Battle of the Bulge Remembered, The

At 5:30 A.M. Sunday, Decem-ber 16, 1944, all hell broke loose along the lightly defended U.S. sector of the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgian-Luxembourg border as German Panzers attacked after a short artillery preparation. German tanks, attacking with searchlights glaring, pressed out through antitank obstacles along the Siegfried Line while rockets fired from Nebelwerfers screamed overhead. The American defenses crumbled and two great Panzer armies broke through and headed for the Meuse River and the vital English Channel ports beyond the Meuse. The German attack was a complete surprise to the Allies. Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery only the day before had said, "The enemy is at present fighting a defensive campaign ... he cannot stage any major offensive operations."

In December 1944, the victorious Allies were advancing on a wide front toward Hitler's Third Reich. Except for a temporary setback in Holland in September 1944 (the ill-fated "Bridge Too Far"), Allied forces had pushed Hitler's once invincible legions behind the fabled West Wall defense of the Siegfried Line.

In the north, Field Marshal Montgomery's armies were advancing on the Upper-Rhine and the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Germany. In the center, Gen. Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group was advancing against the Siegfried Line. Operating as half of Bradley's army group was the First Army under Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges, preparing to attack the Roer dams while defending the Ardennes front. Maj. Gen. Troy Middelton's VIII Corps defended the 80-mile Ardennes front, stretching from Monschau in Germany to Echternach in Luxembourg, with the equivalent of four divisions.

Gen. Dwight D. Elsenhower advocated an offensive attitude across his wide front of advance, but he held some sectors with comparatively weak forces to gain strength at his points of attack. The Ardennes sector was known as the "Ghost front." It was a cold, quiet place where only occasional artillery rounds were fired and patrols probed enemy lines only to keep in practice. It was known as a rest area for each side. The key to the sector was the seven-mile wide Losheim Gap defended by the 14th Cavalry Group attached to the 106th Infantry Division. The 106th had just arrived from the States and had never been in combat. In choosing the Ardennes for a rest area, the Allies had forgotten that the Ardennes and the Losheim Gap were classic east-to-west invasion routes, used successfully by the Germans in 1914 and 1940.

Hitler conceived a last, decisive offensive in the West in September and October 1944. This was after the Normandy landings, the destruction of the German armor in the Falaise Gap, and the Allied landings in southern France. German armament production had increased in 1944, but armament minister Albert Speer warned Hitler that it would be impossible to continue unless a decisive solution in the West was found.

New units were being formed for the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and naval units were pressed into service, and units were transferred secretly from the Russian front. Also, new Volksgrenadier (people's infantry) were formed from very young and middle-aged men freed from factory work by slave laborers from conquered countries. In all, about 30 divisions (250,000 men, 2,000 guns, 1,000 armored vehicles and 1,500 aircraft) were assembled along the Western front opposite the Ardennes for the great offensive.

secrecy and surprise were key to the success of the offensive. Only German army commanders were told of the plan, code-named Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine). Operational security was enhanced further by making all preparatory moves at night, driving tracked vehicles over straw to muffle the sound and prevent telltale tracks, moving artillery into position with horses and using aircraft overflights to mask noises not subdued by other means. The objective of the offensive was to break through the Al lied front at its weakest point, separate the American and British forces, and occupy Antwerp before it could be put into full operation. If that could be done, perhaps disaster in the West could be averted and a full effort made against the Russians.

Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, nearing 70 and Germany's senior field commander, was brought back from retirement to command the Western front. Although only brought in a few weeks before the offensive, his name has been given to the offensive because of his prestige and lukewarm attitude to the national socialism of the Nazis. Under von Rundstedt was Field Marshal Walther Model's Army Group B, consisting of four armies. The main attack would be made by the 6th SS Panzer Army and the 5th Panzer Army with a total of 16 divisions, eight of them armored. Unhappy with such an ambitious plan and limited resources, both von Rundstedt and Model tried to get Hitler to accept a modified, limited offensive. Hitler refused and the die was cast for the last great gamble in the West.

On December 16, bad weather grounded the Allied air forces. The Germans attacked in a thick fog, achieved complete surprise and made deep penetrations along the front. American units were overrun, surrounded and routed. The 14th Cavalry Group guarding the critical Losheim Gap withdrew prematurely and it took the relief of several commanders to bring it under control. The 106th Infantry Division was destroyed. Two regiments of the 106th Division, with supporting troops, were cut off and surrounded in the Schnee Eifel. On December 19, both regimental commanders surrendered their commands. Next to Bataan in the Philippines, it was the largest mass surrender of American soldiers in history. It was also the most severe defeat for U.S. forces during the European campaign.

From his Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Versailles, Gen. Eisenhower ordered his reserves, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, to the Ardennes, and diverted armored divisions from the north and south to the Ardennes sector. Brig. Gen. Bruce Clarke brought the vanguard of the 7th Armored Division to St. Vith. Here, Clarke took over the shattered remains of the 106th Division and held the Germans at bay until December 23 when the last American units pulled out. Clarke's defense of St. Vith had delayed the German 5th Panzer Army for three days, long enough to upset Hitler's timetable and to allow Allied reinforcements to arrive.

