Hearing First Battalion's fight north of Noville, Blues were eager to join it but still lacked ammunition. Then, as if by providence, a pyramid of all calibers appeared on the road next to an abandoned jeep and trailer. Sink had it dumped there. Blues dipped in as if the pile were warm popcorn. They felt like King Arthur presented with Excalibur.
Because of a roll in the road, all they could see of Noville was a glow from where the village was burning, and they heard the sounds of a surging frrenght. Hold up, came the order from Captain Anderson, who went ahead for a reconnaissance. I Company was thirsty and formed cupfuls of water from newly fallen snow as they awaited an order to attack. Attack in what direction? There were Germans everywhere, but they were equally confused. For three days they had been attacking, overcoming, overrunning, overtaking routed American troops. Now what was this? Amis coming toward them, not with white flags but with well-aimed weapons.
The Currahee yearbook described how it looked from the Amis'side:
Our mortar shells, evenly spaced ahead, echoing off the low hills on either flank. Across the valley onto a wooded hill where the company halted…. From the woods into an open field. Across the field and a frozen marsh, over a stream, into more woods and up a hill. [Not much German fire up till then.] On the reverse side the enemy waited. What an enemy! Seven Tiger Royal tanks, the dreadnoughts of a panzer army.
One Tiger was burning, smoke swirled up in a cone shaped column. Bullets, shrapnel ripped by us. Loud bursts of artillery and mortars vibrated the frozen earth. Machine-guns chattered, ours and theirs. Men were being hit, men groaning, but orders were shouted. The last one was to withdraw! We'd never done that before in the face of the enemy! We obeyed in a pissed-off way, with the wounded limping or carried by their buddies. Some of the dead had to be left behind, and that was hard to accept. We'd be back to get them, no one doubted that, and we sure were—about six times! But in everyone's mind was a hated word— defeat—yes, it was defeat. Our first. Noville was lost. The wind blew the smoke of its burning back at us, the smell of defeat.
At a cost of a dozen officers and two hundred enlisted men, First Battalion had bought McAuliffe a precious forty-eight hours.
So began a swirl of attack and counterattack that would continue for a month on the Bastogne-Houffalize road. The 502nd dashed in on Sink's left flank to hold off the next German drive, coming from the north. McAuliffe's loop around Bastogne was completed by the 327th, who had the longest line to defend—over ten miles, half the division front, but mostly full of woods, to the point where the glider men tied in with the 501st. No supplies could enter on any of the seven roads, but now neither could the Wehrmacht, not without a helluva fight.
Pushed back to the hamlet (seven buildings) of Foy, the 506th regrouped and took stock. They with dogged tankers now prepared to defend against massive attacks that were sure to come. Anderson said he'd never heard so many panzers that he couldn't see: from the sound they must have stretched all the way back to Houffalize, ten miles north. Their engines wouldn't idle long. If the weather cleared they'd have to get off the roads for fear of Jabos. If the weather cleared, the 101st could be resupplied by parachute. So the snow clouds were a German ally; however, the eerie pale ground fog was Sink's.
Currahee Don Burgett described it “like looking into a glass of skim milk.” Another trooper marveled at how the fog went up and down like a theater curtain. When it lifted for a while, panzers poking toward Bastogne were exposed to close-range bazooka fire from Screaming Eagles who had heard them coming and even stalked them in the fog. American tanks, dug in to defilade, had the road zeroed in and could fire blind on preregistered choke points. To counter these tactics, the Germans had to bring up infantry to accompany then-armor. There wasn't a lot of infantry in the Fifth Panzer Army, designed for blitzkrieg rather than slugging through woodsy hills where paratroopers could ambush them like Indians.
But in the impartial fog, Indians were infiltrated and ambushed too. Vehicles evacuating wounded were shot up by squads of Germans lurking along ditches they'd been ordered to follow into Bastogne. Each lift of the curtain revealed a new scene, tragic for one or both players; then it descended over an all-directional firefight that turned into a tableau, melting further into milky mist till even the huge, dark silhouettes of panzers disappeared and there was only the sound of tapering fire and the wounded screaming in two languages.
