by Leo Barron
Eisenhower’s subordinate General Omar Bradley, the Commander of Twelfth Army Group, had visited Trianon to discuss infantry replacement issues. The two had just started conversing when a staff officer arrived with a disturbing announcement. The Germans had launched attacks at various parts of the VII Corps and V Corps sectors in the Ardennes, in some areas penetrating the American lines completely.13
After reviewing the initial information, Eisenhower saw clearly that the Germans were on the offensive. “This is no local attack,” Eisenhower quickly surmised. “This could be a major counteroffensive or a feint to attract our attention elsewhere. Brad?”
Bradley answered, “I don’t think it’s a feint. Where would he hit us besides the Ardennes? Everywhere else we’re pretty strong.”
Eisenhower nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right…. No, I think this is it. The Germans came out of here in 1940 and kicked the British off the continent, and now it looks like von Rundstedt is trying to repeat his earlier success.” While he spoke, Eisenhower kept tapping the location of the Ardennes on a map with his finger.14
That evening, most of his subordinate commanders had no idea the Germans had unleashed a major offensive. Eisenhower had a feeling that something bigger was up. Instead of waiting for confirmation, Eisenhower seized the initiative and made the decision to commit his strategic reserve and shift several key divisions to the threatened Ardennes sector.
Fortunately, the Allied armies did not operate in the same fashion as the ponderous Wehrmacht. Eisenhower had total authorization to react as he saw fit. After the war, in interviews, many high-ranking Germans in the General Staff did not understand this. They could not foresee how quickly the Allies would react, and as result, there was little the Wehrmacht could do when the massive counterattacks came.15
Within no time, Eisenhower rounded up key members of his staff to plan a defense, and possibly a counterstrike to stymie the Nazi incursion. They quickly settled on shifting two armored divisions to support First Army. One was the 7th Armored Division and the other was the 10th Armored Division. The question then arose about the strategic reserve. Ike had only two divisions in it: the 101st and the 82nd Airborne divisions. Both units had seen hard fighting ever since D-day. The supreme commander sighed and shook his head as he stared at the map. He was reluctant to send these two divisions back into harm’s way, but he had little choice.
Eisenhower knew both the 82nd “All-Americans” and the 101st “Screaming Eagles” were presently enjoying some downtime at Mourmelon-le-Grand near Reims, France, after bitter fighting in Holland that fall. The two divisions were part of General Matthew Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps.16 After some discussion, Eisenhower decided to release the two airborne divisions to Twelfth Army Group the next morning.17
The race for Bastogne had begun.
0800–1800 hours, Sunday, 17 December 1944
Headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division
Mourmelon-le-Grand (“Camp Mourmelon”), France
Even though it was younger than its brother airborne division—the 82nd—the 101st had already gained a reputation for daring and audacity during D-day. That reputation was further enhanced by a sterling combat record in southern Holland in September during the Market Garden operation. Both airborne units had been made up of the cream of the crop, some of the best-trained men in America. By this time, any surviving veterans in both the 82nd or 101st were basically the experienced elite of the U.S. Army in Europe.