While Clarke was holding out at St. Vim, another drama took place to the south. Ordered to the Ardennes from SHAEF reserves, the 101st Airborne Division was bivouacked near Reims, France. The division immediately left France in the late afternoon of December 18, drove all night in 3,000 hurriedly commandeered trucks and arrived at Bastogne on the morning of December 19 just ahead of the 2nd Panzer, Panzer-Lehr and 26th Volksgrenadier Divisions, all closing in from the east. The 101st would become famous for its stubborn defense of that vital town and the defiance of its acting commander, Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe. By December 20, Bastogne, the logistics center of the Ardennes, was surrounded and the 101st was trapped inside without badly needed combat service support. During the motor march to Bastogne, the division's major medical unit, the 326th Medical Company, had been cut off and captured, and the 426th Quartermaster Company ambushed and diverted to VIII Corps control. The 101st was without surgeons, medical supplies and normal supply services. The weather was bad and little resupply got in by air. Things did not look good for the "battered bastards of Bastogne."

In spite of the Germans' crushing attacks, the north and south shoulders of the Bulge salient held. In the north, the 2nd and 99th Divisions' defense at Monschau and along the Elsenborn Ridge, reinforced by the 47th and 39th Infantry regiments of the 9th Division, stopped the 6th SS Panzer Army. In the south, the heroic delaying action of the 28th Infantry Division had slowed the Germans long enough for the 101st Airborne to get to Bastogne. Also, the 4th Infantry Division's defense of the area around Echternach was equally effective against the German 7th Army. In the center, elements of the 5th Panzer Army had bypassed Bastogne and penetrated almost to the Meuse River. At Celles, just short of the Meuse, the 2nd Panzer Division was crushed by an aggressive Maj. Gen. Ernest Harmon and his 2nd (Hell on Wheels) Armored Division during a two-day battle that began on Christmas.

Good weather heartened Bastogne's defenders on December 23. "Air Force Day" was the result of good flying weather that made possible an aerial resupply of badly needed food, ammunition and medicine, not to mention a good aerial pounding of the Germans by B-17 bombers and fighter-bombers. When the weather socked in again, the infantrymen and artillerymen were ready for the German main attack that took place on Christmas Eve. Hitler had been promised Bastogne for Christmas.

At a council of war in Verdun on December 19, Gen. George Patton flamboyantly promised Elsenhower that he would shift his attack on the Saar Basin 90 degrees and attack north to relieve Bastogne within 48 hours. None of the generals at the conference believed that he could do that so fast. On the morning of December 22, the III Corps of Patton's Third Army launched its attack northward. The vanguard of III Corps was the 4th Armored Division.

Late in the afternoon of December 26, Combat Command R, with Lt. Col. Creighton W. Abrams' 37th Tank Battalion leading, was just a few miles south of Bastogne. Abrams suggested a direct thrust into Bastogne. Thirteen artillery battalions fired a 90-second preparation and the lead elements of Abram's tank battalion blasted its way into the 101st Airborne's perimeter. This lifted the siege of Bastogne that had occupied as many as nine German divisions.

It was at Malmedy that one of the greatest tragedies of the campaign occurred. On December 17, a 125-man convoy of B Battery, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion had just passed a crossroads near Malmedy when it collided with SS Col. Joachim Peiper's Kampfgruppe (battle group) that was the spearhead of the 1st SS Panzer Division of Gen. Josef (Sepp) Dietrich's 6th SS Panzer Army. Peiper was a fanatic Waffen-SS officer known for his ruthlessness on the Russian front. Dietrich was an ex-sergeant major and former bodyguard of Hitler from the street-brawling days in Munich. Dietrich had directed, "No time is to be wasted in the matter of prisoners."

The U.S. unit was captured, lined up in a snow-covered field and machine-gunned. Eighty-six soldiers were killed. When the news of the atrocity got out, the incident became known as the "Malmedy Massacre." Word went out to U.S. units that no SS prisoners were to be taken. That word was countermanded later, but the damage was done. After the war, Peiper and Dietrich were tried as war criminals, but they got off with only prison sentences because their sentences were influenced by the revenge taken by U.S. troops after the Malmedy Massacre was publicized. Gen. McAuIiffe objected strongly when they were released in the 1950s.

With the Third U.S. Army attacking from the south and the First U.S. Army attacking from the north, the Germans in the Bulge made one last desperate effort after Christmas to regain the initiative. They failed, and Hitler refused to allow a timely withdrawal behind the Siegfried Line. By January 20, 1945, the Bulge had been eliminated and the Germans were back at their starting points. In 34 days, the Germans had lost about 100,000 killed, wounded and captured, and about 800 armored vehicles and 1,000 aircraft were destroyed. American losses were equally severe. About 80,000 were killed, wounded and captured, and 700 armored vehicles and 500 aircraft were destroyed; but, the Americans were able to replace their losses within 15 days. The Germans could not.

Hitler lost the last of his mobile reserves in the Ardennes, and he was ill-prepared for Stalin's January 1945 offensive in the east. Churchill called the Battle of the Bulge "the greatest American battle of the war ... an everfamous American victory."

LT. COL. THOMAS D. MORGAN, USA Ret., was commissioned in Field Artillery from the U.S. Military Academy. He holds a master's degree in public affairs from the University of Missouri and a master's degree in history from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.

Copyright Association of the United States Army Nov 2004
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