Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  The convoy arrived at the pre-designated area near Bastogne about 10:00 a.m. I was not oriented regarding the area’s location in relation to the larger radius.

  Soon after arrival, our tent crews hoisted the canvas, mess tent, headquarters tent, surgical tent, ward tents, the works. Meanwhile, during the feverish set-up activity, gun fire was to be heard to the east of us. Most of us had a hunch that we were in vulnerable terrain. Our location was at a crossroads, probably south and west of Bastogne. Our site was totally exposed, no cover, just open space.

  As one of the surgeons who had worked long and hard in the 326th field hospitals in both Normandy and Holland, Captain Willis P. McKee was very uncomfortable with the positioning of the field unit so far from the 101st Division, west of Bastogne. He remembered they were receiving casualties by early afternoon. He wrote:

  Before long, we were receiving cesualties. Sometime around noon, Major (William) Barfield, our CO, left to find an evacuation hospital to which we could evacuate our casualties. Captain Ed. C. Yeary was then in charge. We were aware the civilians were passing our installations with their possessions and assumed that something was pushing them. About 1600 hours, I went into Division HQ and asked permission for us to move into Bastogne, explaining that I thought we were in danger of being overrun and that Division would then be without 3rd echelon medical care. We went into the war room and, after considerable discussion, General McAuliffe said, ‘Go on back, Captain—you’ll be all right.’

  The evacuation team sent to 1st Battalion of the 506th Regiment was busy shortly after the opposing troops began exchanging gun fire. PFC. Robert Barger describes how the 1st Battalion surgeon was among the early casualties suffered that afternoon. He wrote:

  There was a very hectic fire fight. I know that upon occasion I walked right by some German soldiers. We set up an aid station in a house. Captain Warren was hit and I evacuated him back to the 326th Field Hospital, west of Bastogne. That trip was made at 1500 hours.

  Later on, I was with the chaplain of the 506th and we had loaded two litter cases up on the jeep and about that time a barrage came in and the chaplain and I covered the two litter cases with our bodies until it got so hot we hit the deck behind a brick wall. I guess it wasn’t funny but I said, ‘Father, will you please pray for us?’ He said, ‘Barger, I’ve got enough to just pray for myself, you’ve got to help a bit.’

  About 1700 hours, it was beginning to get dark and we had to move these patients back to the medical company. The regiment was in a poor position and they would most likely have to pull back. There were three jeeps. I had a driver and four walking wounded. The third had a driver and two walking wounded. We took off.

  MAP 6

  Crossroads “X”—Site of Division Field Hospital

  Captain Gordon L. Block had been serving with the 121st General Hospital in England where he had asked for a transfer to the airborne troops. His first move was to the 17th Airborne Division in training in England and then to the 18th Airborne Corps in France. From there he was sent to the 326th Medical Company at Mourmelon in mid-December. After only a few days to become acquainted with the medical personnel, he was enroute to Bastogne. In a letter he wrote in 1945, Block gave a brief description of his experience with the 326th.39

  We moved into our assigned position-dug our foxholes and set up our hospital tents. I was sleeping, not too peacefully, in my hole that night when the Jerries suddenly opened up on us with ‘burp’ guns. The firing stopped. I reached the evacuation tent. Machine guns opened up again—tracers tore through the canvas. The wounded lying on stretchers groaned as some were hit a second time with fragments. I remember thinking—Son, you’ve had it now—what’s it going to feel like—come on, let’s get it over with. Again, the firing ceased. I crawled to the main tent to find out what was going on. The rank was flat on its collective face. Discreetly, I assumed a prone position. Again, machine gun tracers over our heads—we surrendered. Several vehicles were burning and the road was lined with tanks and armored cars. A great victory—capture of an unarmed medical company!

  The attack on the field hospital, west of Bastogne, was the third time that T/4 Emil Natalle had witnessed wholesale violence with his surgical group acting in concert with the 326th Medical Company. The hospital had suffered a direct hit by a large bomb in Normandy and had been hit again at Nijmegen in Holland when a fleeing enemy plane had jettisoned its load of bombs, which unfortunately landed on the hospital and grounds, killing two of the medical staff. Natalle describes the third onslaught:

  I was not scheduled for surgical duty so I settled into my foxhole early. We had been on the move for the previous 24 hours. Sleep came quickly but the repose was brief.

  About eleven o’clock, out of the dark, broke the light like day. Artillery, mortars, small arms fire, aerial flares combines in a veritable fireworks. German troops and armor were quickly in our hospital area. Firing ceased. The German OIC (officer in charge) asked for the U.S. OIC. Finding the U.S. officer in charge, the German asked for our surrender.

  The Germans were all over the area. They hollered, laughed and made noise, just as Germans always do. It was bedlam. And to think that only a few minutes earlier, this place was a peaceful meadow somewhere in the Ardennes.

  Captain Willis P. McKee remembered that an anti-tank gun was in defensive position at the cross-roads near the hospital. He recalled how quickly the medical troops were taken into custody:

  Just before midnight, there was a sudden outburst of firing. A German motorized patrol in American half-tracks, jeeps and a Sherman tank had knocked out the gun at the crossroads. Then, one operating tent was sprayed with machine gun fire. Captain Charles Van Gorder, a member of the 3rd Auxiliary Surgical Team assigned to us—and of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, who spoke German rather well, yelled that we were medical troops and unarmed. They gave us 45 minutes to load our casualties and ourselves on our own trucks for departure.

  T/4 Emil Natalle, who was part of Captain Van Gorder’s surgical team, got a close look at the German commander and was asked to check on the needs of men caught in burning vehicles. He wrote:

  The officer in command was a typical Prussian. He was wearing well polished, high, black boots and his uniform looked as if he had just come back from a Berlin pass. In his right eye was a monocle. I remember all the details. He was such a contrast with the ordinary fighting men. War is dirty.

  Following the surrender order, the German OIC asked for an American officer to accompany him about the hospital area. Captain Van Gorder was designated, because the Captain spoke and understood the German language.

  Down at the nearby crossroads, a number of vehicles were burning fiercely. Some of the vehicles surely had men inside for we heard their cries for help. Perhaps they were wounded and unable to escape.

  Captain Van Gorder and the German officer decided to send one German soldier and me to the fiery scene and give help. We walked toward the blazing vehicles but could not approach them. The heat was so intense.

  Arriving on the scene, with a small convoy of jeeps carrying wounded men from the Noville fighting, PFC. Robert Barger came upon the scene and made the wrong decision. He related:

  As we got to the top of the hill west of Bastogne, looking down to the crossroads area where the medical company had set up its tent hospital, we noticed a burning truck right there in the middle of the road and another to the right that was also burning. We stopped at the top of the hill and regrouped, trying to decide whether we should move down there or not. Because of the two litter cases, I made the decision that we would go forward.

  Just as we passed the burning truck on the road, a machine gun opened up on us, killing the two litter cases. I was on the floor of the jeep. We got across the road and I discovered there were now only two jeeps. To this day, I don’t know what happened to the third. The walking wounded had moved very swiftly into the ditch. I crawled across the road to see what was on the other side of the burning truck because we were going t
o make a break and go back into Bastogne. Then, I saw a Tiger tank sitting there. I knew we didn’t have a chance of making it out that way. I got everybody back into the jeeps and decided to make a break toward Paris. We went down the road fifty yards or so. We were stopped by the Germans who had attacked the hospital and, with their guns pointed at us, directed us up to the Medical Company area.