During their time at Camp Mourmelon, efforts had been made in the two divisions to inject replacements to make up for casualties from the previous campaigns. For the 101st, many of these “green kids” had yet to become fully integrated into the division prior to their deployment to Bastogne. Although each of the four infantry regiments of the 101st was at 91 percent manpower prior to Bastogne, a lot of these paratroopers were inexperienced soldiers from the “repple depples” (replacement depots for incoming new soldiers).18
The 101st consisted of three parachute infantry regiments. Each regiment had roughly 130 officers and 2,200 enlisted men. The regiments were the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, the 502nd PIR, and the 506th PIR. In addition, each airborne division carried one glider infantry regiment as its fourth infantry regiment. In this case, the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment (GIR) rounded out the infantry power of the 101st Airborne with its 140 officers and 2,800 enlisted men. The glidermen had the equally hazardous duty of riding to the ground in flimsy gliders as support for the paratroopers in both Normandy and Holland. In fact, one battalion of the 327th was carried over from an earlier regiment: the 401st. Since the “glider riders” (as they called themselves) of the first battalion of the 401st still held a significant amount of loyalty to their old regiment, they were typically referred to by their original designation.19
Once SHAEF made the decision to release the airborne units, it took several hours for the first warning order to reach the two divisional headquarters as the communiqué slowly wound its way down through the various chains of command. The 101st’s G3, or operations officer, was Lieutenant Colonel Harry W. O. Kinnard. He was one of the first to learn the Screaming Eagles were moving out. He had received his initial instructions at 0800 hours the morning of the seventeenth, when the acting division commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, got a phone call from the staff of the XVIII Airborne Corps telling him to prepare for an immediate departure to join Middleton’s VIII Corps in the Ardennes. The news came as a shock to the usually calm and austere McAuliffe—a major enemy offensive had kicked off, and his troops were now some of the only Allied reserves to throw at the swelling German tide.
The biggest problem was that the 101st’s commanding officer, Major General Maxwell B. Taylor, was in Washington, D.C., at the time to discuss organizational changes in the division. Moreover, Brigadier General Gerald J. Higgins (Taylor’s assistant division commander) was also away in England, providing an after-action review of the Holland operation. It turned out that McAuliffe, previously the divisional artillery commander, was next in the 101st’s chain of command.20
As the day dragged on, Harry Kinnard tried to disguise his knowledge of the impending deployment. Other than McAuliffe and the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Ned D. Moore, no one else on the staff knew about the order. The staff officers were all on pass or attending various Christmas parties that day.
Harry Kinnard, twenty-nine, was young for a lieutenant colonel. His boyish face made him seem more so, and now he was the chief operations officer for a division that numbered more than twelve thousand men. Like many of his fellow officers, Kinnard was a West Pointer, and was only five years out from graduation. His clean-cut Boy Scout countenance hid his true strengths, which were a talent for planning and a brilliant organizational mind. His skills surpassed many of his older peers. He would need all of them today.21
Not all of the senior officers were completely in the dark. Kinnard’s close friend and roommate, Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Danahy, suspected something was going on. That was a good thing, since Colonel Danahy was the G2, or chief intelligence officer, for the 101st. Like a good spook, Danahy had kept his ear to the ground when the first reports started to filter down about recent German activity. At that point Danahy started collecting and reviewing the incoming information. Like Kinnard, Danahy was only twenty-nine years old, but unlike Kinnard, Danahy had been a civilian before the war. He was an Irishman from Buffalo, New York, and like many civilians-turned-soldiers in World War II, army rules did not agree with him. Despite his disdain for military regulations, Danahy was respected because he was gifted at intelligence work.22
At 1800 hours that night, during the evening Christmas party, Colonel Moore relayed to Danahy that General McAuliffe wanted to see him. Danahy reported straightaway to “General Mac.” The acting commander’s beetle brows furrowed as he peppered Danahy with questions about the Germans in the Ardennes. Danahy gradually spilled the beans that he had been collecting information abou
t recent German movements there. Danahy explained that a German offensive had kicked off in an area where the Americans had only three and a half divisions. In addition, Troy Middleton’s VIII Corps headquarters at Bastogne lay directly in the path of the German attack—if the Germans got that far. McAuliffe quietly nodded while Danahy briefed him on what he knew, which, at the time, was not a great deal.
