Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble Read online

  Also on 15 December, the G-3 operations officer at the daily SHAEF briefing said that there was nothing to report from the Ardennes sector. Field Marshal Montgomery asked General Eisenhower if he minded his going back to the United Kingdom the next week for Christmas. His chief of staff, General Freddie de Guingand, had just left that morning. With regrettable timing on the very eve of the German onslaught, Montgomery stated that the shortages of ‘German manpower, equipment and resources precluded any offensive action on their part’. On the other hand, VIII Corps in the Ardennes reported troop movements to its front, with the arrival of fresh formations.

  In the north of the VIII Corps sector, the newly arrived 106th Infantry Division had just taken over the positions of the 2nd Infantry Division on a hogsback ridge of the Schnee Eifel. ‘My men were amazed at the appearance of the men from the incoming unit,’ wrote a company commander in the 2nd Division. ‘They were equipped with the maze of equipment that only replacements fresh from the States would have dared to call their own. And horror of horrors, they were wearing neckties! Shades of General Patton!’* During the handover a regimental commander from the 2nd Division told Colonel Cavender of the 423rd Infantry: ‘It has been very quiet up here and your men will learn the easy way.’ The experienced troops pulling out took all their stoves with them. The green newcomers had none to dry out socks, so many cases of trench foot soon developed in the damp snow.

  Over the following days the 106th Division heard tanks and other vehicles moving to their front, but their lack of experience made them unsure of what it meant. Even the experienced 4th Division to their south assumed that the engine noises came from one Volksgrenadier division being replaced by another. In fact there were seven panzer and thirteen infantry divisions in the first wave alone, coiled ready for the attack in the dark pinewoods ahead.

  In Waffen-SS units especially, the excitement and impatience were clearly intense. A member of the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend wrote to his sister on the eve of battle. ‘Dear Ruth, My daily letter will be very short today – short and sweet. I write during one of the great hours before an attack – full of unrest, full of expectation for what the next days will bring. Everyone who has been here the last two days and nights (especially nights), who has witnessed hour after hour the assembly of our crack divisions, who has heard the constant rattling of Panzers, knows that something is up and we are looking forward to a clear order to reduce the tension. We are still in the dark as to “where” and “how” but that cannot be helped! It is enough to know that we attack, and will throw the enemy from our homeland. That is a holy task!’ On the back of the sealed envelope he added a hurried postscript: ‘Ruth! Ruth! Ruth! WE MARCH!!!’ That must have been scribbled as they moved out, for the letter fell into American hands during the battle.

  Saturday 16 December

  At 05.20 hours on 16 December, ten minutes before ‘zero hour’, the artillery of Sepp Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army opened fire. Most American soldiers, avoiding the chill of damp snow in the sixteen hours of darkness, were asleep in farmhouses, foresters’ huts, barns and cow-byres. Dawn was not due until 08.30. Along most of the front, south from the Monschau Forest, the terrain was reminiscent of the Hürtgen, with thick woods, rocky gorges, small streams, few roads and saturated firebreak trails so deep in mud that they were almost impassable to vehicles.

  German artillery commanders, knowing that American soldiers preferred shelter, always targeted houses. Sentries were told they should never be in the house by the door. They should be in a foxhole a short distance away to cover it in the event of German surprise attacks. Sentries, having seen flashes like summer lightning on the horizon, rushed in to wake those inside. But it was only when the shells began to explode all around that there was a panic-stricken scramble by the men to extricate themselves from their sleeping bags, and grab equipment, helmets and weapons.

  There had been odd bombardments before, but this was much more intense. Some of the civilians allowed to stay in the forward area to look after their livestock were terrified to see shells setting hay-barns alight, with the fire quickly spreading to the farmhouse. Unable to control the blaze, they fled with their families towards the rear. Some were killed in the bombardment. In the tiny village of Manderfeld, five died, including three small children.

