During the day, four patrols of “Dog” Company tried to move north along a line west of the Foy-Bizory road but were turned back by fire from the Bois Jacques.
At about the same time that “Able” Company, of the 501st, was ordered to move out to pinch off the pocket of enemy soldiers behind the MLR, Cpl. Frank Lasik of “Dog” Company led an eight-man patrol but altered his course to avoid the fire from Bois Jacques. Eventually, his group pushed as far as the railroad grade, then turned right following a dirt road, which ran parallel to the tracks. He spotted a group of seven enemy tanks and some accompanying infantry moving toward him down the tracks at a distance of 75 yards. Visibility was not good and he was able to slip into the nearby woods and returned to the command post. A call was quickly made to 2nd Battalion, which in turn was to alert “Able” Company of the enemy approach.
With no other map of the area than a Belgian road guide, Lt. Bill Sefton describes the day’s activities for the major part of “Dog” Company and his lack of knowledge as to what was occurring on other company fronts.
We spent the day digging in with Dog Company, turning the battalion left flank along the forward slope, short of Bizory. The left flank of the company ended at a woods indicated as a patch of green on my highway map. I had not been advised that Able Company had been attached to our battalion and was holding a position in a woods along a railroad well, off to our left.
Sometime well after dark, Able Company was kicked out of position by a determined enemy unit of undetermined strength. I don’t know how far they withdrew. I do know our battalion commander issued an order essentially as follows: ‘D’ Company will pull back three miles immediately, hook up with ‘A’ Company and attack two companies abreast through the woods with a rolling artillery barrage two hundred yards ahead, thereby restoring A’s original position.’
Brilliant—just damned brilliant! All we gotta do is carry out an impromptu night attack through an unreconnoitered woods against an enemy of unknown strength. Piece of cake—provided, of course, we can survive our own unobserved artillery fire.
Only one patch of woods showed on my map and we were dug in along the edge of it Ergo, ‘A’ Company had to have been on the far side, beyond the intersecting railroad bed. So why don’t we first send in a recon patrol from our current position and see if the enemy is still right there? If so, we can move out at first light, cutting straight across the front edge of the woods and take ‘em on their flank.
Captain Dick Snodgrass, Dog C. O., was even less enthusiastic about the order than I was, so he bucked my suggestion up to battalion headquarters and permission to send the recon patrol was granted.
I sent a lieutenant and four men into the woods with instructions to go as far as the railroad track unless running into enemy dispositions enroute. They returned in little more than an hour to report reaching the railroad without encountering the enemy. Their findings, relayed to battalion, cancelled the night attack order in favor of moving at dawn.
“Able” Fills a Gap
As the regimental reserve unit, “Able” Company,, under Captain Stanfield Stach, was in a wooded area near 1st Battalion Headquarters when it received its marching orders. Stach was ordered to move north to the vicinity of the railroad to plug the gap which existed between the 506th and 501st Regiments.
As runner for his company commander, PFC. Edward Hallo felt their first assignment on the afternoon of December 20th was to probe for enemy positions in an area which had been infiltrated the previous night by an enemy patrol. He related:
Our job was to act as feelers to find the enemy. ‘A’ Company was sent up along a railroad track. The track bed was built up on a higher level of ground.
The 3rd Platoon was on the left side of the railroad track and the rest of the company was on the right.
As communications sergeant for “A” Company, Sgt. Lloyd E. Jones had a better view of the big picture for his unit than most of the enlisted men in the front line foxholes. He describes the first day’s action in closing the gap between the two parachute regiments.
It was late in the afternoon, around 3 o’clock or so. ‘A’ Company was told to go out toward the railroad tracks as the evening before there had been a contingent of Germans come through this area and the 506th and the 501st were not completely tied in together around the railroad track.
There was an open space and they had gotten 25 to 30 men to come up through there and when they had come over the ridge they had been torn apart by some of our machine gunners. We did know there was a big hole out there and Captain Stach had orders to go out and try to find out where the hole was and get us tied in for at least overnight in case they came through there again.
