ON THE MORNING OF JANUARY 3, the temperature was falling, the snow blowing wildly in near-blizzard conditions. Supply trucks skidded and overturned on the icy roads. Dog Company, as it had been in the Saar, was temporarily removed from screening operations to take the supply trucks' place. Preston McNeil and the other members of Dog Company found themselves given an additional task of carrying back the bodies of the wounded and the dead. In the frigid cold, the injured died of exposure within a few minutes. McNeil found himself picking up bodies that were frozen solid and securing them with ropes to the tank hulls. The well-placed German artillery took a brutal toll throughout the Ardennes: 50 percent of all American combat casualties were the result of artillery hits. A large number of American soldiers simply disappeared, forever to be listed as MIA. McNeil found soldiers who were literally blown apart, the worst carnage he had witnessed so far. He tried not to think about the fact that those body parts had been men.
Able Company had been kept in reserve thus far in the woods outside of Offagne, listening to the rumble of artillery and wondering when they themselves would be called up. The men huddled miserably together around small fires they had built from twigs and branches. When an officer of the 87th Division told Captain Williams that he and his tankers were not permitted to cut wood for fires, as the surrounding trees were the property of the king of Belgium, Williams responded, “I'm going to speak for my whole company. . . . Fuck the king of Belgium.” On the morning of January 3, Able Company was ordered forward to relieve the besieged Charlie Company.
Able's assignment was to attack simultaneously in two directions from Charlie's tenuous outpost at Gerimont: west through the Haies de Tillet Forest toward the hornet's nest at Pironpre, and north toward the village of Tillet. Williams was not satisfied with either the intelligence or the orders he was given by the infantry colonel, convinced he was dealing with yet another officer who knew nothing about the uses and vulnerabilities of tanks. Williams informed S. Sgt. Teddy Weston that once again it looked like they were on their own.
When Williams moved forward to relieve Charlie Company, a grim-faced Pop Gates warned him to be careful. The officers at the front had been of no help to the tankers. Charlie's remaining tanks rolled back over the slippery, tree-lined road to the assembly area for maintenance and repair. It was so cold that Leonard Smith found it nearly impossible to do the kind of maintenance work necessary. Smith and best friend Willie Devore huddled shivering around a small fire in the encroaching dark, as Devore talked about the long, hot summer days he'd known growing up in South Carolina, the light, swaying summer dresses of the girls offering tantalizing glimpses of their bare calves.
ABLE COMPANY TOOK UP Charlie's positions, preparing to attack down the road toward Tillet the following morning. In the monastery just outside of Gerimont, several of Able's enlisted men stumbled upon the pitiable sight of dozens of civilians, many of them wounded and half-starved, shivering against the searing cold. The bodies of other civilians lay among them, including those of several small children. Civilians paid a high toll throughout the Ardennes conflict. Some 2,500 had been killed by the battle's end, many in documented massacres by SS troops such as those at Stavelot, Ster, and Bande, but many more from the indiscriminate hail of German and American bombs and artillery shells.
Captain Williams informed the infantry battalion commander at Gerimont that the attack on Tillet would be suicide for the tankers and infantry alike. The colonel responded that their assault would be preceded by an artillery barrage directed at German positions, beginning just after dawn. Williams—who had seen at close hand in the Saar the limited effect of artillery against entrenched troops—continued to protest, but the colonel remained steadfast, ordering him to attack. Williams returned to his men and, his voice breaking, told them their mission. S. Sgt. Teddy Weston told him they were more than willing to go. In the company's two months of fighting, the men had grown to respect Williams as much as he had grown to admire them. They knew he wasn't sending them anyplace he wasn't intending to go himself.
Like Gates, Williams was determined not to send his tanks straight down the road in the open, telling the men that they would “go very damn slow and easy. We'll look for every bit of cover and wait to see if the infantry knows what they're doing.” The situation—heading down a narrow, exposed road into a heavily fortified valley—seemed eerily similar to that at Guebling and Bourgaltroff.
Pvt. Thomas Bragg, the young driver of Sergeant James's tank, approached Captain Williams, telling Williams about a premonition he'd had that he would not survive the day. Williams, who had long been impressed with Bragg's dedication and willingness to volunteer for difficult duty, told him he had his permission to sit out the day's attack and head back to the assembly area. But Bragg refused, telling the captain simply, “There's no one to take my place. We're all together up here.”
The American artillery barrage began on schedule. Williams, in a light tank, accompanied four of his Shermans two hundred yards down the road, where they stopped, partially sheltered from the Germans across the valley by a small rise. He had sent his two other Shermans just west of Gerimont to guard the troublesome left flank. The infantry soon marched north from Gerimont to join Williams's group of tanks behind the rise. Inexperienced in working with tanks, and sent forward without an officer to guide them, the young foot soldiers bunched up too close to the Shermans. No one, it seemed, had informed them that tanks draw fire. Williams sent his sergeant out to caution them away—just as a German mortar barrage came crashing in.
The Shermans loosed a return barrage of high-explosive shells to protect the infantry, and American artillery observers called in heavy shells to push the Germans off their firing positions. But the mortars had been devastating, leaving at least a dozen infantry wounded. Williams, “chilled thoroughly” by the suffering around him, watched as the remaining infantry ran back down the road to Gerimont (the barrage was so intense, they had little choice), leaving their weapons behind. More mortars fell among them as they ran, killing several. The Shermans could not advance without the infantry, so Williams ordered the tanks to back out one at a time, providing what cover they could for the wounded men until medics arrived.
As the tank commanded by S. Sgt. James Nelson began to back out, taking care to negotiate around the fallen soldiers on the road, heavy enemy artillery started coming in. The tankers knew the Germans had 105mm shells in the vicinity; Williams estimated that these were at least 150s. The wounded infantrymen near the tanks were literally torn apart, limbs and body parts flying in all directions. Nelson's tank had almost made it back to the relative shelter of Gerimont when it took a direct hit and exploded. The loader, gunner, and bow gunner exited, carrying the wounded driver toward the houses. Staff Sergeant Nelson had been killed in the initial hit.
THOSE INFANTRYMEN WHO HAD GONE ahead to Tillet were now taking heavy casualties. The two Able Company tanks to the west of Gerimont provided covering fire for their retreat. The remaining three Shermans of Able moved forward to fire additional covering rounds, spreading out to get the widest possible field of fire from the partial shelter of the slight ridge.
As they moved out, Sergeant Woodson's tank lost radio contact with command. Their transmission was scrambled by German interference. Gunner Walter Lewis heard the improbable and, in this deadly context, haunting sound of Louis Armstrong's version of “I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby” being played. The tanks fired high-explosive shells onto the houses at the edge of Tillet as the infantry struggled to make their way back along the icy road.
Artillery fire continued to come in. Woodson's tank took a hit in the driver's compartment from an 88mm antitank gun, sounding like plate glass shattering into a thousand pieces. The concussion blew Lewis out the top hatch, shredding his clothing. Bleeding profusely, he got up and ran back for the American lines in a state of near-hysteria. Crew members James Jordan and Charles Brooks were also severely wounded.
Woodson carried Brook
s back to safety as enemy shells continued raining in. Jordan would lose his leg; Brooks, who had been hit in his lower spine, was paralyzed. As his premonition had warned him, Pvt. Thomas Bragg, whose wife was expecting their first child, had been killed in the explosion.
ABLE COMPANY'S REMAINING FOUR SHERMANS kept watch throughout the night on the outskirts of Gerimont, preparing for the German counterattack that would most likely come the following morning. For Williams and the men, it was impossible to keep warm. Their extremities were numb and hurt to use. A ground fog rolled in, shrouding the valley and the hills beyond. Shortly after dawn, Able Company's Herman Taylor spotted German infantry crossing the valley from Tillet. The Able Company tanks stayed back in their defensive positions; the German infantry advanced to within two hundred yards of the American tanks but came no farther. The tankers held their fire: They had learned that the Germans would use such tricks to lure them into revealing their positions.
