Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  About daybreak, we lit a fire and had a K-ration. Then the Krauts attacked—came by the dozens—mortars zapped us. The Krauts hit our barn—two guys in my platoon were wounded (Frank Radtke of Milwaukee and Steve Pozar from Orlando). Someone gave word to move out across fields toward a hill and town called Bastogne. Several men were hit as the Krauts took the half-tracks and turned the .50’s loose on us. We formed a line on the hill and shelling and mortar fire were heavy.

  Meanwhile, “G” Company of the 327th had moved into the positions recently vacated by the “F” Company troopers. “G” Company, along with 2nd Battalion Headquarters Company personnel, got a quick taste of combat shortly after arriving on the Marvie scene. Setting up defensive positions without access to maps was a frustrating experience under the best circumstances. It was much more difficult when actions broke out almost immediately upon arrival. 1Lt. Regenburg recalled:

  No one had any maps of the area and we had just a vague idea of where we were going. Some hours later, we arrived in a small village which I later found out was Marvie. As we were going through the town, I was looking for a CP because I understood we were going to stop there. The CP was close to the road and I saw four light American tanks coming out of the woods hell bent for election—coming right past us. I ran out to the road, fired a shot to get their attention to stop and form a defensive position with us. At least even if their guns weren’t heavy, they would provide additional fire power. There was no turning back for them. They just went on through the village. I believe they later hooked up with Task Force O’Hara with part of the tanks from the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions.

  PFC. John Sherman, of “G” Company, was in on the early actions. He recalled the officers hastily setting up defensive positions as the actions began to unfold:

  I remember going into Marvie. Captain Evans, other officers and noncoms were directing the setting up of defensive positions. Before they could finish, a line of tanks and other armored vehicles, along with infantry, appeared on the ridge across a draw opposite our positions. We no sooner saw them when they started firing and advancing toward us. They were maybe 500 yards away or so. Captain Evans was hit (I believe in the head) while he was directing the guys where to dig in. We could see the infantry moving toward us alongside the tanks and it looked like the whole German army. The incoming fire was heavy. I think Don Rich and Jim Shaw were in a farm building and got off a bazooka round at a tank that was close by. Their shot was ineffective and the tank gun targeted them. They started to leave the building when an ‘88 hit the building and blew them out. Neither Don or Jim were hit but Jim suffered severe concussion and had to be evacuated.

  After being told that his regiment was to be in reserve and that the enemy troops were still 40 miles away, it was a real shock to PFC. Donald J. Rich to be involved in a combined armored-infantry attack on Marvie when his regiment had just arrived and had not yet completed the job of digging in. He wrote:

  The bazooka section had not set up yet when someone yelled, ‘There comes a German tank!’ I grabbed my bazooka and told one man to come with me. We ran up the street and into a house. I told the man with me to take the bazooka and stay at a window. I went into the next room to watch and told him to wait till the tank went by and then fire at it. He must have stuck his head up before the tank went by because the tanker fired into the house and blew a hole about three or four feet in diameter. I went rolling across the floor. I jumped up to see how my buddy made out. He came staggering out of the room. I rushed him to the medics. I never knew if he had serious wounds or if he made it. I ran back to the house to retrieve the bazooka. It was bent, with the barrel opening sealed. Someone else got the tank further on.

  As the intelligence officer for 2nd Battalion, 1Lt. Thomas J. Niland was aware of the importance of defending Marvie as part of the overall defense of the key road network in Bastogne. He wrote:

  The 2nd Battalion, after detrucking west of Bastogne somewhere around Mande St. Etienne, proceeded through Bastogne to the area around Marvie to defend the high ground around Bastogne and deny the enemy access to the main road. As we reached Marvie on foot, all hell broke loose and we met the enemy head on in the village and a fire fight developed. They came with half-tracks to Marvie. This is when Colonel Inman was wounded and Lt. Tom Morrison was captured. We soon retook the village and established our defense lines. It was during this action that we were able to free Lt. Morrison and a few men from ‘G’ Company who were overrun and taken prisoner early in the battle.