  When I got out of the jeep, I immediately went for my knife attached to my boot and tossed that away because I didn’t want to get caught with any weapons, as I had Red Cross arm bands in place. I ran into Captain (Edwin) Yeary, executive officer of my company. I asked him what had happened. He advised me that we were prisoners of war.40

  Apparently, the three jeep loads of wounded, which were part of PFC. Robert Barger’s group heading for the field hospital, were only part of about fifty wounded who had accumulated in Noville by nightfall. Captain Bernard Ryan, who had been sent to Noville from Foy by General Gerald Higgins to assist Captain Joseph Warren with the mounting casualties, had accompanied the convoy as far as Foy and continued on to his 3rd Battalion aid station. Ryan describes what happened to Captain Samuel “Shifty” Feiler and his group of medics and the wounded in the trucks.

  Just as he (Feiler) arrived at the Division Hospital, he was flagged down by Germans shooting burp guns. They ordered him into a nearby field. As he jumped across the roadside ditch, he purposely dropped a fine P-38 German pistol, which I had just loaned him, into a ditch. He proceeded into that field and saw that the Germans were so absorbed with their booty that he just kept on going in the dark. He returned through enemy territory to Bastogne without my pistol. The entire Division Medical Company, with the Division surgeon and all the officers, with a few exceptions, were captured at this time.

  One of the enlisted medics with Captain Samuel C. Feiler in moving the wounded to the 326th Medical Company facility west of Bastogne was PFC. Don M. Dobbins. He had been captured, along with Feiler and others, by German troops dressed in American uniforms and using American vehicles. He describes what he saw as an American convoy that was trapped a short time earlier.41

  All of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Here is the way the scene was set. About seven of us were standing behind a truck and along the highway were twelve trucks on their way back to the Division at Mourmelon to get more supplies. All of this was taking place at a crossroads. On one side of the road was a tank destroyer—American, of course. There wasn’t anything we could do about it. The Germans had killed the men in it and were manning it themselves.

  Well, the tracers started flying and hitting everything around there. Why the few of us behind the truck weren’t hit is beyond me. I suppose the good Lord was with us that night. The bullets were so close that I thought I would have to brush them off. We all make one big dive for the ditch.

  We were having trouble with a trooper who had a head wound and the medic who was taking care of him told me that he was gone or something to that effect. I suppose the boy died. There was nothing we could do for the boys in the truck. To stand up on the road was suicide. The Germans fired on every truck standing there and set them on fire. I remember a Negro truck driver in one of the trucks who got up in his cab and blasted away at Germans with a fifty-caliber gun mounted on his cab. He didn’t last long for the Germans turned everything they had on him. If they had fired a second longer, they could have cut the cab away from the rest of the truck.

  I looked at the trucks and saw every one of them on fire. Our truck was burning fast because they had fired right into the gas tank. During all of that, we didn’t hear any outcry from it. I suppose all of them were dead. The guns were trained on them long enough.

  While the firing was going on. PFC. Dobbins managed to elude his captors and headed south through the woods. Captains Jacob Pearl and John Breiner, both dental officers, and Captain Roy H. Moore, Jr. also ducked into the woods and managed to get back to Bastogne. It wasn’t until after the siege was lifted that Dobbins got back to his unit—or what was left of it.

  Pvt.John M.Graham remembered the anxiety of the trip to the Bastogne area. He had been so anxious for rest after the Holland mission. He was able to recall that Pvt. Lester A. Smith was his front-line mate in the Medical Company. They spelled each other on duty hours.Graham wrote:

  I had the first twelve hours, while Smith dug our foxhole. I was captured while on duty about midnight, while bringing in a wounded trooper, by the crew of a German tank which had the traditional 88mm gun. Smith was completely missed and completed the campaign.

  Pvt. Lester A. Smith was a replacement for the Holland mission. He was one of the few lucky ones when the unit was almost totally captured during the night of December 19. Smith describes his rude awakening and eluding the enemy troops rounding up the unarmed medics:

  At the time, I was off duty and was asleep in my foxhole. Upon finding out that the company was being captured, myself and two other friends managed to escape. Others escaped, too, but I don’t know how many. Most of the company was captured.

  The three of us headed in the direction we thought we might find friendly troops. We had a compass, no guns—being medics, waded a creek, came upon a Belgian home and were taken in and given something to eat and drink. After a short stay, we moved on forward where we thought others from the 101st were located.

  Just before dawn a sentry shouted ‘Halt!’ He asked for the password and, of course, we didn’t know it. He had every reason to shoot us, but we finally convinced him we were American soldiers and he let one of us advance. As I recall, this was an engineering company from the Division. We joined them and worked out way into the city of Bastogne. There we joined the few other medical personnel already present.

  Over in the 502nd Regimental area, 1Lt, Henry Barnes had experienced two moves until the headquarters finally settled on a command post. Though the 502nd was not in combat yet, there were four patients who needed to be evacuated to the field hospital. To have his sergeant be familiarized with the road network between the 502nd command post and the field hospital, the sergeant was sent along on the truck ambulance. Barnes relates:

  With no maps, we couldn’t even picture in our minds what area we were in or where, except it was a network of roads on the larger maps.

  By midnight, I had four patients, two pneumonia, from our cold all night ride, and two minor gunshot wounds. I sent them back with one of my sergeants so he could know the route, as we had moved twice and I wanted him to know how to get back. Also, since the Medical Company hadn’t been dug in at the time I was there, I was afraid they might have moved also.

  About two hours later, my sergeant returned, walking and his face ashen. He looked old. He blurted out that the Company was gone. He saw machine gun fire from the woods where they had been left. He had ditched his truck and ran back. No, he didn’t know where the driver was. I questioned and questioned him until I put together this story:

  It seems just as he drove to the crossroads, he was stopped by an MP directing traffic. The MP asked him where he was going and he pointed out where the Medical Company was located and said he had wounded and was taking them there. Since he and the driver were using a weapons carrier, instead of a litter jeep, for an ambulance the MP went around the vehicle and peeked in under the canvas and looked at the patients and said something in German.

  That was when all hell broke loose.

  A machine gun started firing from in front of the Medical Company area on the road. A truck mushroomed up in smoke, with the canvas afire. More guns joined the fire. Tracers were shooting out in all directions.

  The four casualties, hearing the German words uttered by the MP, jumped up and ran right over him and fled, with bandages flashing white in the lurid flaming light, and headed for the ditches on each side, miraculously escaping. The driver and the sergeant almost beat them to the ditches and also made it except they headed for different sides of the road.

  The sergeant was sure the fire was from the Medical Company area and sat staring ahead wi
th a look as though he had caught a brief glimpse of hell.

  While these actions were going on at the crossroads, the personnel of the field hospital were quickly rounded up and loaded onto their own trucks to be sent east into Germany and to prisoner of war compounds for the duration.

  T/4 Emil Natalle had to suffer the indignity of driving one of the trucks carrying his friends toward confinement. He related:

  Meanwhile, back on the hill at the hospital site, the U.S. trucks, trailers and other vehicles had been loaded with all the hospital’s equipment and were set to vacate the area. I was told to drive one of the trucks. It was loaded with wounded on stretchers (litters). A German soldier rode ‘shotgun’ beside me. The convoy of 326th Medical Company POW’s headed east from the crossroads site. It was the beginning of the end for the U.S. Army’s first ever airborne surgical team and some 150 or more personnel of the 101st’s unique surgical hospital.

  An ambulance from the 101st Airborne Division had carried Major William Desobry, along with other wounded, back to Bastogne and then continued on to the field hospital of the 326th Medical Company. The armored unit commander had been immediately taken into the operating tent that evening. The last he remembered of that incident was having the anesthesia mask placed over his face. The next he remembered was waking in an ambulance moving down the road, headed for Germany, along with the rest of the wounded and most members of the hospital unit.

  The 326th Medical Company was given 45 minutes to load its casualties and personnel on their own trucks for departure. In their small way, the medics got some retribution on the trip toward Germany as related by Captain Willis McKee, who closed his account with this comment:

  The medical officers and dentists were put on a truck loaded with jerrycans of gasoline. We spent the next few hours emptying the gasoline over the side. Also, we emptied a few bottles of cognac that we happened to have along.