by Leo Barron
Beyond Mande Saint-Etienne, the Marche highway entered a deep cut that was nearly 550 yards in length. On the western end of the cut was the hamlet of Cocheval, while to the south were several patches of woods. The panzer commanders had selected these groves to conceal their tanks as they were driving toward Mande Saint-Etienne. Being on higher ground, it was fairly easy for the Germans to spot the column of blind Hellcats as they emerged from the road cut. By the time the Americans spotted the panzers, it was too late. When the last of the Hellcats crawled out of the cut, the German tanks opened fire.
The result was predictable. Soon German tank shells screamed in and had reduced one of the M18s to a smoldering wreck. Corporal Henry A. Ruotanen, of Ontonagon, Michigan, the commander of the lead M18, fired several 76mm shells at the Mk IVs, which had merely bounced off their thicker armor. A gliderman was helping to act as a spotter, but as Ruotanen attempted to climb up the berm to the side of the road for a clear shot, his TD was fatally hit. Ralph “Shorty” Vining witnessed the tragedy:
“He got off one shot and then backed back into the cut bank. They claimed that they had hit the German tank but the shell may have glanced off. The 101st Airborne guy was looking through his binoculars and told me he didn’t think they had hit the German. He passed me the binoculars. When he did, that German tank turned and was facing us. I slid down the bank and was going to go over and stop the tank destroyer from going up for another shot, because the German could knock it out face on. I hollered to them. I couldn’t climb up on the tank destroyer because they had started to move. He went out for a second shot. He got a shot off all right, but he got one back. It went right under the barrel of the tank destroyer.”41
There was a sudden flash and an impact like the open turret had been whacked with a giant sledgehammer. A 75mm shell had sliced like a bolt of lightning through the Hellcat, killing Ruotanen’s gunner, Corporal Charles J. Mayeux, a native of Bunkie, Louisiana. The blast had also severely injured Ruotanen and another crewman. Klampert leaped from his vehicle and helped drag the wounded crew to safety. A dismayed Miller quickly tossed a white phosphorous grenade into the engine. Miller knew it would be impossible to recover the damaged tank destroyer under enemy fire. (Later that night, the platoon armorer crawled up and removed the breechblocks so the Germans couldn’t use the abandoned Hellcats.)
Klampert’s convoy was still stuck in the road, which was rapidly becoming a death trap. He ordered the remaining vehicles to sprint out of the cut bank to the right and make for the safety and concealment of the streets and houses of Cocheval. The Hellcat drivers would take advantage of the vehicle’s greatest combat advantage—its quick speed.
The M18s gunned their engines and popped into gear. Within seconds they had raced out of the cut and veered right down the embankment toward the town. One of the panzers tried a parting shot at the Hellcat taking up the rear. The German round let out a horrendous crack as it split the air—a near miss. Klampert established a roadblock with two Hellcats on the eastern side of Mande Saint-Etienne. There was little else he could do but take up a defensive position in town. With the panzers covering the road, the TDs were not going to get through to Towns.
The western defenses of Bastogne were crumbling. The men of Allen’s battalion were becoming strained, and German tanks were just adding to their misery. Towns’s Charlie Company had been fending off the Germans for hours, and now they were starting to break. Klampert’s TDs couldn’t get through to them in their hour of need. All that mattered to the exhausted glider-fighters was who would escape from that shrinking pocket with their lives.42
Midafternoon, Saturday, 23 December 1944
Area of operations, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1/401st Glider Infantry
Just west of Mande Saint-Etienne, Belgium
Bowen arrived at 2nd Platoon’s position, exhausted. He had run a gauntlet of fire from Captain Towns’s command post. Along the way, he passed by some foxholes. In one of them he made a gruesome discovery—the bits and pieces of a body. A mortar round had impacted directly in the hole, vaporizing the occupant. “I didn’t know it then, but it was all that remained of my close friend Homer Johnson,” Bowen wrote years later.
As Bowen counted his men, he quickly realized that some of them were missing. The heavy snowdrifts had turned running into an exhausting exercise—damp boots slipped and failed to find traction in the thickening snow. Bowen suspected that many of the men had fallen behind, struggling to keep up while carrying some of the heavier equipment. One of the missing was his radioman. Because of this, Bowen never got the word that Towns had now changed his mind, ordering Bowen’s platoon to stand down.
