Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  Chaplain (Kenneth) Engle and I were busy packing when the whole regimental band appeared. They were fighting mad. They had been the butt of constant jibes by the men of the regiment for having missed the operations in Normandy and Holland.

  ‘Father,’ their spokesman said, ‘we have been ordered to stay behind again. We joined the paratroopers because we want to fight in this war.’

  ‘So?’ I said, sensing that they expected me to give them a green light to disobey orders. ‘What can I do about that?’

  ‘We thought you might speak to the Colonel.’

  ‘Speak to the Colonel?’ I replied. ‘He’d throw me out of his office if I bothered him now. Besides, he’s up at Division Headquarters, I’m sure, getting his instructions.’

  ‘Well, then, how about our jumping on some of the trucks when they pull out? This might be our last chance.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. I was on the spot and evaded the question; but at least I didn’t say ‘No!’ They must have guessed that I personally thought the Colonel would be mighty glad to have a few extra men to bolster our thinned-out companies.9

  As the unit commanders began loading their men into the semi-trailer trucks, they pondered the effectiveness of going into combat with under-strength companies and platoons. Another worried about how effective his platoon would be with so many replacements with so little training to fill the voids. At least one of them thought the operation would be of short duration.

  1Lt. Ralph K. Nelson related the normal make-up of a glider infantry company and what was on hand at the time of departure for Bastogne. He recalled:

  Normal strength was 150 men and 5 officers but we had 74 enlisted men and officers in ‘A’ Company to go to Bastogne. Captain Taze R. Huntley, another officer, and half our enlisted men were on pass in Paris, as there was no thought of our being called to the front so soon.

  1Lt. Bernard J. McKearney was another officer with an even more short-handed unit. He relates what “E” Company of the 502nd Parachute Regiment entered the fray at Bastogne with on such short notice: “Aside from the wounded veterans from Holland, all “E” Company men were replacements (63 men). I was the only officer.”

  Platoon sergeant Stanley B. Clever of “G” Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was concerned about the new men who had just been assigned to the company. He wrote:

  Due to our hurried departure from Mourmelon, we were ill-equipped and I know the situation was critical. I wondered how our 50 percent green replacement personnel would respond to their baptism of fire in combat.

  Sgt. Wilson Boback wasn’t certain how the replacements would fit in as the new combat situation began to unfold. He wrote: “I had six men on my roster and didn’t get to know them before we loaded on the trucks.”

  As intelligence officer for 2nd Battalion of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 1Lt. Thomas J. Niland didn’t feel the 101st troops would be going into front line positions at this time. He wrote:

  Our numbers were down and we did not get any replacements for our losses in Holland. Most of us didn’t take this too seriously and thought we were just going to be back-up. We merely thought we got cheated out of some leave time and we would probably be back in Mourmelon within a week or so.

  Though he had gotten his battalion ready for the trip to Bastogne, LTC. John T. Cooper still didn’t know if his troops would be going in as support for the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment. It’s commander was on a trip to England with Brigadier General Gerald Higgins, the assistant commander of the 101st Division. Colonel Harper didn’t know anything about the possibility of an artillery battalion in direct support of his regiment. Cooper describes the situation as the deadline approached:

  Late in the afternoon of the departure date, I finally found Colonel Joe Harper, who just drove up. He had been in England. The 327th was the last regiment out.

  I talked to Colonel Harper about two minutes. He said, ‘Hell yes, I can use a battalion! Just follow my regiment out.’

  Another officer who had accompanied General Higgins and Colonel Harper on the plane from England on the afternoon of December 18 was LTC. Robert Strayer, commander of 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Regiment. He had been in London to attend the wedding of his friend, Colonel Dave Doby, the British officer known as the “Mad Colonel of Arnhem.” The two officers had become good friends at the time 2nd Battalion participated in the extraction of 140 individuals, most of whom were members of the British 1st Airborne Division along with downed airmen and hunted members of the Dutch underground.10

  Colonel Strayer recalls that he presented a rather odd appearance to his men when he caught up to them in the assembly area near Champs:

  I remember quite vividly my entrance into Bastogne-my battalion was on a modified approach march through the town with me in my Class ‘A’ uniform.

  I had been in London attending the wedding of Lt. Col. Dave Doby, an English paratrooper friend of mine when word reached us to get the hell back to Mourmelon immediately. This I did on General Higgins’ plane and my jeep was waiting for me … and away we went.

  As the last of his men from “A” Company of the 502nd Parachute Regiment were boarding their trucks, Captain Wallace A. Swanson had a surprise waiting for him. He wrote:

  As we loaded onto the trailer trucks with all our men in full gear, an interesting sidelight to this situation-my wife and I were expecting and the mailman came running up and said I had a telegram from the States and it was received just as we were loading onto the trucks. The telegram stated that my wife, Jeanne, had given birth to our first child, Wallace, Jr. He was born on December 13 and I received the telegram on the 18th as we were loading out at about six o’clock in the evening. That gave me a whole new outlook on life, how valuable our living and existing in freedom really was.

  Troops of 2nd Battalion of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (identified by helmet markings) load the semi-trailer trucks for the trip to Bastogne.

  One of the smartest moves LTC. John T. Cooper remembers directing in the war was when he followed a hunch that ammunition for his pack howitzers would be in great demand during the campaign so he added to their supply just as the convoys were moving out. He wrote:

  My jeep was number ‘1’ in my column. As we passed the ammo dump I turned and took the whole battalion through with orders to load as much 75mm ammo as we could carry in any vehicle, regardless of how crowded they were.

  The time of departure for the advance party and its components, as well as the order of march for the ten-mile long convoy of the 101st Airborne Division, is as follows:11

  At 1215 on December 18 an advance party consisting of Company ‘B’, 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 101st Reconnaissance Platoon, and a detachment of Division Headquarters left Camp Mourmelon for Werbomont, Belgium. This town was 137 miles from Mourmelon and contact with XVIII Airborne Corps Advance was to be made there. At 1225 General McAuliffe departed for Werbomont and at 1400 the Division proper began motor march with units in the following order: 501st Parachute Infantry (with attached 907th Glider Field Artillery Battalion and Battery ‘B’ 81st Airborne AT Battalion); 81st Airborne AA/AT Battalion, 101st Airborne Signal Company, Division Headquarters, Division Artillery Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 506th Parachute Infantry (with 321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion attached); 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion (less Company ‘B’); 502nd Parachute Infantry (with 1st Battalion of the 401st Glider Infantry as its 3rd Battalion and 463rd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion attached); 326th Airborne Medical Company; 801st Airborne Ordnance Company and the 426th Airborne Quartermaster Company bringing up the rear.

  The strength committed at this time was 805 officers and 11,035 enlisted men.

  This was the first time the Screaming Eagle Division would be going into combat by a different mode of transportation than parachuting from C-47 troop carrier planes or riding in CG-4A Waco and British Horsa gliders. OISE Section Communication Zone was contacted earlier for transportation
which was provided mostly as ten-ton open truck and trailer vehicles with some two-and-a-half ton trucks.

  1Lt. Alfred J. Regenburg had been assigned to “G” Company of the 327th a few days before departure. Earlier, he had served as machine gun officer for the 2nd Battalion. Unless the officers had seats in the cabs of company vehicles, they rode in the backs of the open trucks with enlisted men. He wrote:

  I remember riding for quite some time standing up in a ten-ton truck. Officers were not allowed to ride in the cab because that was for the extra driver. I got a taste of what the enlisted men were going through.

  Captain Wallace Swanson described the crowded conditions for the long ride to Bastogne this way:

  We were loaded on the trucks, probably 50 or more men to a big semi-trailer with high sideboards and we were standing up-no room to lie down-might be able to push enough to let a few men get some rest.

  The situation was so urgent that we travelled all night with head lights blazing. Had the weather broken and the German Air Force spotted us, the results would have been devastating.