Bastogne had a lot of trees with lanes going down between the growths. The trees were planted very closely together, mostly pines, not very big around, planted in rows. We got out quite a ways and the ‘ole man’ had heard noises and he said he wanted us strung out along the side of this forest, just inside the tree line, as there was a field between us and another stand of trees. It was getting pretty dark plus the fact that we had a lot of fog that had settled in that area—you could see about six feet in front of you. As the evening progressed, they started to come up through there. We had orders to let them get as close as possible and then we opened up and they pulled back. I heard it was the 28th Grenadiers. They were exploiting the hole between the lines of the 506th and 501st.
A veteran of the Normandy and Holland campaigns, PFC. Robert W. Smith was serving as a medic for his platoon. He remembered that Sgt Edward Gullick was the first to spot the enemy. He related:
We had gone down through these areas and Ed Gullick went through the next clearing and into a wooded area ahead of that and discovered a large German force ready to jump off. With this news there was only one thing to do, that was to spread out and wait for them to come across the clearing. When they got close enough, bur men started firing into them. This, no doubt, got them completely by surprise. There was a heavy exchange of fire but I think the Germans had an advantage over us because they had more heavy weapons than we had.
The actions of December 20th for “A” Company, of the 501st Regiment, are well remembered by 1Lt. Joseph B. Schweiker, who was serving as executive officer. He described the move near the railroad track where they made the initial contact after being in battalion reserve:
We were called from reserve to fill a gap. As we moved into position from one tree grove to another, with the railroad tracks on our left, we spotted the Germans to our front and coming at us. It was dusk and getting dark. Soon a fire fight began. As it built up, we were stalled and so were the Krauts. It appeared the Germans were firing tracers about 4 to 5 feet above the ground and ball ammo 2 to 3 feet—several of our guys were hit right in the neck or chest Captain Stach realized the situation was somewhat different than expected. The gap could have been 500 to 1000 yards, with the railroad thrown in on our left.
Captain Stach and Lt. Monk Mier moved one squad over the railroad track with Sgt. Chamberlain to protect our left flank. As the darkness moved in, the firefight increased and we were at a standstill. Captain Stach sensed the situation and directed me to hold our position, since he couldn’t contact Battalion by radio; he had to find his way back to their location and report our situation. Captain Stach told me to hold our position until he radioed me and stated ‘W’. This meant to pull back to the higher ground where we came from.
With 3rd Platoon moving up along the left side of the tracks while the rest of “A” Company moved forward along the right side in a spread formation, PFC. Ed Hallo’s group hadn’t received the warning yet of the approach of enemy soldiers. He describes actions involving his small group of men:
We started moving up and just as we got past the second grove of trees, we could hear voices and it was late in the afternoon. Dusk was setting in. We decided to stay near a stand of trees and every platoon member got behind a tree to wait for something to happen. As the voices got louder
, platoon sergeant Lyle Chamberlain, who was acting first sergeant at the time, ran over the railroad tracks to warn us, ‘Don’t fire until we give the signal!’ and then ran back.
Lying down on the ground, you couldn’t see over the railroad grade and you didn’t know what was on the other side. Herman Bebe was with me. I always considered him the mascot of the company—a little guy. He had a grenade on the end of his carbine. Bebe asked, What is the signal?’ I said, ‘He didn’t say what the signal was—just pass the word down the line and we’ll play it by ear.’
It was getting dark fast—you could hear the voices getting louder and louder—then we spotted the Germans coming across this wide open field toward us. They were taking their sweet time in spread formation. I’d say the Germans were about seven to ten yards in front of us and Bebe says, ‘I’m not going to wait any longer!’ and he fired the grenade at a German and all hell broke loose. The company fired, too. I had the second tree. Lt. Monk Mier was behind the first tree and he turned and said, ‘Hallo, have the MG section aim down and cover the railroad tracks. Bebe was left of me and I had a tree between me and the enemy. Bebe must have blown the German apart with the rifle grenade. We all had a target We just kept firing for a time and lay there waiting to see what would happen.