  Recalling an incident which was humorous to him, Lt. Niland had this recollection of the experience of one of his Intelligence Section men named PFC. Charles Fisher:

  After the initial fighting in the village, we had to secure the town because the Germans still occupied some of the houses. We therefore started to clear the village house by house. While doing this I encountered Charles Fisher, a scout in my unit. He had been sent by Major Bob Galbraith to find the medics for Colonel Inman who had been wounded during the action and needed attention. I warned Fisher that we had not yet cleared out that part of Marvie. He continued on and ran into a house down the street only to face several Germans who were in the house. They apparently were as surprised as he was—no one fired and he fled the house and returned down the street without a shot being fired.

  That wasn’t the way PFC. Charles Fisher remembered the episode—and he has returned to that action scene on two occasions since the war. This is the way he recalled the incident:

  On the morning of December 20, the first day of 2nd Battalion in Marvie—our battalion commander, LTC. Roy Inman was wounded. I was standing guard at the entrance to the battalion CP when someone shouted, ‘Fisher, go get the medics. The Colonel has been hit!’

  Off I went on the double. I had observed the medics setting up in a barn earlier that morning as we were entering the town so I headed in that direction. There was some shelling and small arms fire so I went a back way rather than down the main street. As I neared the center of town, I walked around the corner of a house just as a German soldier came around the side of a house across the road. I looked at him and he looked at me. We both fired at each other; both missed and ducked behind our respective houses. I determined that this was no time to be out in the open so ran up to the barn where the medics had been located and tried to go in. The barn door was locked so I pounded on it and yelled for someone to open the door. There was no response so I went to a window of the house, attached to the barn, and looked in on a group of civilians. They saw me and began screaming at me and motioning for me to go away. This made me angry so I broke the window, unlocked it and crawled in and started down a hall toward the interior barn door. All this time the civilians were jabbering at me and one elderly woman grabbed by arm and tried to pull me back. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I shook her loose, continued down the hall and turned into the barn. It was rather dark in the barn but I could make out silhouettes of people coming toward me wearing long overcoats. I knew that we didn’t have any overcoats at the time so I raised my M1 and fired. (I thought I fired one round but when I checked my rifle, later, I had only one round left in the eight-round clip.) I immediately turned, ran down the hall, through the room of excited civilians, dove back out the window and crouched down beside a stone wall while I tried to decide what to do. I saw a GI come around the corner of a nearby house and motioned for him to cover me and off I went, followed by a hand grenade and rounds from a burp gun. I made it to cover with nothing more than a piece of shrapnel in the hand. Then, I took off as fast as I could go back up the hill, toward the Battalion

  CP. Enroute, I found the new location of the medics, told them Colonel Inman had been hit (which, by this time, they already knew), had a bandage put on my hand and then back to the Battalion CP where I tried to report what had happened but started to shake like a leaf and couldn’t even talk. You’ve heard the expression, ‘scared speechless’. That was me. Later, I was informed that Battalion had known that the
medics had relocated before I was sent to get them. I was just part of the ten percent who never gets the word.63

  With the wounding of Captain Hugh Evans, along with the battalion commander, 1Lt. Regenburg, as executive officer of “G” Company, assumed he was to take over the unit. He related:

  I assumed I was to take over. No one disputed that, so I checked to see where the rest of the company was positioned. I found, to my dismay, that the platoon under Lt. Frank Hibbard was attached to ‘F’ Company, supposedly on our right flank. Communications were difficult and I was very proud of the men of ‘G’ Company, who seemed to know what they had to do to dig in and set up their defensive lines. Fortunately, ‘E’ Company on our left had been more cautious than ‘G’ Company and had dug in. They took the brunt of the attack, for which I was very thankful because of my weakened company strength.

