by Leo Barron
Not only was Lemaire’s death a symbol of Bastogne’s martyrdom that night, but it was also a clear indication to the Americans as to what they were fighting for. This tragic Christmas Eve news only proved that Bastogne and the sacrifices of her brave people would not be in vain. The Americans were now, and ever more so, determined to hold their ground and keep the Germans out.
The word of the score of wounded soldiers and Lemaire’s death reached the outposts that evening, even as Bastogne’s HQ runners delivered what little mail and hot food they could to the men in the outlying towns. As the soldiers whispered prayers in their cold foxholes, the brave little Belgian nurse and the casualties would not be forgotten, certainly not on this most holy night.
1925–1945 hours, Sunday, 24 December 1944
Headquarters, 327th Glider Infantry Regiment
Bastogne, Belgium
The aid station was not the only target that night. Colonel “Bud” Harper, commander of the 327th GIR, remembered the Luftwaffe attack on his headquarters. Harper and his executive officer had dug a slit trench in the HQ for protection from German bombs. They had lined the inside of the trench with parachute silk, and the two had dragged a dirt-filled footlocker over the top to provide some measure of overhead protection. Finally, Harper had posted an enlisted man outside and instructed him to blow three blasts on a whistle if he heard or saw any German aircraft flying over.
“My exec had been down to Marvie making an inspection. He went in a house down there and in the cellar they had a whole lot of sugar-cured hams hanging up,” Harper said. “He came back with a ham and we were sitting there eating ham sandwiches.”
Before Harper could take another bite, he heard the soldier blast three times on the whistle. Skeptical, Harper stepped out into the night air. The soldier mutely pointed up into the sky.
“The Germans had dropped a flare right square over us and that was the signal we were the target.”
Harper turned to his executive officer. “You know who’s the target?” he asked.
The XO replied negatively.
Harper then declared, “We are. Let’s get down in that foxhole.”
With that, the colonel jumped down into his foxhole with seconds to spare. Suddenly bombs burst around his command post as he and his HQ staff took shelter. Even though bombs penetrated the roof of the building and collapsed the floors above his S2 and S3 office, casualties were minimal.
“They dropped the five-hundred-pound bomb and right across the street from where we were was the cemetery. That five-hundred-pound bomb hit in the cemetery and a piece of tombstone came right through the window. I thought that was kind of sad.” The next day, Harper moved his headquarters. He wasn’t about to take any more chances.7
1925–1945 hours, Sunday, 24 December 1944
On the outskirts of Bastogne, Belgium
In the farmhouse near Champs, Sergeant D’Angelo’s sleepless night was only getting worse. He recalled how he was “banged and bounced” around in his bed, as the Luftwaffe repeatedly bombed the area during the night.8
Others, too, figured something big was going to happen that night. Layton Black, comfortable with his squad in the Hemroulle barn, woke to the noise of bombing. He wrote in his memoir, “What woke me up was the terrible shaking of our old barn and the noise of German bombs falling nearby,” he recalled. “Our guards told us that the Germans had bombed Bastogne at midnight and the fires could be seen from outside our hayloft.”9
Twenty-one-year-old Private Anthony Breder, the “floater” for the 705th, was told there was little need for an assistant TD driver that evening. Breder found himself in Bastogne, running errands for the 705th’s HQ. This included guard duty outside the building that Colonel Templeton was using as his headquarters, and frequent trips running messages out to the outlying regimental command posts.
The bombing and shelling could be relentless, and lest anyone think the headquarters types were perfectly safe or had it easy in Bastogne, Breder’s experience that night might prove them wrong. At one point he was assigned to help one of the aid stations.
“I would carry arms and legs from the hospital and put them in a pile,” He said. “We would burn them later. It was god-awful.”
Breder had to return to his pit under a truck for protection as the German planes conducted a second bombing run later that night. As bomb after bomb hit the streets and buildings around the town square, Breder and several other soldiers dived for safety under the truck. Breder prayed that a bomb would not score a direct hit on the vehicle. When it was over, he was relieved when he was placed on food duty, running hotcakes out to the TD crews.10
Bruce Middough, a trooper with the 463rd, was standing guard duty near the gasoline dump at Hemroulle. Fortunately, the planes ignored his area, but from the hillside where he stood he caught a panoramic view as the aircraft passed over Bastogne and other parts of the perimeter, dumping their deadly payloads in the night.
