by Harry Yeide
At the southern extreme of the assault zone, the 802d (towed) and 803d (M10) Tank Destroyer battalions were in southern Luxembourg with the 4th Infantry Division, which had been moved to the Ardennes to rest after suffering terrible casualties in the Hürtgen Forest. Although spared the brunt of the panzer assault, the doughs had to fight desperately to hold the line. The 803d deployed Reconnaissance Company, the security section, and cooks as infantry. Nonetheless, the 803d did not record a single confrontation with a German tank during the first two weeks of the battle, and the M10s were employed mostly in the indirect-fire role.12 The 4th Infantry Division would bend but not break and, soon reinforced by the lead elements of the 10th Armored Division, would form the southern shoulder of the German penetration.
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Eisenhower was meeting with Bradley when the first reports of the German offensive reached him. Ike thought it a major operation, but Bradley suspected it was only a spoiling attack. Nonetheless, they agreed to order the 7th Armored Division from Ninth Army and the 10th Armored Division from Third Army to redeploy to the Ardennes as a precaution. The next day, Eisenhower alerted his reserves, the 82d and 101st Airborne divisions, for movement.13
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At 0500 hours on 17 December, the 3-inch gun crews of 3d Platoon, A/801st Tank Destroyer Battalion watched the main road southeast of Honsfeld. The second section of the recon platoon was deployed a short distance forward. Elsewhere around the town, another platoon from the 801st and several towed guns from the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion supported the doughs of a provisional infantry unit culled from division rest camps.14 The men had been under frequent artillery fire since early the day before. But the 99th Infantry Division had been putting up a defense so stiff that the Sixth Panzer Army had been forced to commit the SS armor to help the infantry assault wave.
The sound of tanks reached the men from the gloom ahead. Sergeant James Gallagher, the recon section leader, had been told to expect the arrival of an American cavalry unit; Gallagher set out to investigate, but not before telling his men to pull back if he did not return. The sergeant approached the lead vehicle and was relieved to make out the lines of an M5 light tank. Gallagher called out to the commander in the turret. Suddenly, a rifle butt struck the back of his head.
The rest of the column consisted of Mark IVs.
The column stopped at the road junction in front of 3d Platoon. Recon men creeping back reported that the vehicles were German, so the gun platoon leader ordered his crews to swing their 3-inchers to the right and fire. As the men struggled to shift their ungainly weapons, German infantry who had dismounted from the panzers heard the sounds and cut loose with machine pistols and machine guns. With nothing between them and the Germans but air, the crews hit the dirt and returned fire with their small arms. Turrets turned, and 75mm shells crashed among the 3-inch pieces, wrecking equipment and flesh. The platoon leader yelled for his men to pull back. The men—including Gallagher, who had crawled away and made his second miraculous escape—raced toward the cover of a railroad line as bullets whipped around them.15
Oberstleutnant Joachim Peiper’s 1st SS Panzer Regiment spearhead joined the flow of retreating American vehicles and rolled into Hongen against virtually no further resistance.16
A short while later and not far away, a section of 1st Platoon was shifting its guns into position west of Hunningen to deal with an armored column that had been spotted headed toward Büllingen and Hongen in the thin gray dawn. The crews opened fire and efficiently destroyed four Mark IV tanks and a halftrack. The rest of the panzers withdrew. Counter-battery fire crashed into the 1st Platoon’s positions, wounded the platoon commander, and disabled one gun. The men hitched up their weapons and withdrew to Mürringen with the infantry.
By the end of the day, the 801st had lost to enemy fire or deliberate destruction to prevent capture seventeen 3-inch guns, four M8 armored cars, and many of its other vehicles. Known casualties had thankfully been relatively light, but several tens of men were missing. By dark, most of the remaining crewmen were fighting as infantry. The battalion nevertheless KO’d another five panzers with landmines.17
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The next day, the 801st was ordered to withdraw toward Camp Elsenborn. The consensus among platoon leaders was that the battalion’s losses of guns and the failure to destroy more of the enemy was due to “the non-mobility of the towed gun and the lack of armor protection for the gun crew.”18
In a similar experience, 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion had most of its towed guns overrun between 16 and 18 December, although the 3d Platoon of Company B claimed to have destroyed fourteen tanks, one 88mm SP gun, and several other vehicles. Nearly two hundred men quickly went missing in action.19 Likewise, by the evening of 17 December, the 820th Tank Destroyer Battalion had lost twelve towed guns and nearly one hundred thirty men missing.20
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The freedom to maneuver quickly to good firing positions could make a tremendous difference in the face of overwhelming odds.
The M18s of 1st Platoon, C/811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 3d platoon of Reconnaissance Company, arrived near Ouren early on 17 December, among the first SP destroyers to respond to the German penetration. The CO of the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, ordered the guns into position east of town, where German tanks were reported to be concentrating. The TDers learned while under way that the Germans had already seized the hill they were to occupy. Confirmation came in the form of small arms fire and retreating doughs, who said that panzers were advancing up the far side of the hill.
Lieutenant Dan Orr decided to try to stop the enemy. His gunners opened fire as eighteen German tanks, supported by infantry, silhouetted themselves atop the crest. Return fire killed seven men and wrecked the recon vehicles and two M10s, and the German infantry began to flank the position. But panzers were burning—ten in all—when Orr ordered a withdrawal. Sergeant Dominic Zacharilla took up a position from which he could cover the retreat by the rest of the platoon, while the recon men grabbed a bazooka and provided flank support. Zacharilla held his lonely position for twelve hours under constant fire, destroyed three more German tanks, and helped knock out a fourth. The small band held up the German advance long enough for the regimental headquarters and trains to evacuate.
The elements of the widely scattered TD company, including Orr’s platoon, made their way toward Bastogne. Company CO Capt David Collins encountered disorganized elements of the 9th Armored Division parked along the road and ordered them to join his column. At Bastogne, Collins was instructed to proceed to Neufchateau, where he discovered that his column had grown to more than one hundred fifty vehicles. Other men from the 811th trickled in to Bastogne over the next few days, mostly on foot, and joined the town’s defenders.21
The Hitler Youth Grab a Porcupine
On the northern edge of the battle zone, the 2d Infantry Division had orders to organize a defensive line along the Elsenborn Ridge. The twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt sat astride the Wirtzfeld road, which the division had to hold if it was to extract both its forward elements and those of the 99th Infantry Division. But by early on 17 December, tanks from the 1st SS Panzer Division had been spotted in the vicinity of nearby Büllingen, the division’s supply point. Indeed, M10s from 1st Platoon, C/644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, arrived just in time to drive off a German armored probe toward Wirtzfeld by combining with an AT gun to destroy four panzers and a halftrack. One reconnaissance platoon entered Büllingen to establish and maintain contact with the panzers only to be surrounded and captured except for 2d Section, which broke free. A few towed guns from the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion also knocked out several panzers near the town of Butgenbach.22
The 2d Infantry Division’s 38th Infantry Regiment, supported by battalions of other regiments as conditions permitted and required, established a defensive line at the twin villages to screen the withdrawal. There was snow on the ground, and the fog was thick—as was the seeming confu
sion. The few available destroyers from the 644th (Company C and 2d Platoon of Company A) could provide only spot antitank defense, and the doughs mostly fought panzers with mines and bazookas when they first struck the defenses at Krinkelt the night of 17 December. (The 741st Tank Battalion was the spine of the antitank defense in Rocherath.)
