Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  I went quickly through the room and out the door into the stable and then out the back door into the yard where the 3rd squad men were right where I had left them. We fired a bazooka shell, which hit the front of the tank where its armor was heavy, so it wasn’t knocked out. It moved back around our platoon CP house and stopped with its side toward us. Company ‘I’, in spite of being outnumbered and outgunned, was stopping this particular part of the breakthrough. We could hear the 2nd Platoon and what was left of the 1st Platoon and our 1st squad, firing from the other side of the road.

  Our bazooka man said he could knock out the tank as it was sitting with its side toward us. I told him that the shell would probably explode when it went through the bushes in the backyard between us and the target. Two men volunteered to go with the bazooka, across the yard to where they could poke it through the roadside bushes about five yards from the tank.

  The explosion put a hole in the lower part of the tank and we picked off the crew as they scrambled out. There was no way to get an accurate account of what was going on, but we kept firing as long as we could hear the 2nd Platoon firing from the other side of the road. Another tank came up and pushed the one we had knocked out off the road. There seemed to be only three moving around now, which meant ‘I’ Company had knocked out four of them.

  After he and his scouting group had spotted the enemy tanks and troops on the far side of Wardin, PFC. Marvin Wolfe and the others had retreated toward company headquarters to alert them to the danger. The tanks hit the CP before Wolfe got back. He did witness the destruction of one of the enemy tanks. Wolfe wrote:

  At that point, we advanced up a high knoll and got behind a large stone building and started returning the fire as the Germans were coming down the road. As the tanks approached, Wilbrod Gauthier ran down to the road with a bazooka and took out the first tank. He was then killed by the machine gun on the second tank. This tank pushed the first tank off the road and the rest of the tanks continued their advance.

  Radioman Frank Guzy was with Captain Wallace when the headquarters group was driven from the CP by tank shell fire which killed 1/Sgt. Carl Sargis. Guzy dumped his heavy radio which had provided no communication when it was so needed at a critical time. Guzy finished his story:24

  Captain Wallace was one of the bravest officers that I have ever known. His last order to the company was: ‘Every man for himself!’

  Soon, everyone of our group was gone except me. There was no way to evacuate carrying a big heavy radio (42 pounds) and then I realized that the radio could not receive Battalion headquarters so I dropped it on the ground and double-timed out of there. A short time later, I came upon Captain Wallace and the others.

  From his position on the top of a hill, overlooking the small town, PFC. William McMahon’s machine gun crew had been positioned so the enemy could not outflank the “I” Company positions in town. He remembered:

  Now we began to hear tank bogey wheels behind us and some of the guys thought they were our tanks. The tanks began firing into the houses and we knew our guys had taken cover in the houses so it couldn’t be our tanks.

  As the British say, ‘It’s beginning to be a sticky wicket!’ and that was an understatement. At this time, an officer came running up the hill yelling, ‘Anyone who wants to live, follow me!’ My squad was never in the houses.

  Several of the buildings were burning and the smoke was dense; the tanks were firing down the road but there was so much smoke, it blocked our vision and allowed us to cross the road. Without the smoke, I don’t think any of us would have made it.

  With the order being given to pull out, Sgt. Richard “Buck” Ketsdever was still in the village with Captain Claude Wallace and the executive officer, 2Lt. William Schumaker, who had been frantically calling the 3rd Battalion for assistance. He hadn’t succeeded in making contact with anyone. Ketsdever wrote:

  The lieutenant gave me back my radio and, as we were receiving machine gun and rifle fire from the advancing troops, said we should pull out. He suggested going down the small trail to the gate and getting on the other side of the building to get out of the line of fire. The lieutenant took off first, running. I was behind him and Captain Wallace followed me. As the lieutenant turned into the gate, I thought he tripped because he fell to the ground. I was so close to him by then, I fell over him and Captain Wallace fell on top of me. They had both been hit, either by rifle or machine gun fire, and both were dead. I crawled into the creek and started moving up the hill toward Bastogne.

