Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  As the two chaplains of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment moved northeast toward Bastogne in Fr. Francis Sampson’s jeep, they noted the congestion with vehicles going both ways. Sampson describes the confusion which resulted when a convoy fleeing the Bastogne area was using both lanes of the narrow highway:

  A truck company commander, leading his forty or fifty trucks westward had jammed the division’s ten-mile long convoy trying to get to Bastogne in a hurry. When General Higgins, our division deputy commander ordered the captain to take his trucks off the road, he refused. General Higgins pulled his forty-five out and ordered the captain once more. This time he saw the wisdom of prompt obedience. Emergency called for emergency measures.13

  Once General McAuliffe arrived at Bastogne, he went immediately to the Corps headquarters to get the latest word on enemy moves. He left his G-3, Colonel Harry W.O. Kinnard, to be briefed by the skeletal staff of VIII Corps Headquarters while he back-tracked along the highway making plans with his aide, 1Lt. Frederic Starrett, as to the site of the Division HQ and the assembly areas for the infantry regiments and artillery battalions that were following behind. Journalist Fred McKenzie of the Buffalo Evening News had been in Mourmelon at the time of the alert and decided to go along. He wrote:14

  Taking Starrett along, the two rode back into the countryside through which they had come. McAuliffe pointed out an expanse of fields and said he wanted the troops assembled there. A rural settlement of a score or so of buildings situated along a single narrow street off the main highway would be a focal point of this gathering. It was Mande St. Etienne, a village three miles west of Bastogne.

  The General then proceeded to designate the bivouac of each of the Division’s units. He placed the four infantry regiments so that Ewell’s 501st would be near the outskirts of Bastogne, Sink’s 506th in line behind it, Chappuis’ 502nd next in the order of assembly and Harper’s 327th the farthest westward in the Mande St. Etienne vicinity.

  As aide to General McAuliffe, it became Lt. Starrett’s responsibility to see that the regiments were directed to their proper assembly areas. He had also found a more suitable building to use as Division Headquarters than the farmhouse which had first been selected. Fred McKenzie continued15

  Starrett’s show of initiative had not ended with finding a new location for the C.P. A Signal Company crew had arrived in Kinnard’s absence and the lieutenant put it to work stringing telephone lines from the schoolhouse to the Corps headquarters and regimental bivouac areas.

  The wire-stringing detail was working at the side of the main road when a jeep carrying Colonel Julian Ewell came along in the darkness. Traveling well ahead of his 501st Regiment, Ewell had turned at the Sprimont road junction, but he was not sure where he was supposed to go from there. He stopped to talk to the wire party.

  ‘You’re on the right track, Colonel’ said one of the crew after Ewell had identified them as members of the 101st Airborne and explained he was looking for headquarters. ‘This line comes right straight out of the Division C.P.’

  Ewell followed the wire until he reached the schoolhouse. From there General Higgins whisked him off to Bastogne for a conference with General McAuliffe.

  As each of the truck loads of troops arrived at their assembly areas west of Bastogne, they were cautioned to treat the situation as a combat action. S/Sgt. Vincent Occhipinti remembered:

  All the trucks, in the portion of the convoy we were in, pulled into a field and we were told to get off. Every truck load was alerted in somewhat the following manner: ‘No one knows what the situation is, the enemy can be anywhere; keep all-around protection and move out slowly and carefully.’ WELCOME TO BASTOGNE!

  If anyone was sleepy because of the arrival time (approximately 0400 hours), the words describing the unknown situation and that the enemy could be almost anywhere was all that was needed to alert everyone and made moving about as quiet as possible.

  Very few people in the ten-mile long convoy of the 101st Airborne Division on its move to the Ardennes front were even aware that a change had been made in the assignment of the Screaming Eagle Division. Platoon sergeant John H. Taylor certainly wasn’t privy to the information, nor did he know that the Division had been headed for Werbomont. He recalled:

  We arrived at 0400 in the morning and unloaded. Didn’t know exactly where. We set up a perimeter defense. We knew generally that we were in the Ardennes. More troops were coming in all the time. We could hear artillery and machine gun fire in the distance. It was rumored we were in Luxembourg. We were, but it was the Province of Luxembourg in Belgium.

  Upon arrival in the 506th regimental assembly area, Pvt. Charles Cram was put on platoon guard duty at a small farmyard open stable area. He felt he was too excited to sleep anyway. He wrote: “At daylight I asked a young Belgian boy the name of the place where we had stopped and he told me that it was Champs.”

  It was already daylight when the 463rd Parachute Artillery Battalion, under the leadership of LTC. John T. Cooper, arrived near Mande St. Etienne. As they were directed to their assigned assembly area, Colonel Cooper had a surprise waiting for him. He wrote:

  When we arrived at the crossroad to Bastogne, to my surprise, Colonel Tom Sherburne was in the middle of the road directing traffic. He told me to go toward Bastogne and pull off the road some place and wait for orders.

  The infantry regiments had arrived earlier and their men and vehicles were scattered about in the various assigned fields and farmyards waiting for their assignments and orders to move out.

  As the 463rd Artillery Battalion had followed the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment to Bastogne, they were the last major unit to arrive on the scene of future action. It was already daylight, PFC. Kenneth Hesler describes the scene:

  Dawn was gray, dreary, cold and wet. As the convoy stopped once again, troops poured gasoline into puddles along the roadway and warmed themselves or tried to heat canteen cups of water for coffee over flaming C-ration cans partly filled with gasoline-soaked gravel. Small groups of infantry, mostly from the 28th Division, walked single-file along the roadway from Bastogne. Occasionally, someone from the Battalion would shout to them, ‘Hey, you fellas are going the wrong way!’

  As soon as the troops had been unloaded from the trucks, the officers were summoned to battalion and regimental staff meetings. Squad leaders and platoon sergeants pointed out to their officers that many men in their commands were ill-equipped to go forward into combat. Such was the recollection of S/Sgt. Erminio Calderan of “I” Company of the 501st Parachute Regiment. He recalled:

  We bivouacked in an open field and the next morning we left the pup tents standing and pulled out. Only the men who were fully equipped moved forward. Those who needed equipment just fell out. We took the equipment from the green recruits and gave it to the veterans who needed it.

  PFC. Donald Woodland had taken a demotion without prejudice when he came on the scene at Mourmelon and joined the men of “A” Company of the 501st Regiment. Old timers in units resented the arrival of replacements who had stripes unless they were regular army vintage and Woodland was not one of the old experienced soldiers.

  Upon arriving in the assembly area near Mande St. Etienne, Woodland was to find out he wouldn’t be moving out with the members of his battalion or company. He wrote of his experience as the troops readied to move forward to their assigned portion of the defense perimeter:

  At 0600, the 1st Battalion was preparing to move out of its assembly area. However, before the move, there was some organizing to do within the company. An inventory of the weapons was taken and machine guns moved around so that each platoon had no more than two light machine guns (the TO provided for three). The shortage of men with rifles was also reported. This was of major concern to Captain Stanfield Stach and, once he had communicated that fact to Battalion, he received orders that no man was to go into action without a weapon. I was one of the enlisted men who was without a rifle. I did have a clandestine pistol, one clip and a pocketful
of .45 caliber ammunition that I begged from a corporal with a submachine gun.

  Platoon sergeant Lyle Chamberlain huddled with the squad leaders or those who were soon to be squad leaders. The decision was made then and there who would lead, who would be the scouts and who would man the machine guns. The first indication that I would be left behind was when Sgt. Willard C. McIntire came over to where I was reclining on the ground and gave me the word. He also relieved me of my basic load of M-1 ammunition. Finally, another man came over and asked me for my helmet. His helmet liner webbing was broken so there was no support. We exchanged helmets.

  Some of the troopers disobeyed the order to stay behind. Having missed the earlier missions because he was a regimental band member, PFC. Julius J. Schrader wasn’t going to miss his first opportunity to get into the actions of his regiment at Bastogne. Schrader describes how ill-equipped he was on the 19th of December:

  My gear included a helmet steel without a liner, a bayonet but no rifle and no entrenching tool. Fortunately, I did have an overcoat which was to be much needed in the days to come.

  We were constantly told that we would be supplied further down the road as we marched toward Bastogne. Of course, the promised equipment never materialized. As we marched out of Bastogne, I found an M-1 rifle along the side of the road with its muzzle plugged with mud.

  Another replacement with “A” Company of the 501st was Pvt. Christopher C. McEwan who has this memory of the above assembly and departure for the MLR to be defended by his unit:

  When we got to the wooded area we were told, ‘Any troopers who didn’t have any weapons would stay behind until weapons were brought up to them.’ Though I didn’t have a weapon, I went with the rest of the troopers. I have wondered how those troopers who stayed behind made out. I later acquired a light, air-cooled machine gun.

  CHAPTER 4

  DECEMBER 19

  First Encounters

  The three Army units which would have the major roles in the defense of Bastogne had all received their marching orders the previous day. The preliminary actions involving the 101st Airborne Division have already been described.

  On the first day of the German winter offensive the 10th Armored Division was in a rest area at Remeling, France. It received orders from 12th Army Group to proceed to an assembly point near the city of Luxembourg. The 10th Armored closed in on Merl, Luxembourg at 2155 on the 17th of December. On the following morning, Combat Command B was detached for services with VIII Corps in the Bastogne area. It took the road through Arlon to Bastogne with its commander, Colonel William L. Roberts, arriving in advance of his troops. By coincidence, he arrived at the headquarters of General Middleton about the same time as General McAuliffe.

  Colonel Roberts was asked by the Corps commander how many teams he could form from his force. Roberts responded with “three.”

  Middleton then ordered Roberts to move his teams without delay, once they reached Bastogne. One team was to go to the southwest to Wardin, a second was to go to the vicinity of Longvilly and the third team was to move quickly to Noville. This third team, under Major William R. Desobry, was told to “hold at all costs.”

  The 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion was in position at Kohlscheid, Germany about 60 miles north of Bastogne when it received its orders to move to Bastogne. Lt. Colonel Clifford D. Templeton’s tank destroyers were on the road by 2240 but had to detour around Liege and Houffalize—the enemy was already around Houffalize. Some of Templeton’s forces had to fight off small enemy units roving in the area. At the same time, the 705th troops were handicapped in their movements by highways jammed with fleeing troops. After setting up a blocking force against the marauding enemy forces, Templeton moved on toward Bastogne using the Larouche-Champlon-Bastogne road and arrived at his destination at 2030 on the night of the 19th.

  The first two combat teams of the 10th Armored Division, “Cherry” under Lt. Colonel Henry T. Cherry and “O’Hara” under Lt. Colonel James O’Hara, got through Bastogne and headed east before darkness fell. It was already dark when the third team under Major William Desobry began its move toward Noville. Desobry was told by Colonel Roberts that it was urgent that he get to Noville before the enemy forces reached that point.

  As with the 101st troops, which would arrive on the scene on the morning of the 19th, Desobry was handicapped by the lack of maps. However, the move was completed before daylight and the troops quickly set up road blocks and the tanks moved into strategic locations on the heights and in concealment near buildings within the village.

  A few miles to the east and southeast of Noville, German armored forces trapped a large unit consisting of tanks, half-tracks, trucks and jeeps. The history of the 101st Airborne Division, Rendezvous with Destiny16 has the following description of a unit from the 9th Armored Division, along with a small reconnaissance force from Team Cherry being trapped between Mageret and Longvilly:

  The line of tanks, tank destroyers, guns, half-tracks and vehicles stalled along the road made a perfect target for the Germans who got twenty tank destroyers and some 88’s onto the targets. Each wrecked or stalled vehicle increased the jam and in a few hours the road was littered with burning or destroyed American armor and vehicles. The survivors, meanwhile, fought their way into Mageret.