  As the convoy moved northeast through the night, with no cover over the heads of the men jammed into the trailers of the large trucks, PFC. Charles Kocourek remembered:

  I looked back toward the rear of the column and all I could see was bright headlights. I remarked to the man next to me that this must be pretty serious—going into combat with all the lights blazing.

  Passing a bottle of champagne around in a crowded truck didn’t help when it came time to seek relief as the trucks roared on and on into the night with few rest stops. PFC. Ewell B. Martin remembered:

  A bottle of champagne I had bought in Rheims tasted green as a gourd. Don’t know whether it was bad or I hadn’t acquired a taste for the finer things of life. In any event, it was passed around and gone in short order. The most vivid memory I have of that ride is being packed into this cattle trailer so tightly that there was no way to move to the back of the truck and every time the five-gallon can we used as a latrine got to me, it was full.

  S/Sgt. Erminio Calderan had been transferred to “I” Company of the 501st Regiment only a week before departure. He didn’t know the men he had been assigned to lead though he had led his platoon in “D” Company through the Normandy and Holland campaigns. Just before the men had loaded onto the trucks, he had asked his signal corporal to step forward so he could be recognized when needed. Calderan worried about the situation throughout the trip. He wrote: “I was scared as hell moving up-not because I was going back into combat but because I was going into combat with a bunch of total strangers.”

  PFC. William R. McMahon remembered there was a violation of U.S. Army regulations on board his truck. He wrote: “While in the trucks we were ordered to load and lock all weapons, something the Army never does on a movement of this kind.”

  An opportunity to get better acquainted with the new men in his squad was a memory of Sgt. Jack Hampton of the long truck ride. He wrote:

  We loaded up and began to move out to our unknown destination which would take us overnight on what was to be a bumpy ten-hour journey. Not many slept and we spent most of the hours speculating on where we were going and what role we would play. We got to know some of the new guys better and we talked about where we were from and what we did before entering the service. You would be surprised what you can learn from a bunch of guys on a ten-hour truck ride in the dark somewhere in France.

  The feeling was different for T/5 Leon Jedziniak, a combat medic headed for his first assignment. He had this recollection of the damp, cold ride to Bastogne:

  I didn’t know anyone around me. They were all strangers to me, as I had just joined the regiment. I was assigned to ‘A’ Company of the 1st Battalion of the 501st before we boarded the trucks for Bastogne.

  For T/5 Owen E. Miller, another medic, late coming off duty for the daily sick call, found most of the men already loaded for departure. Though he was a veteran of both the Normandy and Holland campaigns, he didn’t know any of the men on the truck. However, they were men of his regiment. He wrote:

  I loaded onto a truck that had 506th people on it. I don’t remember which battalion they were from. Captain Joe Warren said he would see me somewhere down the line at our destination. As we left, it was turning dark.

  With the regimental commander in the back seat of the jeep while the driver and Captain Jim Hatch rode in front, the threesome started out ahead of the rest of the 502nd Regiment so they could learn in advance where to position the troops once they arrived. Captain Hatch describes their trip:

  There appeared to be no definite info as to the exact area where the 101st Airborne Division was to locate for deployment let alone the 502nd Regiment. Colonel (Steve) Chappuis told Pat Cassidy he was in charge of the 502nd movement. Since the trucks began to appear, Chappuis and Hatch would move out by jeep ahead in the hope of receiving some positive info regarding our forward assembly area. I don’t know how many personnel realize how poorly Steve Chappuis could handle cold weather since he was raised in the warm parts of Louisiana. The best we could do (Hatch and the driver) was wrap Steve up in GI blankets in the back seat of the jeep. That was the last we heard from him until we came to a road stop later in the night. We spent the night going past units of the 101st and did pretty well until we started running into troops and traffic in the passing lane moving away from the front line positions that had been overrun by the Germans.