  PFC. Marvin C. Wolfe had witnessed the destruction of one tank by his friend Wilbrod Gauthier and then saw the second tank take him out with a burst of machine gun fire. He got word to get out while the getting out was still possible. Wolfe added to his story:

  Word spread that we were to return to Division Headquarters in Bastogne. As we started to leave, German fire pinned us down and we hid in and along a creek, just out of sight of the Germans. There we could keep low enough to avoid the enemy fire that was flying overhead. There were large, open fields between us and headquarters so we had to wait until nightfall and the safety of darkness before we could leave the stream bed and return to Bastogne.

  Platoon sergeant Erminio Calderan had been shot at by a German soldier firing from a window of the former “I” Company command post. It was time to get out of a tight situation. He closed his account with these recollections:

  About this time, I figured I had enough so I jumped over a three-strand barbed wire fence next to the stream and when I hit that water, I lost my rifle. I ran up the hill where I was caught in a barrage of machine gun fire. I threw myself on the ground and yelled. I thought I was alone. I heard someone also on my left. There were two other men going out with me. The one on my right wasn’t hit. We just lay there for awhile and played dead. I asked the fellow on my left how bad he was. He didn’t think he was hurt bad so I said, ‘When I count three, make for the open spot in the hedge.’ When I did, we started running. We no sooner got to the open spot when all hell broke loose. There was so much lead flying through the opening that you could plant corn in their furrows without doing any plowing.

  Instead of going up, I back-tracked to the wood pile. Unfortunately, the fellow with the head wound never did make it. I don’t know what happened to him. We stayed behind the wood pile for probably an hour. Then we made our way along the hedgerow and out to where this house was on the side of the road. At this particular spot, it was all open—there was nothing to hide behind. There were a group of civilians going by. We borrowed some coats from a civilian so we could get out with them. We got about half way up the hill. I guess the Krauts spotted our boots and opened up. I don’t know if any of the civilians were hit, but there was a road with high banks. We stayed there for an hour or a little longer.

  It was getting dusk and one of the civilians, an old man, came up and I was trying to tell him to keep down. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me. I finally figured he was trying to let me know the Germans were coming up the hill. All I had was a trench knife and I wasn’t about to stay there and be shot or captured.

  From that point on to the woods, it was about 200-300 yards and both of us started running. Did you ever try to run through a newly plowed field—it was terrible. We got into the woods. It was almost dark and there were noises in the woods. I didn’t know what it could be so I pulled my trench knife and challenged. It turned out to be some ‘I’ Company men picking up stragglers.

  Meanwhile, back in Wardin, some of the troopers hadn’t gotten a message to pull out or weren’t in position to do so. One of these men was replacement PFC. Leo Rozman, experiencing his first day of combat. He wrote:

  Company ‘I’ was ambushed in the town of Wardin. German troops were in most of the attics shooting down at us with burp guns and dropping concussion grenades on us.

  Both American and German artillery were destroying the town. I was shocked when I saw the ‘entire German army’ coming toward me.

  However,
when one of three tanks fired at my head from a distance of 15 feet, I had all the fight knocked out of me. I was picked up off the ground and became a POW.

  PFC. Joseph N. Christman had been in on the action with PFC. Wilbrod Gauthier when he was firing at the tanks with a bazooka. Christman tried to hide from the enemy. He wrote:

  I saw Gauthier go down. Rector and I, together, hid in the barn getting into the hayloft. The tank below killed all the livestock in the stable of the barn but they didn’t find Rector and me in the loft. We hid under the hay. The German tank crew and infantry stopped, had lunch and drank from the well by the barn.

  We thought we could make a try for our lines in the moonlight. We got out from under the hay to make our try when a shell burst in the roof of the barn. Rector was killed. I had shell fragments in my left elbow and both rifles were wrecked. I made a try for our lines the next day but was picked up and captured.

  When the enemy tanks appeared at Wardin, the tide of battle turned in favor of the Germans. Those with PFC. Larry Burgoon were trapped in houses and barns within the town. Burgoon wrote:

  When the tanks came at us, Sgt. Edgar called, ‘We’re getting out of here!’ But Lt. (Robert) Harrison said, ‘Load the bazooka’ and took my gun as I wasn’t to need it. By that time, it was too late to run—there were Germans everywhere. We went into a farm building with Lt. Harrison and some men went upstairs. Dan Rubenstein, who was a replacement in Holland, hid with me in the attached barn covered with hay in front of the cows. Just before we split up going into the house and barn, a tank shell hit the corner of the house. Sgt. Gus Gaxiola was hit on the cheek of his butt but was still able to walk.

  Dan and I heard the Germans taking prisoners from above us but we couldn’t see who they were and never saw them again. The Germans set fire to the building and we were flushed out and taken prisoner.

  The survivors of “I” Company continued to filter into the 501st command post in Bastogne throughout the night and into mid-morning of the 20th. When a head count was made, a total of 83 men were left of about 140 men who had gone to Wardin the day before.

  Had there been coordination between the tank forces up on the hill and the hard-pressed paratroopers down in the village, the results might have been all together different.

  3rd Battalion Moves on to Mont

  As Colonel Julian Ewell shunted “I” Company off through the woods and to Wardin, the bulk of 3rd Battalion continued on its march toward Mont and Neffe.

  As Sgt. Donald Castona and the men of his unit detrucked at Mande St. Etienne, they noted the weather wasn’t that uncomfortable so the men began discarding heavy outer gear as they moved east toward their assigned MLR positions. Castona recalled:

  We disembarked in a small town. We thought that this was where we were going to fight until we were alerted to get ready to move out. The weather was good and pretty warm and some of our guys conveniently ‘forgot’ to pick up their overshoes when we got up after our rest breaks. This cost them dearly a few days later when it got cold and snowed.

  We walked through Bastogne and passed an awful lot of GI’s heading the other way.

  There were a few combat engineers set up with their .30 cal. machine guns on the slope before we got to Mont. These were good soldiers and they were prepared to hold their positions.

  We set up positions after going through Mont and got ready to meet the Germans. We could hear tanks coming but most of the guys were confident that we could handle things.

  As a member of 3rd Battalion Headquarters Company and one of two 81mm mortar platoon section sergeants, Richard L. Klein was in the move to Mont and remembered the officers didn’t know any more about what was happening than he did.

  The 3rd Battalion marched several miles to and through Bastogne to reach our ultimate destination, which was Mont. No one seemed to know what the situation was. I asked Lt. Horvath where to set up our mortars and he indicated he did not know any more than I did where the Germans were, so put them wherever. We placed one behind a haystack temporarily. Within a matter of minutes, the first shells were coming into Mont from the direction of Neffe. I grabbed a bipod and base plate and sprinted about fifty yards to the cover of a building crossing a tiny creek and a single-strand barbed wire fence enroute. Seemed like an eternity getting there.

  Four members of 3rd Battalion remember being involved in a move whereby Colonel Ewell directed that a platoon be sent on a move to the north with a swing to the right to approach Neffe from a different direction. They were to find out how well Neffe was defended by the Germans.

  Sgt. Richard Klein was one of the Headquarters Company members directed to join the platoon making the reconnaissance move toward Neffe. He wrote:

  On the evening of the 19th, I was told to take Joe Reilly, a radioman, and report to ‘G’ Company for a patrol. We found that the patrol leader was our former platoon sergeant, now 2Lt. Jim McKearney. We took off almost immediately with no briefing as to where we were going or what the mission was. A couple hours later, I found out we were to see if Neffe was occupied by Germans. As we approached Neffe, along a portion of a sunken road, we ran into fire from our left, in the vicinity of a building that was engulfed in flames. (I later learned that it was the chateau which had been occupied by Team Cherry and later by Lt. Tippit’s platoon from ‘G’ Company.) As we pushed closer to Neffe, we were joined by Tippit and his platoon. It was quite evident that Neffe was firmly held by the Germans.

