Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  The heavy artillery barrage called down on the shattered remains of Foy and the appearance of the 11th Armored Division tanks with their supporting infantry, was enough for the Germans. As mentioned earlier, they pulled out by 0900 and 3rd Battalion troops moved back into any buildings which still provided shelter.

  On to Noville

  The next order Captain Dick Winters received didn’t sit well with him. The fighting wasn’t over for 2nd Battalion on the 14th. He was ordered to get his troops ready to move on Noville. They had spent the past night in Foy, being driven out by a concerted tank and battalion-sized infantry attack. Now they were to move on Noville from whence 1st Battalion and Team Desobry had withdrawn on December 20. Winters wrote:

  When word came down for this attack it pissed me off. I could not believe that after what we had gone through and done, after all the casualties we had suffered, they were putting us into an attack. It just had the flavor of an ego trip for General Taylor, a play to show General Eisenhower that now that Taylor’s back, his troops will get off their asses and go into the attack.

  The scheduled hour of attack also angered the battalion commander. Capt. Winters was bitter with the order to move out at mid-day.

  2nd Battalion moved forward at 1200. That’s another point of not using good judgment by regiment or division command. Why 1200? Why do you send men across one and a half miles of wide open Fields to Recogne-Cobru- Noville, through snow almost knee deep, in the middle of a bright, sunny day? The Germans were sitting on the high ground with tanks hidden by the cover of buildings. Why not early morning—first light of day, so we would have had the cover of darkness for at least part of the time?

  That day I earned my pay! Before we started, I recognized that our salvation just might be that there was a fairly deep shoulder in the terrain on the southwest side of Noville and if I sent the column straight for it, I could pick up more and more cover as we got closer to Noville. (The 1st Battalion took advantage of the same terrain feature on the 20th of December when they withdrew from Noville.) We were lucky. They did not have any strong point on the shoulder and the plan worked. I had to put the whole battalion in single file to cut through that snow. It was a dangerous formation.

  The 1st Battalion was about 400 yards to our left and slightly to the rear of our column. From time to time I’d glance over to see how they were doing. They were being cut up by direct fire from the 88’s on those tanks in Noville. The fire was hitting into their lines; men were flying through the air. Years later, in the Movie Dr. Zhivago, I saw troops crossing snow- covered fields being shot into by cannon from the edge of the woods and men flying through the air. Those scenes seemed very real to me. I sure could relate that with Bastogne.

  We worked very hard getting across those fields and getting snuggled up to the underside of that shoulder by about 1530. By dark I had worked the Battalion around to a draw on the southeast corner of town. To do that we had to go through the fire from machine guns in Noville that were covering the draw. To take care of this we set up a couple of LMG’s of our own. The Germans would fire, we would give them a return burst and, at the same time, send a group of eight or ten men across the draw and a stream to the other side. It became a cat and mouse game. It took a lot of patience, but we did it without any casualties. By dark, we were in position for the attack the nextday.

  One of the infantrymen of “E” Company, Pvt. Anthony Garcia, remembers that move and falling into a small stream in that bitter cold weather. He wrote:

  While trying to jump across a small stream, carrying personal equipment and six mortar rounds during the advance toward Noville several hundred yards distant, I broke through the ice soaking the front of myself and by the time we entered Noville, my clothes were frozen, making a crackling sound as I walked. This turned out in my favor because the ice, strangely enough, kept me warm that night while in my foxhole and because of the noise the ice made, I did not have to go on an all-night patrol which never made contact with its intended (another 101st unit).

  When Foy was cleared on the 13th, “E” Company was pulled back to prepare for the attack on Noville. They were moved up to within a few hundred yards of the town. 1st/Sgt Carwood Lipton added to his story:

  That evening, the officers were briefed on the attack and the general situation. After the briefing, Lt. Speirs told me that he wanted me to take command of the 2nd Platoon for the attack which was to be led by the 2nd Platoon to the left of the road through the town and the 3rd Platoon to the right of it. We were also told that there were friendly tanks to our right rear, although it was not known when or even if, they would join us. Some of them were said to be a new tank, the M-26 as I remember, which had a long gun with a muzzle brake and a low silhouette so that it resembled the German tanks.

  When I pulled the 2nd Platoon together to brief them on Noville and the attack into it to take place the following morning, Captain Winters, not Lt. Speirs, stood by to listen in. He apparently approved of all that I said except that he corrected my estimate of how far the edge of the town was from our attack line. I had estimated it too low.

  As darkness set in, I put the platoon along a fence row facing Noville several hundred yards to our front It was not a completely dark night and we could faintly see some of the buildings on the outskirts of town. It was, however, a bitter cold night.

  I was uneasy about leading the platoon in the attack without knowing more about what lay ahead of us so I decided to go forward, under cover of the darkness, to some of the buildings that I could see ahead. I took the radioman with me. The first building we reached was a barn. We went in through a door in the back and felt our way through to where a door opened onto a courtyard that was by the main road through Noville. I could dimly see several Sherman tanks so I talked with Lt. Speirs again to ask him if he had any late information on where our friendly tanks were. He had none and I told him that I could see some of our tanks ahead and that it looked like our tankers had already moved into Noville.

  We moved more confidently up the road, but when we got to the tanks I could see that they were knocked out There were a number of American bodies, their former crews, on the ground around them. It was obvious that they had been left there when armored Team Desobry and the 1st Battalion of the 506th had withdrawn from there on December 20th. The Germans still definitely held Noville and my radioman and I were right in the middle of it.

  We pulled back as quickly and as silently as we could to the bam and I told Lt. Speirs what I had seen. The attack the next morning would still be necessary.

  After the 11th Armored Division had moved in to mop up Foy, “F” Company had moved to the left flank of the 2nd Battalion positions. S/Sgt John Taylor remembered the cold and the wakefulness as his group waited out the night. He added to his story:

  During the night the enemy fired some screaming meemies. They went over us and hit in the Headquarters Company area, I think they lost some people that time. We had some TD’s with us. Oh, it was cold! Bitter cold! We went through two towns—Recogne and Cobru. We got through both of them and there was a draw and just getting dark that night. We were told to go across a draw onto the high ground on the other side. We did. I think “D” Company was with us. It was cold. I’m sure it was zero. The snow was swirling. It was hard. You couldn’t dig in. We set up a hasty defense around the area. Sometime during the night, Sgt Jack Borden and I were just walking around, swinging our arms and trying to keep warm. They had roving guards out there. The password that night was ‘Whizz’. This new guard came by—you didn’t take any chances in giving the password. The countersign was ‘Wiper’. The password that night was ‘Whizz—Wiper’ and this new guard came by. I remember Borden challenged with ‘Whiz!’ and the kid on guard duty got excited and said, ‘Windshield wiper—Windshield Wiper!’ That was one miserable night. It was so cold—bitter!

  That miserable, cold night is a lasting memory for 2nd Battalion commander Dick Winters who also remembers harboring thoughts of ordering
a night attack. He wrote:

  That night was the coldest, I repeat, the coldest night of my life and I think the same goes for every other man in the outfit. As I mentioned earlier, we had worked hard all afternoon and we were wringing wet with sweat. Then, after the sun went down, it got bitter cold. All you could do was shiver. At one point during the night, I tried to lie down on a little knoll of ground. In no time, I had just shivered myself down that knoll to the bottom. I soon gave up trying to get any sleep.

  Without sharing this thought with anyone, at one point I considered making a night attack rather than standing there all night freezing to death, for I just had the feeling they had pulled out. But I eliminated the night attack idea, realizing that the chances were too great that we could end up shooting some of our own men in the dark.

  It wasn’t the cold so much that bothered Sgt. Louis E. Truax of “Dog” Company as the German nebelwerfer that pounded them during the night. He wrote:

  We had moved to the east side of the Bastogne-Noville road. It was in a valley here that I experienced the worst indirect fire. In that valley, a nebelwerfer came in. I hit the ground and rolled under a fallen tree. I looked up and could see hot, smoking shrapnel protruding from Bill Batchelder’s back. We must have lost five or six guys to that one nebelwerfer. We called them ‘screaming meemies’.

  Some people might think you would stop at this point and render assistance to the wounded. Believe me, you don’t. I moved quickly up to the hill where I had heard the nebelwerfer firing. Halfway up the hill was a low spot. I fell into it to catch my breath. I’ve never been a religious person but, right there, I kinda said a little prayer that I was still there.

  Guess what—that nebelwerfer was gone, but the tracks of if were there along with a piece of burlap. The Krauts had wrapped the hooves of a team of horses which towed that thing out of there. That’s the way they moved it around at night—quietly.

  A Tragic Bombing

  In the 502nd sector where the troops of 1st Battalion had been attacking up the side of the railroad track leading to Bourcy, a misdirected attack by friendly aircraft caused heavy casualties among the troops who were already suffering from the bitter cold and having to attack through heavy snow.

  The extreme cold of January 14 is also remembered by PFC. John E. Fitzgerald who felt that getting something warm on the inside provided a feeling of warmth in the body. He found a new use for “C-2”. He wrote:

  Our basic weapon against enemy tanks was the rocket firing bazooka but there were never enough of them to go around. To help offset this shortcoming, the English had given us a new weapon called the ‘Gammon Grenade’. It was made of a putty-like substance called Composition C-2 and came wrapped in a sack-lime cloth. When activated and thrown at a tank, it would usually slow it down or stop it completely. It had a tremendous explosive force. When our canned sterno began to run out, someone discovered that small pieces of C-2 would burn fiercely. We used it to dry out wet gloves and socks and thaw out the rifle bolts that would constantly freeze. The biggest benefit was that we now had another way to make instant coffee and bullion that came with or K-rations. The only problem was that any further use of the grenades against targest proved less effective as the C-2 continued to decrease in size.

  As mentioned earlier in the text, the rifleman and machine gunner on the front line never knew what the grand strategy of the commanders was on the various moves made in combat situations. When relief was made, it was not always with men of one’s own battalion and thus there was confusion on the part of Cpl. Elmer Nicks when he describes the unit moving through his position. I am sure there were liaison personnel from the 6th Armored Division attached to the 3rd Battalion of the 502nd as it moved through the positions of 1st Battalion on the morning of January 14. Nicks continues his account as the day brings disaster to the elements of 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 502nd Regiment:

  Sgt. Pichler was the squad leader and gunner and I was assistant gunner. His hole was also a German takeover. The best I can remember his hole was between mine and the railroad. The next morning, the 6th Armored Infantry started moving up through us. They were apparently getting the point and attack job. I think it was a battalion headquarters company because there were several officers and I believe one major that were killed by the bomb.

  As they were moving through our position, I was trying to heat a cup of water into which I had chipped shavings from a chocolate bar and thawing out a can of K-rations. I was burning the wax-coated K-ration box cut into tiny pieces to do the heating. Several of the 6th Armored Infantry men, plus one or two of our men, were crowded around my hole and the tiny fire. They were trying to soak up all the heat to warm up a cup of water for coffee when I got through. (I saved the wax cartons as I found that they were really priceless many times for a small fire to heat water or thaw out cans of food).

  I was aware of the big explosions, bombing and strafing that were going on over on the other side of the tracks to our right rear. After a while, you don’t pay too much attention unless it is affecting you. Then the bomb hit. When I regained my senses, I found a blown-off tree in my hole and bodies on top of me. By the time I got out of my hole, I could see a hug crater, trees blown down and many casualties, mostly dead, everywhere. I noticed something I had never seen before. Some of the men’s faces were blown out like toy balloons. I started helping with the wounded with tourniquets and morphine. We could not use most of the morphine as it had frozen.

  I asked one of the survivors where Pichler was and I was told he had gone up on the railroad tracks with a panel to signal the P-47’s. I climbed up cautiously and found him sprawled on the railroad track. I checked him and he did not seem to have any outward wounds but with all the layers of clothes, wounds would not show unless they were really severe. I rolled him off the track and he felt like a sack of coal. Then I noticed several holes in his uniform. We had been close together in combat. We had learned to make the best of every situation. He was a leader and he always knew that I was right with him at all times. It was an unspoken feeling that we could always depend on each other. When he went up on that track he knew that he would be shot at by a Germans and a plane diving at 400 mph. could not tell an American from a German but somebody had to get the indentification panel up there so the planes would know and not finish us off.193

  MAP 23—Tragedy on the Railroad

  Area where bomb was misdropped on the troops of the 502nd on January 14. (Map provided by Cpl. Elmer Nicks.)

  The officers who were killed by the bomb blast included the commander of 3rd Battalion which was passing through the 1st. Another was a liaison officer, 1Lt. Edward Mitchell, from the 377th parachute Field Artillery Battalion which always served as the support group for the 502 Regiment.

  As the medic who was assigned to the pathfinder team of the 101st in the combat jumps into Normandy and Holland, PFC. Raymond “Snuffy” Smith missed the first ten days of the Bastogne operation as the pathfinder teams not used for the resupply drop were in England. However, he was sent forward and was assigned to Lt. Col. John F. Stopka, commander of 3rd Battalion on January 14 near Bizory. smith describes the actions that resulted in the heavy loss of life and wounding of so many of others:

  I was with LTC. John F. Stopka, commander of 3rd Battalion of the 502nd. A few miles outside of Bastogne we were advancing through a pine forest and on one side of railroad which was built up 15 to 20 feet above the surrounding ground level. German tanks were on the other side of the roadbed. Someone requested air power to knock out the tanks. Our own planes strafed and bombed the 3rd Battalion and Killed Col. Stopka and about thirty of our men and wounded forty or more. As a medic, I was the one to treat and tag these men. It was the most horrifying experience I had from D-Day through all the 101st battles.

  1Lt. Ray Brock was also involved in the January 14th action when part of a major 101st Division attack to the northeast toward Noville as the mortar platoon leader for 3rd Battalion of the 502nd. He recalled the att
ack by our fighter planes on our own troops. He wrote:

  We were attacking along the railroad tracks toward Bourcy and had become somewhat mingled with the 1st Battalion. As we were trudging up alongside the tracks in the deep snow, a sergeant from ‘A’ Company, 1st Battalion, called ‘Lieutenant Brock—here is one of your men!’ I wondered how one of my men got ahead of me and up on the bank. I climbed up and looked. It was Cp1. Leo Pichler from HQ. Co. 1st Bn. I had spent half of my 502nd time in that unit so knew Leo well. He had been killed and was lying there in the snow. I always admired Leo as he was such a neat person and always looked so sharp when going out on pass. He was an outstanding fighter on the regimental boxing team and an excellent soldier. It saddened me to see Leo’s life end this way.

  After the fighter planes had completed their jobs and actions had quieted down that evening, PFC. Elmer Nicks went over to check on the other side where most of the heavy strafing and bombing had taken place. He wrote: