Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  As members of the Intelligence Section of 1st Battalion, PFC. Robert L. Wickham and Pvt. Carl Fechtman were moving along in the lead elements of ‘B’ Company. Wickham has this description of his first encounter with the enemy east of Bastogne on the morning of December 19:

  It was so foggy you couldn’t see 100 feet. We hadn’t gone far when we met a man from the 28th Infantry Division retreating. He had a bazooka which I confiscated, since he obviously had no use for it. He said he had knocked out a tank shortly before and had no more ammo. After begging a round from the ‘B’ Company bazooka man, we continued our march toward the enemy with the lead scout—then me—the second scout—and then Fechtman.

  We were some distance ahead of the rest and I would guess about three-fourths to one mile from the city of Bastogne when a couple of Recon jeeps from the 101st Division HQ went sailing by us and I remember thinking, ‘Hell, if those guys are going out like that, the Germans can’t be as close as we were led to believe!’

  I had not seen a map of the area so we didn’t know what we were heading into. On our right was a railroad track and just beyond that, a creek. On our left was a hill. I had noticed that the railroad and road were very close with just a small gravel ridge between them. Ahead of us the road appeared to turn right and I suspected it would cross the tracks. I thought, too, that I would have a better view if I walked along the ridge, which was where I was when the jeeps went by.

  We were probably 100 to 150 feet from the curve in the road when the first jeep went around it and right then all hell broke loose. A tank was sitting just around the corner and it opened fire demolishing the first jeep and the second jeep came back in reverse faster than it had passed us just a moment before. I think he escaped unharmed but bullets were buzzing by so thick that I’ve wondered how any of us managed to get out.

  In nothing flat, I had my shovel out and a hole dug in that hard gravel and was joined by the lead scout.

  One of the members of the 101st Division Reconnaissance Platoon who was part of the two-jeep group leading the forward elements of 1st Battalion of the 501st toward Neffe was PFC. John B. Moore. He describes what happened to their small group:

  A mission was bestowed upon us to go out one of the highways to make contact. The critique informed us the enemy was out two to three miles but moving fast. I was in the first jeep in that recon patrol along with Chuck Tyler (Cincinnati) jeep driver; Tony Benedetto (radio operator) out of Chicago; Rudy Brabec (Browning automatic) also from Chicago. I told Tony to take my front seat in the jeep as he was carrying the bulky radio on his back. I sat on ammunition boxes in the rear of the jeep cradling an M-1 rifle. We made contact only five hundred yards down the road from Bastogne.

  There were two pieces of high ground with German machine guns mounted on each. They let us come in and then opened fire. Tyler and Benedetto were killed and Brabec and I were wounded.

  I managed to crawl back to a medic and got a shot of morphine, then on to an aid station for a number of days.

  MAP 2—Deployment of 501st

  Out on the point with “B” Company scouts, PFC. Robert Wickham continued his description of the action. He was certain an enemy tank had fired on the recon jeep and was now headed their way. He added to his story:

  That tank had come around the corner and was approaching cautiously. I asked the man to load my bazooka and we’d get that tank. He said, ‘It’s all set to go, don’t miss him!’ I had never fired one of those things and told him so. He said he had so there was no question at all who should give it a try. WHAM! The damn shell hit about two feet in front of the tank. For some reason, I can’t imagine why, the tank stopped. He may have thought he’d hit a mine, but we didn’t touch him. He was later knocked out and our main line of defense developed from this spot. To the right of 1st Battalion, across the creek and flat area was the 3rd Battalion and up the hill to our left was the 2nd Battalion, all of us eventually joined up.

  As executive officer for 1st Battalion Headquarters Company, 1Lt. Frank L. Fitter was serving as company commander in the absence of Captain Harry Howard who was still in Paris along with several other officers of the company. Before departure from the assembly area at Mande St. Etienne, the men were fed breakfast and then were on their way. Fitter describes the move and the first enemy contacts:

  Being a battalion headquarters company, our machine gun sections were attached to rifle companies. I remember the automatic weapons fire from the right side of the road much closer than we had expected. Our company was the second in the column behind ‘B’ Company. Not long after the enemy patrol was silenced, the recon jeeps passed through and were fired on a short distance in front of us. One was destroyed; the other returned post haste. The rifle companies immediately went into defensive positions. Mortars were set up and Battalion established a command post in a cove off the road where road material had been quarried.

  A memory of a friend being lost in the first enemy encounter made up much of Pvt. Carl R. Anderson’s recollections. He wrote:

  Wayne A. Calloway was 21 years old, from Grants Pass, Oregon, and had married a high school sweetheart just prior to going overseas. He had jumped with the 1st Battalion at Heeswijk, Holland on 9-17-44. Calloway did not have a rifle because he had turned it in for ordnance while at Mourmelon. Thus, when we moved out, he, not having a weapon, was given a bazooka. When the 1st Battalion received fire from the Germans near Neffe in the fog, the call came for ‘Bazookamen forward!’ Calloway jogged to the head of the column accompanied by Mourmelon replacement Cpl. Stanley Kaminski from Buffalo, New York. They disappeared into the fog and were never seen again alive. (Sometime around New Year’s Eve, word came from the unit that took over the 1st Battalion front at Neffe that Calloway and Kaminski were found in some woods near Neffe. They both had been shot with their hands tied behind their backs and their boots had been removed. Thus, they had been captured, hands tied and then killed while being held as prisoners of war.)

  As soon as the first enemy fire was received, the two forward companies, “B” and Battalion Headquarters, spread out in defensive positions on either side of the road. Battalion was in position of overall command. Operations sergeant Chester Brooks relates how he was directed to get a machine gun forward to provide supporting fire:

  I was with the Battalion command group when whoever was in command turned to me and said, ‘Get a machine gun in that woods over there on our left.’ There was nothing but bare ground between a ditch our men had jumped into when the firing started and the woods. I grabbed the first machine gun crew I could find and pointed to the woods and said, ‘Get your gun over there!’ Cpl. Tom Maitland had the crew and he told me later that he thought I was nuts.

  This is what he told me when I visited with him in 1958: ‘I grabbed my machine gun and told my men to follow me. I was so mad I didn’t even take normal precautions but moved swiftly to the barbed wire fence above the ditch. I grabbed a strand and the machine gun opened up on me. It snipped the barbed wire so it hung loose in my hand. I dropped to the frozen ground and sidled back downward to cover. A few minutes later, I heard a horrendous scraping sound and looked below me and one of my men had taken off his helmet and was trying to scrape a hole in the frozen ground.

  As mentioned earlier by 1Lt. Frank Fitter, members of the 1st Battalion machine gun teams were interspersed in the line company formations as they moved eastward. PFC. John Trowbridge was one of those gunners. He wrote:

  I hadn’t noticed the fog so much as we walked through town, but most of the countryside was invisible. Perhaps that’s why our 1st Battalion, led by the Recon Platoon, veered to the right at a fork in the road and headed for Marvie.

  Not long after being re-routed back to the Longvilly road, whether by chance or design, our squad found itself about 100 or so yards behind the forward elements and began to receive fire from the direction of Neffe. It was the first hostility I had encountered since September 21st in Holland.

  Colonel Ewell’s jeep had come
to a stop about ten feet in front of me, at the sounds of resistance. I had never been that near to the Colonel, nor did I remember hearing his voice before. His calm, cool composure had a reassuring effect on those near him. I can’t remember his exact words, as he spoke on his radio, but it meant the same as ‘Hold right where you are!’

  To the left of the road was a slope rising gradually to a ridge running parallel to the road in an east-west direction and about 30 yards to our front was a house, built into a cove on the left side of the road, protected on the east and west by the terrain. We fell off the road into this cove and set up our machine gun, facing up the slope to the north. We were told that ‘B’ Company was deployed to our left front.

  There was a grove of trees on the ridge about 100 yards to our left front which we assumed was under ‘B’ Company’s control, but we were getting small arms fire and a great deal of shelling on our position. Someone ordered a machine gun up there to clear out the trees. I knew before McDonald yelled that it would be our gun.

  We started up the slope on our bellies; Rasmussen on my right, Webb and Thornton bringing up the rear, when ‘Jerry’ opened up with a machine gun. I saw the dirt exploding between Rasmussen’s fingers as he said, ‘Let’s get the hell out’a here!’ We slid back down much faster than we went up. I guess we scared them out, because we weren’t fired on again that day.

  Sgt. Chester Brooks continued his story, wondering what was happening to their front. As operations sergeant, he needed to be in the know.

  However, when things seemed to stabilize, I remember Colonel Ewell came up in a jeep to where we were and I asked him what the situation was and he cooly outlined all that had taken place.

  One memory of the Bastogne fighting stays in the mind of PFC. Lawrence C. Lutz who was up front with the forward elements of “B” Company. He wrote:

  Just west of Neffe, we were challenged by machine gun fire and we hit the ground. Immediately, a fire fight developed and, after some time, we were ordered to dig in with the 3rd Platoon of ‘B’ Company on the left of the Bastogne-Longvilly road. We took some casualties in the fighting and one incident in particular stays with me all these years. Sgt. George Adomitis jumped out of his foxhole screaming like he was badly hit. A couple of the troopers knocked him down and shortly after, they took him away. Later I learned that he had died. I was told that Adomitis’ mind had taken all the combat it could and that he stood up to end it all. This was just the start of the killing and destruction to take place in the next month.

  Pvt. Roy L. Biffle had come to the 101st when they were in Normandy as a replacement and made the rest of the campaigns. He was in on the initial action on the road to Neffe. He wrote:

  We made contact with the Germans at Neffe. A machine gun opened up and wounded several before we could get off the road. Ken Casler and I dug in on the ridge and Ken got hit with shrapnel (not seriously) but he had been hit in the shoulder in Holland so it shook him up some.

  As a member of the 81mm mortar platoon of 1st Battalion, PFC. George A. Ricker’s responsibility was to furnish heavy weapons support to the rifle company commanders. He describes the early morning move toward Neffe:

  It was foggy, visibility zero. We came under automatic fire at day light. Although I do not recall the name of the fellow on point or later, I do remember talking with him after the action was over. Since visibility was so poor, he carried an armed grenade in his hand and when within ten feet of a German machine gun emplacement, he escaped by tossing the grenade. I was with T/5 John Riszmiller in the ditch when he took a slug through the wrist.

  T/5 Leon Jedziniak had been assigned to “A” Company as a medic just as the men were boarding the trucks in Mourmelon. As a replacement, he knew none of the men on board and now he was on his way to his first combat mission. He was called on by Chaplain Francis Sampson to go to the aid of a wounded man only a few hours after detrucking. Jedziniak wrote:

  Just outside of Bastogne, the unit was pinned down by machine gunfire. We crawled to a ravine by a viaduct that had a railroad track. The call ‘Medic up front!’ came back. I learned a wounded man was lying in an exposed Position beside the railroad tracks about 75 yards ahead. Father Sampson, a rifleman, and myself advanced to Where the wounded man was lying.

  This man was evacuated to the aid station and field hospital. The 101st hospital was overrun by the Germans. A Citation for a Bronze Star Medal describing the above action more thoroughly accompanied Jedziniak’s story. The citation reads as follows:

  On 19 December 1944, in the vicinity of Bastogne, Belgium, Technician 5th Grade Leon Jedziniak learned of a wounded man lying in an exposed position who was reported beyond help. Realizing that the man might have a slight chance of survival, Technician 5th Grade Jedziniak and the Chaplain advanced seventy-five yards under sniper and tank fire to where the wounded man was lying. Finding the wounded man unconscious, they dragged him back in the face of very heavy enemy fire, which necessitated crawling. Although one bullet went through his jacket, Technician 5th Grade Jedziniak continued. Another bullet kicked dust into his eyes temporarily blinding him. He and the Chaplain succeeded in bringing the man to a safe Position from which he was evacuated.

  One of the actions Chaplain Francis Sampson described in a book of his wartime experiences was the rescue of the wounded soldier as the 501st moved toward its objective on the 19th of December. He wrote:18

  I attached myself, for the time being, to a company just a mile or so east of the city. A Soldier told me that there was a man a couple hundred yards down the road in a culvert by the railroad tracks. He was wounded and had called out for a priest (a rare request under such circumstances, for a man just doesn’t count on a priest being on hand everywhere). I asked the soldier to take me to him and grabbed an aid man to help me. A German tank had been knocked out on the road between us and the wounded man, but a German was still manning the machine gun on the fence, he let go at us. The soldier leading us had the upper bone of his arm shattered by a bullet. We all three took a dive in that ditch by the railroad track. The wounded soldier pointed out with his good arm where the man I was looking for was located. The medic and I went to him. We were pinned down by cross-fire. I lay down beside the wounded man, heard his confession and anointed him. He uttered not a word of complaint but expressed his thanks. He felt everything was going to be all right now. The aid man indicated with a shake of the head that the man didn’t have a chance, but we carried him back to our position and some other men took him to the aid station. I never heard whether he lived or not; he was not from our regiment.

  After a period of time when patrol activity determined what 1st Battalion was facing, Major Bottomly told Colonel Ewell he felt an enemy force of two tanks and two platoons of infantry faced him.

  The 57mm anti-tank guns of “B” Battery of the 81st Anti-Tank Battalion which had accompanied 1st Battalion, could not be brought into play because the road to Neffe ran straight for the last half mile. The enemy tanks had that situation covered.

  2nd Battalion Moves Forward

  At 1000, Colonel Ewell became convinced his 1st Battalion was stopped so he decided to bring the rest of his regiment out of Bastogne. The 2nd Battalion had to fight its way through the traffic jam of the retreating forces during the next hour. Ewell ordered them on to an assembly area on the reverse side of a gently sloping ridge north of 1st Battalion. They would be in position on Major Bottomly’s left.

  Colonel Ewell then directed 2nd Battalion to move from its assembly area and seize Bizory. The objective was reached by 1203; no opposition other than some sporadic cannon fire from tanks. He then attempted to seize Mageret from that direction hoping to trap the opposing tanks facing his troops. He also directed Major Sammie N. Homan, commander of 2nd Battalion to send one of his companies to seize the patch of woods directly north of Mageret. This forest plantation was of some very tall spruce trees. Ewell noted that the long ridge running across the evergreen trees dominated Mageret in the valley below. He f
elt that by putting one company at that height might cover the approach to Mageret.

  Major Homan started down the road from Bizory to Mageret but his road march ended quickly. Troops from the Reconnaissance Platoon of the German 26th Volksgrenadier Division were already firmly entrenched in foxholes at the top of Hill 510. Homan took this first setback almost without loss; the enemy wasn’t so fortunate. They had left the cover of their foxholes and were coming over the crest when the 2nd Battalion mortars and Nelson’s artillery caught them with a full barrage. 2nd Battalion troopers related seeing many of the opposing force fall during the barrage. The survivors raced back to the shelter of their dug- in positions.

  As the S-2 intelligence officer for 2nd Battalion in the Normandy and Holland operations, 1Lt. Bill Sefton was always more aware of the bigger picture of the 501st Regiment when it was in action than he was now as a platoon leader in “D” Company on this first day near Bastogne. He has this description of the move up into the Bizory area:

  It was a very foggy morning with visibility limited to a few hundred yards. ‘Easy’ and ‘Fox’ Companies were ahead of us in the column. Just short of the village of Bizory, we passed a very lonesome platoon of combat engineers dug into a forward slope. To say they were delighted to see the 101st moving past them would be an understatement of impressive proportions.