Bowen finally linked up with First Lieutenant Robert A. Wagner of 1st Platoon at 2nd Platoon’s command post in a “sunken courtyard” next to a stone house just north of the Mande Saint-Etienne highway.
Wagner and Bowen quickly took stock of the situation. A Sherman tank that had provided crucial fire support earlier had been knocked out. Nearby in a stand of fir trees stood a 37mm antitank gun, but it, too, was useless. The biting cold had frozen the wheels to the ground as if it had been welded in place. German shells continued to shriek and pound the earth nearby, causing the glidermen to flinch with each near miss. Bowen counted eleven German tanks and scores of Panzergrenadiers several hundred yards away, pouring a blistering fire into the courtyard.
One Hellcat, commanded by Staff Sergeant Chester Sakwinski from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was turning out to be C Company’s guardian angel. As Sakwinski’s TD slammed shells toward the Germans, a second Hellcat was in a bit of a fix. Apparently the ice-cold temperatures were affecting more than just 37mm guns that morning. The turret on the M18 had frozen, and the tank commander could not get it to rotate.
The tank destroyer scooted out of the courtyard and raced back to Bastogne to get it fixed. As it rumbled away, a Mk IV took a shot at it. Several men recalled watching the German shell knock a pile of bedrolls off the turret, but that was the sum of the damage done. Again speed had saved one of the little M18s.
Meanwhile Sakwinski was playing a game of hide-and-seek with the panzers. He would order his driver to pop up from the courtyard onto a slight berm and shoot at the Germans. Before they could retaliate, Sakwinski would quickly roll back down. Having no clue how many tank destroyers were defending the house, the German tankers hesitated, instead of bum-rushing the house with their superior numbers. Sakwinski’s charade was helping buy time for Allen’s glider-fighters.
Towns’s men were falling left and right in the fields near the house. As Bowen lay there in the cold snow, the sound of gunfire started up again, reaching a crescendo of intensity as the Panzergrenadiers closed in. Bowen looked around at the dark forms of the dead and dying, bright red blood spilling into the snow. He knew almost all of them. Bowen might have wondered whether he too would soon be joining them.43
1200–1500 hours, Saturday, 23 December 1944
Headquarters, 1/401st Glider Infantry
Flamizoulle, Belgium
Back at his command post in Flamizoulle, Allen could tell the Germans were trying to penetrate his lines north of the Mande Saint-Etienne highway and bypass his battle positions. If they did that, Allen reasoned, he would have little to throw at them. There was a huge gap between his battalion and the 502nd to the north. If the Germans found that gap, it would be a serious threat to the western perimeter. Using that avenue of approach, the Germans could sweep around and cut off his entire battalion from Bastogne. Worse, from there, the door to Bastogne would be left wide-open.
Allen knew his best chance for success was artillery, and although he had been scrimping for rounds earlier, he had also witnessed the airlift. He knew there had to be more mortar and artillery rounds available somewhere. At 1500 hours he requested artillery. He also asked for six hundred rounds for his mortars. In addition, he asked his regimental headquarters to send as much small arms ammunition as they could spare.44
1500–1610 hours, Saturday, 23 De
cember 1944
Fire Direction Center, 463rd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion
Hemroulle, Belgium
Allen’s prayers were soon answered. Almost immediately he got more artillery, and he got a lot of it. Evidently the high command felt this was as good a reason to justify a massive artillery support mission as any other. Now the infusion of resupplied 75mm rounds enabled Cooper’s 463rd to provide prodigious amounts of indirect fire in support of Allen’s beleaguered battalion.
“Keynote, this is Five Baker.” First Lieutenant Henry L. Smither’s voice broke through the static. “Fire mission… Grid… 475598… Break… 482592… Ten enemy tanks and personnel.”
The battle staff quickly made the calculations and then sent the fire solutions to the gun line. Since they had more ammunition now, the FDC staff allocated two entire batteries, Baker and Dog—eight guns total—for the fire mission. This was first time that day that two batteries were tasked with supporting one unit.