After Danahy finished the skimpy intelligence dump, a somewhat preoccupied McAuliffe waved him away and told him to go back to the party. Danahy knew McAuliffe had plenty to think about. One question nagged him, though. Danahy wondered why his boss was so concerned with VIII Corps; after all, the 101st did not belong to General Middleton’s corps.23
McAuliffe traveled back to his office that afternoon to plan for the divisional move-out. He was concerned, and struggling with the fact that not all of the 101st were at Mourmelon. Officers and enlisted men were scattered to and fro. Many soldiers were on leave. Some were hopping Paris nightclubs, or enjoying the attractions of the famed Pig Alley, as a generation of doughboys had done during the previous war.24 GIs were excited that the war seemed to have paused for the moment, and took advantage of the lull in anticipation of the holidays. After all, Marlene Dietrich was visiting Belgium courtesy of the USO. It was even rumored that Glenn Miller, the noted band leader and Army Air Force captain, would be flying over from London to Paris for a special pre-Christmas concert. Some were conducting more mundane tasks, such as doing a little seasonal shopping for the family back home. It would become a huge effort to gather up these men away on leave. Many would have to be rounded up by jeeps scouring the streets. As a last-ditch effort, any troopers wearing the All-American or the Screaming Eagle patches would be rounded up by the MPs and brought in forcibly, if need be.25
Afternoon to evening, Sunday, 17 December 1944
Army/Army Air Force football game at Army Air Force base
Nancy, France
Not far from Camp Mourmelon was the French town of Nancy. Here, many of the Screaming Eagles were playing their annual divisional football game, a friendly if sometimes rough game against an Army Air Corps unit. The rivalry was tremendous within the U.S. Army, and many of the division’s troopers had made the long ride to the air base just to watch and cheer on some of the more athletically inclined Screaming Eagles.
If there was one man in the division who knew football, it was Captain Wallace A. Swanson. “Swannie,” as he was affectionately called by the men who served under him, was commander of Able Company of the 502nd. A large, stocky man, he had been raised on football, growing up in farm country near Sharon Springs, Kansas. At twenty-four years of age he had already completed an illustrious college career playing for Kansas State University. He had even been offered a contract with the Philadelphia Eagles after graduation, but had turned it down to pursue a career as an army officer. The military, though, could not ignore his talent. Swanson had been ordered to play on the Eastern Armed Forces All-Star football team in 1942. During that time, the AF team was a sort of short-lived NFL division that drew players from all branches of the military. Swanson remembered:
“After training for five weeks, with grueling two-a-day practices, we played three pro teams in eight days. We won two, lost to the Chicago Bears seven to zero. Then the team disbanded and we all returned to our separate units.”
Football had left Swanson in peak physical shape and taught him about leadership. Shortly after marrying his sweetheart, Thelma Jeanne Combs, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Swanson was deployed to England. Swanson was made company commander in the 502nd and kept busy preparing his men for the anticipated invasion of Nazi-held France. He cut his combat teeth during the night jump on D-day and in bloody fighting by the 101st at the Norman town of Foucarville. Swanson had even been momentarily captured by some Germans, but during a truce in the fight was luckily freed by his captors. Action in Holland had also earned him accolades from his superiors for his leadership and decisiveness.
On Sunday afternoon, Swanson was at Nancy acting as the division’s coach, trainer, and manager of the football team. He remembered the game was just wrapping up and the paratroopers had won by a touchdown or two.26
“We knew something was up,” Swanson recounted. “The game was at an air corps base, and some of our fighter planes came in low, giving what we thought were victory rolls.”27
During the football game, one of Swanson’s star players, a strapping, twenty-four-year-old sergeant in C Company of the 502nd, noticed that several of the Army Air Corps’s best players had suddenly left. Growing annoyed, Ohio-born Sergeant Layton Black Jr. heard call after call blare over the base loudspeakers, repeatedly interrupting the game.
“I played my heart out, and the game was going fast and furiously when suddenly the loudspeaker system we were using for our game would blast out a call for ‘Major so-and-so,’ ‘Captain so-and-so,’ ‘Lieutenant this,’ and ‘Corporal that,’ saying, ‘You are to report to your squadron at once. On the double!’”
Black and the other 101st players exchanged quizzical looks in the huddle as players left the field and subs were brought in. “Coach Swanson called me over to him so he could tell me something. I knelt on one knee next to the coach, who was squatting by the sideline on our side of the field. He started to show me something on his clipboard when suddenly the lights went out for me!”
