellish storm from the skies above. Rouette was one of those unfortunate towns. The American pilots above could see the line of German soldiers below like they were a stream of ants marching off a hill. Many of them were wounded survivors of the morning debacle and had sought refuge in the home of a Mr. Féron.
Like the Ju 88s over Bastogne, it was hard for the American pilots to discern that the men below were injured noncombatants. The Thunderbolts dived on the column caught in the open streets of the town. For fifteen long minutes, the people of Rouette huddled in their cellars with the German soldiers as bombs exploded and shook the ground around them. Several bombs detonated harmlessly outside the town, chewing up earth and sod.
Some, though, found their mark, blasting apart eight homes. Indeed, the American pilots dropped not only fragmentation munitions but white phosphorous, too. As a result, several more homes burned. Some of the villagers were killed as well. Some died in the fires, while one, Lydie Gaspard, died as she ran to her home for shelter. A P-47, flying at treetop level, had cut her down with machine gun fire. She collapsed in her doorway in a pool of blood.
People were not the only victims. The Germans had housed their horses, used for pulling much of their artillery and supply trains in the town stables, and they were unable to set them free before the bombs hit. The helpless beasts perished in the flames.67
It was a cruel reminder to the people of Rouette that in war, death made no distinction between soldier, livestock, or innocent woman.
Midafternoon, Monday, 25 December 1944
Headquarters, 26th Volksgrenadier Division
Givry, Belgium
It was clear to Kokott by afternoon that Hitler would not get his Christmas wish. Bastogne was still standing in defiance. By now he knew that his Panzer Angriff had failed. All of the reports he received that afternoon painted a picture of failure. Though the attacks of the 77th and Maucke’s Panzergrenadiers had started with promise—momentum, power, and surprise—nowhere had they achieved the breakthrough his division so desperately needed to end the siege. Erroneously, Kokott believed that his forces had inflicted terrible punishment on the 101st Airborne Division, but it was somehow not enough to penetrate the American lines. He reasoned that Maucke’s watered-down forces had been too weak, despite the massing of these and other German units at what he was certain were the weakest points of the American line. Instead of
victory, it had become a costly defeat. The one best chance the Germans had was now gone.
Kokott slowly realized that with the failed Christmas assault, the tipping point in the struggle for Bastogne had been reached. The Americans would now, most probably, hold all the cards. The Germans had lost their best opportunity to seize Bastogne, and soon Patton’s forces would be slicing up from his division’s rear, making straight for Bastogne like an unstoppable tidal wave of steel.68
Kokott turned his thoughts to defense. Patton’s Third Army was hitting the Seventh Army hard to his south, and Kokott worried that the Fallschirmjägers protecting his boundary would buckle and break under the intense pressure.69 If this happened, Kokott’s southern unit, the 39th Fusilier Regiment, would have to conduct an about-face to counter Patton. In addition, the paratroopers in Bastogne might coordinate a counterattack while his own forces were disorganized, demoralized, and spread thin to the south of Bastogne. Therefore, Kokott knew he would have to put an immediate halt to the day’s attack and readjust his lines so that his forces would occupy good defensible terrain in anticipation of American counterattacks.70
American fighter-bombers and artillery quickly frustrated his plans. Since midmorning, the Allied fighter-bombers had started their campaign to lay waste to the now exposed German forces around Bastogne. Closer to the front lines, Colonel Maucke reported that the Jabos had struck his own regimental command post. For the grenadiers caught out in the open that early evening, the terror from above dispelled any final hopes that their attack might have succeeded.71
The Jabos were not the only problem as the German troops withdrew to huddle in defensive positions. American artillerymen, restocked with ammo and emboldened from the morning’s repulse, had unleashed a terrific barrage.
Cooper’s 463rd soon had its Pack howitzers back in action, firing in the indirect support role from their positions near Hemroulle. Between 1100 and 1700 hours, the 463rd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion fired more than two hundred rounds of high-explosive shells at German targets along the southern and western perimeters.72 Despite the furious shelling, the Americans chose not to follow up their artillery with an aggressive counterattack, and Kokott managed to stabilize his lines before nightfall.73 And to his south, the 5th Fallschirmjäger Division had briefly checked Patton’s advance—for now.74
With a heavy heart, Kokott used that evening to radio the bad news to General von Lüttwitz. Soon even Hitler would learn that Festung Bastogne remained in American hands.
Midafternoon, Monday, 25 December 1944
Area of operations, Able Company, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment
Outskirts of Champs
To Lieutenant Jim Robinson, observing a large group of Germans massing on the hill above Champs where he had been forced to desert his outpost, it appeared the enemy was taking advantage of the lull and planning another attack into town. The 377th FO watched as the German medium tanks and infantry were milling about on the hill and the outskirts of Rouette, apparently preparing to renew the assault and take Champs back from Swanson’s tired men.
Looking through his field glasses, Robinson knew what to do. Coordinating with First Lieutenant Wise in Swanson’s CP, he relayed a call to the 377th batteries. Giving the coordinates, he suggested using the brand-new radio proximity fuses, delivered in gliders during the ammo resupply the day before. This artillery round, which had never been used in combat in the European theater of operations, was a remarkable leap forward in artillery accuracy. After the shell was fired, a radio beacon signal emitted from the fuse could determine a preset cue to detonate the shell at whatever altitude or distance was desired.
Within minutes, the telltale shriek of “outgoing mail” passed over Robinson’s head: “Like giant thunder claps ‘Battalion—four rounds!’ of time fire enveloped the dugouts and foxholes of our old OP. Gone for the moment was the pent-up frustrations of days of counting our scant ammo supply as massed artillery converged on the target,” Robinson recalled.
