Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  MAP 4—1st/506 to Noville

  As soon as we came under fire, the new platoon leader yelled at ‘Mitch’ to bring up the stragglers, then he disappeared. ‘Mitch’ was bug-eyed furious. He yelled back, ‘God dammit, the 3rd Platoon doesn’t have stragglers!’

  Bill Barclay, the 3rd Platoon scout, reached the top of the hill first and yelled for Mitch to come up. He had spotted three German tanks coming our way. We all arrived on the hilltop and spread out in a line of defense. It was useless to try digging in because of the mass of roots. Bullets were cracking overhead and small twigs kept falling on us from being severed by bullets.

  Suddenly, one of the tanks was hit by a tank destroyer back in Noville. The other two stopped and another was hit. The third tank turned tail and headed to the rear. There’s no doubt in my mind that the TD gunner saved our necks because those tanks were stopped just 300 yards from us.

  As a medic, T/5 Owen E. Miller, moved about somewhat more freely than others as he searched for the injured and wounded in battle situations. He had this recollection of what Noville was like the first day:

  I remember the bitter cold and fog. I never saw fog like that. It would settle and then rise as soon as it touched the ground, sometimes before it touched the ground. I kept going from the aid station up into town and across about a hundred yards of open space. You had to time it just right. When the fog settled, you started running to get to the other end of the field. I timed it and made a dash just as the fog lifted and a machine gun opened up from the hill on my right side. I beat the bullets and got through a barbed wire fence and ran to a haystack. I thought I could catch my breath there. Just then, the haystack jumped in the air. I thought someone was firing at me. I looked around the haystack and there was one of our tank destroyers that had just fired. Up on the opposite hill, I could see a whole line of German tanks. The TD had just blown one up. I saw him hit another one, setting it on fire. A German tank returned fire and I could see this was no place for Owen Miller and went in the back door of a house into a room full of officers. I said, ‘Excuse me!’ and went out the front door into the center of town. I went up on the front step of the church to take a good gander. Just then, a shell hit the steeple. I couldn’t see why they were chasing me so much. This went on all day in my hunt for wounded, to treat them and to get them to the aid station. There was a barn behind the church and an aid station that had a lot of wounded in it.

  Unknown to the Americans, the Germans decided to jump off on their attack toward Noville at the same time. Major Desobry describes that action:

  Much to our surprise, the Germans also picked 1400 hours to launch a major attack. So when we came boiling out of town, when the smoke cleared from our artillery preparation, out of the smoke came the Germans over the ridgeline. We were engaged in a head-on clash with whatever was out there.

  The fight lasted from 1400 to about 1600. A very desperate flight. Towards the end of it, LaPrade and I realized that even if we did take the ridgeline, we were fighting too big a force to actually hold it. We were taking a lot of casualties with guys exposed out there and the men to the northeast, who had the ridgeline, were radioing they were under severe attack by tanks and panzer grenadiers and didn’t think they could hold it.31

  The combined American force was actually facing an entire German panzer division. The two commanders decided to pull their forces back into the relative protection of the strongly constructed buildings in Noville. The tank destroyers went into action, popping out from places of concealment behind buildings and in haystacks to fire at the enemy tanks whenever the fog lifted.

  What T/5 Owen E. Miller had witnessed briefly, when he barged through one of the houses, was the gathering of Team Desobry officers with the line company commanders and their 1st Battalion commander. They had been making hasty plans for the defense of the town as they had been ordered to hold on to Noville.

  A description of the “C” Company attack up the hill to the east of Noville, as it stalled, is given by company commander 1Lt. Edward Mehosky:

  They were half way up (the hill) when enemy tanks appeared on the ridge and opened fire. My platoons continued to advance up the slope in the face of intense fire. The attack faltered, due to the heavy ground fire it was receiving and the battalion commander ordered a withdrawal to the edge of Noville. My platoons withdrew by fire and movement, leap-frogging back to where defensive positions would be taken.