“I could watch the bombing of Bastogne. I heard the planes coming over and watched them drop their flares. I could actually see the bellies of the planes when they dove over Bastogne from the reflection of the flares.”11
Evening, Sunday, 24 December 1944
Area of operations, 6th Company, 77th Volksgrenadier Regiment
Near Flamierge, Belgium
Ludwig Lindemann had established his makeshift command post in a tank dugout south of Flamierge. “As at Irssin [Russia] we were told to keep fighting that day and on Christmas Day,” Lindemann recounted. “I would have preferred to take a break; instead we had nothing to celebrate Christmas, no food or anything like that. I don’t think it registered to us that it was Christmas.”
From there, the veteran Unteroffizier organized his company. Like most of these nights, Lindemann blew on his hands to keep them warm. He could see his breath in the cool night air, and like many of his men he felt pangs in his stomach. It had been some time since many of them had eaten. His unit had sustained serious losses over the last eight days fighting these stubborn Amis, and now, he learned, he was going to take his company in for another attack. The mission was simple—avoid the villages and take Bastogne—but Lindemann sent a runner to get the full set of orders from battalion. The young man he sent dashed off into the night and returned later with the new set of more complete orders.12
Lindemann scanned the order for relevant data that pertained to his unit. According to the regimental directive, his battalion must be in its assault position by 0215 hours, in a forest more than five hundred yards east of Rouette. Lindemann looked at his watch. He didn’t have a lot of time to get his men ready and up there. Lindemann’s battalion would be required to secure the northern flank of the regimental attack, as another armor-infantry unit would make the main assault. Oberstleutnant Martin Schriefer, the regimental commander, tasked the battalion to seize Château Rolle, the 502nd PIR’s headquarters, southeast of the woods. Their axis of advance would take them through the woods, north of Champs, and then back up a ridge to attack the château from the north.
Schriefer’s plan was textbook infantry infiltration tactics. Under the cover of darkness, his entire regiment would use the Les Bresses woods to the north of Champs to conceal their movement. Their objective was to cut the Champs–Longchamps road at the base of a hill and attack the American lines here. If successful, they would separate the 1st of the 502nd from its sister battalion, the 2nd, to the northeast. Here, the connection between “Long John” Hanlon’s 1st and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Sutliffe’s 2nd was thin.
At 0255 hours, the attack would commence. First the various artillery batteries and mortars would lay down a blanket of suppressive fire to pin the American machine guns and artillery. It would be a short but violent barrage that would last five minutes. Then both battalions would move out. 1st Company would lead the advance of 1st Battalion, which had the mission to move down the Rouette road, through Champs, and reach the woods to the southeast of Rolle. There it would conduct a tactical pause
while 2nd Battalion, Lindemann’s unit, would catch up after severing the American lines after exiting the woods, and moving up the slope to take Château Rolle. The whole time both battalions would be moving through either villages or forests to provide cover and concealment.
After completing their initial missions, both battalions, acting in concert with Maucke’s portion of the 115th Panzergrenadier, would continue their advance toward Bastogne. Both battalions of the 77th would then seize the towns of Hemroulle and Savy. Once they had accomplished that operation, Schriefer hoped he could mass his combat power with that of the other German units and take the northwest sector of Bastogne itself.
Schriefer relied on other parts of his regiment to provide firepower and support. For artillery support, the infantry gun company would move behind both battalions as they advanced southeastward. Furthermore, each battalion would receive an additional antitank platoon that would provide more than a dozen Panzerschrecks (shoulder-borne rocket launchers similar to American bazookas). One antitank platoon would remain with the regimental headquarters to act as a reserve with the AT company commander. Moreover, each battalion would receive flamethrowers from the 26th Pioneer Company. Hence, if the Americans would not leave their foxholes willingly, Schriefer would have the ability to burn them out. If the Americans counterattacked with armor, Kokott allocated an entire troop of Hetzers—small but deadly 75mm-equipped tank destroyers—to the 77th. To make matters worse for the Americans, once they had secured the area, the engineers would lay antitank minefields to block any counterattack. Finally, an entire battalion of artillery would support the 77th’s attack with an initial barrage.
