No Silent Night

by Leo Barron

  One of these units was Lieutenant O’Halloran’s platoon. While MacDonald was busy relaying information back to Allen, O’Halloran’s troopers opened up on the swarming German infantry to prevent them from flanking Baker Company’s battle position. The enfilade fire was having a telling effect, turning the German Panzergrenadiers to the east.42

  As the tanks and foot soldiers continued to overwhelm his line, Bowles could only hope the others had received the warnings and would pass them on, especially to the tank destroyer and artillery units. For the time being, he ducked down in the woodlot command post and, like Rogan, waited for the worst to pass.

  As Hauptmann Schmidt led his force forward, an Mk IV passed just fifty feet from a B/705th tank destroyer located behind Bowles’s 1st Platoon CP. The German tank commander could only wonder why this particular tank was parked at a right angle to his own and, within the cover of a tree plantation, stood out of formation. He shouted something in German, perhaps ordering the crew to get back in line and stop dallying. In the fog and dark, the German commander mistook the vehicle for a German tank. Standing stock-still and holding their breaths, the American crew remained silent until the panzer moved on. Only then did they dare breathe again.43

  Close by, in the same patch of woods, Lieutenant Miller, the 705th’s 1st Platoon reconnaissance leader, waited with his men. His scouts saw the attack coming their way at 0630 that morning. As a precaution, Miller had ordered many of his men to dismount and to occupy the foxholes near the copse of trees. Like the glidermen, the scouts allowed the panzers to pass by them without firing a shot. Straining to see in the dim light and fog, Miller finally saw the German soldiers and tanks when the column halted only seventy-five yards from his command post, so close that Miller could hear the Panzergrenadiers yelling in German. From his position, Miller counted seven German tanks east of the woods.

  Not far from Miller, Private First Class Edward R. Lamke sat in the turret of his M8 Greyhound armored car. When the German tanks rolled by his position, he ducked down in the steel turret, sure that the tanks would see his vehicle. Luckily his armored car was backed far enough into the wood line that the panzers missed it completely. Besides, Lamke realized, if a firefight broke out, the 37mm “popgun” in the Greyhound’s turret would be about as much use as a peashooter against the Mk IVs. Worse, Lamke noticed, he had put himself in a bad position in the dark, and could kick himself for what he’d done. He could not even turn the turret on his M8, because nearby tree trunks blocked his gun barrel from rotating. Lamke’s only option was to stay quiet and hope the German tanks would stop idling near his position and move on.44

  0330–0715 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944

  1/502nd Parachute Infantry tactical assembly area

  Near the 1/401st headquarters, outside of Hemroulle

  Along the road outside Hemroulle, Sergeant Layton Black and the rest of Captain Cody’s Charlie Company were preparing to move out toward Champs. Shortly after 0330, Cody had been alerted by the call from Hanlon after his discussion with Chappuis.

  Black was still grumbling to himself about having to desert his warm hayloft bed so early that morning. Word had come down that the boys of Company A were in trouble in Champs, and Charlie Company had been ordered two thousand yards up the road to bail them out. Baker Company, Black heard, had already headed that direction.45 “We got ready in a hurry with few words. Everyone knew it was coming—the fighting. What upset me the most was that Jerry wasn’t going to take Christmas off!”46

  Now the men huddled and shivered together in the dark, waiting to start the march. Some stepped out onto the Champs–Hemroulle road. They kicked and stamped their feet to stay warm. Some cussed at the weather. Typical of the army, many of the soldiers joked that this was just another round of hurry up and wait for the next orders. The paratroopers blew into their hands, checked their weapons, and chatted in low tones.

  Finally, with many stops and starts, C Company began to move in a column of twos up the road toward Champs. When they halted again, they had traveled only a half mile.47 Captain Cody had gone forward to conduct an area reconnaissance while his platoon leaders established a perimeter defense along the road. Frank Miller, another member of C Company, remembered the thick fog that swept over the fields to their left and just beyond the farmhouse: “It was early in the morning, about six o’clock in the morning, just getting light; it really didn’t get too light until about eight o’clock or so, till the fog cleared.”48

  As the men stopped by the last few farms marking the northern limits of Hemroulle, the paratroopers took notice of the farmhouse headquarters of the 1/401st. The door of the building and the opening of the high wall surrounding the courtyard both faced the road on which they were moving. Since they were once again waiting, Black’s platoon wandered into the courtyard, where one of the men started to brew coffee. The paratroopers wondered at the stirrings of excited voices and activity within the glider fighters’ headquarters.

  Black noticed the tension in the men’s faces as they stood around: “Our C Company moved halfway up the road. My 2nd Platoon, in close order marching formation, held up on the road next to the farmhouse that was the command post of the 327th [1/401st],” Black remembered. “There we were halted and stood in full battle dress, loaded down with heavy ammo, machine guns, mortars and bazookas…. We were jumpy,” he admitted.49

  Like any good NCO, Sergeant Black knew that just standing around was not the best plan. He began to organize a hasty defense for his squad. His first task was to establish his crew-served weapon, an M1919 .30-caliber machine gun, near the perimeter. Black picked out a spot near the courtyard gate and told his gunner to aim the machine gun to the west at a hilltop eight hundred yards from his position. While he was doing this, Black noticed that the rest of the 2nd Platoon men were standing around a fire. Black was pretty sure his soldiers had not started the fire and wondered who had. As he watched, more GIs emerged from the farmhouse.

  Suddenly it all became clear. Black realized Allen’s headquarters men were burning maps and other papers. The glidermen of the 401st were leaving, and leaving in a hurry.50

  0710–0720 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944

  Charlie Company/401st

  Battle positions south of Hemroulle

  Schmidt’s panzers rumbled eastward. The low-silhouetted StuGs kept pace on the left. Ahead were the foxholes and trenches of Towns’s Charlie Company, in reserve after the hard fighting near Mande in which the Germans had captured Sergeant Bowen the day before. Now they were in the last battle positions before their battalion commander’s HQ and the Champs–Hemroulle road.

  Private First Class Robert O’Mara, a rifleman in Towns’s 2nd Platoon, recalled seeing the enemy tanks that morning. “I saw three of them coming over a hill. One was pulling a cart with people in it.” The carts were large sleds that carried nearly a platoon’s worth of Panzergrenadiers. In the early morning hours, before the sun came up, many Americans thought the sleds were additional tanks; now with the sun starting to shine, the GIs could make out several sleds being towed behind the rumbling tanks.51

  Captain Towns had just called twenty-one-year-old Private First Class Robert Lott over to his foxhole that morning to congratulate him on the work he had done staving off a tank attack near Mande two days ago. Ironically, just as he was reminding Lott that he had promised a pass to Paris for any man in his company who knocked out an enemy tank, someone shouted that German tanks were heading their way.

  To their front, Lott and Towns had heard the firefight between their sister companies and the Germans. They could even see flashes of gunfire in the fog. Shortly after, Towns received the message from MacDonald to “come up.” Doing so, with the armor bearing down on him right now, was going to be quite difficult. Before he could truly get his men in motion, the tanks were upon them.

  The lanky Towns ducked down to grab his radio and then turned to Lott: “Pass the word out—not any soldier is to take a shot.”52 Lott crawled thr
ough the snow and along a low hedge to spread the word. In each foxhole position, the men of Towns’s company passed the message along. Quietly, the men of C Company did the same, as their brethren in A and B companies had done. The panzers sped through their area, some, like the whitewashed Mk IV that passed near Lott and Towns, only fifty feet away. With nerve-racking self-discipline, Towns’s men hunkered down. The Germans passed by and the glidermen remained unharmed. Lott later called it “a miracle on Christmas Day.”53

  Maucke’s tanks had completely broken through the outer American positions and were now almost astride the Champs–Hemroulle road to Bastogne. Suddenly the oncoming force split up. Several tanks in the line went to the north; others turned to the southeast. The glider troops thought this was odd, to say the least, and might just play right into the Americans’ hands. “We wondered why the Germans went in opposite directions,” recalled Lott, who witnessed the split with Towns.54

  To this day, no one is sure why Schmidt’s force suddenly split up into two parts and went in two separate directions. This was clearly not part of Maucke’s or Kokott’s original orders, and tactically it made no sense to weaken the drive toward Bastogne. Without the benefit of Maucke’s much-argued-for reconnaissance, and in the thick fog, the tanks may simply have driven off course, unable to recognize where they were. On the other hand, perhaps the American fire was intense enough to divert some of the German tanks to make for the north (Champs) to link up with the friendly units of the 77th Volksgrenadier, engaged at that time with Swanson’s Able Company. Other theories abound. For whatever reason, one half of the German assault that Kokott had staked so much on this Christmas Day was now heading in the complete opposite direction from Bastogne.

  0710–0720 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944

  Hauptmann Schmidt’s Panzer section

  Heading toward Hemroulle

  In Flamierge, Maucke impatiently listened to his radio net. His last transmission from 1st Battalion was garbled. He received another report from 3rd Battalion, informing him that they had reached the ridgeline west of Hemroulle. He knew, though, that time was running out, and if Wörner was not in Bastogne by 0900 it would be too late.55 At 0900 hours, the Allied fighter-bombers would arrive over the battlefield, and they would destroy the tanks caught in the open.

  For the nine or ten German vehicles turning north, the Champs–Hemroulle road was now in view. The infantry fire from their rear had slacked off as they cleared Towns’s Charlie Company positions. The drivers of the German tanks squinted through the thick glass of their periscopes. In the carpet of snow they could tell they were approaching the road from the concrete telephone poles that paralleled its path. Immediately before them stood the pale stone farmhouse that was Allen’s headquarters. The German tankers saw the GIs racing out of it in panic. Beyond the road and farmhouse loomed a large section of dark woods.

  Obviously the tanks would not be able to penetrate this thick wood line. They would have to turn to the right or left and use the road to go either north to Champs, or south to Hemroulle. The commander of this unit decided, like his counterpart to the right, to stop and wait for more infantry to catch up to the tanks. He ordered his driver to make for the farmhouse and capture it. So far the attack had gone as planned, and they had reached their initial objective—the Hemroulle road.56 For the time being, the courtyard would be an excellent place to halt, regroup, and wait for the infantry.

  0710–0720 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944

  1/401st command post

  Hemroulle, Belgium

  As the other Mk IVs turned to the right and headed for the small forest lots and hills above Hemroulle, the nine to ten tanks in the northern column (five or six Mk IVs and at least three StuG IIIs from 3rd Battalion) drove straight toward Allen’s headquarters. The StuGs were possibly in the lead. Inside the two-story farmhouse HQ, Allen and his staff were oblivious to how quickly the attack had covered ground since Bowles’s report earlier.

  Now, as the dawn light began to illuminate the fog-shrouded scene from the east, Towns and Lott were dumbstruck. They could see the entire force driving straight toward Allen’s HQ from their recently bypassed position. Towns knew he had to warn Allen immediately. “Tanks are coming toward you!” he radioed tersely to his commander in the farmhouse.

  “Where?” Allen asked.

  “If you look out your back window now,” Towns answered, “you’ll be looking right down the muzzle of an 88.”57

  When he peered out of the farmhouse, Allen learned that Towns was not exaggerating. An approaching panzer fired its main gun at the building. As Allen and his staff hugged the floor, the shell splintered the roof and passed through the structure, setting it afire.

  Allen shouted for Major Angus to get the men to burn any important papers and then get the hell out. Thank God, he thought as he heard the sound of the 463rd’s guns engaging the tanks. That might buy us a little time! Grabbing the radio, he quickly contacted Colonel Harper to let him know that the battalion HQ was displacing and that the Germans had penetrated the American lines. When asked how close the German tanks were to his farmhouse, Allen responded: “Right here! They are firing point-blank at me from 150 yards’ range. My units are still in position, but I’ve got to run.”58

  When there was a break in the firing, Allen told the last two men remaining, Captain James Pounders and Captain Joseph S. Brewster, to “come on.” He grabbed an armful of papers, threw a piece of white parachute silk over his shoulders for camouflage, and bolted out the door just as a German tank picked him up in its sights. “The books say the tank was leading me with its fire, giving me credit for more speed than I possessed,” Allen recounted with grim humor in an interview years later. “But I met an officer later who had just topped a hill when the tank started firing, and he saw the whole thing. I asked him if it was true the gun was leading me. He said: ‘No. You were definitely leading it.’”59

  0715–0720 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944

  Charlie Company/502nd Parachute Infantry tactical assembly area

  Inside the 1/401st Headquarters in Hemroulle

  Sergeant Black knew the burning of the maps was not a good sign. He turned to warn his men, but it was too late.

  “German tanks!” a voice shouted out.

  “All hell broke loose,” Black remembered.

  There was a flash, a bang, and Black watched as a 75mm tank shell blew his .30-caliber machine gun into the air. Black yelled, “Every man for himself! Get the hell out of here! Head for the trees!” and the scene was one of chaos. The Germans seemed to close in from out of the fog and sweep down and surround the farmhouse. Men were flailing in the snow as the tank machine guns swept the courtyard and 75mm rounds blasted the walls into chunks of stone and clouds of masonry. Many of Black’s men sprinted after Allen’s headquarters section and made for the safety of the woods across the road.60 Others, pinned to the ground in fear, became prisoners as Wörner’s Panzergrenadiers leaped from the tanks, weapons ready.

  There were shouts in German, rifle and machine gun fire, and in no time the Germans had captured Allen’s headquarters. The fire on the roof of the structure was growing. Schmidt’s tank crews pulled four of their tanks around the side of the whitewashed walls and paused as the German soldiers policed the area. Just like the GIs moments before, several grenadiers stopped to warm their hands over the fire in the courtyard.

  Across the road, the men in C Company beat a hasty retreat into the woods. Some described it as an organized withdrawal, weapons and all, but others considered it a near rout.61

  Private First Class James Flanagan was one of the paratroopers who barely survived the initial German onslaught. Like Black, he was waiting along the road to Champs when the tanks unleashed on the spread out paratroopers. Flanagan remembered that bedlam was the result, as every man dashed for the safety of the distant wood line. While he sprinted past an officer, a 75mm shell suddenly pulverized a tree that was between them. Flanagan dodged the trunk as it ca
me crashing to the ground. His feeling of relief, though, was short-lived. He did not hear the next round when it hit. Without warning, he was hurled into the air, his legs pumping wildly, as if on a bicycle. Flanagan was thrown into a water-filled ditch. He looked around and saw the Mk IVs and the assault guns were just hitting the road, but many of his comrades were no longer running. C Company was starting to turn around and fight from the wood line, firing back at the Germans. “As my trusty M1 was frozen due to my dunking, I couldn’t do much more than act as a cheerleader,” Flanagan admitted.62

  Caught at the farmhouse, Layton Black tried to run for cover into the building, dodging the Germans among the ancient stables attached to the burning structure. He finally sneaked through the haymow overhead to a door out the front, dropped down, and sprinted across the road to safety with many of his men. As he left, he caught sight of Colonel Allen doing the same.63

  As Ray Allen and two of his headquarters staff ran to the road, aiming for the woods, some C Company men mistook them for Germans hot on their heels. The paratroopers wheeled about and fired at the hapless CO of the 401st. As Allen dived into the snow for cover, he swore under his breath. Inching back up, he told his men to follow and took off at a ninety-degree angle along the road and hedge, ducking low and heading for Hemroulle. The three officers dodged through some trees and a little valley, making their way south. Unfortunately for Allen, as soon as he entered that area, riflemen of Cooper’s 463rd fired upon him. It seemed everyone was frantic and jumpy with the approach of the German tanks. Winded and exasperated, Allen and his group started waving a white handkerchief (possibly the parachute silk) as they sheltered in a roadside ditch. Finally the troopers around Hemroulle let them come forward, and Allen made it safely to American lines.64