Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  The German artillery fire that had mortally wounded Lt. Jones also found their targets on several other men on the MLR. Another of our 1st Battalion group was killed. I do not recall his name. Sgt. Wynick was all business. He carefully wrote down the names of the KIA’s in a little book and removed one of the dog tags.

  Another member of the small band of 1st Battalion (501st) troopers who had been left behind because he had no weapon was Pvt. Duane Harvey who, in a normal situation, would have been operating as a member of the S-2 Intelligence Section for Headquarters Company. He lost a friend in the barrage that took the life of 1Lt. Claude Jones. Harvey related:

  The next morning (December 21), our positions received heavy artillery fire and one of the 501st fellows came over and said, ‘Don Fair and the lieutenant had been killed over by the block house.’ Don Fair was a Fort Benning replacement and we had come from England together. The war was very brief for him, killed the first time he came under fire. After the shelling, we stayed in those positions until later in the day when we moved back to a small village (Senonchamps). There we set up in a house which was the last one on the road.

  As a member of “C” Company of the 327th Glider Infantry, PFC. George K. Mullins had been rushed to the 501st sector to fill a gap in the perimeter defense on the afternoon of the 19th. After a relatively peaceful stay in the area, interrupted by intermittent shelling, Mullins and his buddy, H. C. Parker moved out toward the enemy early the next morning only to be called back to move to another threatened spot on the west side of Bastogne. Mullins recalled:

  We were just getting acquainted with this foxhole when we got orders to move outwards to where I could hear a battle going on just over the hill. We hardly made contact with anyone when we were rushed to the west side of this town (Senonchamps).

  We stopped for a few minutes when a chaplain priest showed up. The Catholic troopers hurriedly followed him to the side of a hill for Mass. Hell is near, just around the corner, I knew. I’ve seen this situation before.

  An artillery barrage that caught his unit along a road as they were in the process of moving from the Neffe area to Senonchamps, on the west side of Bastogne, is a vivid memory of PFC. George M. Kempf of “C” Company. He wrote:

  PFC. Joe Carpenter and I were company scouts. We were leading our group to new holding positions when artillery caught us. Joe was killed. I was missed but everyone behind us was killed or wounded. I believe Joe was from Binghamton, New York and was married and had two children.

  What PFC. George K. Mullins is about to relate ties in with what acting sergeant Donald Woodland of “A” Company of the 501st Regiment stated earlier about his lieutenant being mortally wounded near the Team O’Hara roadblock.

  We moved out to the top of the hill. It was timber area with some open spots. I had two mortar ammo bearers with me and we moved out ahead. We came upon a paratrooper covering his platoon leader who, a few minutes earlier, was killed by an incoming shell.

  The artillery barrage, which had been described by PFC. George Kempf, is the same one which Sgt. Donald Woodland and PFC. George Mullins are about to relate, though neither of them has ever spoken to the other about the action.

  Woodland continues with his description of the incoming barrage at the time a company from the 327th Glider Regiment happened to be passing the position he had been at since the 19th:

  To our rear, we noticed that a company from the 327th Glider Regiment was moving down the road toward the MLR. As the point of the company reached the MLR, the German artillery shelling increased in violence. Some of the shells were air bursts in the trees. It seemed as if the shrapnel would follow the tree trunks. The infantry hit the dirt and several were wounded.

  One of the wounded riflemen almost fell on top of me. He had been hit in the neck and I laid on my back to administer first aid. He asked me if his jugular vein had been hit. I told him that I did not know. He then asked if the blood was coming out in spurts or in a steady flow. I answered his question. I took his M1 for my personal use, but neglected to remove the ammunition from his belt so that I had only the clip in the gun.

  A short time later, Wynick received his ‘million dollar wound.’ Now I was in charge of the remaining men from 1st Battalion. Some of the troopers said that they were taking off for the outfit, but I decided my place was here and would attach ourselves to the 327th.