  To the south, on the Fifth Panzer Army frontage, artillery batteries remained silent. Manteuffel had disregarded Hitler’s insistence on a long opening bombardment. He considered such a barrage to be ‘a World War I concept and completely out of place in the Ardennes, in view of the thinly held lines … Such a plan would merely be an alarm clock to the American forces and would alert them to the daylight attack to follow.’ A few days earlier, Manteuffel had sneaked forward in disguise to reconnoitre the deep valley of the River Our, and the River Sauer at the southernmost end. The Sauer was ‘a significant obstacle due to its steep banks and limited crossing sites’.

  He then questioned his soldiers and officers on the habits of the Americans opposite them. Since the ‘Amis’ retired after dark to their houses and barns, and only returned to their positions an hour before dawn, he decided to cross the river and infiltrate their lines without waking them up. Only when the attack had really started did his army use searchlights, bouncing their beams off low cloud to create artificial moonlight. This helped his infantry spearheads find their way forward in the dark woods. His engineer battalions meanwhile had started bridging the River Our, so that his three panzer divisions, the 116th, the 2nd and the Panzer Lehr, could surge forward.

  Hitler had laid down in his prescriptive way that infantry divisions would make the breakthrough so that the precious panzer divisions would start fully intact for the Meuse bridges. The first reports to reach the Adlerhorst were most encouraging. Jodl reported to Hitler ‘that surprise had been achieved completely’. Surprise had indeed been achieved, but what the Germans really needed was momentum to turn surprise into a paralysing shock. Some American troops lost their heads and began to save themselves. In many cases, frightened civilians begged to be allowed to accompany them. A few of the German-speakers still loyal to the Reich, on the other hand, watched the chaotic scenes with undisguised satisfaction. ‘If in places there was panic,’ an officer in the 99th Division reported, ‘in other places there was supreme valor.’ These feats of extraordinary courage would slow down the German onslaught with critical results.

  Four kilometres north of Manderfeld, the hamlet of Lanzerath stood opposite the Losheim Gap, the line of advance of the 1st SS Panzer-Division led by the Kampfgruppe Peiper. Almost on the top of a ridge, it had a magnificent view out towards Germany. On a knoll, overlooking the houses and the road, an outpost of eighteen soldiers from the intelligence and reconnaissance platoon of the 394th Regiment of the 99th Division manned foxholes on hillside pasture. To their right rear a thick pinewood offered a means of escape, but also a route for an attacking force to outflank them. The importance of this position lay in the fact that a couple of hundred metres to the left was the road junction leading north-west to Honsfeld, and then to the valley of the River Amblève.

  Even though the inexperienced 99th Division was part of V Corps, this platoon commanded by Lieutenant Lyle J. Bouck Jr was just over the boundary into the VIII Corps sector, which at its northern end was weakly held by the 14th Cavalry Group. Some tank destroyers attached to the 14th Cavalry were down below them among the houses. When the eastern horizon came alive with the flashes from the muzzles of hundreds of guns, the reconnaissance platoon had ducked down into its foxholes. Lanzerath was an obvious target for German artillery. The soldiers were grateful for the overhead cover on their well-constructed trenches, which had been prepared by the 2nd Division. After the bombardment lifted, they saw the tank destroyers down in the village pull out past them and then turn left down the Honsfeld road. ‘They might at least wave goodbye,’ one soldier remarked.

  Bouck radioed his regimental headquarters to report on the bombardment, and h
e was told to send a small patrol into Lanzerath to check and observe. Now in the grey, dawn light, he took three men down to have a look. They entered a house to hear a man talking German. Lanzerath, only just within the Belgian border, was very much part of the Germanophone eastern cantons. Bouck’s men were convinced the man was talking to the enemy and he had to stop them from killing him. As the light improved a little on that heavily overcast morning, they saw large numbers of figures in the distance approaching in a column. They would be coming up the road past the platoon’s position. Bouck ran back to radio a request for artillery fire on the road below Lanzerath, but he was met by disbelief at regimental headquarters.

  Through his field glasses, Bouck watched what turned out to be a twin column of German paratroopers in their distinctive helmets and smocks marching, with a file on either side of the road. Their weapons were slung, not at the ready, and they had no scouts out ahead or on the flanks. They could have been on a route march. This was the 9th Regiment of the 3rd Fallschirmjäger-Division, whose task was to break open the front for the Kampfgruppe Peiper. The platoon waited tensely, their machine guns and other automatic weapons cocked ready for the perfect ambush. Bouck wanted the main body to be within their field of fire before his men opened up. He then sighted a small group who were clearly officers. He signalled to his men to prepare to open fire. But at the very last moment a little fair-haired girl of about thirteen rushed out of a house and pointed up the hill at the recon platoon’s position. Bouck hesitated, not wanting to kill the girl, but the German officer screamed an order, and his men threw themselves into the ditches on either side of the road.

  The ambush may have aborted, but the opportunities for killing the under-trained teenagers had not disappeared, due to the obduracy of their commander. He sent them into one frontal attack after another. The recon platoon machine-gunners simply scythed them down as they struggled to climb a snow-fence across the field just below the American positions. The range was so short that they could see their faces clearly. Bouck radioed a second time, urgently requesting artillery support. He was told that the guns were on other fire missions. He asked what he should do. ‘Hold at all costs!’ came the reply. Several of his men had been hit, but they were able to fight on.

  Sickened by piles of dead and the wounded building up in the fields below, Bouck could scarcely believe that the German regimental commander could continue this futile sacrifice instead of trying to outflank them. A white flag appeared, and Bouck ordered a ceasefire while German medical orderlies collected their wounded. The battle began again and continued until after dark, by which time Bouck and his men were almost out of ammunition. Only after nightfall did the German commander attempt to outflank the defenders. They rushed and overran the position. Bouck and almost all his men were taken prisoner. His platoon had held off a whole regiment for a day, killing and wounding over 400 paratroopers, at a cost of just one man dead and several wounded. But it was the delay inflicted which counted most.

  Peiper knew that it had been a mistake to let the infantry go first, and he was furious. Already his Kampfgruppe had been held up because the bridge over the railway line north-west of Losheim, which had been blown by the Germans during their withdrawal three months earlier, had not been repaired. It was not ready until 19.30 hours that evening. The 12th Volksgrenadier-Division’s horse-drawn artillery also went ahead of Peiper’s column, adding to the delay. The roads were clogged but Peiper ordered his vehicles ‘to push through rapidly and to run down anything in the road ruthlessly’. In his impatience to get ahead, he told his tank commanders to drive on through an American minefield: five panzers were disabled as a result.

  His divisional headquarters ordered him to divert to Lanzerath to meet up with that part of the 3rd Fallschirmjäger-Division which had been repulsed. Peiper was to take over the regiment and attack. According to one inhabitant of Lanzerath, Peiper’s men were highly agitated as they entered the village, ‘shouting that they were going to drive the Americans all the way back to the Channel’, and they kept saying that their troops were already on the Meuse at Liège.

  Peiper showed his contempt for the parachute regiment officers, who insisted the American positions were very strong although they had not been near them. He was also exasperated with the Kampfgruppe Skorzeny combat team attached to his force, with four Shermans, trucks and Jeeps. ‘They might just as well have stayed at home,’ he said later, ‘because they were never near the head of the column where they had planned to be.’ Peiper ordered his men and the paratroopers forward towards Buchholz and Honsfeld.

  The small force from the 99th Division, surrounded at Buchholz station, fought off attacks from the 3rd Fallschirmjäger. A young forward observation officer was sent to direct artillery support. ‘We pulled our jeep off the road and backed it into a barn,’ he recorded later. ‘It was a quiet, cold night … We could clearly hear the SS panzer troops shouting back and forth, the racing of tank engines, the squeal of bogie wheels.’ On their SCR-536 radio, they also heard German signallers taunting them in English. ‘Come in, come in, come in. Danger, danger, danger. We are launching a strong attack. Come in, come in, anyone on this channel?’ The defenders of Buchholz station were doomed when Peiper’s flak panzers arrived. They mounted quadruple 20mm guns that could obliterate any defenders unprotected by concrete, or by several inches of armour-plate.

  On Peiper’s right flank, the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend was struggling as it advanced slowly on the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt. This division, which had been ground down by the British and Canadians in Normandy, had never fully recovered. ‘There were fellows among them whose discipline was not quite up to standard,’ an officer in another SS formation commented. ‘These were boy-scout types and the sort of swine who think nothing of cutting a man’s throat.’ The division also seemed to lack technical skills. The Hitler Jugend suffered a high rate of mechanical breakdowns with its Panther Mark V panzers.

  At the northernmost end of the 99th Infantry lines, the 3rd Battalion of the 395th Infantry held the village of Höfen just south of Monschau. The small Höfen salient in the Monschau Forest was an obvious target for attack. Generalfeldmarschall Model wanted to break through either side of Monschau to block the roads to Eupen and Aachen, and stop any American reinforcements coming from the north. He forbade any bombardment on Monschau itself. At Höfen, however, the American battalion found artificial moonlight playing in its favour. As the 326th Volksgrenadier-Division advanced through the mist, the glow silhouetted the approaching German infantry. ‘At 06.00 the Germans came,’ an officer reported. ‘Out of the haze, they appeared before the battalion position. They seemed to be in swarms moving forward in their characteristic slow walk. The artificial moonlight outlined the approaching Germans perfectly against the backdrop of snow, and every weapon the battalion possessed opened fire … The German losses were terrific and at 06.55, they began to withdraw.’ The battalion’s ten 81mm mortars were also used, and when communications were restored with the 196th Field Artillery, they added their fire.

  Less than two hours later, another, stronger attack began, reinforced by tanks and armoured cars. ‘On the K Company front, the German infantry moved forward of the tanks and shouting like wild men, they charged the company position.’ The assault was fought off only after the mortars and artillery – the 155mm ‘Long Toms’ – targeted the sector. At 09.30 came yet another attack. A large number of Germans managed to seize four houses. The battalion commander ordered his two 57mm anti-tank guns to start smashing the walls with armour-piercing rounds. Rifle and automatic fire was concentrated on all the windows to prevent the Germans shooting at the anti-tank gun crews. ‘From the screams within the house one could readily ascertain that the anti-tank guns were creating havoc.’ A reserve platoon crept up and began throwing white phosphorus grenades through the windows. The survivors soon surrendered. Some seventy-five dead were apparently found inside.

  The 2nd Battalion of the 393rd I
nfantry had been attached to the 2nd Division, which had just started a new V Corps advance north towards the Roer dams near Schmidt. When they heard heavy firing to the south they thought that the rest of the division was now joining in the same attack. They still had no idea of the German offensive.

  An aid man called Jordan, helped by a couple of riflemen, began bandaging the wounded in the comparative shelter of a sunken road. ‘We administered plasma to a boy whose right arm was attached by shreds,’ a soldier recounted, ‘tried to soothe him and held cigarettes for him to smoke. He was already in shock, his body shaking badly. Shells exploding hundreds of feet away made him flinch. “Get me out of here! For God’s sake get me out of here. That one was close – that one was too damn close. Get me out of here,” he kept saying.’ Jordan, the aid man, received a bullet through the head. ‘We heard later that day that our boys shot a German medic in retaliation, somewhat mitigated by the fact that he was carrying a Luger.’ Not knowing what was going on, and angry at having to give up ground they had just taken in the advance towards the dams, they were ordered to halt and turn round. Orders were to withdraw south-west towards Krinkelt to face the 12th SS Panzer-Division.

  While most of the 99th Division fought valiantly in the desperate battles, ‘a few men broke under the strain’, an officer acknowledged, ‘wetting themselves repeatedly, or vomiting, or showing other severe physical symptoms’. And ‘the number of allegedly accidental rifle shots through hands or feet, usually while cleaning the weapon, rose sharply’. Some men were so desperate that they were prepared to maim themselves even more seriously. A harrowing example in the 99th Infantry Division was a soldier who was said to have ‘lain down beside a large tree, reached around it, and exploded a grenade in his hand’.