Cooper’s little Pack howitzers banged to life as they fired salvo after salvo. By 1610 that afternoon, they had fired fifty-eight rounds of high explosive at the enemy.45 Soon, their brothers in the 377th PFAB had joined in with their guns and nearly a hundred rounds landed in one square kilometer southwest of Cocheval. The airborne gunners were doing what they did best—supporting the infantry with massed firepower.46
Late afternoon to early evening, Saturday, 23 December 1944
Area of operations, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1/401st Glider Infantry
Just west of Mande Saint-Etienne, Belgium
To Bowen and Wagner, crouching in the cold near Mande, the rain of steel falling on the German positions was welcome, but not enough to drive the Germans back. In his memoirs, Bowen claimed that division had denied all requests for artillery support. Obviously that was not the case; it is more probable that the German fire was so intense that Bowen never noticed his own artillery.
The situation was deteriorating rapidly beyond all control. Neither Bowen nor Wagner had communications with Captain Towns. They were clueless as to how long he expected them to maintain their positions.
The most pressing problem was the panzers. Sergeant Sakwinski was fighting off one group of German tanks with his tank destroyer, but another group of Mk IVs had edged their way forward, and from a distance had managed to curve around and enter a small draw where Sakwinski couldn’t get them. Bowen recalled seeing a bazooka in the back of a lone CCB 10th Armored half-track that had been abandoned by its crew nearby. Bowen figured he or one of his men might be able to sneak up on one of the panzers and help even the odds for Sakwinski.
Bowen darted off, running in a crouch. He returned a moment later with the great steel tube over his shoulder. Wagner helped him load one of the rockets and then tapped Bowen on the helmet. Bowen took a deep breath and headed back out across the snow to get a better fix on the flanking panzers. In his memoir, he described what happened next.
“I had to cross the front yard of the house that was being swept by small arms fire. However, I managed this without being hit, even though my heart was in my mouth the whole time. I settled behind the embankment and looked through the trees for a target. A tank was sitting in a little draw some 200 yards out. I set the sights, took a long careful aim after making sure the pin was pulled in the rocket, and pulled the trigger. Without a shield on the weapon or protective glasses, the blast from the rocket nearly blinded me. However, I kept my eyes on the tank. The rocket it grazed it without exploding. The tank hurriedly backed out of sight.”
Bowen wasn’t satisfied, but wisely decided to get out of there before the panzers pinpointed his position and unleashed their fury upon him. He returned to the command post and reported back to Wagner. He told the lieutenant, “I’d like to go back in case the tank moved forward again.”
Wagner said no. He showed Bowen that there were only two rockets left. “I think we should save the rockets. We might need them later.”
The sergeant nodded in agreement. A few minutes later, Staff Sergeant Louis A. Butts arrived from his squad. Butts was one of the 2nd Platoon squad leaders, with an unshaven face that resembled the dogface stereotype of a GI from the Bill Mauldin cartoons. Bowen could read the frustration and anger in his expression. Butts was clearly wondering why his men were fighting and dying for what seemed like an impossible position to hold.
“Half of my squad is either dead or wounded. And we’re nearly out of ammunition. The rest of the platoon is no better off. I think we should pull back,” Butts said in a growl.
For a moment Lieutenant Wagner said nothing, quietly considering the various options available to him. None of them were good. Finally he looked back at Butts and snapped, “Sergeant, my orders are to hold this position. Until there is a change in those orders, that’s what I plan on doing. Now go back to your men. You’ll be notified if we are to pull out.”
Bowen later wrote about Butts, “Even though his face flushed with anger, he gritted his teeth, turned and somehow got back to his squad’s position.”
For the next hour or so, the panzers continued to slam round after round into the 2nd Platoon battle positions while German mortars hammered away at the survivors. Amidst the carnage, Sergeant Joe Damato of Wagner’s platoon arrived at the makeshift CP. Second Lieutenant Leonard E. Gewin, Sakwinski’s commander, Wagner, and Bowen were all there to speak with him. Damato brought bad news: The whole line was collapsing.
Bowen recalled, “Suddenly the whole world seemed to explode in my face. I felt myself being tossed aside as if a giant bubble had violently burst at my feet.”