  The following is a portion of a letter written by a Lt. Rockhammer of the German Army dated December 22, 1944 when the actions seemed to be going in their favor:17

  This time we are 1,000 times better off than you at home. You cannot imagine what glorious hours and days we are experiencing now. It looks as if the Americans cannot withstand our important push. Today we overtook a fleeing column and finished it. We overtook it by taking a back road through the woods to the retreat lane of the U.S. vehicles then, just as on a maneuver, we pulled up along the road with 80 Panthers. Then came the endless column, driving in two files, side by side, hub, to hub, filled to the brim with soldiers and then a concentrated fire from 60 guns and 120 MG’S. It was a glorious bloodbath, vengeance for our destroyed homeland. Our soldiers still have the old zip. Always advancing and smashing everything. The snow must turn red with American blood. Victory was never as close as it is now. The decision will soon be reached. We will throw them into the ocean, the arrogant, big-mouthed apes from the new world. They will never get into our Germany. We will protect our wives and children from enemy domination.

  If we are to preserve all tender and beautiful aspects of our lives, we cannot be too brutal in the deciding moments of this struggle.…

  It is possible that Lt. Rockhammer is exaggerating slightly as to the American losses. The troops of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment were to be in action in the Mageret area very soon. The Rendezvous with Destiny quotation and Lt. Rockhammer’s description may be narratives of the same incident.

  The 501st is Committed

  The 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, led by Colonel Julian J. Ewell, spearheaded the ten-mile long convoy of the 101st Airborne Division to its assembly areas near Mande St. Etienne. The “Geronimos” were assigned the fields nearest Bastogne. As a result, Colonel Ewell’s force got the assignment to “go out and find the enemy.”

  As mentioned in an earlier chapter, very few maps of the Werbomont and Bastogne areas were available to Division. As Ewell prepared to send his men out at 0600, only a few maps had been obtained from VIII Corps headquarters and twenty of these went to the 1st Battalion Headquarters and to the line company commanders. One map, scaled 1:100,000 went to Lt. Colonel Clarence F. Nelson, commander of the 907th Glider Field Artillery Battalion, which continued to serve as the heavy weapons support for the 501st. This map was all he had from which to prepare his firing data. His staff very quickly prepared sketches for his forward observers. The sketches showed the key features such as crossroads, bridges, woods and towns. These were numbered. The observers knew where the 105mm snub-nosed howitzers were located and so the artillery operation was coordinated.

  As 1st Battalion moved out, its commande
r, Major Raymond Bottomly, was directed not to put out flank patrols as this would delay movement to the front. Contact with the enemy was expected to take place east of Mageret. Long range sightings of the enemy would be difficult with ground fog limiting visibility.

  When 1st Battalion moved out from the assembly area and headed east of Bastogne, the S-2 Section men were assigned to the various line companies of the 1st Battalion. PFC. Robert I. Wickham remembers his assignment:

  MAP 1

  Deployment of troops on the first day!

  Sgt. Grandin Johnson assigned me, along with another S-2 man, to ‘B’ Company. I didn’t yet have ammo for my carbine or a magazine to put in it. Lt. Stevens came up with a box of ammo for me but still no magazine, which meant that I’d have to use it single shot. (From the stories I heard later, it seems I was pretty well equipped.) We reported to ‘B’ Company and headed out with their scouts to meet the enemy.

  Two jeep loads of men from the Reconnaissance Platoon of the 101st Airborne Division were leading the column. The artillery observers and liaison personnel accompanied the lead unit in the march. The artillery weapons would be positioned about five hundred yards east of Bastogne at the site of the present Mardasson Monument honoring the men who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

  Colonel Ewell left his headquarters in Bastogne an hour after the troops had departed. He found the column moving down the wrong road. The Recon jeeps had made the turn toward Marvie and were headed south. Colonel Ewell recalled the troops by radio. 1st Battalion did an about face and ‘B’ Company passed through the trailing elements, returned to the intersection and swung right onto the Longvilly road. The Recons had to race through the entire column to get back into their lead position.