As a replacement, Pvt. Christopher McEwan joined “A” Company as a machine gunner. With many of the heavy weapons being turned into ordnance for inspection and cleaning, as a newcomer, McEwan faced going into combat without a weapon. Rather than wait at the assembly area until weapons could be found, McEwan went forward with his unit, hoping to pick up a weapon along the way. During the first night near the front, a machine gun was found for him so he was ready to participate the next morning. McEwan relates his first combat experience:
The next day, with a belt of machine gun bullets wrapped around my neck, we headed east down a road. We stopped and laid in a ditch. A Tiger tank fired a shot at us but it hit the roof of a barn. We moved out along a single-track railroad. I was told to set up my machine gun at the edge of a wooded area. I had a large, open area in front of me. I was on the right flank of my outfit. I had no one to cover my right flank, which I felt very uneasy about.
Suddenly, I heard firing off to my left. Thinking now that my buddies needed help, I picked up my machine gun and took off to the left, running up the side of the railroad track. As I crossed over, the machine gun belt, which was dragging along the ground, got caught between the rail and ties. I was left standing in the open trying to free the belt. I could hear bullets whizzing past my head, like angry bees. I finally got it loose and ran down the other side of the tracks and got into the fight. It finally quieted down. I laid there, behind my machine gun, for quite a while. I didn’t know where the others had gone, so I started moving forward. I moved for quite a distance.
Over on the right side of the tracks, where he was more or less in the center of the extended formation of the remaining two platoons of “A” Company, 1Lt. Joseph Schweiker recalled that it was decision time. The enemy was moving around 3rd Platoon in a flanking maneuver. He wrote:
As time passed, the Germans seemed to be gaining on our left flank, across the railroad track. I checked with Monk Mier and he felt the same way. 1Lt. Jimmy Murphy hadn’t felt the pressure as much on our right. Since we had no contact with Battalion or Captain Stach, we decided to pull back in order to prevent the Germans from getting around us on our left flank and establishing our position on higher ground. We had the machine gunners fire for a minute or so with riflemen protecting them; during the period, we pulled back. It worked out fairly well and we dug in for the night.
Back on the left side of the track, PFC. Ed Hallo and his machine gun team was ordered to provide cover so the rest of the company could fall back to more advantageous positions. He continued his story:
By this time, it was getting pretty dark and Monk Mier came up and announced, ‘We’re gonna pull back to the group of trees behind us. Hallo, you stay here with the MG section and stay as long as you can while the rest of the company pulls back,’
The company moved back and there was a lull. Then, all of a sudden, there was a lot of noise and it was coming from down along our left flank. I said to the guys, ‘We’d better try to get out of here. I think the Krauts are going to move down to our left flank and set up a machine gun and we’re going to catch it sure as hell.’ It was so dark that we held hands with the free hand and I looked up to see the sky between the rows of trees. We ran through the woods just as fast as we could—carrying a machine gun you really can’t run very fast! We got beyond the clearing and made contact with the company. We stayed there that night.
Pvt. McEwan hadn’t heard the order to pull back and, consequently, was out by himself. Darkness set in. Unknown to him at the time, he was well behind the enemy lines. He had never been in a combat situation before. McEwan continues his story:
It started getting dark and foggy. I set up my machine gun and laid down behind it, ready for action. I couldn’t see very well and started hearing some noises up in front of me. As the sound got closer, I knew then that it was Germans. I could hear them talking and their cannisters were making noise. They were committing the unforgivable, thinking there was no one there. They came closer and closer until they were almost on top of me. I could not see their faces, but I saw their silhouettes. I opened fire, raking my gun back and forth. The burst of machine gun fire picked up the first two Germans and slammed them to the ground. I continued to fire about six inches off the ground because I figured they were going to hit the ground and it would be able to hit some of them. They really panicked. I heard someone shouting orders to try and control them. I heard some of them moaning—then it went quiet.