  During the process of withdrawing I observed the enemy following ‘B’ Company, which was withdrawing under heavy fire. I immediately deployed my reserve platoon along an embankment on the side of the road and hit the advancing enemy units with a punishing enfilade fire that stopped their pursuit. They went reeling back to the ridgeline with severe losses. Although we were not able to obtain our primary objective, it was felt that neither were the Germans able to obtain theirs, especially with their numerically superior forces and armor attachments. Once back to our lines, we joined the rest of the battalion and the 10th Armored team in successfully establishing a perimeter around Novile.

  Company ‘C’s’ command post was located at the southeast corner of Noville. The company CP’s seemed to ring the village while the Battalion CP was more to the center. Later, I was called to a situation briefing at Battalion, along with other company officers. The room we entered was dark because someone had decided to board up the windows and placed a wooden trunk in front of an opening for extra protection.

  Major Robert F. Harwick, executive officer for 1st Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment had returned from Paris late on the afternoon of the 18th to find his battalion had already departed for Bastogne. He learned from a supply truck driver the route to use and Harwick left at 0800 the next morning. He traveled the 107 miles to Bastogne, arriving before noon and reported to regimental headquarters in Bastogne. From there he continued on foot to Noville. Dodging from building to building, he finally located the command post after getting directions at the aid station and picking up some necessary equipment. Harwick wrote:

  I found our aid post first and picked up a helmet and carbine and directions to the Command Post. There was a continuous fire coming in; and, just after I left the doctor (Warren) to run up the road, he was hit by shrapnel.

  The road was partially blocked by a huge fir tree. Just beyond that, a half-track was burning; across the street was a jeep partly buried in a fallen wall. Several houses were burning and beyond another half-track was flaming. The mortar shells kept falling through the smoke and bits of shrapnel and brick and tile whined incessantly. Now and then, a man would make a dash across the street or to one of the vehicles still intact.

  The house used for the Command Post was still in good shape. In the living room, the Battalion Commander (LTC. James LaPrade) and a major, who commanded the armor which had been attached to the Battalion, along with the runners, a radio operator and an assortment of men and officers were taking. It seems the Battalion had tried to move onto the ridge, just north of the town. as a German force of 16 tanks and self-propelled guns tried to move into the village. The result was that they had the ridge and we had the town. The trouble was that they could shoot down on us and we had difficulty shooting up at them.

  I reported in and started to set up a message center in an adjoining room and, in general, set up for operations. As I did this, a shell came through the window of the Command Post and I found myself in command of the forces in the town.32

  After observing the paratrooper attack up the ridges to the north and east of Noville and the subsequent appearance of enemy tanks attacking over the crest of the ridges, Major Desobry had hurried back to the 1st Battalion CP in the center of town. The two commanders had been busy pouring over the maps with the assembled company commanders when the maintenance officer of the tank retrieval unit pulled up next to the command post and parked his vehicle there. A short time after the line company officers returned to their own command posts, the building was hit by an artillery shell. The en
emy observer up on the commanding heights had apparently noticed the vehicle parked and assumed the building was some kind of headquarters and called down artillery fire on it. The fire missed the vehicle but hit the building. Colonel LaPrade was killed and Major Desobry was badly wounded, being hit in the face, head and one eye.

  A seasoned officer and veteran company commander, Robert Harwick had been promoted to battalion executive officer for 1st Battalion at Mourmelon. It didn’t take him long to size up the situation he now faced. He wrote:33

  There was a quick consultation with the new armor commander. We set up a defense around the town, spotted our tanks and tank destroyers and sent a report to Regimental Headquarters explaining the situation and asking for a doctor to replace the one who had been wounded.

  Medical officer for 1st Battalion, Captain Joseph Warren and T/5 Owen E. Miller had been scurrying around giving aid and comfort to the injured and wounded around Noville during the afternoon shelling. Miller describes coming to the assistance of Captain Warren:

  Later in the day, I got Captain Warren when he was hit. He had wounds in both wrists. He told me not to cut his trench coat. I said I can’t treat you otherwise. He asked me to take the coat off him and I did this with much difficulty. I got him to the aid station and that was the last I saw of him.

  As a surgeon for 3rd Battalion of the 506th Regiment, Captain Bernard J. Ryan had been sent to Noville during the late afternoon of the 19th by General Gerald J. Higgins, assistant division commander, because 1st Battalion was suffering heavy casualties. Using a letter he had written to Major Louis Kent, the 506th Regimental surgeon in 1945, while recuperating from wounds to refresh his memory, Ryan described what happened during the few hours he was with 1st Battalion:

  On arriving in Noville, I took over the 1st Battalion aid station while Captain Joseph E. Warren, the battalion surgeon, proceeded into the town of Noville in the midst of a barrage. He was wounded almost immediately. Night was closing in with about fifty 1st Battalion casualties about the town. The battalion C.O., LTC. LaPrade had just been killed.

  The line companies now moved into positions of perimeter defense about the town. “A” Company, which had been in reserve, now moved into positions on the north edge of town.

  As a member of “A” Company, PFC. Donald Straith’s group went into the town and to the northern edge near the cemetery where they set up defensive positions. In a personal account of his military operations in World War II, Straith related his impressions of the first day of combat:

  Although I couldn’t see enemy troops or tanks anywhere in the fields around Noville, the town was under an artillery attack as we entered. Spread out along the shoulders of the road and crouching low, we approached the crossroads that marked the center of town. Our road was flanked by two wrecked American half-tracks, the farther one still smoldering in front of the burned-out shell of a church, and a two-wheel ammunition trailer blazed in the middle of the intersection. Ahead of me, I could see a familiar knit cap bobbing along. Here we are—going into combat—and I realized that Jack Bram still had no helmet.

  We skirted the fire, crossed the intersection and moved into a narrow, inclined lane between two of the buildings on our right. The column came to a stop as word was passed to halt where we were while we waited for the command to attack. We welcomed the brief chance to rest, relieve ourselves and, for some, to light a cigarette, but the command came all too soon. As some men were still trying to button their pants, we set off at a run through the passageway, past a couple of wall-to-wall houses and along the front wall of the town cemetery.

  An officer stood at the cemetery gateway waving us in and, as I passed through, I saw ahead of me a low dirt ramp against the far wall. A G.I. stood peering over the wall while motioning for us to vault it at that point. I was only about halfway across the cemetery when the man at the wall suddenly turned and signaled for us to take cover, so I immediately dove between two gravestones and lay there waiting. I could hear heavy firing beyond the wall, and an occasional shell would pass overhead, one striking the side of a small mausoleum nearby. From various shouts I heard around me, I soon found out that those men who had crossed the wall were pinned down in the fields beyond and that forward movement had come to a standstill.34

  In an article which appeared in his hometown newspaper, PFC. Steve Polander, of the same unit, and probably the same platoon, described his actions from a little different viewpoint in the cemetery:

  At 2 p.m. this afternoon, my company is attached to a unit of about 400 men or so as we approach the small village of Noville in double column along the main highway.

  Word came down to halt as the front column reaches the base of the hill. An explosion takes place at the front of the column. Someone has stepped on a mine.

  The road led up the village hill with houses on both sides and a large red barn at the top on the left side.

  Everyone knows something is up. A man about half way up the hill, dressed in civilian clothes, is seen by all as he walks from the left side of a house to the right side, looking down at us. He enters the house as we move in, then all hell breaks loose.

  Long range artillery starts pouring in, with precision accuracy. They rake the village hill for about 14 continuous hours and, hidden on the fringes, German tanks pour 88mm timed shells mixed in with heavy artillery.

