by Oliver North
Between Normandy and Belgium, Hitler had lost 400,000 irreplaceable soldiers killed and captured, over 1,300 tanks, more than 2,000 artillery pieces and assault guns, and 3,500 aircraft. But he wasn’t about to give up. And the Allies had a major problem of their own making: supply.
German soldiers mounting their last offensive in the Battle of the Bulge.
Though Antwerp—Europe’s largest port—was in Allied hands, the harbor and the forty-five-mile-long Schelde River estuary opening on the English Channel were heavily mined and the low-lying Dutch offshore islands guarding the approach were all still in German control. Until the mines and German troops were cleared—no Allied ships could enter the anchorage—requiring all ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies to be trucked 400 miles from Normandy.
Montgomery believed that a quick breakthrough to the Ruhr River valley—Germany’s industrial heartland—might hasten the end of the war and negate the need for a bloody fight through the marshlands west of Antwerp. Eisenhower approved a two-part plan Monty dubbed Operation Market Garden. It called for the British 1st Airborne—along with the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions designated as the 1st Allied Airborne Army—to launch a surprise airborne assault to seize key bridges over which the British Guards Armored Division would charge across the Rhine and into the west German plain. It was a disaster.
On 17 September, the 82nd and the 101st Airborne landed and quickly seized most of their objectives—the bridges over the River Meuse at Nijmegen and the Wilhelmina and Zuid Willems Canals near Eindhoven—both in Holland. The British 1st Parachute Division, however, was dropped a full six miles from the Rhine crossings at Arnhem—and was quickly surrounded by the veteran 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions. The advancing Sherman tanks of the Guards Armored Division—restricted to a single narrow road for their approach—never made it to Arnhem. On 24 September, the 9,000 valiant, lightly armed paratroopers, outnumbered, outgunned, and fighting house-to-house, were finally overwhelmed. Only 2,000 of them made it back across the river. All the rest were killed or captured by the Germans.
Hitler was emboldened by the bloody “victory” at Arnhem and the overall Allied offensive slow-down precipitated by lengthy supply lines. Despite the looming advances by the Red Army in the east, Hitler ordered his generals to “harden” their defenses and prepare for a counter-attack. The effect of his order was almost immediate. By early October, Wehrmacht “personnel officers” had culled through every command and rear-echelon unit to find any able-bodied man able to fight.
On the river approaches to Antwerp, 65,000 troops under General Gustav von Zangen fought desperately to hold off Montgomery’s Canadians from 6 October until 8 November as the Brits fought in terrible weather to open the port. Fortifications on the Siegfried Line—the “west wall” along the Saar River—were improved by the Germans and manned against the U.S. 1st and 9th Armies. In the Hürtgen Forest—a fifty-square-mile swath of densely wooded steep terrain along the Belgian-German border—Hitler Youth, Home Guardsmen, and Volksgrenadiers inflicted more than 25,000 casualties on the Americans, fighting them to a bloody standstill, in their futile effort to capture the Ruhr River dams.
As autumn turned cold, even Patton, strapped for lack of adequate fuel for his tanks, found it difficult to maneuver in Lorraine against the remnants of German Army Group G that had escaped the Allied landings in southern France. At the fortress city of Metz, the U.S. 95th Infantry Division, in which my father served, was decimated in a month-long battle that started on 18 November. Meanwhile, in the deep draws of the Eifel Mountains, on the German side of the Ardennes forest frontier with Belgium, Hitler was gathering eight Panzer Divisions, two Parachute Divisions, and a Panzergrenadier Division in preparation for a counter-attack called Autumn Mist.
It was the gamble of a desperate man. Hitler ordered his reconstituted Panzers and SS troops—under the overall command of von Rundstedt and led by his devoted follower, Waffen-SS General Sepp Deitrich, at the head of the 6th SS Panzer Army—to capture Brussels and then break through to Antwerp. The Führer’s fantasy was that his SS units could somehow push 100 miles from the Ardennes to the Channel coast, divide the Americans from the British, and permanently deny the Allies a new logistics base. His hope was that an armor attack out of the Ardennes in weather too foul for Allied airpower to fly would come as a complete surprise—and that they could capture enough American and British fuel to keep his tanks in the fight all the way to the Channel. His first hope would be realized. His second would not.
At 0535 on the morning of 16 December, a barrage of German artillery, rocket and mortar rounds came crashing down on the U.S. 4th, 28th, and 106th Infantry Divisions as the 9th Armored Division deployed along an eighty-five-mile swath of the Belgian frontier. It was damp, foggy, and bitterly cold and the American units were totally unprepared. Few of the U.S. soldiers were equipped with winter-weather gear for what turned out to be the coldest Western European winter in fifty years.
Both the 4th and 28th Divisions had already been badly battered in the Hürtgen Forest and their cantonments on the edge of the Ardennes were supposed to be “rest and recovery” camps. Because the Germans had strictly enforced radio silence, Ultra intercept operators had no inkling that von Rundstedt had massed hundreds of thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks, and more than 1,000 artillery pieces less than five miles away in the thick forest to their east.
Nearly all of the 28th Division was overrun almost immediately, and to their north, the inexperienced 106th Division was surrounded in a matter of hours. Farther south, the 4th Infantry Division, supported by the 9th Armored Division, managed to hold up the advancing SS columns for much of the day, but when ammunition supplies dwindled, they were forced to retreat—leaving other supplies, vehicles, and many of their wounded behind.
Bradley’s 12th Army Group—whose area of operations included the Ardennes—was slow to react. Lacking Ultra intercepts or any aerial reconnaissance because of the low-hanging clouds, Bradley believed the German assault was merely a localized attack. Eisenhower, summoned from an aide’s wedding in Paris, thought otherwise—and ordered the 7th Armored Division to cut into the German thrust from the north and Patton’s 10th Armored Division to move north in an effort to interdict the “tail” of the attack.
The following morning the 7th Armored Division ran headlong into the 1st SS Panzer Division at St. Vith—a key road junction on the way to Antwerp—and the American fuel stores. By then it was clear that a major offensive was under way and Bradley finally moved to contain it. He issued a warning order to the 101st Airborne Division to move as fast as possible from their rest-training camp at Reims to the town of Bastogne—a crucial crossroads on the way to Antwerp.
The 101st raced the 100-mile distance by truck and arrived during the night of 18–19 December and started digging into the frozen ground. At dawn the following morning the Panzer Lehr Division with 100 tanks arrived on the outskirts of Bastogne—only to find their way blocked by the lightly armed but determined paratroopers. Michigan native Sergeant Donald Burgett was one of them.
SERGEANT DONALD BURGETT
Company A, 1st Battalion,
506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne
Ardennes Forest, Belgium
19 December 1944
We normally parachuted into combat, but for the “Battle of the Bulge” we were trucked overland—more than a hundred miles in open trucks. I was a sergeant and squad leader of the 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon, Company A, and at nineteen, was one of the “old men” because of my combat experience. The paratroopers got hit pretty hard, so every time we went in, I rose in seniority.
I had been wounded twice during a bayonet attack in Normandy, so I spent some time in the 216th General Hospital in Coventry, England, and rejoined the division on 13 July. We parachuted into Holland on September 17. When the Germans attacked through the Ardennes we were in a “rest area”—getting replacements, putting our gear back together, and repairing our machine guns, mo
rtars, and other crew-served weapons.
We had about three hours notice to mount up and move out to defend Bastogne. There were seven roads and one railroad that went through the city—like the spokes of a wagon wheel. The Germans had to have Bastogne to move their tanks, fuel, men, equipment, artillery, and supplies forward and to bring their wounded back into Germany.