As “A” Company fell back to the higher ground in another tree line, the medics were busy treating wounded. As a platoon medic, PFC. Robert W. Smith was at his usual position, slightly to the rear and center of his group. He had already treated Pvt. George Loies for an arm wound. He continues his account:
Ed Poznek came back with a wound to the upper part of his body. As it was dark, it was a bit difficult to dress his wound and note if there might possibly be two holes—where the bullet went in and a second where it came out. Firing started to ease up and we crossed back over the railroad track and walked him up the hill and placed him alongside a dirt road and tied a piece of bandage on a bush so he could be seen and picked up. I found out later, a medical jeep picked him up. I started back down to see if there were any more wounded and I ran into Billy Daniels. It was a damn good thing, as the company was pulling back. If I had not met Billy there, I could very well have been killed or captured. We were ordered back almost to the hill where we had started. I teamed up with another trooper and started digging a foxhole.
Communications sergeant Lloyd W. Jones remembers the pullback and the heavy shelling they experienced. Still handicapped from the injuries that had put him in the hospital in Rheims, Jones was called on to evacuate one of the wounded. He wrote:
As we pulled back, we experienced one of the worst nightmares that an infantryman encounters—they started throwing many, many 88 shells into the trees and, of course, there were the tree bursts. For a while, we just fired blindly back into them and it didn’t do much good. We were being cut to ribbons. Captain Stach gave the orders to pull back into the next area behind us. I had a problem coming back from the hospital and not knowing the replacements. This guy, who I didn’t know but evidently he knew me, had been hit in the lower part of the body and he pleaded with me not to leave him. I just grabbed him and picked him up and, amid the tree bursts and the darkness, literally fled with this man on my back toward the rear along with the rest of my comrades to set up new positions in the next tree line. We finally ran into a jeep that had come up to pick up the wounded. After I put him on the jeep, that was the last time I saw him.
Mont
Sgt. Donald Castona had been a part of the patrol which had gone to Neffe on the evening of the 19th, to
check out the size of the enemy force in place in that small community. After asking for reinforcements when they were involved in a firefight, the troops were ordered back to the 3rd Battalion positions at Mont. Castona had planned to lead the men back through some fields which were partitioned off with barbed wire but opted for returning along the road. Those same fenced-in areas proved to be a very fatal hazard for enemy troops who tried to cross those fields on the night of the 20th. Castona continues his story:
It seemed that a column of Germans was not far behind us on the same road. By this time, a tank and another armored vehicle had joined us along with the heavy weapons company of 3rd Battalion.
It started getting dark and we went to work digging in around and about the little town of Mont. Before we did much more than a shovel’s depth deep, we were hit by a very heavy barrage. A lot of the shells landed right about on our positions but we didn’t get very many casualties and the enemy rolled their barrage behind us. One shell—looked like a 155mm—landed right beside the hole Aloysius Riley and I were trying to dig. Luckily, it was a dud.
The Germans followed the barrage with an infantry attack just after dark. It was supported by a couple of tanks. Our machine gunners and our tanks fired tracers into a haystack; just at the crest of the hill the Germans were coming over. This haystack caught fire and left the German tanks and infantry silhouetted and in plain sight. The tank supporting us knocked out the German tank and made even more fire behind the German infantry. That is when they ran into the sheep fences I had mentioned earlier. Those poor guys were trying to get over, under, or around the fences and made good targets for our guys. They got shot up really bad, even though some of them got almost to our lines. Some of them were killed by the heavy weapons company with their .45’s. (At this point Castona stopped, adding, ‘I’m kind of running out of gas now. Remembering this stuff gets me excited and poops me out.’)
Battered Bastards of Bastogne Page 22