  I find myself lying against a thick concrete wall enclosing a graveyard. A shell explodes on top of it and the concussion knocks me senseless. When I come to, I don’t know where I am. I stumble and stagger to get to the top of the hill. I find myself next entering a small chicken coop that seemed to be attached to the barn. Inside sits a young man, on what looked like a block of wood, his back to me. His skull on the upper right side has been totally torn off by a huge chuck of shrapnel. His brains are showing the the medic kneels, dabbing his skull. The village is on fire and we are continually being pinned down, all, that is, except the barn with the cows and horses that lie within, dead and bleeding from shrapnel.

  I finally reach an area near the top where I dig in about a foot and a half deep, about 40 yards straight up from the barn. As darkness begins setting in, I lay flat on my stomach and an 88 air burst explodes above me. I feel my head hitting the bottom of the hole. A piece of shrapnel about the size of a quarter tears into the upper backside of my steel helmet, tears up the liner in a circular motion and drops out. It cuts a path in my hair no more than a quarter inch from my skull.35

  Over in the “C” Company area of the perimeter defense, PFC. Robert Wiatt is sent out to see what his platoon is faced with in that section of the line. He writes:

  After a brief pause, we were told to go into Noville and make contact with the enemy. ‘C’ Company was to be on the right side of town so I and a new replacement, Pvt. Henry Lugo, were sent down the right side of the main street to see what was going on. We went along a stone wall around a church to a corner that went off to the right. By this time, we were drawing small arms fire so we took cover behind a burned-out half-track. At this point, I told Lugo to run back to tell the company what we had run into. As Lugo left the cover of the half-track and started back down the road, he drew a lot of fire. Like most of us, it scared the hell out of him so he turned back to the half-track and threatened to shoot me for trying to get him killed. I had to do some fast talking to make him calm down. Realizing that we could not stay where we were, we went over the stone wall and back to the company which was moving up the right side of town.

  When platoon leader 1Lt.Joe Reed, of “C” Company, had been ordered to fall back from the ridge line and set up a perimeter defense at the edge of town he was surprised to learn that they would retreat no further.

  The regimental order at that time was to hold Noville at all costs. There would be no withdrawal. We just looked at each other. It was obvious we were very much outgunned. The Battalion went into defensive positions on the edge of town. ‘C’ Company covered the left part of the Battalion front. My platoon was t
he left flank of the company at the edge of town.

  Due to the fog, sometimes we could see and sometimes we couldn’t. It was about this time, two buildings from us, Lt. Colonel LaPrade opened the door and went in. Kraut shells came through a window and killed him. A 705th Tank Destroyer was located with me to help protect the Battalion left flank. The only problem was, he was all out of AP (armor piercing) ammo, only had HE (high explosive) left, which couldn’t penetrate the Kraut armor. The Krauts were trying to pull back some infantry way up on a hillside to our front from one strip of woods to another about two hundred yards apart. I asked my machine gunner, Henry Barrett, if he thought he could reach them. In between the fog rolling in and out, he was able to catch some Krauts in the open and laid out about eight or nine or them on the hillside. In the meantime, the Kraut tanks were getting a little aggressive to my front and I helped the tank commander pick targets of opportunity. We were able to knock the track off one tank. It’s crew jumped out, but immediately another tank used the disabled tank as a shield and knocked out our TD. The tank commander was on fire when he got out. We put the fire out and a medic took over. My sector quieted down when it began to darken. During the night Krauts tried to probe into town but, due to debris on the road, they had problems. I understand some of our troops were able to knock out a couple tanks for their efforts.

  As he traveled back and forth between his company CP and the Battalion Headquarters, 1Lt. Edward Mehosky noted a number of abandoned vehicles of various kinds scattered about Noville and out beyond the perimeter defenses, which had been set up in the late afternoon when the troops fell back from the ridgelines. He was about to get “wheels” for his unit. He wrote: