Battered Bastards of Bastogne

by George Koskimaki

  Prisoners were rounded up and brought into our area for holding until consolidated with others. Many were young 15-year olds. They wondered why we were putting up so much resistance—didn’t we know we were surrounded?

  Operations officer, Major Victor Garrett summarized the actions that played such a big part in the 463rd area on Christmas Day:

  Our command post and fire direction center was in Hemroulle, near Bastogne. We were in a house and the aid station was in a chapel across the road. On Christmas Day we kept our prisoners in the stable to the left of the CP.

  Ever since Sicily, we carried extra armor-piercing and phosphorus ammo (as per Col. Cooper’s orders). Some say the armor-piercing did the job and some say the phosphorus caught them on fire.

  There was now a respite in the 463rd area as far as defending their own positions were concerned. The 4th Armored Division of the 3rd Army broke through the enemy lines south of Bastogne on the evening of the 26th.

  Parker Tries for Another

  The same enemy attack which hit the 463rd Parachute Artillery Battalion as well as the 502nd and the glidermen of the 401st, also got to the 377th Parachute Artillery area at Savy. Sgt. Arthur Parker hoped that the opportunity would present itself so he could get some more tanks with his bazooka. He wrote:

  The next morning the Germans broke through the lines somewhere and our headquarters came under attack by one tank and some infantry. Everybody was out in the snow to fight off the attack. I was out in the open with my bazooka and wondering if I could be so lucky as I was in Holland when I got two tanks.128

  This tank was coming straight on with no chance to get a side shot. Trying a frontal shot is like committing suicide. Off to our right a tank destroyer came out of the woods and put a round into the tank and it went up in smoke.

  Christmas Day Attack on Champs

  Frontal attacks by the enemy on the positions of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment began with the shelling of the forward positions of “A” Company in the Champs area. The situation is described by the company commander, Captain Wallace A. Swan son:

  On December 25th, Christmas morning, shelling started about 0300 and we had well over three to five minutes of continuous shelling. All of our communications were destroyed from our CP to the platoons. The only way we could get messages in or out was by runner—and that was dangerous because of the barrages but that was something we had to keep doing out of necessity.

  The enemy attacked our forward positions in the eastern and northern edges of Champs between the 1st and 3rd Platoons. We had street fighting throughout the night with hand to hand, door to door fighting. The CP of 2nd Platoon had been set afire during this action. We now encountered large enemy forces in and around our front lines and behind it. The tank destroyers were committed to help clean out some of the enemy elements. This was going on around 0315 to 0400 in the morning.

  As the assistant platoon leader for 2nd Platoon of “A” Company, 1Lt. Al Wise relates what happened shortly after midnight on Christmas morning in the platoon command post:

  The CP of the 2nd Platoon with 1Lt. John Harrison (I was assistant platoon leader) on December 24, 1944 was situated in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Champs. Our men were dug in about 150 yards in front of the CP on the reverse slope of the crest of the hill which was about 300 yards in front of our front lines. The 1st Platoon CP was in another farmhouse on our right flank.

  We stayed up until midnight Christmas Eve to wish each other a ‘Merry Christmas’ and then turned in. About 0225 our area came under very heavy shelling, lasting approximately 15 minutes. During a lull in the shelling, one of the men from our forward outpost came running into the CP requesting a medic, as one of the men on the outpost had been severely wounded in the back by shrapnel. As the medic and Lt, Harrison started to leave, they noticed some white-clad strange figures surrounding our CP and also the 1st Platoon CP. At approximately the same time a German machine gun, situated about 20 feet from one of the windows of our house, opened the attack by firing directly through the window into the house in which we were standing. At the same time, a machine gun on the opposite side of the house, fired alongside our house, preventing our using the door. The machine gun firing through the window hit our stove, upsetting same and setting the room on fire. About that time another Jerry team, using their bazookas, let go at the walls. We returned the fire but as we could see very little, the fire was out of control and smoke filled the entire house. We had to get out.

  (A point of information—all this happened as I mentioned above, about 150 yards behind our front lines and, therefore, we did not know at that time whether our front lines had been overwhelmed or not. It so happened our lines were spread so thinly, as it was so bitter cold and dark, that Jerry had little trouble infiltrating behind our lines and seemed to know exactly where the platoon CP’s were located.)

  We went into the barn, which was attached to the house, as most barns are in Belgium, letting out the cows and saw that they were not fired on. The smoke, by this time, made observation nigh impossible so we made a mad dash for the hedgerow roughly 25 yards away. Luckily, seven of the men from the CP made it, but minus everything we owned—coats, gloves, bedrolls, blankets and grenades, with the exception of our rifles and ammunition.

  We reorganized in the hedgerow and saw there was confusion all about. In the dark, it was impossible to tell enemy from friend. However, by this time our CP was a blazing mass and from the light it caused we could see the Jerries attacking the 1st Platoon CP. Lt. Harrison, with a couple of runners, went on ahead trying to locate our remaining squads, and seeing where our front lines were, if any, while we fired at the Jerries attacking the 1st Platoon CP trying to distract the enemy.129

  For Sgt. Louis Merlano from the same platoon, there were several skirmishes—the most memorable being the December 25th battle. He wrote:

  Company ‘A’ had the responsibility of protecting the Champs area. The 1st Platoon was on the right, 2nd Platoon was on the left and the 3rd was left of the 2nd. The outstanding parts were that 3rd Platoon covered one knoll and 1st Platoon covered the knoll on the right, out in front of the church and schoolyard. I happened to be up on the line with the mortar squad and the machine gun squad which was manned by Tippins and Sirocco. The rest of the 1st squad had foxhole positions along the line. We had several men in a house resting and warming up, taking turns and sending 4 to 5 people back and forth. Lt. (Maurice) LaGrave was back further, closer to the village of Champs and he had kept in contact with us by runners.

  Along about midnight, I was going back to the house to check to see if some of the men were ready to come out on the line. I got caught in a terrific barrage and I had instructed the men that it sounded like we were in for an attack and asked them all to hustle up. As I was coming out of the cellar, I ran into several Germans. I jumped out through one of the windows. The men were all shooting as they were getting out of the doors. We were being overrun. I got back to Tippins and Sirocco and we fired as much as we could.

  At that point, it looked like we were totally overrun and our hopes were shattered until we saw one machine gun over on the left—Fowler’s weapon, had kept pace with what was going on so it was our intent to fire alternately with them although they didn’t know if we were still around or who it was that might be on the right.

  This went on through the night. After being overrun, we turned our guns around back toward Lt. LaGrave who then met the Germans head-on and now we really had them in a pincers.

  PFC. Werner C. Lunde remembered that his company didn’t see much action until Christmas morning and then the roof fell in on some of them. He was one of those who were asleep in that platoon command post. He wrote:

  I should have gotten back to our line. I feel real bad about that. I still don’t know how so many Germans could get past our guard posts without being seen. By the time the guys on guard woke us up, we were completely surrounded. There were several tanks right outside die door. That was the beginni
ng of the worst four months of my life.

  Cpl. Fowler’s Gun

  A weapon that receives proper maintenance is the one that performs best when its use is critical. That is what Cpl. Willis Fowler wrote about concerning actions which took place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He is the machine gunner referred to by Sgt. Louis Merlano in his earlier narration. Fowler describes the action:

  The afternoon of December 24, 1 decided to clean my machine gun. I took it apart and cleaned it thoroughly—put it back together and set the head space. I was pleased with the sound of the head space on that gun.

  That night, we went to bed. This included our squad leader, Sergeant Charles Asay and others. We were with our squad in a potato shed alongside of a road near Longchamps.