Goethe was a Currahee, Ross Goethe from Nebraska, whose hatred for the Germans was more vicious than his buddies could understand. One very dark night his company was on line in a dense pine forest when he heard kraut scouts slipping toward them. In inky fog, Goethe felt a hand grip the rim of his foxhole. He ducked back before a bayonet swept from side to side like an antenna, checking to see if the hole was occupied. Goethe grabbed the wrist, yanked the German in, stabbed him repeatedly with the bayonet, then flung the dying man out in the direction whence he'd come. Nice work, said Goethe's platoon leader next morning, killing without firing your weapon and giving away your position. But finish him off next time, trooper. That kraut was gurgling all night.
THE FIRST SNOWS WERE followed by deepening cold, a more implacable killer than even the renowned German formations, which in turn came at Bastogne from all compass points. What stopped them was a centralized defense and their own chain of command, which never designated a single commander to coordinate an all-out assault on the 101st's oval perimeter. McAuliffe, however, could hoard small tank-infantry teams to rush like firemen to whichever regiment was receiving the attack of the day. Furthermore, within “the hole in the doughnut,” as the press would call it, he could mass his artillery fire on any threatened sector; what had been a major problem in the Netherlands, concentration of artillery, was a trump card in Belgium. For the first six days in Bastogne, McAuliffe had precious few howitzer rounds, but he knew how to use them, and when “Divarty” spoke, the Germans listened and rethought their plans.
Exasperated the attackers called upon their own artillery to end what had become a siege. On December 23, Lieutenant General Heinrich von Liittwitz, a monocled Prussian who commanded the panzer corps controlling most of the surrounding forces, sent two officers toward American lines under a white flag. This wasn't particularly notable; brief local truces had been carried out previously, always for evacuation of wounded from between the lines. On these occasions Screaming Eagles were grateful to rise from frozen foxholes, stretch, yawn, and even shave without drawing sniper or mortar fire.
The Germans this time had a different request, though one, by their lights, with a humanitarian aura similar to succoring the wounded. The message, written on a captured American typewriter, was from Liittwitz (identifying himself only as “the German Commander”) and addressed to “the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.” The 130-word text demanded surrender, otherwise “total annihilation” by more than a corps of German artillery. “All serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.” McAuliffe was granted two hours to “think it over” before this bombardment commenced.
McAuliffe was far too busy planning how to parry Lutt-witz's next thrust to devote two minutes, never mind two hours, to thinking over a reply. Upon being read the translation, his first words were “Aw, nuts.” In 1944 that meant “Tell them to go to hell.” No one on his staff could improve on “nuts,” so that was the message sent back to the Germans, out to the world, and into history.*
The rumor spread around the 101st perimeter as quick as the cold: the krauts had recognized futility and offered to surrender. Albers was skeptical. Yeah, we're killing a lot more of them than they are of us, but there're some pretty good enemy troops out there, not the kind to surrender. I think they'll try again.
They did that night, preceded by the first Luftwaffe air raid and the hardest of the 101st's thirty days of fighting in the Bulge was yet to come. Hard-bitten troopers brushed mud and snow off with the same sort of sardonic outlook that
had allowed them to briefly consider that the krauts might be ready to surrender. If the Luftwaffe was aloft, C-47s could not be far behind.
That's exactly what was on McAuliffe's mind. Nuts was sangfroid, relished by his staff, who clapped like the audience in a nightclub when he announced his one-word reply; but they, like him, were best aware that though tactically the 101st was holding its own against 4-1 odds, logistically there was deep crisis. When surrender was refused, only two hundred howitzer rounds were available to support each of the four infantry regiments. Against a major coordinated attack, two hundred rounds could be expended in ten minutes. It had come down to this policy for artillery economy announced by G-3: only if there were “four hundred Germans in a one-hundred-yard area would howitzers be fired at them—but no more than two rounds.”
Though there was a small resupply by parachute on December 23, the shortage of small arms and machine-gun ammo was only slightly less severe than for howitzers. Orders came down that the infantry positions now occupied were the last. The perimeter had been compressed to implosion, and there was nowhere to withdraw. “Defend in place” is the military euphemism for hold at all costs. It was the order of the day on Christmas Eve, when on the firing line friends shivered with cold and shook hands as if for the last time while darkness fell. With few rounds per man, the only way to produce firepower was to get it from the enemy. Dziepak reviewed the most desirable German weapons. Stay low during their attack, kill a kraut, grab his Schmeisser, and there's your ammo resupply. And, oh, yeah, before you fire a kraut weapon, yell “Friendly” or you might get return fire from your buddies.
Christmas Day produced a lull. Down in the foxholes men could hear their counterparts singing “Silent Night” in its original German. They also broadcast Bing Crosby's “White Christmas” on a loudspeaker. Listening were troopers in shallow foxholes lined with tree boughs. As body temperature melted the frozen pine branches, water penetrated clothing. Out went wet boughs while new were gathered in, preventing cold immersion but also preventing anyone from getting more than twenty minutes of sleep. With the Germans so close, snoring was a grave offense.
The big Christmas present came the next day, delivered by air as if by Santa. Riddled by copious flak, waves of C-47s bore in to drop cargo from five hundred feet, low enough to prevent chutes from drifting into German hands. Gliders coasted in with tons of ammo. Almost every Screaming Eagle could see the daylight drop. It was all they needed to keep the faith. Soon previously muted howitzers began to cough and roar like long-unused cars. Companies of Germans had been seen roaming unconcerned around the perimeter outside small-arms range. Now there was abundant artillery to rain on their movements. Divarty's radios were swamped with calls for fire missions. One of them began, “It's like Forty-second and Broadway out there!”
December 26 was also the day Patton's 4th Armored Divi-sion made its breakthrough to Bastogne from the south. It was tough going over ice that sent tanks lurching off roads, and a third of them were lost to 88s and Tiger Royals dug in on every hill. Ralph Ingersoll described his first view of Bastogne:*
Riding through the Ardennes I wore woolen underwear, a woolen uniform, combat overalls, a sweater, a tanker field jacket, a muffler, a lined trenchcoat, two pairs of heavy woolen socks, combat boots with galoshes over them—and cannot remember ever being warm. There was a mean dampness in the air and a cutting wind that never seemed to stop.
On the edges of the town you could see, like a picture story in a book, where the German columns had broken through the perimeter defense and come right up to the edge of houses. You could see this from the burned-out panzers. They had come in one by one and been bazookaed. The trail of them was like a snake cut into little pieces, winding up the low plateau on which Bastogne stands. Here and there, black in the bright sun, were little basketfuls of charred junk, all that's left when an aircraft hits the ground at three or four hundred miles an hour.
What Ingersoll saw was the history, recorded by Colonel Harper of the 327th in his after-action report: “All we commanders at Bastogne could do was put our men on what we considered the critical ground. When that was done the battle was delivered into their hands. Whether we were to win, even survive, was then up to the individual soldier…. He stayed and froze, where he was put and often died rather than give an inch.”
Even Hitler had something to say about the defenders of Bastogne: “I should like to see the German general who would fight on with the same stubborn resistance in a situation which seemed just as hopeless.” December 26 was also a momentous day for him when his staff announced, with uncharacteristic bravery, that “we cannot force the Meuse River” (they never got closer than five miles). In an all-day conference Hitler acquiesced to fighting decisively east of the Meuse where the Bastogne salient constricted his supply lines like a finger poking into the trachea. Bastogne was to be taken with every resource in the Bulge. Overnight the 101st G-2's map sprouted with new symbols: 15th Panzer Division, Panzer Lehr, 1st SS Panzer, 3rd and 4th SS Panzer Grenadiers, Kampfgruppe Remer, and a bewildering array of lesser units, including two infantry divisions, pulling back now, contracting the Bulge to go into defense of the strategic penetration. They meant to stay—because Hitler wouldn't allow them to leave—and turned with a new intensity on Bastogne, what they called an abscess in their side.
Albers recalls: “They liked to attack just as it was getting dark. That was pretty early, maybe three-thirty or four. They'd shoot handheld flares in front of 'em. Without exposing themselves, flares illuminated where they wanted to go. We shot into the dark where the flares came from, shot right down at the ground, the snow. The flares started zooming in all directions like skyrockets on the Fourth of July. We were hitting the guys shooting the flares, and the krauts became confused about where they were headed.”
The to-and-fro in bitter cold began to take a toll, even for veterans. There had been no resupply of grit. What they had was all they had, and even with the savvy and poise developed in Normandy and Holland, it was a finite quantity. In contrast with their senior commanders' confidence, troopers were coming down with “battle rattles,” what was called shell shock in World War I, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after Vietnam. A 10th Armored man came walking by after a German attack, his helmet dripping blood. “Where you going?” a trooper asked. “I gotta get a new tank….”
Barren Duber had acquitted himself well till after Christmas. Cagey, cunning, an accomplished sniper, Duber was never more happy than when he captured German “shoe” mines, explosives enclosed in wood to defy mine detectors. He found that freezing weather deactivated their detonators, so he collected them for the thawing day when he could go out on a patrol and strew them behind German lines. But after a freezing night in the woods around Foy, Duber never thawed out himself. He shook in his foxhole from battle rattle and had to be hauled out by his armpits, shuddering like an epileptic. Now that the 101st had an umbilical cord to Brad-ley's army, Duber was evacuated, gone forever. After V-E Day, someone in I Company saw him, no longer in the 101st, driving a truck in a convoy headed for Brest. “Hey, Barren!” the trooper called. Duber looked straight ahead as though he'd never heard his name.
During the siege, a certain defiant contempt for wounds developed. The division surgical hospital, with all its doctors, had been captured in toto on the road up from Mour-melon, so till after Christmas there was little but first aid for the wounded. Frostbite and trench foot were treated by changing to larger boots if there were any available from other wounded. The only way to prevent frostbite was burlap bags wrapped around the feet or taking the well-insulated boots of dead Germans. After four winters in Russia they had the best arctic gear in the world, including, of course, white camouflage.
What the 101st had were bedclothes, sheets worn like ponchos, pillowcases over helmets, all readily donated by Belgians. One gave up a bridal dress intended for her Christmas Eve wedding. McAuliffe was so touched by the gesture that on December 26 he had a white par
achute delivered to her house. With it was a note expressing his hope that she could make a new wedding dress, this time with silk. She never had the chance. That day her house was destroyed by German shelling. The bride was found dead in the rubble.
No one faked a wound. No one in I Company doubted that Duber had indeed fallen to battle rattle and could fight no longer. He'd given his all for as long as he could, more than he had to give. Men with physical wounds took pride in refusing morphine, giving it to someone worse off. Such selflessness did not find expression, however, in sympathy. There had just been too many wounds inflicted on too many men. What numbed a wounded man's buddies was his loss: one less in the squad, a wider gap to cover, a longer period of night watch for the survivors. Often a casualty's main pain was the realization that his evacuation weakened the front so long defended at such cost. Disappointed in himself for being hit, he would need to be cheered by medics, reassured that no one held a wound against him. Medics were scarce. Men knew not to call for one just because they'd been hit. One would come running and perhaps get hit himself. Use your first-aid kit, veterans told rookies; that's what it's for. Call for a medic, if you have to, after the shooting stops.
Often it took more than one wound before a man went to the facsimile of a hospital, a basement in the ruins of Bas-togne where patients lay in rows on the stone floor. The unofficial, unenviable division record for multiple wounds belonged to Charlie Eckman, a machine gunner in Second Battalion, 501st, who came to Bastogne by way of Toccoa, Normandy, and Holland. At five feet four and 120 pounds Eckman was a small target, but the Germans hit him seventeen times in six months. That was a rigorous count: several small fragments from one grenade counted as only one wound, though two bullet holes from a single Schmeisser burst were both counted. His seventeenth was a nine-millimeter slug in the ankle that drove a boot eyelet into his leg. This meant the boot had to be removed—it hadn't been for two weeks—something Eckman dreaded, and he heard from the medic, “My God, trooper, your leg's gotta come off! The foot's completely frozen!”
Behind Hitler's Lines Page 26