  The rest stops were few and far between, but after many hours men were hungry and relief sometimes came from surprising sources. Such was the case for PFC. Robert A. Crowe. He wrote:

  We made a rest stop near a little village in France or Belgium. Ladies from the village came up to our truck with fresh, warm bread and bottles of wine. That sure was good bread!

  PFC. Robert Dunning remembered chatting with one of the truck drivers and also recalled taking advantage of some creature comforts at an unscheduled stop in a small village.

  For the first time I knew the 101st was not going into combat by air. We were now regular ‘straight-leg’ infantry. Our truck drivers were ‘Red Ball.’ One guy said that he was not too thrilled to be hauling 101st Airborne soldiers-’they go into combat areas!’ Ha! He didn’t know the half of it!

  During the almost non-stop drive to Bastogne, one of the lead trucks skidded off the road in a small town and went through a house blocking the road. As far as I know, no one was hurt. Since we could not get around this wreck, we had a short stop.

  Sgt. Gil Morton told us to find shelter as best we could in the local houses. This was great because we were cold. The house that I, Walter Ross, Herb Spence and Jack Manley stayed in was quite nice, as least warm. I’m sure others recall those great big feather ticks. We made good use of them for awhile.

  While serving as executive officer for the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Regiment, Major Richard D. Winters recalled the trip to Bastogne this way:

  As the convoy moved along, my job was to bring up the rear of our section and make sure everyone kept the column closed up and in order. When the convoy would stop, it was my custom to get out of the jeep and walk up and down the line. At one point in this long ride, 2Lt. Ben Stapelfeld, one of our replacement officers for the Bastogne campaign, approached me and asked if he should be doing anything. In answer to his query, I said, ‘Do you see what the men are doing? (They were sleeping.) You do the same. When I need you, I’ll let you know.’ (Ben turned out to be an excellent officer.)

  As mentioned previously, General McAuliffe had left earlier preceding his troops by almost two hours. He was intent on getting to Werbomont so he would have a grasp of the situation and where he would position his troops in the new defense line. With him in the command car were Colonel Harry W.O. Kinnard, his G-3, and aide, 1Lt. Frederic D. Starrett. When they reached Neufchateau, there was a change in plans.12

  At Neufchateau, General McAuliffe was informed by VIII Corps that the Division was attached to VIII Corps with the missi
on of stemming the German offensive in the vicinity of Bastogne. By means of officer guides, the march objective was changed from Werbomont and the Division was to detruck in assembly areas in the vicinity of Mande St. Etienne.

  Just before the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment and its attached units had left for Werbomont, Deputy Commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Gerald J. Higgins and Colonel Joseph Harper, commander of the 327th, had arrived from England. Higgins gathered his gear and sped on forward to catch the leading elements before they reached Werbomont. Before he left Mourmelon, a message had been received alerting the 101st to the change which General McAuliffe had received at Neufchateau.

  Sgt. Steve Koper was driving a jeep in the convoy. During the move he remembers a command car trying to pass him along a very congested highway. He recalled:

  It was very foggy. Suddenly an olive drab vehicle cut in front of me. I think it was a Packard. It was General Higgins. I almost hit him. He was trying to pass the convoy but a column of trucks was coming toward us.

  Captain Jim Hatch of the 502nd remembers there were others in a hurry to get to the head of the convoy. He wrote:

  We had a sedan behind us that was giving us a bad time trying to pass us. I finally got out and went back to see what this fellow’s problem might be. Guess what? It was General Higgins trying to get ahead of everybody since he had received word before he left that the 101st was placed under the command of the VIII Corps which was located in Bastogne and that was to be the assembly area for the 101st units. Needless to say, we let him pass and now we had positive word as to our next higher headquarters and would head straight to Bastogne. This encounter with General Higgins even got Steve out of his roll of blankets to get the latest word from the General. As we proceeded toward Bastogne, we checked with MP’s at crossing sites to ensure they had the correct word as to where to direct 101st units. The MP’s were on the ball and we didn’t find one without the proper directions.