  The attack was beaten back by aggressive fighting and the combined effort of Task Force O’Hara, which brought fire on their tanks. One of the incidents that was really a mistake was that there was a half-track belonging to the engineers that was also across the bridge. They started back for cover when the attack broke. By mistake, they were knocked out, I think by either ‘G’ Company bazooka fire or 81st anti-tank fire. The position of the half-track (knocked out without any serious injury to any of the occupants) was such that it impeded any attempt by the German tanks to get through. One such tank did get through a few days later and Tommy Niland tried to knock it out with a bazooka and the shell just bounced off the tank. It was later knocked out by Task Force O’Hara.64

  Colonel Salee’s 1st Battalion

  1st Battalion of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment had been ordered to the east side of the perimeter on the afternoon of the 19th when the 501st had experienced heavy pressure in their Mont-Neffe-Wardin area. Salee’s men, less “B” Company, had dug in and waited for action on the 501st west flank. The only action experienced had been some rather heavy shelling during the night.

  As a platoon sergeant in “A” Company, S/Sgt. Jack Williamson was part of that group sent over to the east side to relieve some of the pressure being felt by the 501st. After experiencing a relatively quiet night, action began to pick up for his group on the morning of the 20th. It is very possible that the Germans he was speaking of are the same ones who were pushed out of the 907th Glider Field Artillery positions. Williamson related:

  The next morning (20th), we saw some Germans advancing toward us like a flock of sheep. There was a jump outfit on our flank. When their lieutenant gave the order to run out and surround some Germans, me and another glider trooper went along. About 25 to 30 were captured.

  Williamson’s Strange Encounter

  An encounter with a group of tanks on a patrol during the day of the 20th has left S/Sgt. Jack Williamson wondering all these years. He relates:

  An earlier patrol toward Neffe was scrubbed and the second patrol was to go. I looked around for our lieutenant and he had disappeared. He had told me to take the patrol. I asked which way? He said ‘about two fingers left of the sun’. So I decided to go somewhere in that direction with about 15 men and we were heavily armed. I started out leading the patrol and, instead of going straight ahead, I eased over to the right and went through the woods instead of over the open fields. The Krauts started shelling the top of the hill about the time we should have been up there if we hadn’t changed directions. We came to a clearing in the woods and I was leading PFC. Einard C. Mackey, who was acting as second scout. I got up out about twenty feet into the clearing and spotted a tank with a gun pointed right at me. I froze and, with my right hand, motioned Mackey down and back. He read me right and held the patrol—what to do—either way I felt they would fire the gun at me. Not that I was so brave, I figured my best chance was to approach the tank slowly, which I did. When I got up close, I saw the American star on the side of the tank. Hell, I walked up and saw it was an American tank unit with a captain standing by the lead tank and his jeep.

  We started talking and I waved my patrol forward and they came on over. The captain asked me what unit I was with. I told him the 101st Airborne Division. He wanted to know where we were situated. I told him Bastogne. How many men? To boost his morale, I said ‘about 80,000 or more in and around town and more coming up’.

  They had about ten tanks and were headed toward Bastogne on either side of the road. I told the captain I needed to go and make my patrol. I was to get a prisoner or some German pay books. I said we would be going down the road between his tanks and that we would be safe that far at least. As I left, I suggested he go into Bastogne and join our ranks.

  Then, we moved on and there was a soldier standing in the turret of each tank and I waved at each as we went by and said ‘Howdy!’ Would you believe not one of those tankers acknowledged me. I told Mackey, ‘Them tankers are a weird bunch of bastards!’

  We moved along and left the tanks behind a good ways and sat down on either side of the road, in the woods, to take a breather. We saw some Germans in the distance digging in artillery. Coming toward us were three enemy soldiers. They were probably the point of a German column moving our way. I ordered our men to be quiet and pointed toward the Germans. I waited until they got close up so we could capture them.

  PFC. Ernest A. Miller was getting his BAR gun in a good position and in doing so made some noise alerting the Germans and the big guy in front gave them the ‘achtung’ and they spread out like a covey of quail. We opened fire and hit all three. I jumped up and ran out and pointed my empty submachine gun at the big German. I ordered him to spread those hands out and up. I grabbed the grenade from his belt and threw it to the side. I got his binocs and luger and his map and map case. The case held only American cigarettes. He was only hit in one foot—in the heel. The other two didn’t make it.

  At first, the big German said he couldn’t walk. I said, ‘Walk or Kaput!’ and he got up. I had Miller walk behind him to encourage him. I said, ‘If he can’t make it, shoot him’.

  As we started returning to our positions, the Germans started shooting at us with a mortar. The only reason they waited that long was because they thought they had run into our front lines. As we were moving back fast along the dirt road, that mortar was chasing us. I figured they were firing from a map so we headed into the woods, to the left. The road swung to the right. They kept chasing the road. We kept going and came back onto that tank outfit. They were still there.

  Once again, none of them spoke to us till we got up to where their captain was out in front. He didn’t even ask about the German prisoner we had. He suggested I take him and his driver to our headquarters.

  He asked if I knew the password and countersign and I said yes. He said ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ‘Hell, yes!’

  He and his driver rode in front and Miller and I were on the back of the jeep with the prisoner. Mackey took the rest of the patrol back and they arrived safely.

  As we came into the 327th lines, I was challenged but I knew some of the guys. Some officer came over and looked the situation over and spotted the weapon I had taken. He wanted the German luger I had. He told me his daddy got one in World War I and he always wanted to have one. I told him there were a lot of them out front and that was where he could go to get one. I don’t think he liked my response.

  We got into Bastogne and found our G-2 office. I told the tank captain ‘Here it is!’

  Miller and I were standing in the cobblestone street. The tank captain and his driver started moving off real fast. I yelled, ‘Don’t you want to see our G-2?’ He yelled, ‘We’ll see them later!’ At that time, I couldn’t figure it out.

  We took the prisoner to the G-2—some Lt. Colonel. If I remember correctly, he spoke perfect German. When he was through questioning the prisoner and me, he said to take the prisoner outside. The German was afraid to go with us but the G-2 colonel insisted we take him over to the church where the wounded were being treated. They had hay on the floor. We let the prisoner lie on the floor—I guess
he was hurting a lot. Some troopers at the church relieved us of the responsibility of the prisoner.

  We went back to our outfit and they gave me hell for not bringing the prisoner to them but I thought it was the thing to do to get information to our G-2 quickly. I found out later the Germans were using our uniforms. I now believe that tank outfit was German in our uniforms and in our tanks. They were leading the column toward Bastogne. I think it was the 26th Volksgrenadiers.

  “B” Company Heads East

  When “A” and “C” Companies headed toward Neffe on the afternoon of the 19th, “B” Company was held back at Mande St. Etienne until it was given a definite assignment. S/Sgt. Paul Slevey would become the acting first sergeant on the following day, in the absence of the regular top kick who was still in Paris, when the unit departed for Bastogne. Slevey traced the “B” Company move to its assignment in the Neffe area:

  On December 20, we came across the railroad bridge into Bastogne, passed the Hotel LeBrun and on to the town square, then down the main street, just past St. Peter’s Church. We went through the town gate to the next crossroad. We turned to the left and up the hill. This was on the road to Neffe. Near the top of the hill, a lane led off to the right. We went up a short distance and dug in. I dug a foxhole with Sgt. Bob Balchuck and we finished just before it started to get dark. The C. O. wanted Sgt. Balchuck to deliver a message to one of the platoons. He wasn’t sure where they were so I said I’d help him find them. On the road, we went up to the fence row that would have led to the platoon but at that time artillery started coming in so we took to the ditches. After the third round, we got up and ran until we heard more coming. This time, when we stopped, I looked over and saw a religious shrine at the side of the road. I laid there and said a little prayers. When the next round came in, I cussed the Germans. Sgt. Balchuck said he was hit but could make it back to our hole. In the slit trench, he laid on his stomach and I lifted his overcoat and with my Zippo lighter, looked to see if he was bleeding. He went back to the aid station and came back the next morning. That night, Pvt. Luke Anderson was KIA. Privates Frank Fetco, John Iski and Jackson were SWA.