  PFC. George Mullins of “C” Company of the 327th was one of the men who was hit by the barrage in the vicinity of Donald Woodland’s position. He wrote:

  I heard tanks on a ridge below. One of our tanks rolled up behind. He stopped about 100 feet to our right. Immediately, he took a round from a German tank that I heard from the ridge below. The tankers wasted little time bailing out of that big hunk of steel.

  The next round was meant for us. I dived for a low place in the ground with the two ammo bearers on top of me, one being a large man, the other was a man named Johnson, from Indiana. The tree burst was too close for comfort. The explosion was terrific. Everything seemed to be dark and hazy, although I could feel blood trickling near my face. Both men were mumbling prayers. I am sure I owe my life to these two troopers, their bodies being my only protection against the shell fire.

  Mullins ended that narration with “I now found myself in a cathedral being used as an aid station. Many soldiers lay wounded. A doctor and two medics were busy operating, taking a bullet from a soldier’s head.”

  Apparently Pvt. Duane Harvey and acting sergeant Donald Woodland joined Captain Walter L. Miller and his “Charley” Company on the move west. The “C” Company commander failed to mention the shelling in his story. Miller describes the move to Senonchamps:

  At that time, I received an order to go cross-country to Senonchamps to protect the 10th Armored Division artillery located in that area. I can remember going by the Chateau Ile-le-Hesse on the way to Senonchamps.

  I met there with a Colonel Browne who commanded the 10th Armored Division artillery unit. He was killed that day or the next by a shell fragment as he walked in the village. A Lt. Col. Crittenberger took command. We moved to the far end of Senonchamps, taking positions to the right and left of the road. We could see the Germans moving from a woods on our right front to a woods on our left and we engaged them with fire. We also had the support of ‘Choo-Choo’ artillery of the 10th Armored Division who would throw a shell in among the enemy.

  “B” Company Hit

  Companies “A” and “C” of the 327th moved out first on the 21st followed by “B” Company, which had arrived near Neffe only the day before. When “B” Company got its marching orders to move to the Senonchamps area, they used a different route to avoid shelling. It didn’t work. They were hit as they moved along the outskirts of Bastogne. S/Sgt. Paul Slevey describes what happened to “B” Company. One shell did a lot of damage. He wrote:

  On December 21st, the company was moving from the edge of Bastogne down through an open area in town and we were caught in an artillery barrage. McMinn was KIA and Stanley was SWA. Walt Dazkowski was SWA—he lost part of a leg. Ernie Schneider was lightly wounded; the SCR-300 radio he was carrying kept him from being hurt bad—the radio didn’t come out so good—it was junk.

  These guys were wounded as the result of one round. When I walked by Stanley, he held up his bag and said, ‘Here, you’re the first sergeant now!’ The bag contained the company records as they would be with us. We went past the town square. After we crossed the railroad bridge, we went to the left, passing the water tower. About a mile further, we stopped in a patch of woods that was next to the railroad tracks and here we dug in.

  Senonchamps

  As a replacement in “B” Company of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, Pvt. Kenneth K. Knarr was experiencing his first combat action near the western outskirts of the small village of Senonchamps with other members of his platoon. His group had been assigned to the position on the 20th. He wrote:

  The First or second day our platoon was in a garage and w
e were being shelled constantly. One of our men had a grenade in his left shoulder pocket. Somehow he pulled the pin. It exploded, blowing off his right hand and left shoulder. I heard he died but don’t remember his name.73

  The next day Rip Reardon had his feet propped up as he was making pancakes on a cast iron stove. At that time, a tanker from an armored outfit walked in the front door looking for his unit. Just then, some large shells hit the building. Some of us dove into the cellar. A few minutes later we went back up and found Rip Reardon unhurt and the tanker badly wounded.

  Pvt. Duane Harvey of the 1st Battalion of the 501st Regiment experienced the same shelling. He remembered a Sherman tank parked in the yard behind the house and recalled a shed in which two Belgian civilians, killed by the Germans, had been placed until they could be buried. At the time of the shelling, Harvey was patrolling the grounds near the house.