Able Company had received no reinforcements. Several Able Company members who had been left without tanks carried their grease guns forward to join the thinly spread 87th Infantry, dug into shallow foxholes in the frozen ground. The front was deathly quiet for the next three hours, as the tankers scanned the ground fog that covered the valley below. Finally, the strange silence was broken by a German artillery barrage. Incoming shells shattered the ground around the Able Company tanks, which were hidden behind a row of houses. Williams spotted through his field glasses two German tanks concealed by a stone wall on the edge of Tillet. Mortar fire started coming in, and rifle fire sounded below. The American artillery reply was delayed.
In the ongoing German barrage, the Sherman tank commanded by Sergeant Murphy took a hit from an 88mm shell and Technician Jessie Bond was killed.
As the light faded, the Germans, as battered as the Americans, pulled back for the night. But for the Americans, the news was grim. The American relief column was still nowhere in sight.
8
TILLET
To introduce into a philosophy of war a principle of moderation
would be an absurdity. War is an act of violence
pushed to its utmost bounds.
—CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ
The German defense of the village of Tillet and its environs fell to the Fuhrer Begleit Brigade, commanded by Col. Otto Remer, who had been awarded this coveted post for his decisive role in thwarting the July 20, 1944, attempt on Hitler's life. The brigade once served as Hitler's personal palace guard. Like the Panzer Lehr Division, the unit had been created around some of the premier tank soldiers in the German army, members of the Grossdeutschland Panzer Division who had earned their reputation at the Russian front. While the villages of Bonnerue and Pironpre continued to be defended by the Panzer Lehr, by January 3 control of the area around Gerimont and Tillet had shifted to the Fuhrer Begleit Brigade. It was the 761st Tank Battalion's misfortune to be straddled between these two crack armored teams.
The Fuhrer Begleit was an exceptionally large brigade, equipped with seventy-one tanks and assault guns and supported by a range of heavy artillery and self-propelled weapons. Its handpicked soldiers fought with a discipline and dedication military historians would come to term “fanatical.” The 761st's enlisted men knew nothing at the time of their opponents' storied history; nor did they know the name of the tiny hamlet that happened to be situated, on military maps they were not privy to, between their line of departure at Gerimont and their objective of the St. Hubert-Houffalize Highway.
Able Company held on to its battered outpost at Gerimont throughout the morning of January 6. The Fuhrer Begleit Brigade's artillery shelled the hamlet with devastating accuracy, exploding an infantry supply truck moving just beyond the monastery and narrowly missing the 761st's medical jeep. Captain Williams and his men were by this point simply too weary and too cold to be scared. Infantry reinforcements did not arrive until that afternoon. Only then was Able sent back to Remagne for much-needed maintenance and reoutfitting. Elements of Charlie rolled forward to take their place, waving and nodding acknowledgment as they passed. But Able's rest was to be short-lived.
The Fuhrer Begleit Brigade had meticulously mapped out its defense of Tillet and the highway beyond. Tillet was overlooked by dozens of ridges, which were fully exploited in the Germans' complex fortifications, holding machine-gun nests covered by tanks and self-propelled guns, and further supported by Panzerfausts, mortar teams, and heavy artillery. The 87th Infantry Division's command had finally realized the depth of these defenses and was preparing to stage a massive assault in conjunction with the tanks of Able and Charlie Companies. Leonard Smith, looking down across the snow-covered valley at Tillet, had seen enough combat by this point to know the attack would not be easy. But there was little that stood out about the village that would come to haunt him and define the war for him more than any other.