  About 0230 in the morning of the 25th, the Germans attacked with artillery. The shelling woke us up and Sgt Asay took the rest of the squad across the road from the potato house. I stayed with Pvt. Bill Emerson, who was my assistant gunner. He was on the gun at the time. I awoke and went out to where he was in the gun emplacement. He hadn’t been firing the machine gun and I needed to get that gun in action.

  As I began to fire the machine gun across the opening in front of us, we could hear the Germans hollering as the bullets hit them. My machine gun was the only one that was firing at the time. I had cleaned it and had it in good working order. The other machine guns were froze up. They were stuck, unable to operate. Some of the men were urinating on the guns to unfreeze them. Since my gun was the sole MG firing, other people began to bring me ammunition. From the time the attack started until daylight, I was on the machine gun, firing out into the area to our front. I don’t have any idea how much ammo I expended from then until daylight.

  As a member of Sgt. Charles Asay’s squad, PFC. Ted Goldmann was jarred awake by the noise of artillery explosions and machine gun fire heard in the potato shed where he and others were sleeping in the hay. Bastogne was his first combat experience. He wrote:130

  A little after 2 a.m. on the 25th, we were awakened and told the 2nd Platoon outpost reported tanks and half-tracks moving up the road toward us. Our only heavy weapon was the TD which came up at dark each evening and withdrew at dawn each morning. We ignored it until it actually happened and at 3:15 it did happen. All the artillery the Germans had, broke, and we scurried for our holes. The squad on the right side of the road wasn’t so lucky. Four men were in the house with the barn and two men were in a haystack when the Germans infiltrated. Only two men were on their MG. The Germans brought up two tanks to the outpost along with infantry and, since there was no telephone, they had no orders to withdraw. Anyway, the tanks had them covered. The corporal, Jimmy Goodyear, who escaped in March, said these six men on the outpost were also captured, that he had seen them all, which substantiated our beliefs.

  Our squad was ready and God was with us and the Heinies started doing stupid things. They shot flares into a totally dark sky and we took advantage of them. They fired haystacks and then got in between us and the blazes to form perfect silhouettes and down they went Fowler was a miracle man with that LMG. He deserved all the credit he got along with the Silver Star.

  The TD opened fire on the two tanks by the outpost as soon as they got on the crest of the high ground and knocked one out with the first shot and damaged the second with the following shot. The Heinies managed to pull both back before dawn. The Germans, in their eagerness and self-confidence, even set up an aid station in the house with the barn attached. Sgt. Asay threw grenades right into their midst and scattered them like a busted vase. He was wounded in the jaw by a piece of his own grenade. That house was an odd one—four Americans hiding upstairs, a German aid station on the main floor and 18 Belgian civilians hiding in the basement. The Germans kept taking it on the chin and getting nowhere.

  S/Sgt. Robert Barnes of “A” Company remembers an incident in which enemy soldiers used white snow gear to camouflage their approach to his machine gun position. He wrote:

  It was a cold winter night. Sgt. Everett Brown and I were taking our turn on a .30 caliber machine gun. It was time to be relieved so I went and aroused the two who were supposed to take over. After being relieved, I went to my slit trench which had straw and was partially covered and started getting in my sleeping bag. The bottom third was frozen from getting into it with wet shoes and I had a tough time getting my feet to the bottom. This was the type of bag that some of the men who didn’t have overcoats, cut off the bottom half, cut slits for arm holes and used them for coats.

  Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a moan from the direction of the machine gun. I looked over and saw a figure in white making arm motions. I ducked down in the foxhole, not knowing if other Germans were around. I heard another moan that was real low. My first thought was that a bayonet or knife was being used. I suppose this helped put me to use as I raised up, pointed my rifle, could not see the sights, and fired. The figure in white fell and, at the same time, a grenade went off. Shots were fired at me from my flank. Four or five shots were fired and then all was quiet. I went over to the machine gun and the figure in white was a German officer, shot in the head. The grenade was a concussion type and was dropped by the officer when hit. As there were only two, I assumed that it was a reconnaissance patrol trying to pick up a prisoner. The two men on the machine gun received slight wounds from the grenade but didn’t put them out of action, which was good as we only had 17 men left in the 2nd Platoon at the time. The German who fired at me from the flank made a getaway. With all the firing and grenade exploding, only Fred Terwilliger on the radio heard anything. The men were that tired and exhausted. The two who were on the machine gun had agreed that one would rest while the other stayed awake. The only trouble was he dozed off, also. When confronted by the German, he tried to holler, but nothing came out, only moaning sounds. All’s well that ended well.