In short, Kokott had given Schriefer an extraordinary amount of firepower.
To Lindemann, desperately trying to stay warm that night in the tank trench, huddled with his men around a small fire, the code word would be “Nurnberg.” Once he heard that over the radio, around 0215 hours, he knew that the regimental commander had commenced the operation, and he would lead his company forward into the woods. The young Unteroffizier had been instructed to fire a white flare into the night sky to signal when he had seized each of his objectives. That was it. Lindemann folded up the order and slipped it into his pocket. He looked at the tired faces of his men around him. Some he had known since Russia. Then there were the new replacements. Even though they were only a few years shy of his own age, they seemed babies compared to him and the other veterans.
Lindemann was tired, but he knew sleep would have to wait. For the veteran soldat and ex-painter from Heyen, it would be another miserable Christmas far from home. Once again, in the grand service of Hitler’s Reich, Christmas was turning out to be just another day at war.13
2200 hours, Sunday, 24 December 1944
Headquarters, 26th Volksgrenadier Division
Gives, Belgium
At roughly 2200 hours on Christmas Eve, Oberst Wolfgang Maucke was a picture of frustration. Trapped by the rigid demands of the German military system, he found himself standing before his commanding officer in the little warming hut in Gives, once again being told to follow impossible orders.
Maucke, like many midlevel officers during Wacht am Rhein, had found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. Pressured to simply carry out orders from above, even if in all good conscience, he knew they stood little chance of success. Now, standing before his superior, Colonel Kokott, Maucke could hold back no longer. He had to speak.
“What about reconnaissance?”
Kokott glared at Maucke from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Kokott responded. There was no time for a thorough reconnaissance. The attack must go forward Christmas morning. Kokott emphasized to Maucke why that was so important—the better to surprise the Amis and evade the Allied fighter-bombers before the men and armor were caught in the daylight. Bastogne simply must be breached before daybreak, Kokott told him, and Maucke’s combined armor-infantry attack must be in Bastogne before the reappearance of the Jabos. If Maucke were stalled, held up by resistance, or otherwise late, the Allied airpower would catch the Germans at their most vulnerable point and quickly put an end to the attack.
Maucke clenched his jaw. Daybreak was a mere eight hours away. Even one day of sending an armored car patrol to Rouette, or allowing the time for some of his snowsuit-clad soldiers with optics to crawl up among the hills surrounding Champs or Hemroulle, would be of some help in planning the assault. There were too many unknowns. Did the Americans have artillery support in this sector, and how much? Where were they entrenched? Had they placed mines in the surrounding fields? Did they have antitank guns or tank destroyers? How many? Those last two points were of great interest to Maucke’s tank commanders. Kokott’s staff could provide little help and few answers to his questions.
Kokott smiled artificially. He wished to set Maucke at ease as much as he could. Maucke and the 15th were highly regarded in the Wehrmacht. Unfortunately, when Kokott had heard of the arrival and Maucke had reported in to him, Kokott was crestfallen. He had expected an entire division—the vaunted 15th Panzergrenadier—to lead his attack. Instead OKW had given him only one regiment from that division, which he considered to be understrength. Either someone had forgotten to tell Army Group B and its commander, Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model, that the 15th Panzergrenadier Division was not at full strength, or Wacht am Rhein was indeed turning out to be as desperate as many German commanders had secretly feared.
Well, that didn’t matter now. Nothing could be done at this point—it would soon be Christmas. He explained to Maucke that the Americans, it was hoped, would be too distracted, thinking of their holidays away from their loved ones, to organize much of a resistance at the supposedly weak Champs–Hemroulle sector—Kokott’s planned attack route into Bastogne. Seeing the distance, Maucke quickly counted the number of kilometers on his own map. It was more than eight kilometers (almost five miles) from the assembly point to the final objective. He shook his head in disbelief.