  The position of the lead scout on a reconnaissance mission is unenviable for most infantrymen. Sgt. Donald Castona of “G” Company was part of the platoon making the reconnaissance. He felt sorry for the young soldier who moved out as lead scout.

  I remember Pvt. (Daniel) Bazarewski moving out as the lead scout as brave as can be. I never envied those guys their job. Our old first sergeant, now a 2nd lieutenant, (Otis) Tippit, took his platoon and went around the first opposition we ran into and led his men on an assault against the enemy position. Lt. Tippit was wounded in the face in the assault but they picked up several prisoners and stopped the Germans at that point.

  Sgt. Wilson Boback was one of the platoon squad leaders involved in the action. It was one of the memorable recollections of his Bastogne area fighting. He wrote:

  We made an attack on a small town (Mont or Neffe?). We hit them at night. It was a wild battle—the Germans had two machine guns cross-firing from stone fence lines. Tracer bullets were all over the place. 2Lt. Tippit was a short distance from me. I worked my way on my belly over to one machine gun and tossed a grenade at it. It was silenced. The other one kept firing and Lt. Tippit got hit in the ear. I was going after the other machine gun but Tippit yelled for us to pull back.

  As the radio operator for the platoon, Pvt. Walter E. Davis remembers some of the actions which occurred during the move while it was still day light. He wrote:25

  I was the radio operator and the platoon was the 3rd of ‘G’ Company. We got heavy machine gun and rifle fire from the buildings in Neffe as we started down the slope leading to the chateau. As I ran across the open ground to where Colonel Cherry’s tank was, at the bend in the road, I threw away my extra radio batteries and some other equipment to lighten my load so I could run faster. Colonel Cherry had one tank, one half-track and a jeep at the road block. He could not withdaraw during day light and was waiting for dark. The Germans had the high ground under fire from their tanks in Neffe. The best of my memory was there were just a few of us who got down to Colonel Cherry. Our machine gunner was hit just as he set up his gun. He had a bullet in the right shoulder and back.

  The fellows driving the jeep thought they could make it up the dirt road, which was partly protected by trees. We tried to tell them to wait for dark but they made a run for it with their jeep wide open. They didn’t get fifty yards before both were hit by heavy machine gun fire. They groaned and fell off the jeep. We tried to get to them but could not, due to heavy fire. Both were dead when we got to them after dark.

  While
waiting for dark, we captured three Germans. Two were wounded. A funny thing happened that almost got us killed. I took the rifle we had taken from the captured Germans by the barrel and broke the stock by hitting a tree. This caused the rifle to discharge and the bullet hit my M-1 rifle ammo in my cartridge belt and set the powder on fire. My clothes were burning and I was trying to get my cartridge belt off and some of the fellows were trying to beat the fire out with their coats. Needless to say, the captured Germans got a laugh out of it. I never broke another rifle without removing the bolt after that.

  When the 3rd Platoon ran into heavy opposition on the approach to Neffe, Sgt. Donald Castona was sent back for reinforcements. He ended up leading the original group back to Mont. Castona added:

  I was sent back to bring the rest of the company up to where we were but was stopped by Colonel Ewell and told to bring our guys back so we could set up a defense of Mont. I was just told to get them back. We tried to come back the direct way but ran into the heavy sheep fences that were to play such a big part later on. Anyway, we came right back along the road and got back to Mont. I caught a little hell for bringing our guys back along the road but we were lucky. It seems that a column of Germans was not far behind us on the same road. By this time, a tank and another armored vehicle had joined us along with the heavy weapons company of 3rd Battalion.