  While Cpl. Willis Fowler was busy keeping the German infantry on the ground to his front, his sergeant, Charles Asay wasn’t far off directing the remaining members of his squad. He wrote:

  The Germans hit us on Christmas Eve. We fought an all-night action at Champs. The squad on the right was overrun. I spent the night directing fire and throwing hand grenades on the right to keep the Germans off our flank.

  We had no wounded or dead. I like to think I took good care of my men. I had the only squad left on line in the platoon.

  The continued involvement of 2nd Platoon in the actions is described by Lt. A1 Wise, the assistant platoon leader. He wrote:

  At about 0400, there was another lull in the firing and at this time Lt. Harrison, having again reorganized his platoon, returned knowing approximately where most of the men in our platoon were located.

  Privates Mullen and Terwilliger, a medic and myself, decided to try going forward to our advance CP and see if we could aid the wounded man who was still up there. We climbed the ridge without incident, except for scattered rifle fire, and found the CP still intact. The medic, with another man from the outpost, carried the wounded man back to our lines and I remained at our outpost with Pvt. Grosvenor for the remainder of the night.131

  With the sounds of heavy action coming from the “A” Company sector, 502nd Regimental Headquarters wanted to know if reinforcements were needed. Capt. Wallace Swanson was concerned with all the movement going on in front and behind him. He felt friendly troops coming in as reinforcements might be fired on in the early morning darkness. He wrote:

  During the early morning hours of the 25th, the regimental command wanted to know if we could use additional help. I informed them that even though there was lots of action going on in Champs, I did not feel as though any more troops should be sent in because of the darkness. There was no need to send ‘B’ Company down in the woods because we couldn’t know who was enemy and who was friendly. So they sent ‘Baker’ Company to a road block area between our positions and the regimental command.

  Captain Swanson went on to cite the bravery of one of his machine gunners on out
post duty who did so much to keep the enemy from making further inroads into his positions. He added:

  One of the mainstays who helped turn the tide in our favor was Cpl. Willis Fowler, a machine gun corporal who had taken over the machine gun because he had to have more effective fire power on the enemy that had come down from the higher ground. From the hillside that was out in front of us, the enemy had overrun the outpost on top, and came down the side which was a trail-like road. The enemy tanks were sitting up on the hillside just back of the ridge and blasting our positions down in the village of Champs. The tanks did not move into our area, but the infantry did and, with Willis Fowler handling the machine gun in such a magnificent way, stopped the enemy infantry from advancing with a large additional force.

  Many of the enemy were wounded or killed because of Fowler’s action on the machine gun along with the work of other riflemen taking position and picking off others in the enemy advance.

  In his forward machine gun position, Cpl. Willis Fowler had continued to beat the enemy infantry to the ground through the pre-dawn hours. As the first faint streaks of dawn appeared on the eastern horizon, there was a brief respite before the enemy attacks were renewed. Fowler describes a situation in which he became the target of one of the tanks:

  As darkness waned, action slowed down somewhat. We had a little breather but just after daylight, to our front, there was a ridge and up over this ridge came four German tanks. They got to the top of the ridge and stopped. They just sat there and I told Emerson that we’d just stay down in our hole which was beside the potato house. We’d be very quiet and inconspicuous. I’m sure the tankers could probably see us but whether they did or not, I was looking at them when a column of German soldiers came up behind the tanks. They started down the ridge toward our location. I told Emerson to stay low; I was going to fire on them and then the tanks would open up on us.