Two surviving platoons of Reconnaissance Company joined the doughs and TDs in heavy street fighting that surged back and forth among the burning buildings of the village for hours. The Germans reached the recon company CP, but headquarters personnel grabbed their guns and helped drive the attackers away at midnight. Sergeant Melvin Mounts and his crew narrowly escaped a rude surprise when the building behind which their M10 was hiding collapsed, revealing two Panthers twenty yards away.23
About dawn on 18 December, a panzergrenadier regiment supported by a battalion each of tanks and assault guns—all from the 12th SS “Hitlerjugend” Panzer Division—concentrated near the twin villages to join the volksgrenadiers already engaged. The SS panzers were about evenly divided between Panthers and Mark IVs.24
The 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had left a company behind with the 8th Infantry Division when it had joined the 2d Infantry Division in the Ardennes in early December, received control over the towed guns of Company C, 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion. Three guns from the 801st were also attached.25
The Germans again penetrated Krinkelt on 18 December. Lieutenant Robert Parker of Headquarters Company saw seven Panthers approaching his position. He secured a bazooka and made his way to a ruined barn, from which he scored a direct hit on one tank. Parker worked his way through the hail of fire in the streets until he was within forty yards of the panzers. The lieutenant fired again and soon had one Panther burning nicely and a second immobilized. Cannon shells and machine gun bullets now sought Parker out, but he was able to damage three more Mark Vs before he was wounded. Out of rockets, Parker made his way back and organized two bazooka teams from recon that were able to finish the panzers off.26
Five more panzers carrying infantry reached the 38th Infantry Regiment’s CP. A TD located fifty yards away (probably the M10 with Pvt Henry McVeigh acting as gunner) knocked out the first tank, and when the column stopped, it finished off the second and third. CP personnel in the upper floors of the building blazed away at the grenadiers, few of whom escaped, while a doughboy knocked out the fourth panzer with a bazooka. The surviving tank turned around and left, despite a shot from the TD that hit the turret. McVeigh was credited with destroying two Panthers, two Mark IVs, and a halftrack.27
The 2d Infantry Division pulled out of the twin villages on 19 December to man the defenses along Elsenborn Ridge, its mission successfully completed.28 During the withdrawal, a column of twelve Panthers approached a heavy walled church near the northern edge of Krinkelt, firing into every house, until Private McVeigh knocked out the lead panzer with a HVAP round at seventy-five yards. The others pulled back.29
All told, the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion accounted for seventeen panzers, two SP guns, and one halftrack during the fighting around Krinkelt.30
The defense at Krinkelt and Rocherath had accomplished far more than the men involved knew: It had thrown the Sixth Panzer Army hopelessly off schedule. Asked after the war why the 12th SS panzer Division had failed to break through, then-Sixth Panzer Army Chief of Staff Generalmajor (Waffen SS) Fritz Kraemer attributed the failure to “tank destroyers and heavy resistance.”31 By 20 December, Generaloberst (Waffen SS) Sepp Dietrich, commanding the Sixth Panzer Army, privately concluded that the Ardennes offensive had failed.32
Slowing the Surge at St. Vith
Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model, commanding Army Group B, believed that the Ardennes offensive would become a battle for road junctions because of the restrictive terrain.33 With the Sixth Panzer Army tangled by the tenacious defense offered by the 99th and 2d Infantry divisions, and with the German Seventh Army making slow progress on the southern shoulder, the Fifth Panzer Army in the center badly needed one such road junction: St. Vith. It expected to capture the objective by 17 December.34
The town was still in the hands of what was left of the 106th Infantry Division when the lead combat elements of the 7th Armored Division arrived late on 17 December after a sixty-mile road march over clogged and slippery roads. The men in the attached 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion (who had been in Holland converting from the M10 to the M36) had seen the fear on the faces of the Belgian civilians they had passed en route, but they did not know the cause.35
The CG of the 106th Infantry Division passed command to BrigGen Bruce Clarke, commanding CCB. Clarke set about organizing a horseshoe-shaped defensive perimeter around the town, supported by CCB/9th Armored Division and the remnants of a regiment each from the 106th and 28th Infantry divisions. The TDs and recon teams of the 814th were parceled out to support division elements manning roadblocks along the defensive line.36