The Panzer units that attacked us the morning after we arrived had Mark IVs, a small Tiger tank, and some of the “Royal” Tigers—their biggest—and of course all sorts of assault guns, half-tracks, and wheeled vehicles. We already knew to let the tanks go by and then pop up and shoot off the infantry. We had four TDs—Tank Destroyers—that were mounted with 90s, from the 705th Tank Battalion. They could knock out a Tiger with that 90 mm gun at close range.
I jumped into a hole at one point and a German tank ran over the top of me. He was probably there three seconds, but when you’re underneath sixty tons of enemy steel, that seems like a long time. If they knew you were beneath them, they would lock the track and and spin the tank around and grind you into hamburger. I saw them do it to one of my men.
You know, if you’re fighting a war in a ditch, the whole war is in that ditch. You don’t know what’s going on in Africa and don’t care. When you’re in a hole, pinned down by mortars and machine guns have you in a crossfire, it’s impossible to get a sense of the overall picture. That’s how it was for us at Bastogne—where we were encircled, with no communication in or out.
We were shot up so bad that my company—which started the fight in Bastogne with 170—within a couple of days we had just fifty-eight men left. We ran patrols outside our perimeter day and night—just like we had for the seventy-two straight days and nights we had been in combat during Market Garden.
That also meant we went seventy-two days we didn’t shower, we shaved with cold water out of a steel helmet, and washed one foot at a time; in case Germans hit again, or you got the call to attack. We had a very rough time with our equipment—after seventy-two days of constant combat, our machine guns and mortars were all beat up. We had lice, scabies, and I had trench mouth so bad I could move my teeth around with my tongue. Pus oozed out of my gums.
At Bastogne we were in constant enemy contact—a lot of it small arms fire at distances from three or four feet to maybe a hundred yards at the most. When I got shot one night, the bullet went into my hip and I could see part of the bullet under my flesh so I used my trench knife to dig the bullet out myself, because the Germans had overrun our hospital on the first night. They took all of our surgeons, medics, and medical equipment with them.
The real turning point was when the weather cleared enough for the C-47s to parachute supplies to us. We also got support from P-47s—strafing and shooting up German tanks and troops.
Finally the 4th Armored Division broke through to us but we couldn’t leave because tanks are very vulnerable without infantry around them. They brought a few replacements—my squad received one man. Best of all, they brought us ammunition, overcoats, and overshoes. They took care of our wounded but some of the men with severe frostbite needed amputations.
Then, after the 4th Armored came in, the 11th Armored Division arrived. The 11th Armored was green—they had never been in combat but they had the newest tanks, with 76 mm guns and muzzle breaks. As they arrived near Bastogne, our patrols were telling us that the Germans were preparing to mount another attack on the northwest end of Bastogne.
Patton said, “We have to attack now—before they do. Let’s go.” He took the new 11th Armored and they did a good job. They went forward, hit the Germans head on, and pushed them back.
I liked being a paratrooper. When you go out the door with a parachute, you don’t know if your chute’s going to open, but if it doesn’t you’ve only got nine seconds to worry about it.
Brigadier General Anthony McAullife was acting commander of the 101st Airborne when they were ordered to Bastogne. For three days after arriving at the small Belgian city, the paratroopers and a handful of tanks fended off the German Panzers. Then, on 22 December, four Germans carrying a white flag approached the American positions at the edge of the besieged city.
The leader of the group, a Panzer officer, told the U.S. soldiers who stopped the group of envoys that he had a message for the commanding officer of the U.S. unit. The Germans were blindfolded and taken to the 101st Division HQ, where they delivered their message to the Division G-3, a tall Texan and West Point graduate, Colonel Harry Kinnard.
COLONEL HARRY KINNARD
G-3, 101st Airborne Division
Bastogne, Belgium
22 December 1945
I parachuted into Normandy with the 101st as a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant colonel. Before I was twenty-nine, I was a colonel—which was quite unusual in the Army. In our case, it was just a matter of survival. Eleven of my classmates started out in the 101st, and I was the only one in the end that hadn’t been at least wounded, and many of them had been killed.
A typical U.S. Army division has three regiments but the 101st had four. In addition to the three parachute infantry regiments, the 501st, 502nd, and 506th, we also had a glider regiment, the 327th.
On September 17 we had parachuted into Holland for the Market Garden operation. I had the planes drop my battalion from 400 feet—which was very low—because I wanted to get a very tight drop between a canal and the river, so that the Germans couldn’t cut us off before we got to the bridges we’d been sent to capture.
I told my guys, “Don’t even try to assemble. Just get up and go for the bridges.”
We secured our objectives, killed a lot of Germans, and captured 417. After that, General Maxwell Taylor made me the G-3—the operations and plans officer of the division.
When we jumped into Holland we were told that we’d be fighting for about seventy-two hours and be pulled out. Well, we were there seventy-two days—fighting every day. When we finally pulled out and went back to Reims, France, we were told, “You guys have done a great job—you can take a much needed rest.” So General Taylor went back to the United States, and General Higgins, the assistant division commander for Infantry, went to England.
I got a call from Brigadier General McAuliffe, our division artillery commander, about 2100 on the seventeenth. General McAuliffe was the only general officer present when we got the alert, so he was the acting division commander. He said, “Harry, come over here. We’ve got something going on. There’s been a German breakthrough, and we’re moving out in the morning.”
It was well after dark on the night of the 18–19 by the time we got the whole division into Bastogne, a small city of maybe 30,000. It was bitter cold and there had been a light snowfall in the area. Eisenhower had already sent in Combat Command B, of the 10th Armored Division. They had about fifty tanks that were working—and had taken up positions on the roads coming into Bastogne.
When our 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment arrived, we sent them out immediately to reinforce the 10th Armored—and they had just gotten in position when the first fight erupted on the morning of the nineteenth. It was that close. A handful of tanks and 3,000 paratroopers engaged the German tanks just three miles out of town.
The next unit we put out was the 506th. And then the 502nd and every time the Germans started breaking through someplace, we got there just ahead of them, forming what turned out to be a perimeter. But by 20 December, the Germans had us completely surrounded and outnumbered five to one.
We put our field hospital in what would have been a safe area. But when you’re surrounded there’s no longer any safe area. The Germans captured our entire hospital, which was really bad news, because we had a lot of casualties throughout this battle. Without the hospital we treated our wounded as best we could, but it was very bad. Altogether we suffered 4,100 casualties—wounded, killed, and missing in action.
On 22 December a party of four Germans—two officers and two enlisted men—under a white flag made from a bed sheet, approached a platoon of o
ur 327th Glider Regiment. The platoon didn’t fire on them, and went out to meet them. One of the Germans said, “We want to see your commander.”
So, my guys blindfold everybody and left the two enlisted men to where they came in to the platoon headquarters, taking the officers, blindfolded, to the company headquarters. The company commander brought the message to our G-2, the intelligence officer, and to me, the G-3. And we took it to the chief of staff. The message says, basically, “We have you surrounded. And the humanitarianism of Americans is well known. We know you wouldn’t want us to have annihilate you and your men along with innocent civilians, so you’d better surrender or we will annihilate you.”
The chief of staff decided we needed to take this message to Tony McAullife.
The general said, “Let me guess. They want us to surrender?”
I said, “No, sir. These Germans are demanding our surrender.”
McAullife said, “They demand that we surrender? Nuts!”—which is just the way he talks. There was a long discussion about whether the message should be answered. “Oh yes, it should be answered,” McAullife said, “and it should be in writing. They wrote to us; we’d better write back to them. But I don’t know what to tell them.”
I said, “What you said first would be hard to beat.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I answered, “You said, ‘Nuts!’ ”
So General McAullife writes, “To: German Commander. Reply: Nuts. From: American Commander.” He gave his reply to the chief of staff and says, “See that this gets delivered.”
