by Leo Barron
As day gave way to twilight, von Lüttwitz received the final reports. Because of aerial resupply to the 101st Airborne, Bastogne now was beyond the capabilities of the 26th Volksgrenadier Division alone to divest. Furthermore, the 5th Fallschirmjäger Division was barely holding the line south of Clochimont. In addition to this, von Lüttwitz learned that the Sixth Panzer Army failed to advance past their lines, leaving the Fifth Panzer Army’s northern flank in the air and unsecured.
To von Lüttwitz, it was clear the offensive was over. Survival of his forces was the paramount concern of the corps commander, but due to Hitler’s intransigence, he could not order a general withdrawal. Frustrated, and in a sense realizing that he was now only fighting for time, he ordered his men to dig in and hold on while the rest of the final 5th Panzer Army reserve—the 9th Panzer Division—trickled in to bolster their lines. Seeing that west of the Meuse was now a dead end, he directed his attentions southward toward his greatest threat—Patton’s Third Army. If Patton reached Bastogne and then pushed on to Houffalize, his tanks could slice the XXXXVII Panzer Corps into two halves, allowing the Allies to encircle the western portion of the Fifth Panzer Army and destroy it piecemeal. Bastogne would inevitably hold out until Patton reached it, and the town would provide Patton with a springboard for launching more American forces into the heart of the German offensive. Now that the battle for Bastogne was basically lost, von Lüttwitz had only one last option—to try to keep Patton from reaching the town.81
As he finished the last morsels of his meal and placed his monocle back in his eye socket to review the latest written reports thrust into his hand by a nearby staff officer, von Lüttwitz knew he was not the only high-ranking Wehrmacht general who could foresee an impending disaster. What they decided to do over the next few days as Wacht am Rhein ran out of steam would determine their careers, futures, and probably their lives. One thing was for sure: Capturing Bastogne, for now, seemed an impossibility, an opportunity that had quickly vanished, much like the foggy weather, the fuel in so many panzer tanks, the chance for a peaceful Christmas, and the lives of so many German soldiers.
1900 hours, Monday, 25 December 1944
Headquarters, 115th Panzergrenadier Regiment
The heights near Isle-la-Hesse, south of Bastogne
Making plans to continue Wacht am Rhein mattered little to a distraught Colonel Maucke. He had lost one-third of his men. He had tried to warn Kokott that the attack stood a good chance of failure without time and reconnaissance, and he had been proven right. Now his men had died in droves on the snowy fields outside of Bastogne, or burned to death inside their tanks, littering the roads, hills, and farm lots near the Champs–Hemroulle road.
To senior officers like von Manteuffel, von Lüttwitz, and even Kokott, those men were mere numbers. To Maucke those men were his soldiers. Many he had known since Italy. Several hundred men in his 1st Battalion had marched out with eleven tanks that morning, and not one panzer or Panzergrenadier had returned. At sundown, Maucke decided to drive down the Marche road to the heights just west of Isle-la-Hesse to find any survivors. When he reached the heights, gunfire drove him off, just like the hapless Leutnant Gaul earlier.
Discouraged, Maucke could only speculate as to what exactly had befallen his men that fateful Christmas morning. He knew firsthand that the attack had turned into a disaster. He had witnessed most of it that day. He could now see the aftermath as he left his vehicle after returning from his drive down to Isle-la-Hesse. The wounded were stacked up near his command post on a short hill near Givry, the overworked medical officers frantically tending to horrific wounds.