Wise witnessed the scene as well: “We fired one round for range, which by luck was excellent and fired four rounds for effect. I never saw a more beautiful sight,” Wise commented. “All four bursts detonated approximately 100 feet over the Jerries and I guarantee the hill was cleared.”75
The effect, for the Germans, was murderous. Great bursts of snow and dirt flew up from the hillside. German soldiers ran for cover; tanks raced off the hill and defiladed for cover on the other side. It was too late, as more Volksgrenadiers died by the score, torn apart and consumed in the great blasts. The group was completely broken up and scattered, leaving behind a spread of corpses in the snow.
The deadly work was witnessed by Captain Swanson. Swanson later heaped accolades on both Vallitta’s and D’Angelo’s actions for helping his men regain control of Champs during the crucial aspects of the battle, as well as Robinson and other FOs for their yeoman work in directing fire on German troop concentrations afterward:
“During this Christmas Day encounter with the enemy, the field artillery observer, 1Lt. Jim Robinson and his radio operators gave me terrific support by calling in the needed artillery shelling on the advancing enemy. As daylight came to our area, men of ‘A’ Company were able to pick off a lot of enemy infantrymen who were moving towards our line.”76
Up until the end of Christmas Day, as darkness once again enveloped the cold killing grounds around Bastogne, FOs like Robinson would continue to call in accurate artillery fire on clots of German soldiers near Rouette and Givry. The devastating American artillery, aided in accuracy by a startling new technology—the radio proximity rounds—would hammer the final nail in the coffin of Kokott’s ambitious Christmas attack.
Midafternoon, Monday, 25 December 1944
Remnants of 6th Company, 77th Volksgrenadier Regiment
Somewhere west of Champs
Lindemann stared in shock at what remained of his company. Nur dreissig soldaten!—only thirty men! His Volksgrenadier company had started the offensive with a hundred men. In the beginning, he thought they stood a chance to take Bastogne, but now he felt they would never enter the cursed Belgian town.
The attack that had started that morning through the Les Bresses woods had ended in defeat. Meanwhile, people all around the Christian world celebrated Christmas while his men bled and died in the snow. Above him, American fighter-bombers relentlessly strafed and bombed their positions, circling overhead that afternoon like a flock of vultures. Several American bombs exploded near him.
“I also remember the American bombers dropping bombs Christmas Day. Some came near my position. I was lucky, though, [but] many of [my] soldiers died. About ten to thirteen were killed. So many were killed or captured.”
Now all he had remaining in his company was the thirty soldiers, now looking at him in desperation and fear.
He recalled later, “No one recognized that it was Christmas. Every day was the same—carry out our orders. Our only wish was to stay alive that Christmas.”
Lindemann sensed that the war for the Fatherland was over. This was, after all, as he and his men had been told so often over the last few weeks, the final push—the big gamble. He remembered it was at Bastogne that he realized Germany could not win the war. His only duty now was to save as many of his men as he could, get them home, and survive.77
Midafternoon, Monday, 25 December 1944
XXXXVII Panzer Corps headquarters
Château de Roumont, Belgium
General von Lüttwitz received the news of Kokott’s defeat with shock. Listening to the reports over the field phone in his warm château, he realized all was not going well. The reports on Wacht am Rhein and the Fifth Panzer Army were no better than the news from Kokott at Bastogne: West of Bastogne, the spearhead of the Panzer Corps, the 2nd Panzer Division was dying. Its panzers had penetrated the farthest of all the German units, but by Christmas Day many of its vehicles had sputtered to a halt due to a fuel shortage—a fuel shortage that was the result of the Ame
ricans holding the vital road junction at Bastogne.
Because of Bastogne! Von Lüttwitz was starting to hate the very name. Because of the failure of Kokott’s Christmas attack to take Bastogne from the Americans, the 2nd Panzer Division had now rolled to a stop near Foy-Notre-Dame, Belgium—less than five miles short of the Meuse River. Now von Lüttwitz was more concerned with saving his forces from certain destruction as the Allies, having reacted with determined force to the initial German attack almost ten days ago, prepared to overwhelm the “bulge” in their lines and completely wipe out the German units trapped there. Allied units would soon envelop them, and the destructive end they had planned in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair weeks ago would turn out to be their own doom. As von Lüttwitz dined on American K rations, which had fallen into his hands thanks to American airdrops near Bastogne, he dreaded the discussion he would have with his superior, von Manteuffel. He went over and over the operation again in his head, mulling over what went wrong.78
To add to the gloom, that night the 2nd Panzer’s reconnaissance teams had reported the sound of tanks north of Conneux. The men of 2nd Panzer discovered that the tanks belonged to the American 2nd Armored Division, and they were the spearhead for the U.S. VII Corps, under the command of Major General “Lightning Joe” Collins. This meant the worst possible news, von Lüttwitz thought: The Americans had brought in another corps to blunt the German attack, punching it right in the nose of its farthest extension.79
Von Lüttwitz was hoping that von Lauchert’s division would continue to batter its way through and make it to the Meuse. At the same time, he hoped that Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr would have equal success. It was a forlorn hope. Once again the American fighter-bombers struck with a fury. Vehicles by the score were turned into burning wrecks alongside the road as the Allied planes caught the columns like sitting ducks. By nightfall, the Panzer Lehr Division had withdrawn from Humain and Havrenne. Elements of 2nd Panzer attempted to link up with the stranded reconnaissance teams near Custinne. Like Panzer Lehr, they made some initial progress as they pushed through Ciergnon, but in the end, they too failed. As for the fate of the men of both divisions, many became Allied prisoners of war, and many more ended up in shallow graves. Few reached German lines.80