Clarke’s goal was to delay the Germans as long as possible, not to hold St. Vith indefinitely. The Germans were preoccupied with reducing the two surrounded regiments of the 106th Infantry Division (both eventually surrendered) and first attacked the defenses at St. Vith in any strength on 20 December. That day, the Führer Begleit (Escort) Brigade—formed around the cadre of a battalion that had protected Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters—tried to push down the roads behind St. Vith to bridges across the Salm River. At dusk, a company of Mark IVs crested a hill in front of 1st Platoon, A/814th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The waiting M36s cut loose with their 90mm guns and destroyed five Mark IVs with seven rounds. The remainder retreated into the growing darkness.37
Late on 20 December, patrols from the 7th Armored and 82d Airborne divisions established contact. The paratroopers were establishing a defensive line on the far side of the Salm River, and the defenders of St. Vith were now subordinated to the XVIII Airborne Corps.38
The following morning passed in ominous silence.39 As evening approached, the 18th and part of the 62d Volksgrenadier divisions launched an attempt to reach St. Vith in the wake of a terrific artillery barrage. Third Platoon of A/814th was supporting Company B of the 23d Armored Infantry Battalion at the far right of the 7th Armored Division’s lines southeast of St. Vith, where a six-hundred-yard gap separated the men from CCB/9th Armored Division. The volksgrenadiers began infiltrating about 1630, and the doughs were soon in trouble as the Germans detected the gap and charged in. The platoon’s three M10s and one M36 quickly ran out of HE shells, and the crewmen resorted to .50- and .30-caliber machine guns, side arms, and hand grenades.
The infantry began to backpedal under the pressure, and two M10 crews—bereft of infantry support—were alarmed to discover that their vehicles were sunk too deeply in mud to move. The German fire was too heavy for the other destroyers to pull them free, so the men bailed out and accompanied the rest of the platoon back to St. Vith to set up a roadblock.
Royal Tigers from the Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 now joined the attack and wreaked havoc on a few Shermans that tried to cover the widening gap in the line. The remaining 3d Platoon gun section laid mines that knocked out three panzers. The volksgrenadiers pressed on fiercely and came close enough to disable the one M36 with a bazooka about 2330 hours. The crewmen in the last TD faced a column of eight approaching Panthers and knocked out the leader, which blocked the road. Return fire damaged a track, but the crew was able to repair it.40 The stubborn little roadblock held the main route through St. Vith until nearly midnight.41 This was just one example of the many small, desparate fights waged throughout the sector by isolated groups of American soldiers that created a domino effect and wrecked the German timetable.
Heavy snow was falling through the freezing night air as Tigers carrying volksgrenadiers crawled past burning buildings into St. Vith. Clarke ordered a retreat to a new defensive line west of the town, but in the chaos many small units never got the word.42
The Führer Begleit Brigade drove a wedge between Combat Commands A and B of t
he 7th Armored Division on 22 December, and Clarke withdrew to another line with his headquarters in Commanster, a town set deep in the forest. The remaining M36s of A/814th shifted one mile to the vicinity of Crombach and dug in with the doughs from 23d Armored Infantry Battalion. The exhausted men repulsed repeated infantry attacks with the help of artillery called in as close as twenty-five to one hundred yards in front of the foxholes. First Platoon M36s claimed three Tigers with direct fire and one by indirect fire, but one M36 sustained a hit that destroyed it.43
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During the day, differences surfaced between MajGen Maxwell Ridgeway, commanding XVIII Airborne Corps, who wanted to hold on to the territory between the Salm and St. Vith, and 7th Armored Division general officers who believed the command was in danger of imminent destruction. Clarke’s CCB had already been reduced by half. British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who on 19 December had taken command of all Allied forces on the north side of the salient, decided the men at St. Vith had delayed the Germans long enough and ordered a withdrawal across the Salm.44
The extrication began the next morning when the temperature dropped far enough to freeze the mud and permit vehicles to move. Tanks and TDs bearing riflemen were just forming up at Hinderhausen when the Führer Begleit Brigade struck again. Cavalry deployed as a rearguard while two M36s engaged the lead panzers.45 Lieutenant Jack Dillender related:
