The intelligence and reconnaissance platoon joined up with the 424th Infantry, the only regiment of the 106th Division to escape, having formed the right wing of Hasbrouck’s force. For the first time they heard of the massacre near Malmédy. ‘The line troops vowed that no prisoners would be taken in their sector,’ wrote one of them. ‘Two of the platoon, on liaison to one of the companies, were visiting the front line foxholes of one of the rifle platoons. Across a fifty yard gap in the woods, a white flag appeared, whereby a sergeant stood up and motioned the Germans to advance. About twenty men emerged out of the woods. After they had advanced closer to the line, the sergeant gave the command to open fire. No prisoners were taken.’
Only German troops who had circumvented St Vith were in a position to advance. That evening panzers and infantry attacked along the railway line to Crombach. The fight for Crombach was furious. One company fired 600 rounds in twenty minutes from its 81mm mortars and ‘broke the base plates which were welded to the floor of the half-track’. German panzer crews used their trick of firing bright flares to blind American gunners and thus got off their rounds first with devastating effect.
As Hasbrouck had predicted, nearly the whole division was now coming under heavy shellfire. Orders for the withdrawal were issued, and the artillery began moving out at midnight. It began to freeze hard. To the joyful disbelief of Brigadier General Clarke, the ground finally became solid enough not only for cross-country movement, but also along the deeply mired woodland tracks. This was essential if they were to extricate all the different components towards the three-kilometre gap between Vielsalm and Salmchâteau, and the two bridges over the river. But German attacks during the night prevented the two combat commands from pulling out during darkness. The careful plan for the withdrawal was thrown out of synchronization, but despite many rearguard skirmishes the bulk of the retreating forces managed to cross the River Salm on 23 December.
A survivor from one infantry company, who managed to escape with the 17th Tank Battalion, recounted how after several running firefights they finally reached the lines of the 82nd Airborne. A paratrooper digging a foxhole put down his shovel and said: ‘What the hell are you guys running from? We been here two days and ain’t seen a German yet.’ The exhausted infantryman retorted: ‘Stay right where you are, buddy. In a little while you won’t even have to look for ’em.’
On the southern slope of the Elsenborn ridge, the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend again tried to break through with tanks at Bütgenbach. The American defenders herded civilians into the convent’s cellars and provided them with food. In houses outside and on the edge of the town, women and children cowered in cellars as the house above them was fought over, captured and recaptured by both sides. Bazooka teams stalked panzers which had broken into the town. American fighter-bombers then attacked the village. One explosion threw a cow on to a farm roof. By the time the fighting had finished, the bodies of twenty-one civilians had been wrapped in blankets, ready for burial when the opportunity arose. Most were elderly and disabled residents from the nursing home.
This was the last major attempt to break the American defence of the Elsenborn ridge. The 12th SS Hitler Jugend Division was ordered to pull out and reorganize before being diverted to join the Fifth Panzer Army further south. Gerow’s V Corps had defeated the attempt of the Sixth Panzer Army to break through.
In the early hours of 22 December, German Junkers 52 transport planes dropped fuel, rations and ammunition to Peiper’s Kampfgruppe, but only about a tenth of the supplies could be recovered from the restricted drop zone. The Luftwaffe refused Sixth Panzer Army’s requests for further missions. Attempts by the 1st SS Panzer-Division to break through to support and resupply Peiper were thwarted at Trois-Ponts by a regiment of the 82nd Airborne defending the line of the River Salm just below its confluence with the Amblève. General Ridgway knew that he needed to eliminate the Peiper Kampfgruppe in its pocket at La Gleize and Stoumont as soon as possible so that he could redeploy the 30th Division and the 3rd Armored Division. The threat was growing further west with the advance of the 116th Panzer-Division to Hotton, and the 2nd Panzer-Division on its left.
Ridgway had hoped for a clear sky that day, after the hard frost of the night before, but he soon heard that no aircraft would be flying in their support. At least Stoumont was finally cleared by the infantry from the 30th Division supported by Sherman tanks. The Germans pulled out, leaving wounded from all three battalions of the 2nd SS Panzergrenadier-Regiment. But west of Stavelot a panzergrenadier company slipped in to block the road and captured an American aid station. This was retaken by combat engineers and tanks next day.
Peiper acknowledged that his situation was ‘very grave’. There was house-to-house fighting in La Gleize, where some buildings were burning from American artillery firing phosphorus shells. Peiper claimed that the church in La Gleize, ‘conspicuously marked with a red cross’, had been targeted by US tanks and artillery. His men, most of them still teenagers, were exhausted and half starved. Most of them wore articles of American uniform taken from the dead and prisoners because their own were falling to pieces. Since all attempts to break through by the relief force from his division had failed, Peiper decided that evening that his Kampfgruppe would have to fight its way out.
While Peiper’s morale was sinking, Generalmajor Kokott on the south side of Bastogne began to feel much more optimistic. His 26th Volksgrenadier command post had just heard reports of the rapid advance of the panzer divisions towards the Meuse. He also began to think that perhaps Lüttwitz’s corps headquarters must have good intelligence on the state of the American defenders of Bastogne, otherwise it would not have ordered just ‘a single infantry division’ to surround and capture the town. Lüttwitz, visited the night before by General der Panzertruppe Brandenberger, was assured that the 5th Fallschirmjäger-Division could hold the southern flank against Patton’s drive north from Arlon.
In bitterly cold weather, with more flurries of snow and the ground frozen hard, Kokott began a concentric attack. His 39th Regiment advanced on Mande-Saint-Etienne in the west, while his reconnaissance battalion, Kampfgruppe Kunkel, fought around Senonchamps and Villeroux, south-west of Bastogne. ‘In the course of the [day],’ Kokott recorded, ‘news arrived from Korps [headquarters] to the effect that the commander in charge of the Bastogne forces had declined a surrender with remarkable brevity.’
When soldiers of the 327th Glider Infantry had seen four Germans coming towards them, waving a white flag, they assumed that they wanted to surrender. A German officer speaking English announced that according to the Geneva and Hague conventions they had the right to deliver an ultimatum. They produced their own blindfolds and were led to the company command post. Their letter was then sent to divisional headquarters. Brigadier General McAuliffe, who had been up all night, was catching up on sleep in the cellar. The acting chief of staff shook him awake, and told him that the Germans had sent emissaries asking the Bastogne defenders to capitulate or face annihilation by artillery fire. McAuliffe, still half asleep, muttered ‘Nuts!’ Not knowing what to recommend as a reply, one member of the 101st staff suggested that McAuliffe should use the same reply as he had given to the chief of staff. So back went the message to the unidentified ‘German commander’, who was in fact Lüttwitz, with the single word. Manteuffel was furious with Lüttwitz when he heard about the ultimatum. He regarded it as a stupid bluff, because the Germans simply did not have the artillery ammunition to carry out the threat. McAuliffe, on the other hand, could not be sure that it was a bluff.
The change in the weather meant that uniforms stood out conspicuously against the snow. In Bastogne and surrounding villages, American officers asked the local mayor if they could obtain sheets to be used as camouflage. In Hemroulle, the burgomaster went straight to the church and began to toll the bell. Villagers came running and he told them to bring their sheets as the American soldiers needed them. Some 200 were provided. The paratroopers began cutting them
up to make helmet covers, or strips to wrap round rifle and machine-gun barrels. Those who made poncho-style capes for going out on patrol soon found, however, that they became damp and froze. This made them crackle and rustle as they moved. Other soldiers scoured Bastogne and its surrounding villages for cans of whitewash to camouflage their vehicles and tanks.
In their foxholes round the Bastogne perimeter, the ill-equipped paratroopers of the 101st suffered badly in the freezing temperatures, especially with their feet in sodden boots. Some soldiers discovered a store in Bastogne with a couple of thousand burlap sacks. These and others were distributed rapidly for the soldiers to wrap around their feet, yet non-battle casualties from trench foot and frostbite were soon to rise alarmingly.
Despite the wretched conditions, the paratroopers surprised the Germans by the vigour of their counter-attacks on that day. The Germans had begun by attacking the Mande-Saint-Etienne sector at dawn. During the fighting there, a family of refugees sought shelter along with others in the last house in the village. The two brothers who owned the farm milked the cows and brought in pails of it for their guests to drink in the attached stable. Suddenly, the door was kicked open and two German soldiers with ‘Schmeisser’ MP-40 sub-machine guns entered. The refugees cowered against the wall, because the two men appeared drunk. While one of them trained his weapon on the civilians, the other walked over to the pails of milk, undid his trousers and urinated in them one by one. They both thought that this was funny.
The 26th Volksgrenadier-Division lost just on 400 men in its attacks that day, and it had to bring in replacements from the divisional supply battalion and the artillery regiment as infantrymen to make up numbers. Because of the counter-attacks, Generalmajor Kokott even thought that the defenders were about to attempt a breakout from the encirclement. His men had heard from civilian refugees leaving Bastogne that there was great tension in the town and that vehicles were being loaded up. German shells during the night had hit the 101st Division’s command post and killed several officers in their sleeping bags.
An airdrop planned for that day had to be cancelled because of the bad visibility. The 101st was running very short of artillery ammunition and the number of barely treated wounded was mounting fast. Yet morale was high, particularly when news of the rejected demand to surrender rapidly made the rounds. Some senior officers at SHAEF, particularly Major General Strong, the British chief of intelligence, feared that the 101st Airborne would not be able to defend Bastogne. ‘I was never worried about the operation,’ Bedell Smith said later. ‘Strong was, however. He asked me three times in one day if I thought we would hold at Bastogne. I thought [we could]. He said, “How do you know?” I said: “Because the commanders there think they can hold.” We had at Bastogne our best division. When the commander said [they were] OK, I believed he would [hold].’
Major General ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins wasted little time in organizing his VII Corps to resist the advance of the German panzer divisions heading for the Meuse. For the moment he had only the 84th Infantry Division, but the 2nd Armored Division was on its way, and so was the 75th Infantry Division. He travelled in an armoured car to reach the town of Marche-en-Famenne. ‘The fog was sitting right on the tree tops,’ he recorded later. There he found Brigadier General Alex Bolling, the commander of the 84th Infantry Division, who had pushed out reconnaissance forces to identify the enemy’s line of approach. He was reassured to find Bolling ‘very calm’, but their conversation convinced him that Bradley was wrong to believe that his entire corps should be held back for a counter-attack. VII Corps was about to be ‘engaged in a fight for its life’. Collins decided to set up his corps headquarters in a small chateau at Méan, fifteen kilometres due north of Marche.
The advance Kampfgruppe of the 2nd Panzer-Division had started early on 22 December heading for Marche. It met no resistance until it clashed with a detachment of Bolling’s 335th Infantry Regiment at a crossroads two kilometres south of Marche, in rolling country of fields and woods. While a force of panzergrenadiers continued the battle, the lead elements of the 2nd Panzer turned west towards Dinant. Alarm was caused by an unconfirmed report from the British 23rd Hussars, forward of the Meuse crossing at Givet, that panzers had been sighted at Vonêche, a dozen kilometres to the south-east.
The lead elements of the 2nd Panzer were by then only twenty-five kilometres from the Meuse bridge at Dinant, but constant attacks by Bolling’s division forced the 2nd Panzer to detach troops for flank protection. An attack from Marche by American infantry in the morning failed, but another, stronger attempt supported by tanks in the afternoon retook the high ground south-west of the town. A major reverse was prevented by the 2nd Panzer’s anti-aircraft battalion taking on the Shermans in the open, but it suffered heavy losses in the process. That night the panzergrenadiers managed to retake part of the heights and open the road to the west.
American service troops and other detachments in the area soon woke up to the danger. One group, who had billeted themselves in the ancient Château d’Hargimont between Marche and Rochefort, slept in their uniforms and boots with grenades to hand in case they were surprised in the night by the German advance. On hearing gunfire, they pulled out rapidly and headed back towards Dinant. So too did most of the young Belgian men, either on bicycles or on foot. They had a well-justified fear of reprisals for the attacks by the Resistance in September, and they also knew that if they stayed, they risked being marched off to Germany for forced labour.
Taking refuge in cellars as artillery shells began to fall, Belgians had no idea of the state of the battle. They could, however, identify the different sounds made in the street by American boots with rubber soles and the hobnailed jackboots of the Germans. They backed away when Germans entered, not just from a fear of violence, but also because they knew the enemy soldiers were covered in lice. German troops during that advance were intent on searching for Americans in hiding or for members of the Resistance. Any young Belgian who had been unwise enough to pick up a couple of live rounds was liable to be shot as a ‘terrorist’ if searched. And when the Germans decided to make themselves at home, they stacked their rifles and Panzerfausts in a corner, which the civilians could not help eyeing nervously. The locals spoke Walloon among themselves, knowing that the soldiers could not understand, unless one of them happened to be a conscript from the eastern cantons.
In cellars, lit by storm-lamps or candles, the Ardennais sometimes sang folk-songs when there was a long lull. But when the shelling started again in earnest, people began reciting the rosary, their lips moving fast. Conditions during long periods of bombardment rapidly deteriorated, encouraging dysentery. Buckets could be taken up and emptied on the dung-heap only when there was a lull in the firing. Farmers and their sons would also rush out to milk cows in the byre and feed the pigs. They brought back pails of milk for those sheltering downstairs to improve the diet of potatoes. If there was time, they would rapidly butcher livestock killed by shellfire. The fortunate would have brought an Ardennes ham, which they shared out. Many stuffed pails and bottles with snow and waited for it to melt as drinking water, because going to the pump was too dangerous. Those who fled to the woods when their homes were shelled could do no more than pack together for warmth. Their only water came from sucking icicles.
All over the Ardennes, the old and infirm were looked after in a community spirit; in fact examples of selfishness seem to have been rare. People whose houses had stone cellars would shelter neighbours who only had floorboards over theirs. And the owner of a local chateau with deep cellars would invite the villagers to take shelter there, but such a prominent building was always likely to attract the interest of artillery observers, whether Allied or German.
Generalmajor von Waldenburg, the commander of the 116th Panzer-Division, was in a bad mood that morning. At 04.00 hours, he had received an order from his corps commander to stop his attack on Hotton from east of the River Ourthe, which was valiantly defended by an American engineer battali
on and service troops. Manteuffel wrongly believed that the defence was too strong and would hold up Waldenburg’s division. He ordered the 560th Volksgrenadier-Division to take over at Hotton, while the 116th Panzer was to go back through Samrée and La Roche-en-Ardenne, then proceed north-west again on the other side of the Ourthe to break through between Hotton and Marche. Waldenburg was convinced that if they had been sent that way earlier, they could have advanced well beyond Marche by then. This diversion certainly allowed General Collins more time to organize his defence line further to the west.
In Luxembourg, General Bradley’s staff noticed that he now seldom left his bedroom or office. But that morning Hansen entered Bradley’s office to find him on his knees bent over a map on the floor, peering through his bifocals at the road net being used by the Germans, and marking routes with brown crayon. It was the day on which General Patton’s attack from the south towards Bastogne began with III Corps, including the 4th Armored Division and the 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions on its right. XII Corps, starting behind the 4th Infantry Division on the southern shoulder, would also advance north with the 5th Division and part of the 10th Armored.
After the heavy snowfall of the night before, Hansen described the view from the hotel as ‘a veritable postcard scene with tiny snow covered houses’. The fog had eased and the temperature had dropped, but low cloud cover still prevented the deployment of Allied airpower in all its strength. As the population of Luxembourg was still anxious, the 12th Army Group civil affairs officer decided to take Prince Jean, the son of the Grand Duchess Charlotte, round the city in a car, to reassure the people that he had remained with them. Bradley’s staff were angry that Radio Luxembourg, with the most powerful transmitter in Europe, had gone off air when its staff pulled out in a panic, taking most of their technical equipment with them.