TWO MILES WEST OF GERIMONT, at Pironpre and Bonnerue, the attack by elements of the 761st's Baker Company and the 347th Infantry Regiment against the Panzer Lehr Division continued without rest. Infantrymen were sent to clear the woods, fighting against combat engineers of the Panzer Lehr who had taken up rifles in a pitched, bloody battle reminiscent of the American Civil War. In the fields around Pironpre, the tankers and infantry shivered at night beside their vehicles and in their shallow foxholes. Each day they awoke to make another series of futile charges against the entrenched defenders.
Equally fierce fighting and grave losses were occurring throughout the whole of the Ardennes. “The Battle of the Bulge” is in many ways a misnomer, for due to the ragged, divided nature of the terrain, the campaign rapidly developed into a series of separate and distinct battles. Historian John Eisenhower describes these engagements as “difficult to follow because so much was happening in so many places at a given time. . . . [I]t is almost impossible to visualize the entire picture as it unfolded.” The Bulge can perhaps best be understood as a jagged collage of numberless place-names like Pironpre, Pinsamont, Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, Kaundorf—meaningless to most people, except for the men who struggled, suffered, and died in these small hamlets in the relentless cold in the very heart of war.
The 761st's blood brothers of old, the 26th Yankee Infantry Division, had been fighting in isolation southeast of Bastogne since December 27, through the towns of Kaundorf, Bavigne, and Nothum. Separated from all other American divisions, with both its flanks wide open, the 26th Division's disastrously exposed position can best be conveyed by orders issued to the 101st Infantry Regiment for New Year's Eve: “Each Battalion will be prepared to meet counterattacks from the north, northwest and northeast.”
The weather throughout the Ardennes continued to exact almost as dreadful a toll as the German artillery. Even the most experienced of American generals had not faced war in conditions like these. The Allied air force would be grounded due to the severe weather for all but a few days in January; when pilots did fly they took great risks, as in every direction around them all they could see was white. On January 3, the First U.S. Army's attack from the north was halted by deep snowdrifts, icy roads, and dense ground fog. Everywhere the Germans, ordered to hold their ground, viciously contested and counterattacked the Americans. Surveilling his exhausted troops, and the conditions and the carnage they daily endured, Patton reflected, “How men live, much less fight, is a marvel to me.” Tillet was to stand among the bloodiest of the many battles within the Bulge.
THE 87TH INFANTRY DIVISION'S ATTACK on Tillet began in earnest on January 7. Captain Williams was not present for the assault: When Able Company arrived at Remagne on the sixth, Doc Adamson diagnosed him with severe trench foot and an infection in his leg requiring immediate treatment. On the morning of the seventh, the company gathered around the ambulance that was to carry Williams to Sedan, France, presenting him with a captured German flag that all the men had signed. Able, in its battle-scarred tanks, would soon be back at the front. The joint team consisting of Able and Charlie Companies was to be commanded by Pop Ga
tes.
The rolling, exposed terrain around Tillet was a tactical nightmare for the Americans. The ice and deep snow made extraordinarily difficult manuevering for the Shermans, which were initially instructed to stand back and perform a supporting role. Dog Company continued its grim task of carrying supplies to the forward elements and carrying back the wounded. Preston McNeil had tried to say a prayer for each, but in the endless work he soon lost count.
The young infantrymen attacked with great heroism in a series of drives on entrenched positions across the open, snow-covered hills and fields. The 87th fought through surreal levels of bitter wind and enemy fire, waiting out whistling German artillery barrages, stumbling a few yards forward and firing their M-1 rifles before diving down to avoid more incoming shells, then struggling up and trudging forward again. S. Sgt. Curtis Shoup of the 346th Infantry Regiment led an uphill assault on one of the ridges near Tillet; when his company was pinned down by machine-gun fire, unable even to dig for protection in the frozen ground, Shoup exposed himself to German fire, moving forward while firing his own automatic weapon. Though hit several times, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered straight into the teeth of the withering enemy barrage until he was close enough to throw a grenade. His heroic, dying act destroyed the enemy emplacement.
Brothers In Arms Page 19