He knew the late and piecemeal arrival of his battalions precluded any advance planning. As he had warned Kokott and protested, he truly knew his unit could not successfully spearhead an attack over ground he had not seen, or take enemy positions that he did not have a clear picture of. All Christmas Eve, Maucke had held back the gnawing feeling that his men would suffer terribly, trying to keep a positive front for his soldiers. By Christmas afternoon, the reports and the lack of contact with any of his 1st Battalion had confirmed his worst fears.82
Now he had to prepare for another assault. He brought up his reserve and visited Major Adam Dyroff at the 3rd Battalion headquarters around 1535 hours. He shifted this 2nd Battalion to Mande Saint-Etienne and received from division a further six assault guns. At 1900 hours, Colonel Kokott arrived to oversee the final preparations. Seeing what was in front of him, Kokott then decided to postpone the attack until the following morning. The Americans had already tried to counterattack that afternoon with negligible results. Kokott doubted another one was in the offing.83
Now Maucke could only wait. He also doubted the Americans would try a counterattack. That would prove fortunate, because there would be little his men could do to fight it off. Surveying the wounded and exhausted men on the hilltop, he could tell there was no real fight left in them. Christmas had brought nothing but defeat and death to his regiment.84
Early evening, Monday, 25 December 1944
101st Airborne Division command post, Heinz Barracks
Bastogne, Belgium
For the division staff of the 101st Airborne Division, Christmas dinner was a welcome diversion from the chaos of Christmas morning. The headquarters men felt that Hitler’s best shot had dropped well short of the target. For the kitchen cooks of the 101st Signal Company, the Christmas festivities had left an indelible mark on the barracks walls in the form of pockmarks from stray rounds. A Christmas meal was prepared for General McAuliffe, Colonel Roberts, and the rest of the staff officers of the division headquarters. Somehow a master sergeant had scrounged up some decorations, and in the center of the square table he erected a makeshift Christmas tree from several spruce branches, tied together. Atop it, he had even placed a paper star.
The staff sat down quietly, still wearing their coats, as if they were waiting to dash out at a moment’s notice. The air seemed filled with a palpable sense of relief, mixed with exhaustion. Their meal, like Chappuis’ and Cassidy’s at Rolle, was paltry. It was ersatz coffee, canned salmon, and biscuits. For dessert, the sergeant had somehow worked a miracle and brought out some lemon meringue pie. A staff photographer snapped a photo to commemorate the historical event. McAuliffe did not even bother to flash a smile. He had too much on his mind, thinking about how close the day’s events had come to spelling disaster for the defenders of Bastogne. As he sat there, brooding, with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes looking down at the table, a nearby explosion rattled the room.
“Let’s get out of here,” General McAuliffe ordered. Hearing the command, the staff hurriedly herded once again toward the cellar. Danahy, still holding his pie in his hand, tried to squeeze through the doorway without losing his dessert, but to no avail. Most of the pie ended up on Danahy’s face, which elicited some chuckles from those present.
It was Christmas night, and they were all still alive. Bastogne had held, and it seemed to all at headquarters that the roughest parts might well be behind them. Earlier, Danahy had compiled his daily roll-up, and it was impressive: The 101st Airborne Division had captured more than six hundred enemy prisoners of war to date. In addition, his intelligence staff estimated that the division had destroyed or damaged 144 tanks and twenty-five half-tracks during the previous week’s worth of fighting.85 More important, relief was on the way. Danahy had spoken with McAuliffe earlier, and he had informed him that Patton’s frontline trace was a thousand yards south of his lines. Because of this and the morning victory, the mood had lifted somewhat since last night. Everyone sensed that the Germans had made their big push, and the 101st had thrown them back. True, Patton had not yet arrived, but he was close, and he was getting closer every hour.86
Throughout the day, McAuliffe had demanded up-to-date information on Patton’s whereabouts, specifically the 4th Armored Division. Earlier, McAuliffe had even sent one of his scout aircraft—a fragile little L4 Piper Cub—aloft to reconnoiter
the battlefield and find it. The pilot, First Lieutenant Ben F. Wright, took off with his copilot, First Lieutenant George Schoneck. They circled the town, cataloging all the various positions, both friendly and enemy. When they returned, Wright marched over from the makeshift airfield to brief the general.
Wright later recalled the incident. “I went to his [McAuliffe’s] headquarters and started on a long dissertation on every position. He said, ‘Hell, I know that! I want to know where the 4th Armored is.’”87
The next day, around 1640 hours, the 326th Parachute Combat Engineers would find the 4th Armored Division and the rest of Patton’s Third Army making their way into Bastogne.88
Supplies were once again air-dropped, and would continue to come in for the next few days until the corridor that Patton had forced his way through was safe enough for trucks and supply vehicles to transit. Soon a train of ambulances drove up from the south and arrived in town to help evacuate the severely wounded. Nothing could have been more appreciated for the overworked medical staff of the division, having done their best with short supplies to treat the wounded under some of the most challenging circumstances. A total of 652 wounded were taken to XII Corps hospitals that day. By the twenty-eighth, more than a thousand stretcher cases would be removed, even as the fighting continued; many men would return to their families alive—a belated Christmas present for many a soldier who might otherwise not have survived the siege.89
True, very few Screaming Eagles would ever admit they needed to be “rescued,” but it is certain that at times the situation in Bastogne grew desperate for the Americans during that Christmas of 1944. The relief was appreciated, and just as Patton had predicted, the linkup with McAuliffe had now put the Americans in a strong position to counterattack and put an end to the German drive. Victory, however, is never so clean-cut. Over the next few days, around the perimeter, the Germans would continue to press the issue and harass the American lines. Both the 502nd and the 1/401st would be involved in stiff combat through January to keep out of German hands the territory they had gained at such a cost on Christmas.
One thing was certain: The men who fought and defended the town agreed that the Christmas Day attack was the pivotal episode of the siege. At no other point did the German forces outside Bastogne hold so many high cards in this bloody high-stakes poker game, and at no time was McAuliffe’s situation as fragile as it was on that weekend of December 23–25.
It took a day or two, but it eventually dawned on the Americans that the major German attempt to take Bastogne had failed. Christmas had brought a present for both the citizens of the town and the American defenders. Patton’s breakthrough was just the gift wrap that made it that much better. The Americans finally realized that the battle that determined Bastogne’s salvation had actually been fought that dark Christmas morning. The Germans had been stopped by the paratroopers, tank destroyer crews, and Cooper’s gunners less than a mile and a half short of McAuliffe’s headquarters. For the men and women who lived through it, for many years afterward they would agree that it was the closest call of the siege and, for so many of them, a Christmas miracle.
For Tony D’Angelo, Larry Vallitta, Morris Klampert, Donald “Moe” Williams, and the other officers and men of the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion, the fighting would continue on into Germany and Austria. The unit, which typically receives little credit for its role in the defense of Bastogne, was honored time and again by McAuliffe and the Screaming Eagles who fought beside them. It was estimated by Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Templeton that at Bastogne, the Hellcats of the 705th managed to destroy thirty-nine German vehicles. The ratio was calculated; basically, for every M18 lost, seven German tanks were put out of action. Templeton himself was awarded the Silver Star for his leadership. Sadly, the battalion would lose its steadfast commander, the man who had drilled them in gunnery back in the States until the 705th were some of the best shots in the ETO—Templeton fell victim to an artillery shell in Germany in March of 1945.90
In his sector, Colonel Allen credited both Love’s TDs and Nancarrow’s engineers with destroying five tanks that morning, some of which, in the poor light, were probably towed troop sleds mistaken for vehicles. For Captain Nancarrow’s brave engineers who dared to take on a Mark IV, each man received a Bronze Star for valor.91
For the 101st Airborne paratroopers and glidermen who had fought side by side with the tank destroyer men, the 705th had earned their overwhelming respect during those bitter December days.92
Likewise, those tough glider-fighters of Allen’s battalion, men like Carmen Gisi, Bob Lott, Robert Bowen, Robert O’Mara, and Robert MacDonald, had played an equally important role in stubbornly fighting inch by inch for the ground northwest of the perimeter. There would be little break for Allen’s battalion, who throughout January would continue to engage in combat with the German forces threatening to once again seize the Marche road. As additional U.S. reinforcements were brought forward to widen the corridor in this area and beat back the German advances, the fighting would get especially bloody in this part of Belgium and Luxembourg during the start of 1945.
And, of course, there had been the contribution of the Army Air Corps, another unsung hero of the Battle of Bastogne. Without the valuable and determined work of the cargo aircraft and fighter-pilots such as Howard Park, the air over Bastogne would have been dominated by the Germans. Worse, the supplies would have never made it through, bad weather or not, and the terrifying firepower of the Allied fighter-bombers would never have reined back the armored tempest trying to strangle the Belgian town.
By the end of 1944 Allied airpower reigned supreme in the skies over Europe and was feared by the Wehrmacht on the ground. Hitler managed to launch one more aerial offensive in January—Operation Bodenplatte, which was a failure—spending the last of the Reich’s valuable Luftwaffe fighters in a frivolous effort to knock back the encroachment of Allied airfields in Belgium and France.
For Ken Hesler, Claude Smith, Victor Garrett, and John Mockabee, as well as the many other members of the 463rd, there was very little Colonel Cooper’s veteran gunners of the 463rd could do to add to their unit battle honors and streamers. After valiant service in Italy and southern France, the 463rd was probably one of the most “blooded” units in the airborne. After the Christmas Day battle, the gunners had the opportunity, as a surely smug John T. Cooper must have enjoyed, of proving to their airborne brothers just what their little guns and steady gun crews could do. Never again would there be doubts from paratroopers as to the tenacity and effectiveness of the 75mm battalions. Like the 705th, the Red Legs of the 463rd, through their disciplined fighting around Bastogne, had garnered the full respect of the Screaming Eagles. In March of 1945, Cooper’s battalion would be formally attached to the 101st Airborne. The “Bastard Battalion” had found a home. The unit would remain so throughout the war, into Germany, and beyond.
For his role, and for the role of the 502nd’s gallant defense of Champs and Rolle that Christmas, “Silent Steve” Chappuis received the Distinguished Service Cross, pinned on his chest by none other than General George S. Patton himself. Patton was reportedly delighted to see the destruction of so much German armor in the fields between Champs and Hemroulle when he toured the battlefield.
Like their brother glider-fighters in the 1/401st, the men of the 502nd continued to hold the line around Bastogne through tough fighting that January. Soldiers like Willis Fowler, who received the Silver Star for his action with the machine gun outside of Champs; Charles Asay; Ted Goldmann; and Schuyler Jackson, who earned a second Silver Star for knocking out the tank near Rolle, continued to hold the area around Champs through the bitter winter weeks until the German effort around Bastogne was completely spent.93
EPILOGUE
“Out of Blood and Death…”
Madame Maus de Rolle spent many quieter years after the war rebuilding her property and walking the peaceful grounds of the ancient château. After that dreadful battle on Christmas, two impish loc
al teenagers, Gaëtan and Thierry de Villenfagne, left Rolle and clambered over the wrecked German tanks. They scrounged some items from two of the StuG IIIs that were stopped near the Dreve de Mande, and found the radio still worked in one of them.
Other family members, including Madame Maus de Rolle’s son, Jean-Michael Maus, collected spent cartridges, rifles, and helmets left over from the Christmas battle. At one point he scavenged several bolt-action Mauser rifles from the inside of the StuG wreck closest to the Lane of Trees. The boys (Gaëtan, Thierry, and Jean-Michael) would go to the forest and shoot the Mausers. Upon returning home, Jean-Michael’s parents would always ask him whether he had heard the sound of gunshots in the woods and whether he knew anything about them. Jean-Michael would, of course, deny that he had heard anything at all.
In 1967, the jig was up. Jean-Michael’s father found the weaponry and, at Madame’s request, dumped the Mausers and several other items down the château well to prevent the children from playing with them. The grand dame was none too happy. Not only did she not want to be reminded of that awful time years ago when both the lives of her family and her property were in jeopardy of being destroyed, but she knew that no good could come from kids playing with weapons that were still highly dangerous.
In 2008, Jean-Michael’s son, Bernard Maus, and some other locals recovered two rusting Mausers, several clips of bullets, and a mortar shell from the well. Maus plans to display the items in a museum he hopes to open one day with Pierre Godeau on the château grounds. It is hoped that the museum and château will serve as a permanent reminder to Americans and Belgians alike of the fierce battle that took place mere yards away—the battle that decided the fate of Bastogne one Christmas so long ago.1