Black had been slammed into the ground by an opposing player. Briefly unconscious, he finally came to and, wobbly, walked back up to Swanson. Black, who had been caught with his helmet off by a cheap shot from behind, had a broken nose and a bloody face. Swanson took one look at Black and ordered him sidelined and to be checked by the medic.
After the game, Black got caught up in the postgame celebration. The generous Army Air Force personnel wined and dined the 101st players. Pretty French girls were brought in from Nancy. Dancing and drinking went on all evening. Later, Black and some comrades collapsed in the upstairs bunks of a barracks at the base. He awoke to voices downstairs.
“‘Hey, down there!’ Black yelled. ‘What’s going on? Anything we ought to know about up here?’
“‘Who in the hell are those guys upstairs?’ someone replied.
“‘They are those football players from the 101st Airborne, our paratroopers,’ another said.
“‘Paratroopers? 101st Airborne? They have been put on alert. Haven’t they left yet? Go wake them up! They have got to get back to their camp!’”28
Black had a feeling his hangover was about to get a lot worse.
2100 hours, Sunday, 17 December 1944
Briefing room, headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division
Mourmelon, France
“All I know of the situation is that there has been a breakthrough and we have got to get up there,” Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe announced to his staff and regimental commanders, pointing to a spot on a map near the Ardennes Forest. Once again the Screaming Eagles would be going into combat, but this time they would ride into war on the back of trucks instead of leaping from planes. Their original orders were simple: Proceed to Werbomont and join up with VIII Corps to stop the German advance.29
As soon as he made the official announcement, McAuliffe was firing off questions, asking for status updates from each of his regimental commanders in attendance. From the information they shared, McAuliffe felt he had waited as long as he could to gather as many paratroopers and glidermen and bring them back to Mourmelon. He could no longer wait for those who were still stuck somewhere on leave. He didn’t have time.
McAuliffe had concluded that the best way to move out was as regimental combat teams. With the reported speed of the German advance, it was highly possible his men would have to fight the moment they arrived. At the end of the briefing, McAuliffe chose a group of men from each regiment to be part of an advance party with Colonel C. D. Renfro as the commander. Their job was to take off immediately and hunt down the best forward assembly areas for each regiment. Danahy would also be on that
team, McAuliffe decided. It would be a good idea to have his intelligence chief there to feel out the situation and have a report ready for when he arrived.30
For years, McAuliffe had wanted a division command, and now he had one. Unlike some of his peers, McAuliffe had missed out on serving in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, having just graduated from West Point when the war ended. Like many army officers, he languished during the interwar years. In 1941, he was working at the Pentagon in the field of weapons development. When the United States entered WWII, McAuliffe transferred to the 101st to serve as the commander for its artillery. In fact, at the age of forty-six, he was older than General Taylor by three years, and sometimes referred to himself as “Old Crock” in front of his younger subordinates. Now, with the absence of General Taylor, the “Old Crock” would be leading the division back to combat on its most important mission of the war.31
McAuliffe would rely heavily on his regimental commanders. Luckily, most of them had served as battalion commanders in Normandy and Holland.32 One of those regimental commanders was Lieutenant Colonel Steven A. Chappuis (pronounced “Chap-wee”), who commanded the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment.
At thirty years old, Chappuis was one of the youngest regimental commanders in the airborne. A Louisiana native and graduate of the prestigious military school at Louisiana State University, Chappuis had grown up in a hardworking Cajun family near the town of Rayne. Growing up in a farming family during the Great Depression was a struggle in itself. Because of the hardscrabble times, the entire Chappuis clan—including all six siblings—worked days and nights on the family rice and cotton farm. Incredibly, through scrimping and saving, his parents had managed to send all of the children on to college. It was this hard, sacrificial start to life that forged Chappuis’ quiet, hardworking, and austere personality.33