A German mortar round had detonated within ten feet of their location. All four of the men suffered wounds. Gewin was a mess. Bowen and Damato were both injured but conscious. Luckily, Wagner had sustained only a minor wound to his foot. The lieutenant didn’t have time to worry about it. Once the medic wrapped his foot, he hobbled off, trying to maintain what was left of 2nd Platoon and the roadblock. Meanwhile, the medics determined that Bowen and Damato were out of the fight. They were taken to a basement of a nearby house. To ease the pain, a medic gave them morphine.
Wagner didn’t get very far when he realized the Germans had come up from behind, cutting him off from 2nd Platoon. He limped over to 1st Platoon’s position. When he got there, he discovered that his own platoon had left, falling back to the main American positions beyond the road.
For Bowen and Damato, lying in the basement, the next few hours were a morphine haze. Damato had suffered a huge gash in the back of his right leg. Bowen had been lucky. His suspenders had helped deflect the force of a chunk of shrapnel, but the piece had still stuck in his ribs. The medics were able to remove it, but not another jagged chunk that was sticking out of his wrist. By now it was dark. It had been a while since they had spoken with Wagner, and Damato sensed something was wrong. The two men contemplated a run to try to find Wagner, but Bowen knew Damato would never make it.
Outside, the constant chatter of gunfire had begun to peter out, as Bowen recalled. He reached down and checked to see whether he still had his pistol. By now most of the men knew about the massacre at Malmedy. The prospect of capture by the Germans did not sound good. From the news of Malmedy, it seemed the Germans often arbitrarily executed captured GIs. Bowen and Damato lay huddled in the cellar, resting in some hay with other wounded men, including the intrepid crew of Sakwinski’s M18, who had finally been forced to give up their single-handed duel with the German armor. Several civilians were also sitting in the dark basement, shivering with fear and cold.
“[The basement]… had become complete chaos. The civilians were hysterical, crying, praying, and screaming. The medics were unable to quiet them,” Bowen remembered. “The door was shoved in with a kick and a big German in a snowsuit came in, machine pistol leveled. He had a flashlight, which he shone on the medic and the litters.”
Bowen heard one of the medics say in German, “Nothing but wounded.” The grenadier pointed the machine pist
ol at the Americans. Fortunately, he was only checking to see if the American medic was telling the truth about the wounded. Using a flashlight, he shone a beam around the room, examining each soldier to confirm that he was indeed out of the fight. As the German did this, Bowen gripped his pistol even tighter and started to raise it up. In his morphine-induced haze, his first reaction was, I’m not going down without a fight. Quickly and wisely, he reconsidered. Sense had come back into his head, and he tucked the pistol away.
“Yes, they are all wounded. That’s good.” The German spoke in English. He then looked right at Bowen and remarked, “For you the war is over.”47
1840–2200 hours, Saturday, 23 December 1944
Headquarters, 1/401st Glider Infantry
Flamizoulle, Belgium
Ray Allen knew it was past time to go. All day he had listened to C Company’s desperate struggle to hold open the Mande corridor. By evening the bad news had arrived—the Germans had retaken the town of Flamierge. Voboril’s force had come back pell-mell, the same way they had gone out, riding on the jeeps and Greyhounds. This time, though, they brought wounded.
At 1700 hours, a platoon of tank destroyers arrived from the 705th’s B Company. These Hellcats were under the command of First Lieutenant Robert Andrews. Andrews had positioned his four tank destroyers south of Flamizoulle, and angled their fire to the south and southwest to block the Germans if they attempted to approach the American lines from that direction.
The news got worse as darkness descended and the cold night swept in around Flamizoulle. Around 1800 Allen got a call from Towns that the Germans were swarming over his lines to the south. The words were short, but the meaning was clear: “1810—Enemy tanks reported to have overrun Blue Charlie.” Not long after that disastrous report, division radioed to all units that enemy tanks were rolling down the Marche road east of Monty. The time was 1835 hours.
At 1840 hours, Allen knew he had to put plan A into effect. He had held out as long as he could. Allen knew that ever since their arrival several days ago, the glider-fighters of the 1/401st had fought tooth and nail to protect the “back door” to Bastogne. Lots of American blood had been spilled in that effort.