After the war, Maucke wrote that it was “… [an] attack with tanks in the dark, across unfamiliar terrain, and against a well-entrenched enemy that belonged to well-known elite troops of the American army.”14
Maucke figured he had protested as strongly as he dared. There were still many limitations, even with his rank and experience highly regarded by the high command. The attack seemed to Maucke to be at best a halfhearted gesture ordered by von Manteuffel to get the führer off his back about Bastogne. These thoughts he kept to himself. Unfortunately, he and his men were going to have to pay the price for it if it failed. Unhappily, he about-faced and left Kokott’s headquarters. Maucke had lodged his protest; now, as any German officer knew, there was only duty, even if that duty smelled like failure. There was no time to waste. He had to set about developing a plan. Befehlen sind befehlen—orders were orders.
As he strolled outside in the cold night, Maucke pulled on his gloves. He thought about his piecemeal unit. He could not wait for any others and would have to go into battle with whatever parts of his three battalions had arrived in the Bastogne area by now. About two hours earlier, Maucke’s battalions had moved out to their initial start positions. His divisional commander, Oberst Hans Joachim Deckert, had buttressed Maucke’s regiment with a company of Mark IV Panzerkampfwagens and a company of smaller, but just as lethal 75mm-equipped tank destroyers (Sturmgeschütz III). Unfortunately, the tank destroyers had no radios, which made coordination and communication problematic. In addition, even though Deckert was giving him the entire company of seventeen panzers, only eleven would be available. (By this time in the war, German operational readiness had suffered due to a lack of spare parts, so it was rare when an entire panzer company could deploy with all of its tanks.) Fortunately, Deckert understood the crucial role Maucke’s regiment would be playing. Like Kokott, he had given most of his artillery to support Maucke’s regiment for the assault.15
Maucke glanced at his watch. There was little time for him to convey this information to his battalion com
manders. He had to return to his own headquarters as soon as possible. There was no time to waste. It would be close to midnight when he would finally give them their final orders.16
Kokott heard the rumble of Maucke’s command vehicle driving off outside the warming hut. He, too walked outside to clear his head. Despite the woefully inadequate kampfgruppe from the 15th Panzergrenadier Division, he knew had no choice but to continue with the attack. At least the soldaten of the 15th were known throughout the Heer to be some of the finest troops, with a gallant and successful combat record. That was why Kokott was thrilled when he had originally heard the entire division would be under his temporary command. Kokott rubbed his glasses clean with his sleeve and sighed. Now he had only one regiment with bits and pieces of a few Panzergrenadier companies to deliver what was expected by German high command to be the decisive blow on the American forces holding Bastogne.
It would simply have to do, he thought.
In an interview after the war, Kokott said, “Changes could no longer be made regarding the attack itself, i.e., the time for the attack and the details of the execution. It had to be started and brought to a successful conclusion.”17
Kokott then remembered it was Christmas Eve. In a few hours, his men would begin their attack on the Americans in Bastogne. He hoped fortune would be on his side, because now the plan relied on it.
Late evening, Sunday, 24 December 1944
Headquarters, 101st Airborne Division, Heinz Barracks
Bastogne, Belgium
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Danahy finished typing his nightly report. It was his sixth nightly report since the beginning of the operation. He had already finished his overlay showing the various enemy units that surrounded the division, and it caused quite a jovial stir when he wrote “Merry Christmas” on it. Still, there was a decidedly serious nature to the overlay. It was grim evidence of what they faced. According to his intelligence reports, the 101st was surrounded and in direct contact on all sectors of the perimeter with eight different enemy regiments. These included three Volksgrenadier regiments, four Panzergrenadier regiments, and one SS Panzergrenadier regiment. Basically, that Christmas Eve, the Germans outnumbered his division and its attachments by nearly two to one. (In fact, Danahy’s estimates were off. The 2nd Panzer Division and most of the Panzer Lehr Division had left, leaving only three Volksgrenadier regiments and two Panzergrenadier regiments.)