  During the night, I was patrolling outside the house while the others were inside. The Germans started shelling our positions. When it started, I stepped inside and stood up against the wall between the door and the window. A shell hit outside and the blackout shutters fell off. A wood stove in the corner fell over, spilling the supper of several GI’s on the floor. We all thought it was from shell concussion but the next morning we found a dud 75mm shell under the stove and the wooden window casement had a half-moon crease along the side where I had been standing.

  With the last road out of Bastogne being cut the night of December 20th, it became very important to beef up the defense lines to the southwest. In his book, BASTOGNE, The First Eight Days, Gen. S.L.A. “Slam” Marshall wrote:

  Later in the morning of December 21, Team Pyle—14 medium tanks and 200 infantry, mostly from the 9th Armored—moved to the vicinity of Senonchamps to assist the 420th Armored Field Artillery. LTC. Barry D. Browne, in command of the 420th, had received reports that Sibret and Morhet had fallen into enemy hands. He figured that he was out on a limb and that the enemy might come upon him from either flank. So, he turned one of his batteries to fire on Sibret and rushed a forward observer out to adjust on the village. At that moment, he saw the motorized column of the 333rd Field Artillery group as it came speeding up the road out of Sibret. Another column came driving hard behind the 333rd—men in American clothes and riding American vehicles. They got fairly close to Senonchamps, then stopped, deployed and opened fire with an M8 assault gun.

  Even as Colonel Browne realized they were Germans, they started side-slipping off into the Bois Fragotte, which lies south of Senonchamps. Team Pyle got there in time to help Browne fill those woods with fire; one battery from the 420th Field Artillery Battalion and one from the 755th Field Artillery Battalion (155mm’s) also engaged in this action. The infantry and tanks moved west into the woods. Almost immediately, one of the tanks knocked out an enemy 75mm self-propelled gun. The force then advanced into a large clearing in the center of the forest. While crossing the clearing, one of the tanks was disabled by a shell from a high velocity gun somewhere in the woods. The tank lost a track. A smoke screen was laid in an attempt to cover its withdrawal, but the tank would not budge and had to be destroyed.74

  Part of “A” Company of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment was sent down to the area of Villeroux to check out on friendly troops and find out if it was still in friendly hands. This occurred on the 21st of December. One member of that patrol, PFC. Willis F. Rohr, describes the experience:

  Our squad made a patrol down the road south from Ile-le-Pre to contact American troops in a town to the right and about two or three miles out. No opposition was met that night. We managed to get hot water and our food heated in one of the houses at the crossroads.

  Captain Walter L. Miller describes the situation in Senonchamps after his men had moved into the area on the 21st of December:

  While in Senonchamps, we did not use the houses except at night when we would bring in our weapons for cleaning and oiling so they would not be frozen in the early morning attacks by the enemy. One of the replacements I picked up going into Senonchamps was from a disorganized unit. He was found frozen to death in his foxhole, inasmuch as he had been afraid to move during the night. We did have several stragglers assisting us there from other units but they were taken away from us when we returned to the lines.

  In Senonchamps, we were very low on ammunition and living on one-third of a K-ration a day and with no dry socks. The artillery battalion only had about 39 rounds of ammunition with which to support us.

  Pinching Them Out

  Over in the 506th sector, 1st Battalion commander Major Robert Harwick felt his men deserved a rest from the arduous two-day battle at Noville and Foy but it was not to be. The men had slept in the hay barns of Luzery and in the morning of the 21st, Harwick had to call them out for another mission. He wrote:75

  The Germans were far from through. They moved back into Foy that night. Worse of all, they broke through our defense perimeter, leaving nearly 200 Germans holding a section of woods inside our defenses and within a mile of Division Headquarters. At 0700, I received an order to get them out.

  1Lt. Ed Mehosky’s “Charley” Company was one of those selected for the clean-out mission on the 21st. He remembered:

  1st Battalion was in Division reserve in an area near the village of Luzery, located just north of Bastogne and west of Foy. On the 21st of December, we got word that there had been a penetration by German forces along the Bourcy-Bastogne railroad tracks between the 506th and the 501st sectors, southeast of Foy. ‘C’ Company and ‘A’ Company were given the job to eliminate the threat. After a meeting with the Battalion commander, I briefed my platoon leaders on the mission. By 0900, we were heading in the direction of Foy. The morning was cold. A misty fog blanketed the gray landscape. We marched northeast on the Bastogne-Foy road. From the road, we turned southeast into a sparsely wooded area, mostly evergreens. The deeper we advanced, the thicker the woods. We came to within a couple hundred yards of the tracks where we thought the German positions would be. We were south of the Halte railroad station and parallel to the Bastogne-Foy road.

  Major Harwick added to his account with a description of the wooded area through which the attack was being made:

  One company was put between the woods and Bastogne. I took Meason’s company and Mehosky’s and carefully started through the woods to try and chase the Krauts into the waiting company.

  The woods here had been planted. The trees were pine and fir, in neat rows and with no underbrush. It was like a tremendous hall with a green roof supported by many brown columns.

  We moved very carefully and slowly, feeling out each section of the forest. We were especially careful at the fire gaps and boundary roads that divided the woods into planting sections. There was some German artillery falling, the shells hitting in back and to our left, but nothing disturbed the quiet of the woods. The men moved softly, orders were whispers or motions.

  MAP 9—Pinching Them Out

  Over on the “C” Company front, company commander Ed Mehosky directed his platoons to make their moves toward the enemy positions. He added to his story:

  Reconnaissance completed, ‘A’ Company moved off to the left, ‘C’ Company to the right. I deployed two platoons and engaged the enemy. The other was held in reserve. My two platoons soon drew fire. Forward movement became very difficult. Heavy small arms fire was pouring in and artillery bursts exploded in the tree tops. My platoons were temporarily stalled. The enemy had the advantage of well-concealed positions. They had dug in and were using fields of fire cleared through the low hanging tree limbs.

  Action now began in front of Major Harwick’s position. A rifle shot put the troops to ground. Harwick added to his story:76

  Then the rifle crack from in front, just over there! There was no one standing, but helmets peered around trees trying to spot the source. Just where did that come from? Then another, and now a burst of machine gun fire, the tracers bouncing from tree to tree like a pellet in a pinball machine.

&
nbsp; Pvt. Steve Polander was one of the members of “A” Company who took part in that fighting. He gives his version of the action from his position out in front where the action was hot and heavy:77

  Rifle fire starts coming off the hill above us, ricocheting all around. We quickly regroup, about 40 able-bodied men in all, and head straight up the hill where German infantry is dug in beyond a strip of wooded area, not too deep. We move among the tall timber and some men drop.

  Captain Richard Meason, who had been a platoon leader under Bob Harwick in Normandy, was now commanding “A” Company. The Ardennes campaign was to end his combat experience in World War II on the morning of the 21st. He wrote:

  We pulled out immediately thereafter and attacked the Germans through a woods at approximately noon of the morning of the 21st. During this attack, I was hit in the abdomen by an explosive rifle bullet. This fight was short, furious and successful.78

  The description of the 1st Battalion actions in this fight were written by Major Harwick less than a year later so he provides more detail in his report than the others but surprisingly the stories tie in so very welt. Harwick continues:

  But ‘A’ Company had them spotted. A few low mounds of freshly turned earth marked the outer foxhole line. The fire is returned and now a few greenish figures bound up and move forward, running crazily, then they are down again and have disappeared. ‘C’ Company on the right had stopped at the shots on the left, but they now moved forward again. ‘A’ Company continues to work forward and now the first call for ‘Medic!’ ‘C’ Company hadn’t found anyone yet. I worked past Zahn79 and his reserve platoon to be sure that ‘A’ and ‘C’ didn’t become separated. But there it was, ‘C’ had made contact. A long burst of machine gun fire. Again it rattles and bounces through the trees and the men on the right go forward in dashes. Rifle fire was now heavy and crackled continuously. I pass the boy who caught that first shot, face down, still holding his rifle, his helmet a little off to one side.80